Creative Critical Reflection

Final Products

Postcard Advertisement

Website

http://existingfilm.weebly.com/

Short Film

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwAkYkJWyX2sdDJWSl9sMEhTWjg/view

Final Thoughts

I would be lying if I didn't say that I'm glad this project is over with. The stress I have been putting on myself to make this project has been getting to me lately, and finally getting to relieve myself of that stress is a huge weight off of my shoulders. Creating this project has been more daunting than any project I've ever taken on. But, at the end of the day, considering everything we went through while making this film, Jania and I created something that I feel I can be at least a little proud of.
Thank you for following me along on this last little adventure for Shortcake Studios, and I hope you enjoy our projects final results.

Working Hard

I'm currently in Puerto Rico visiting my family, so working on the project this weekend has been pretty difficult. I was even working on my website in the airport while waiting to board the plane. I still have lots to get done, however, so I'm going to have to set aside an entire day during my trip to work on everything and make sure I finish up. The good thing is that I have my postcard finished and a lot of the website information blockeed out. It's gonna be crazy, but I know I'll get it done!

Postcard Process

Working on the postcard took me longer than I thought, but I actually enjoyed doing it and I'm really happy with the end result!

I started off with this image for the back of my postcard. I knew I wanted a lot of empty space to include all of the necessary information, so this image was a perfect starting point with the positioning of our actor.

Next, I wanted to blur everything in the image except for the actor, ensuring he would stay in focus. At first I thought about leaving the image like this, but then I started playing around with filters on my photo editing app and I found some really awesome effects.

 

Since I was trying to go for a hand drawn type of aesthetic, the filter I ended up choosing felt perfect. Having it be in greyscale felt appropriete for the subject matter of our film. Plus, it left a nice big empty space to fit all the postcard's information in a way that it could clearly be read.

Last Day of Filming

I won't sugarcoat it. Our last day of filming was a mess.

As I've mentioned in my past posts, one of our biggest obstacles has been working around our main actor's busy schedule. Originally, we were suppose to finish filming last weekend, but our actor had to cancel at the last second, and the only other time he was available this week was on Tuesday after 4:00 PM. Since this was our last week for filming, we knew we would have to finish filming everything in that one afternoon. Despite my state of overwhelming anxiety, I knew we would just have to make it work, so that's what we tried to do. We planned accordingly with our other actor who agreed to film with us on Tuesday and provide us with the setting as well.

Flash forward to Tuesday when things fall apart even further. Jania and I are together getting some last minute details together at the dog park before filming, when we get a call from our other actor. He tell us that he has to cancel, and that we can't use his house to film anymore. 

So. It's one hour before Jania and I have to start filming, and we're suddenly left with neither a second actor, nor a place to film. We start scrambling like crazy, trying to figure out who can fill in and what to do. After about half an hour of Jania and I freaking out and thinking we were totally screwed, one of her friends replied to us and said he would be able to film that night after 6:00. He wasn't a particularly.... good actor, but we were totally desperate and he was willing to act for fast food. We ended up filming in Jania's house until 10:30 on a Tuesday night. Towards the end of filming, Jania's camera started to die, so we had to rush through filming the last few parts. Hopefully that won't come back to haunt us.

All in all, it was a disaster. But, at the end of the day, we got it done. Now, lets just hope it all comes together a little more smoothly from now on. 

Wasted Week

This has not been a good week for me. I have been super sick and dealing with other personal issues, so as a result, I've been absent from school and we've fallen way behind on our project. We were suppose to be filming this weekend, but our actor had to cancel again. Now we have to finish filming on Tuesday, Jania has to finish editing, and I have to finish putting together our postcard and website; I'm just terrified that we won't be able to get everything done before spring break at this point. Nothing seems to be going right for us, and it doesn't help that I'm feeling overwhelmed by outside issues. Our poor time management skills have once again backed us into a corner. I'm just so mad at myself for letting this happen again.

Building Our Website

When Jania and I started this project, we agreed that we shouldn't put much focus on creating our poster or website until we were done filming. However, neither of us thought we would still be filming this late in the game. So, to try and compensate, I've started creating the movie website. I obviously can't finish making it until we're done with the film itself, but starting on the basics isn't going to hurt us.

So far, I've decided on what tabs I want to include on our website, as well as the content I'm going to include on each page:

Home
I want to include our postcard as a title image at the very top of our home page, and underneath an embedded link to the film itself.

Synopsis 
This page is going to include a brief summary of the film, as well as our film's intended purpose. I'm also thinking about including a little slide show of pictures from filming and behind the scenes photos.

About the Creators
This tab may or may not be included, I haven't decided yet, but I thought it would be interesting to include a page where Jania and I can share a little bit of our own personal stories, as well as why we each wanted to create a film about this topic and what this short film means to us. I think it would be a good way to connect with our audience on a more intimate level.

Getting Help
I want a section of our website to include ways for people struggling with mental health to get help. That includes the numbers for suicide hotlines, links to resources on how to identify symptoms, and other sources like these.

Some Relief

We just found out that we actually have more time to complete this project than we originally thought, and I am more than a little relieved. I've been incredibly anxious about not being able to finish all the elements of this project, especially the critical reflection. Last year, I didn't give myself enough time to make my creative critical reflection, so I ended up having to turn in a really sloppy, poorly made one. I've been super worried about having a repeat of last year, but knowing that I have a week longer than I originally thought I did makes me confident in the fact that I will be able to get everything done, and done correctly.

The truth is that I still want to have our project finished by the original due date because I'm going to be in Puerto Rico visiting my family during spring break. But, just knowing that I have that safety net if I need it is a huge weight off my chest.

Stressing (like always)

So one of the flashback scenes that Jania and I have to film is a "morning routine" scene, but we're having trouble figuring out where we can film it. It's stressful, because not only do we have to figure out where to film, but we also have to make sure that our schedule aligns with our actor's schedule. And our actor works during the week, so most of our filming has to get done on the weekends. 

Besides that, we're also concerned about filming our therapy scenes. Not only do we have to get confirmation for the location that we want to film those scene's at, but we also have to get someone believable to play our therapist character. Getting an adult to play this role would be ideal because it would be most believable, but, since we want to film outside of school, it's going to be impossible to get someone that much older than us to film these scenes, so we're probably just going to have to make someone our age look older. On top of that, we're going to need this actor's schedule to be pretty flexible, since our main actor's schedule is already so limited. 

Having to rely on other people in order to make our movie is probably the most stressful part of this project for me, because it makes me feel like we have a significant lack of control over what can get done. That kind of feeling makes me incredibly nervous, especially since situations like these were a huge reason why our project last year came out as disastrous as it did. I'm just hoping that once we start filming the last few scenes, I'll feel far more calm with everything that's going on. 

Filming at Markham

Since we got our main character's work costume the last time that we filmed, Jania and I were finally able to film the work flashback and the break flashback this weekend!

Our main character works at a park, picking up litter and just keeping the park clean in general, so for our set, we chose to film at Markham Park. Since it's such a huge park, we knew we'd have minimal interruptions while filming; besides that, it's a beautiful, fitting setting for the scenes we wanted to film, so we knew it would be perfect. We drove around the giant park for a while, looking for a good area to film, when finally we found a cute little nature trail that we thought would be perfect. Once we were there, we completely trashed the trail. We threw garbage all over the place for our main character to pick up while on duty (don't worry, we made sure all the trash was picked up when we were done filming).  Then, we filmed our main character picking up the garbage as part of his job. A few people did pass through while we were filming, but the interruptions were minimal, and we posted a sign in front of our "set," asking people to NOT pick up the garbage. We got some funny looks, but people could clearly tell what we were doing since our actor was obviously dressed as a garbage man, and no one stopped us or kicked us out.

The nature trail we were filming at also had these cute little benches for walkers to sit and rest. Since they were located in the same area as the work scene, we decided it would make sense to use them to film our main character on his break. The purpose of this scene is to show our main character trying to draw in his sketch book, but being unable to get anything on the paper. With a pencil and sketch book in hand, we had our actor sit on the bench and act upset with himself for his inability to draw in that moment. Despite my initial apprehension about our actor, I think he actually did a really great job of conveying our main character's intended emotions during this scene.

Overall, I think filming actually went really well. We got a significant amount done in only about two hours, and I was super happy with the quality of most of the shots that we were able to get. Now I'm just hoping that filming the rest of the scenes goes as smoothly as these did.

Start of Filming

Jania and I starting filming! For the flashback scenes, we want to film our protagonist doing his morning routine, driving to work, working at his job, taking a break, having lunch, and driving from work. So far we've, filmed him driving to work and him having lunch. We had planned to film more than that in one go, but we realized we didn't have the character's costume which was necessary for filming the work scene and the break scene.

We were able to film our "driving to work" scene fairly quickly since it's our simplest flashback. We kept our shots fairly standard and simple because of how short we want to keep this snippet of a memory. After that, we filmed our protagonist having lunch, and things went very smoothly. 

Once we were done filming those two scenes, we went out to buy our main character's work clothing. Our protagonist is a park sanitation worker, so we wanted to get one of those bright yellow, reflective vests for him to wear, similar to what construction workers use. 

We went to Party City first, but we couldn't find a construction worker costume that wasn't for toddlers, so we went next door to Home Depot, and we were actually able to find a proper costume for our actor. 

Even though we didn't too film much, overall, I'm feeling good about the stuff we got done and it's left me excited to do more. Next time we film we'll be able to film our work scene and our break scene, which are the two most important flashbacks. 

Slice of Life Genre

The point of a slice of life film is to depict the everyday experiences of the protagonist, which is why our concept fits perfectly with the genre.

Slice of life films are all about trying to capture the authenticity of the human experience, without being dependent on an overt plot to carry the film's direction. This genre is risky, because it means our film will rely heavily on our protagonist to keep the film engaging to viewers, but I'm confident we can accomplish this with an interesting character and a provocative script.

For me, however, the main concern with the slice of life genre is being able to convey a clear purpose. Since slice of life films don't usually have obvious plots, it can be hard to illustrate what the point of the film is to the audience. This is especially daunting with a serious topic like ours. I'm hoping that audiences will watch our movie and really be able to grasp what our purpose is. Im really just anxious to see how this film all comes together.

(Source)

Symptoms Research

Jania and I want to make sure we do a good job of conveying the typical characteristics in someone with major depressive disorder, so we've each been doing research on behaviors exhibited by depressed people. Based on that research, I've picked out specific symptoms that Jania and I want to directly convey to the audience in our film.

• Feelings of emptiness: We want to convey this through key moments of silence in our film. Silence is the sound of being alone, and based on personal experience, being alone is often when depression hits the hardest. I want to make sure to convey that empty, lonely feeling in this film through visual and auditory elements.

• Loss of interest or pleasure in activities/lack of energy, so even small tasks take extra effort: We want to convey this symptom in a specific flashback. Our main character loves sketching and creating art in his free time, but his depression is leaving him uninspired and unable to do even the thing he loves most. We want to have a scene where he is on a park bench with his sketchbook, clearly wanting to draw something, yet unable to do so. 

• Anxiety, agitation, or restlessness: I want to include close up shots of our main character's hands fidgeting or his leg bouncing constantly when he's seated. These ticks are common in people with anxiety and depression, and it works as a visual cue to convey how the protagonist is feeling to the viewers without being completely overt.

• Trouble thinking, concentrating, making decisions, and remembering things: The whole point of our character drawing out his day for his therapist is because he struggles with vocalizing and getting his thoughts in order, so this symptom is vital to justifying our film's structure and concept. 

Source 1

Source 2

Worries

Jania and I have been working hard on our script and storyboard for the movie. We want the dialogue between the therapist and our protagonist to guide the story and sequence of memories, so the script is going to be essential to planning out the shots and timing for everything. The only problem is that, at least on my end, our idea is still a little unclear, so I'm struggling to put everything together in my mind.

Besides that, I'm nervous for our schedule. The person who is going to play the main character has a pretty limited schedule for when he's available to film, but I really want to get filming as soon as possible in order to start editing and start putting together our movie poster/website.

All of this has to get done, but, to be honest, I'm feeling pretty powerless and overwhelmed at the moment with everything going on. Jania and I need to get together, sit down, and really get all of our thoughts and ideas in order. Then we can start to actually move forward and make some necessary progress.

Research

In order to get some inspiration for my own short film, I've watch some other short films that tackle the issues of mental illness. These are some characteristics and notes I've picked up while researching:

1) Many of these short films attempt to show the main character's day-to-day life.

This is very similar to what Jania and I have been picturing for our film since the very beginning of our concepts development. 

Alone by Eric Nguyen

Empty by Tom Smith

A lot of these films start off with shots of the main character laying in bed, not wanted to get up to start their day; an experience that anyone who has or has had major depression can relate to. These shots are typically combined with the sound of an alarm clock to signify the start of the day. This is done to start off the film chronologically, and to establish that the film will be following this character throughout the rest of their daily routine.

There is certainly nothing wrong with this format, however, Jania and I's original idea was going to be exactly like this, so I'm pleased that we want to do something more unique instead in it's formatting. Our goal is still to show a normal day in our protagonist's daily life, but we plan on steering away from the monotony of keeping it in the standard, chronological order.

2) One characteristic that I really want to utilize in our own short film is the absence of music. Using silence is a great way to artistically represent the empty, numb feeling that many people with depression or another mental illness often experience. The lack of music can make audiences uncomfortable because it forces them to focus on the diegetic noise and the visuals of the film. Doing this will put a significant emphasis on our shots and editing, which means we will have to make sure our execution is particularly strong, but, I believe it'll be worth it for the ambience of our film. 

3) Another common characteristic in these films is low-key lighting and dull colors in the visuals. It's another artistic way to represent how the protagonist sees the world around him or her because of his or her mental illness. 

Living with Depression by Kat Napiorkowska

For a film with this kind of topic, it's important to make the audience be able to understand and connect with the main character, even if they themselves do not battle with any kind of mental illness. It's the little touches like lighting and mise en scene that make doing so possible.

The Idea

Jania and I have started to flesh out our concept for our short film, and I'm feeling a lot more confident about the direction we are heading in as of now. We have some really solid ideas that I think will make this film unique in a really good way.

The film will start out by establishing that our main character is in a psychiatrist's office. The doctor will ask the protagonist to describe his day-to-day life, but he'll seem to struggle with this tasks. Instead, the doctor will ask him to draw individual events from his daily life without concerning himself about their order. The rest of the film will be short clips that represent the scenes he is drawing out as he narrates over them and does his best to explain his own train of thought.

I like this idea because of its unique way of telling the story, but I've yet to come up with an ending that I'm truly happy with or excited about. So, my goal for now is to try and figure out a conclusive ending for this film; one that does it's job of providing some sort of closure, while not ruining the whole purpose and message of the story. I think researching other short films that involve a similar topic to ours will really help us with this, so that's what I intend to do next. Most of all, I want to avoid is producing a film that addresses such an important issue in an unoriginal or uninteresting manner.

Starting Fresh

Today marks the start of an all new project for Jania and I. Last year, our portfolio project did not turn out the way we had hoped it would. To be honest, neither of us was proud of our film introduction. Our final product was sloppy and full of mistakes, and I catch myself cringing whenever I think about other people seeing it. But, this year, we are determined to redeem ourselves by creating a short film that we can stand beside with pride.

We're purposefully going a totally different route from the lighthearted, cutesy opening that we did last year, because we want to distance ourself from that idea and do something completely new. The only similarity is that, like last year, the topic for our new short film is quite personal to both Jania and I. Our concept this year centers around mental illness, specifically depression, and how it feels to be suicidal. Both Jania and I have our own experiences with mental illness, which is why this film means a lot to us. What I really want to do is shine a light on the fact that living with severe mental illness means being in a constant battle with one's own thoughts, while still having to carry on through day to day life as though nothing is wrong. It's a burden that many people carry, but few speak out about.

The consistently negative representation of mentally ill people in mainstream media has resulted in a common narrative in which the mentally ill are treated as unstable, crazy, and even dangerous individuals. However, the reality is that the majority of people with a mental illness lead normal, everyday lives and show no signs of their condition to the outside world. I want to find a way to effectively convey this in our film, because I'm tired of seeing stories where mental illness is demonized and portrayed as something to be feared.

With that said, I'm excited to start my research and get a better understanding of what I need to do in order to meet my own standards for this film's production. It's going to be a lot of work, but I feel far more prepared this time around.