Revelation 22:21

THE PEOPLE

In terms of characters, this film is very simple. The main characters are the 2 members of the couple, of course secondary characters would be essential to develop their story, but the 2 in-loves are the ones whose personality has to be shown.

Luz

Luz is a Hispanic 17-year-old girl who moved to the U.S. when she was 14. Her name is the Spanish for light, and it serves as a reference to Matthew 5:14, where Jesus calls the church the light of the world. She is a very bright person in terms of personality, she loves spending time with people and suppresses her emotions to please others and have a good time. But while doing so, she also battles an internal discourse with self-hatred and doubts about her purpose in life. A character that really inspired Luz's personality (Not the events that surround her) is Daisy from The Great Gatsby, she may seem dramatic, but does her best to please those that appreciate her. The colors that follow her are usually pastel, warm colors such as light yellow or lemon, light orange or faint orange, and a subtle addition of light green or chinoise. 

Joshua

Joshua is a 17-year-old boy born in South Florida. His name is inspired by the Biblical character Joshua who led the Israelites to their promised land, foreshadowing that he is a good influence on Luz and will lead her on the right path. He is a very calm person, that always seeks to see the good in every situation. He is an optimist and a very loving person with everyone that comes along. His love for Luz is represented by his support for her and how he holds her hand in every difficult situation they face. The colors that follow Joshua are royal purple, tufts blue, and falu red. These colors serve as complementary colors for the color scheme that Luz represents, conveying they are made for each other and foreshadowing an unbreakable union.

Fitzgerald, F. S. (1925). The Great Gatsby. Scribner. (Original work published 1925)

2 Kings 3:15

 MUSICAL

Away from Romantic drama, I want my film to be a Musical. While Musicals are mainly seen in theatre, quality musical films can be found anywhere. In this genre, sound is essential, specifically the music of the film. This music, along with choreography and dialogue tells a story. Evoking emotions the characters are feeling and somehow conveying a spontaneous feeling to their dancing and (sometimes) singing, immersing the viewer into the story with captivating compositions and routines. With Musicals, what you see is not the most important factor, but what is heard affects the experience, balancing both audio and visual elements in harmony.

COMPOSING MY FILM

While films are composed, I want to use my musical knowledge to compose music for my film opening. In Musicals, the music that plays is essential to captivate the viewer and convey what the film will express. Music will be non-diegetic, as it won't be introduced as an element in the narrative word, but the dialogue and the choreography will work directly with the music that is playing, almost as if it were diegetic.

In terms of how the music will sound, I want to go for a more Latin and tropical sound. Following conventional elements of Salsa and Bolero, with a Jazz-inspired melodic composition. One of my main inspirations for composing the music for this film opening is Willie Colón and Ruben Blade's 'Siembra'. 

Siembra - Ruben Blades, Willie Colón

My dad grew up with this record and one of its songs, 'Pedro Navaja' became a bonding point for us. After listening through the whole project, I knew I wanted to work on something similar, especially with pieces such as 'Plástico' and 'María Lionza'.

I will use Musescore, an app for writing sheet music to compose the sections for the music. While I want to use key modulations heavily, I want to keep the basis of the song simple, mostly percussion driven than melodic. 

My project in Musescore

I want to involve friends of mine who are musicians to record this music. I know many that would be of great help. 

Other albums that inspire me for this are Hector Lavoe's 'Comedia', Abe Mendoza's 'Melodías - EP', and Joe Bataan 'SalSoul'.

In terms of elements of musicals I am including in my film, there will be music and choreographies that will work to tell a story, but there will be no singing (for the most part). The dialogue will be a constant poem, that, alongside the music and dancing, mise-en-scene elements and colors will tell the intended story and will allow context to develop.

SIEMBRA 

Released September 7, 1978, 'Siembra' is a salsa album by Panamanian songwriter Ruben Blades and Puerto Rican trombonist and singer Willie Colón. Combining soft Latin tones with jazzy New York melodies and even disco rhythms, 'Siembra' digs deep into society's issues in materialism and attention seeking, plus the insignificance of life in a world full of money and riches.

'Siembra' uses typical salsa percussive elements and rhythms, following common grooves and using common instruments for this genre.

SALSA GROOVE

I want to focus on 2 songs from this album that inspire my brainstorming for my film opening's score, one through its rhythm and the other through its melodic elements.

María Lionza is the 4th song on the album, it holds an andante tempo throughout, building up the composition by adding new percussive elements as the song progresses. The beginning of the song is what I want to focus on, a simple, yet effective groove that grabs your attention instantly.

This is my attempt at transcribing the percussion from the intro of 'María Lionza'. Even though this is just a simplified version of a full salsa groove, what makes it sound better is the way it is played. Almost like dragging, there's a certain swing that comes to it, especially with the cowbell. Jimmy Delgado, Adalberto Santiago, and Eddie Montalvo are the 3 responsible for this killer groove. By dragging the hits just a few milliseconds, they create a successful dragging salsa groove, then juxtaposed with the grand trombones and trumpets. I want to try and recreate something similar for the score inspired by this song, not the same groove but the same feeling that the song carries.

Buscando Guayaba is the 2nd song from 'Siembra', it is written in C major, a key with a commonly positive connotation. The song follows an I-V-V7-I-I-V-V7-I-I7-IV-iv-I-vi-ii-V-I chord progression, which might seem very complicated but it is actually not as difficult. This chord progression leaves a lot of space for dialogue and singing, which is why I want to use it as an inspiration to write a chord progression in the same key with a similar energy.

'BUSCANDO GUAYABA' PIANO

Hellerman, J. (2023, August 25). Defining the Musical Genre in Film and TV. Nofilmschool.com. https://nofilmschool.com/musical-genre‌

John 1:1

A NEW BEGINNING.

Finally, the project that persuaded me to take Media Studies. The one topic that captivated my decision. The one assignment I awaited since day one. Our PORTFOLIO PROJECT. I'm excited to finally develop my film opening. The many things I've been told about this class mostly surround this project. Everyone who told me about it speaks about it with passion and with the underlying intention to recommend the class just to work on it. I've enjoyed the class and the many assignments we've worked on, I feel like they've built my creative and technical thinking process, but this one project has been my hope throughout the entire year.

ESTABLISHING TONE.

I want to approach a certain tone with my film opening. I'm thinking about working with color schemes, contrasting darker and light colors to juxtapose two emotions and situations that are parallel to each other. I want to also establish the tone through the lighting of the shots. Going hand in hand with the colors, the lighting will relate to the color schemes and allow the implied tone to be shown.

DEVELOP CHARACTERS.

Through mise-en-scene and dialogue, I want to develop the main character and introduce their purpose. My desired purpose with the story for the film demands the main character to be developed. The way they're dressed, their actions and their words will convey their purpose and background. Who they are, what they do and what they will do, foreshadowing the rest of the film.  

Bryce Henderson - Music Marketing Blog Post #2

 To begin this project we separated the research equally between all the members so we could be efficient and we could all collect information about our assigned genre. This helped us to work quick on our case study chart and have a basis for what we had to research for our marketing campaign. With a genre like country, trends are set. There is a certain target audience that has to be hit, but it serves as a minimum. In terms of target audiences, a limit is difficult to set, so noticing the trends in country music we decided to follow those standards and also push limits and look towards reaching a more diverse audience in terms of age range and interests. In terms of marketing techniques, cross-media convergence is essential in country music. Almost all major country artists have a website that gives direct access to subscriptions, merchandise, tours, music, etc. 

Zac Brown's website

Almost all major country artists are active on social media sharing their personal lives, upcoming music and performances. The easy thing about researching country is that it's mostly the same strategies. The difficult thing about researching country is that there is a unique selling point for every artist.

While brainstorming, we based our ideas mainly on the song, 'Cold', which gave us a leeway to work with aesthetic and opaque colors. Brainstorming for the music video was simple, for the storytelling part, we made up a fictional story where a woman leaves her man to cheat on him and divided it on multiple shots. We thought of different settings for the promotional section of the video and recorded full-song clips in them, leaving a lot of creative space to modify them and pick and choose sections. In our storyboard, we reflected our ideas so we could have a basis for what the music video would come to be, many scenes were repeated so the music video wouldn't feel like it was dragging. Then we started brainstorming our marketing campaign which felt considerably easy due to the very strict trends that most country artists follow. We decided to follow examples such as Zac Brown, Blake Shelton and Chris Stapleton whose marketing campaigns are based around social media and websites, also offering merchandise that serves as a technique to have the audience market the artist. 

Our Bryce Henderson Hat concept

Recording our music video had its difficulties, as expected, but it was a fun experience. We were able to get creative with the shots we had planned and innovate with what we had. Being able to invite a friend to act in it and working as a team with my teammates was a satisfying experience, recording this music video had more fun than hardships. In terms of editing the video, Emma took charge of that and she did an amazing job, she asked us for notes on it so we could all somehow contribute to the final product. 

'Cold' Music video

Working on our presentation was difficult. To be completely honest, we rushed. That really limited our content and provided a not-so successful result, but we're glad we got to finish it with content we did discuss and had in mind since the beginning of brainstorming. Once again we separated the content, one group member wasn't as helpful as expected but for understandable reasons. The rest of us we were able to be efficient and work on our presentation. I edited the final video for the presentation with the audios and we ended in success.

This project could've been way more enjoyable if we organized our time right and we prioritized it. Most of the things we worked on were rushed and it created a lot of tension within the team. This is a very big example of learning from your mistakes, if we weren't given the extra time, this project would not have been what it is now. Managing time is essential to work on a successful project, setting strict deadlines for what is to be done and achieving results in due time. Setting leadership is also essential to work on an efficient project. I am definitely taking most of these factors with me to the portfolio project so they work as tips to succeed and not stress as much while working on it.

Country - Music Marketing Blog Post #1

 The first issue we faced was definitely the genre we were assigned, working with a genre that normally isn’t targeted to our age group is definitely difficult, but we worked through it. Our idea with country started with researching various popular country artists in the US, we found that acoustic guitars were a repeated topic, as well as fields and open spaces. Dark logos also were very present and pale colors as well, so we based our aesthetic around that. To build our artist we brainstormed not much on platform but on standing out through visuals and easy colors. To build a relationship between the song and the video we used opaque colors due to the song’s sad topic.

To build our music video we chose the promotional and storytelling techniques as they are popular and successful within the country world. We chose to closely follow the song’s story about heartbreak through a simple story of infidelity. We based our video on mostly long shots and medium shots, with a few close ups and even extreme close ups to add impact, but to maintain the organic feeling of country music we left the shots raw in terms of setting. Leaving space for creativity, we took long shots of whom would be Bryce Henderson to pick and choose clips and compile them within the video.

In terms of our marketing campaign, away from our music video, we chose to go all out on digital marketing and merchandise, as these would reach the common country audience and possibly a younger audience. With the assistance of the fusion of genres the song brings, a younger audience is a potential gain for this campaign, bringing the newer generation into the endless genre of country. Using the logo as the main part of the brand, Bryce’s guitar is the face, showing it is what will follow him through his music.

Semester One Reflection

 Through semester one of Media Studies, I learned the pure basics of media composition. I know mostly musical composition, production, and performance, but film, and many other details of the media sphere where a blur to me, so learning about things as small as types of shots to things as big as mise-en-scene was interesting and fulfilling to understand. I learned to identify these different techniques and details and even started to identify and use them to find the meaning in movies or shows I watch on my own. Looking deeper into media has always been part of my life as a consumer, but using the techniques to find meaning is fairly new.

I need to strengthen how I explain my perspectives on how different techniques affect meaning. With the many practice essays we did through the semester, I noticed my main issue was finding the right words to plainly put what I was thinking. I overthink my words and essays trigger that instantly. Sometimes I don’t correlate how some techniques develop meaning in one film to the way they’ve already been used in other pieces. Identifying the correct techniques could also be improved and developing my knowledgeability of the media sphere in its business side.

In our film pitch project, I feel like representing our ideas with fonts, words, and pictures was successful. How we were all on the same page and we succeeded in working as a team helped to complete a possibly well done assignment. What needed to be improved, or realized, is that crazy ideas are good but they should also be realistic and taking into account the viewer. Our idea for the film was very disturbing and uncomfortable, we basically thought of the craziest scary movie idea we could find and we did, but wasn’t the best decision. I learned that I should take into account my audience more, know what could possibly create a negative or positive reaction and make wiser decisions, choose what will balance what I would like and what the audience would enjoy, and use my ambition and creativity to create enjoyable and presentable pieces.

Representation In 'Community'

 Dan Harmon's 'Community' is a representation galore. The sitcom presents multiple groups of people represented by different characters. Starting with the main character, Jeff Winger, a stereotypical white man that seeks women in desperate ways. Dressed in casual attire most of the time with a common short haircut and growing a light beard as the show progresses. The stereotypical white man in Community is represented as selfish and petty, but also as a middle-class, single community college student, which differs from the common representation of a successful father. Jeff's flirty mannerisms around most women he meets depict him as desperate. Besides Jeff's appearance and personality, the events he involves himself in also support this representation. Throughout the first episodes of the sitcom, Jeff is shown trying to develop a romantic relationship with his classmate Britta Perry, but fails in the attempt, leaving an awkward relationship between the two in upcoming episodes.

Throughout the first study group between the main character group, there are many examples of representation, through opinions, mannerisms, and costume designs.

One of the main characters, Troy Barnes, is represented as a popular High School football player through his clear varsity attire and diction. In his introduction to the show, he describes himself as a quarter-back and a "prom king", depicting Troy as immature and possibly still caught up in his High School life. He is then described by Annie Edison, one seventh of the study group, as a "jock", which develops his character and foreshadows his personality. Troy is further shown to be somewhat nerdy. After developing a friendship with classmate Abed Nadir, Troy's true colors are shown through his love for robot movies and video-games. This side of Troy's personality represents the underlying insecurity that follows High School football stars, where their secret hobbies and passions are censored due to their desire to remain popular. Even though Troy's personality originally juxtaposed Abed's, their friendship helped Troy to rediscover his passions.

Racial representation is also shown through Troy's character in the many conversations he has where African-American stereotypes are discussed. The on-going discriminatory remarks by study group member, Pierce Hawthorne, develop the issue of how Troy is often profiled due to his skin color. The classic scene of Troy and Jeff having a conversation in the football field discusses discriminatory stereotypes in a comedic manner.

Religious representation is also shown in Community through Shirley Bennett, a conservative Christian woman who's beliefs usually clash with the other characters, depicting the stereotypical issues that may happen with religious mixes. Shirley has been a protagonist in multiple discussions with other study group members such as Annie who is Jewish and the underlying atheistic view of the other members. Shirley's social status is also a matter of representation as she is shown as a single (Even though she finds a partner further in the show) mother of 2. These details develop a possible racial stereotype and may show a negative religious standard through unstable families. But even through Shirley's hardships follow her through the show, she pulls through and serves as a representation for single mothers that will do anything for their children.

Abed's character is loved by a large part of the Community fanbase due to his innocent personality, making many situations awkward but interesting. The character of Abed represents people in the autistic spectrum. There was a thorough research made on the condition that comically led to Dan Harmon's conclusion that he is on the spectrum. Abed's representation of autism is expressed through his hyper-fixation on his passions and his amazing sense of memory, being able to remember even the smallest details about his favorite action movies. Abed wears studious attire with fun shirts, flannels or jackets, and jeans, possibly representing a certain group of students that have great learning skills and focus more on studies than fashion. Abed's hyper-fixation quality is greatly shown in the episode "Remedial Chaos Theory", where he even finds passion in certain personality traits, no matter how extreme they are. In this episode, the alter ego of "Evil Abed" is introduced.