Sneak Peak

Here's just a small preview of my documentary with a quick trailer I made for website purposes. It's by no means a professional or incredibly put together trailer, but I thought it would be nice to share!

Distribution, poster, website, and more!

Hello!!! I feel like I've been away from my blog for so long because I've been hard at work finishing my project, but good news, it's all finally done! The only thing left for me to do is the CCR which I will start working on tonight and finish tomorrow. Before I dive in and show you all my final products, I first wanna update you all on the work I've been doing over the last few days. This mostly involved working on the poster and website.

Obviously one of the big things for any TV show or movie is how it will be distributed. For my project, since I didn't actually have to distribute anything, I was at liberty to make up and choose any distribution process I felt appropriate, as long as it was realistic. For my documentary series, as I officially decided to brand it as, I chose a direction many projects are now taking in that it would be totally distributed online. I chose this for a couple reasons. Mainly because since this is the direction we are moving in it is more easily accessible to all, and more my main target audience, teens to young adults, they are most responsive to this. Specifying where I will distribute it online, I have decided that my documentary series will be an original series picked up by and distributed mainly by Netflix, in addition to being available on iTunes for those who are not Netflix users. So why these two platforms? iTunes, because it is something most people can access and in all the other documentaries I used as case study research, their content was available on iTunes. Also, I did some research, and for the majority, most Netflix shows are available on iTunes. As far as why I chose Netflix, I did this because streaming services are now becoming huge competitors and even beating mainstream television and out of all the streaming services out there, consumer reports show Netflix remains the most popular. The great thing about Netflix also is that is comes basically built with an audience. Also, Netflix already has a great deal of movies, shows, and documentaries about theater and other art forms (cough cough, First Position) so my documentary series would fit right in.

This choice of distribution affected not only some aspects of my website, but also my poster. Netflix originals have some specific things all in common with their posters so I made sure to check this out so I could make sure to follow conventions and have it in my poster.

The main thing is that they all have the Netflix logo somewhere at thee top, most with "A Netflix..." and the date the episodes will be available at the bottom. Though there are variations, as you can see, with most posters I found, the Netflix logo was at the top in the center and the availability date was in the bottom right corner, so I incorporated these elements into my poster. 

In regards to my website, I pretty much did all I said I would with the exception of adding a playlist. For one, the program I used wouldn't let me upload music in the fashion I wanted to and also I thought it wouldn't really make sense to add song that were about the topic, but I wasn't actually able to use on the show. I thought about adding the professional versions of songs the troupe had performed but that also seemed redundant since I already have a performance page. Other explanations for more specific choices can be found in my CCR, but for now I just want to discuss the social media platforms I created and linked to the page. I decided to make a Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Like I said, my main target audience is teens and young adults, but since art appreciation is a subject many older adults can relate to, I'm also hoping to target a few of them and so the Facebook is really for them but it also targets the younger audiences, according to Forbes, 41% of millennials use Facebook everyday. The Twitter and Instagram, however, are for the younger group since these are among the top social media platforms for Generation Z and Millennials. I could have included Snapchat since it is rising into the top three social media platforms used by Millennials and Gen Z, but the truth is most older audiences don't utilize this platform so I didn't want to exclude them completely; plus, with the other three accounts I think it would be enough. Although I wasn't able to create a YouTube page which is something I wanted to do, I was able to embed performance videos in the website itself. 

Lastly, just to get this out of the way, I want to site where I got the music for my documentary excerpt. In total, I used 4 sounds: the sound of an orchestra tuning its instruments, a camera flash charging sound effect, a camera flash sound effect, and a song. Both sound effects were from a YouTube account called "Jojikiba" which provides Royalty Free sounds.

The sound of the orchestra was from a YouTube account known as "Urb Mak" and he had previously assured another use that this sound was in the public domain, i.e., anyone could use it.

Lastly, the song I used was a Royalty Free song that was included in Filmora, the software I used to edit, which was called Little Maps by Eddie.

That's all for now, next time I post it will be the final reveal of everything I've been working so hard on. I hope you will all enjoy it!



Sources:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/21/overwhelming-majority-of-people-watching-streaming-services-still-choose-netflix.html
https://www.lightsfilmschool.com/blog/how-to-get-your-indie-film-onto-itunes-netflix
https://www.lifewire.com/hottest-social-app-trends-for-teens-3485940
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurenfriedman/2016/12/29/4-millennial-social-media-trends-to-watch-in-2017/#171f0fe66e69

Picture Perfect

As I'm working today on editing and creating my documentary's poster, I realized I never updated you all on how shooting for this went. I took the pictures in school Thursday as I had said, and although I'm happy with the results, they are a bit different than I planned. Before I show you the final image I'm currently editing and manipulated, I wanted to do a kind of spot the difference and just reflect on what I said I was planning to do vs. what actually ended up happening.

The plan:

• Utilize blue, purple, and white lighting
• Have silhouettes formed by the back light, in other words, just have black figures as my performers
• Use of solid black for stage floor

The result:

• Utilization of pink lights and bright white spotlights in order to create the "silhouettes"

As it turns out, although I have spent endless hours throughout the years on and in my schools stage and auditorium, I am one hundred percent a performer and not a backstage technician. I completely overestimated the lights we had and the ways I could manipulate them. The blue and purple lights were originally inspired by an image I took in the wings of Morsani Hall in the Straz Center- a theater primarily used by professional touring companies and performers. The blue and purple lights I wanted to recreate, I was trying to do so in my public high school's amateur theater. We did have these colored lights, they just didn't really read well and were not as bright and powerful as I remembered, so, I opted for a pink tint in lighting which is just what ended up working best. 

The ceiling of  the stage where the blue lights were located.
They're clearly there, just didn't do much for the shot. 

The pink lights were located in a manner where they
more faced the stage rather than came down
right on it. You can see the pink was capable of totally
taking over the auditorium. 

• The "silhouettes" are actually completely visible colored bodies

Again, an misunderstanding of the placement of the lights in my theater. The colored lights, like I said, were not bright enough and faced directly down on the stage, not able to give me the silhouette effect. The only way I could get the effect of shine and light falling on the performers was by using spotlights, which although got the job done, created a different look than I anticipated. Because of this, you can see the performers clothes perfectly; and because I didn't plan on this happening, I didn't tell my subjects to wear anything specific. Now, this could have been awful and ruined my entire picture, however, I think it actually worked in my benefit. All of my troupe-mates that volunteered to be in this picture for me were conveniently wearing solid colored shirts that worked well together, giving the shot a nice bit of color, but nothing too crazy. 

• The part of the stage I shot on is actually wood, but I didn't even end up capturing it in some shots. 

This one is actually up in the air; it could go as planned, but also maybe not (I'm making two versions of the poster right now to decide which is best later.) Originally I had planned to have my actors stand on a black stage, which is what I thought the stage I would be using was, and I mean, it was, but not the mantel, which is where my subjects had to stand for the picture to work with the lights. If I use the image that shows the wooden, unfortunately not black, stage, this means I have to crop my "6510" title and get rid of the background to be able to use it on my poster (since the background of this picture is black). If I use the image that doesn't even show the stage, I may just end up putting black at the bottom of it and easily pasting the picture over it. But this will all be decided with the final result.

Anyway, enough explanation. I'll just show you the two pictures I'm using for my poster. I guess the one I will actually end up using for the poster will be a surprise, but for now, I think I'm leaning towards the second. 

 

Website Wonders

As I've started working on my website, one of the largest unexpected challenges that I've encountered is creating a compelling and representative synopsis for my documentary. As I established before hand,  the about/ synopsis page is an integral part for any film or tv show's website since it is what audiences unfamiliar with the piece will first be drawn to in order to gain immediate information; therefore, it should give consumers enough information so that they can decide if it is something they are interested in, not enough information so that they feel they know the whole story, and engaging enough that they desperately want to watch. A good synopsis is also extremely telling of a stories character and quality. "When a plot synopsis is still compelling without all the little details, that's the test of a story's foundation." (www.scriptmag.com)

That being said, this is what I've come up with so far. I may make some edits, however, I'm pretty satisfied with it.

"The theater community is one that expands globally, capturing many individuals with its diverse art and performance forms; the connection felt among performers and theater connoisseurs because of their love for this craft is unparalleled to most human connections. The foundation of this bond and community often begins early on among students and young performers alike.

In a high school in South Florida, students in its award winning drama club work year long as a troupe preparing for the Florida State Thespian Festival and competition. With over 7.000 thespians in attendance each year, the festival is identified as the nation's largest gathering of high school theater students of its kind. Here, students spend a week in Tampa, Florida immersed in performances, workshops, master classes, and the ambiance of the city being completely taken over by theater.

Following the troupe’s journey from initially imagining and rehearsing their pieces for the district festival in hopes of receiving the coveted Superior ranking to be able to qualify for the State Festival, to capturing the devolvement and growth of their relationships and performances through States, We Proudly Represent Troupe 6510 witnesses it all. It tells the story of art, passion, camaraderie, and community as these thespians transform from just a troupe, to a family."

Editing Feedback and Updates

Since I last said I finished editing, I went back and made some adjustments on my own before actually showing my documentary to anyone. The most relevant change from my first draft to the second draft, and the one I'm most excited about because I think it looks so pretty, is the look of my title! By this point I think you've heard me talk about this title so much you're probably expecting something good, I hope I don't disappoint. It's nothing too fancy and extravagant but I really like how it turned out, and really, it was exactly what I envisioned. Here's the grand reveal.

Here's the original title, which I had displayed in a previous post 

And here's the title now, complete with the marquee light 6510 my brother so kindly created for me

Maybe it's silly to be as excited about an aspect as seemingly small (in comparison) as a title's graphic, but it's just so encompassing of theater and the "big time" dream that I think it embodies a very important aspect of my documentary very nicely. I'm also happy because now this means I get to work with and adapt this title for the other minor components and I know the final results will probably look just as good.

Now into the meat of the update: tonight, after finally being pleased enough with my editing to feel ready to show people for critique, I shared my project with a few peers from my class. Lari, Celeste, and Isa were the one's that mostly gave me feedback and they had a lot of great things to say that going back and fixing will make my piece just that much better. From everything they told me as well as a few things I personally caught when viewing my draft for the millionth time, I complied a list of some general, but also very specific things I have to fix and edit in order for my documentary to be as complete as I want it. Though it wont make sense right now, I'll post my notes here and in time, once I finally share my end product, I'll come back to insert my drafts so my progress and changes can be seen. But for now, here's just this:

Overall, however, my friend's really enjoyed the piece and said that their notes were mostly knit picky which makes me feel really good about my project so far since I worked so hard on editing. With this all finally coming together, although there was never really a doubt in my mind of the subject I wanted to focus on for this, I'm glad I chose what I did. Not only was it perfect timing to be able to film and what not, but it's also a topic so personal and important to me that (it's about to get really cheesy and borderline lame in here) I've enjoyed creating the project and now have a reflection of incredible memories that I know will last me a life time. Now onto the next! I've already started working on the website and this Thursday I will officially be taking the pictures for my poster, so that's what this week is looking like. 

We are LESS THAN 2 WEEKS away from the due date!!! But I'm making great time. I want to have all components finished by Sunday, the end of this week, that way in the final week I can take a few days to do the CCR and still have time to spare to fix any mistakes and then finally, enjoy my spring break and time off. 

Done Editing!!! (Kinda)

Last night, I am happy to say I finally finished editing my documentary!!! I am pretty happy with the way it turned out with the exception of one transition in the end of it that seems to change subjects with no meaning or purpose. This is where the "kinda" done editing part comes in. I really love everything else about my piece, but this week I'm going to show my product to a few classmates and have them give me input as to whether or not they think the transition/end is weird and or abrupt. I also want to ask, obviously, about what they think overall so that if need be, I can make changes while there's still time. I think a main critique that I may possibly receive is that the task at hand it to create an excerpt from a TV documentary- my entire TV documentary capturing the Troupe's work and challenges leading up to and after states, with my excerpt documenting the time at states- but I think rather than an excerpt I made more of an "op doc". If the people I show this to absolutely hate that aspect of it, it can be easily changed and I already know how I would go about it, so that part I'm not too worried about.

Other than that all I need to do to finish is insert the graphic for the title which I'm waiting on, and also I'm still looking for background music to include for the end. I mentioned my struggle with music before and not being able to use the tracks I originally wanted, but the way it worked out, I don't think those tracks would have all fit into the piece anyway, so really, it was nothing to stress about.

I'm nervous, but mostly looking forward to sharing my excerpt with others and getting feedback on my work.

Poster Updates

I previously created a post discussing my ideas for the documentary's poster and although I was still unsure of the final image I would be using, this week I met with a few of my class mates to discuss our projects and they gave me some insight on the topic. I explained to them my idea and showed them the images I was using as inspiration; collectively we all decided that, yes, the backstage picture was the best and most capturing of the purpose of my documentary. They suggested, however, that rather than having the image be backstage from off in the wings, it be a shot on stage of the silhouettes of the troupe facing out to the audience during something like a "curtain call." I really liked this idea and in fact, had already thought about it, the reason I never really considered it too heavily though was because something like that is already very similar to another famous production's poster:  A Chorus Line.

Not only a musical theater production created for the stage, but also a movie making grand impacts on screen, A Chorus Line is a well known piece for both younger and older audiences, especially those who are involved and interested in theater... aka MY EXACT TARGET AUDIENCE. Not to mention, it is also very similar to the Thespians documentary poster.  This is mainly the reason why I had some hesitations for choosing this as my cover image. I didn't want it to come off as unoriginal, uninspired, or become easily mistaken for Piece of media other than my own.

On the other hand, this image is PERFECT for my TV documentary and portraying its true underlying themes, and soo... my peers convinced me to go this route. I'm going to be taking the shots next week on my school's stage once I have access to the light booth and am able to properly light the set how I want it. Unlike the image used for A Chorus Line and Thespians which utilizes classic white and yellow lights, I'm planning on orchestrating my lights so that they are comprised of a blue, purple, and white light color scheme, similar to the lighting in my original backstage inspiration picture (and looking back on it, the lights in the heading of the Thespians websites home page).

Something about this just makes it feel more original and distinct from A Chorus Line's poster, as well as part of the modern theater world. I'm including the white light so that there is still something within that color scheme that will match and pair well with my "marquee light" title which will most likely be white/ yellow lights. For this reason, I will also do my best to take the cover shot with white and yellow lights shining on the performers, just in case the blue and purple look too off with the title.

Another distinction that will separate my documentary's poster from others of previous productions is the physicality and body language of the subjects in my shot. A Chorus Line is all about individual performers sharing their personal stories and auditioning to further their own career. It's really about the pressures of the performing industry and the toll it can take emotionally and physically on individuals, and the poster reflects this, with many of the performers in the cover standing in solidarity and off on their own. Since my production is about the polar opposite, relationships and community built on the bond of theater and performing, my subjects will be proudly holding hands, standing together as one.