Final Products :)

What's up blog. It's finally done. Here is our A Level short film, a dramatic queer coming-of-age story called Writing on the Bathroom Wall. 

SHORT FILM

SOCIAL MEDIA

PRINT COMPONENT

Thank you everyone that helped along the way and I'm so grateful to my group M and J who this could not have been possible without.

The quest to find a shitty bathroom (somehow impossible)

What's up blog. After begging my group to location scout while I was away, they finally got to the job. What we didn't realize was that our town's public park and facilities have somewhat recently gone under upkeep, remodelling, or reconstruction of the sorts because every bathroom in our city was FAR TOO NICE. And it's not to say that our school bathrooms are horrible, they're well kept for high school (seriously grateful cause some other schools you can't even look yourself in the mirror) but these public bathrooms did not pass for the average public school bathroom. Main things we were looking for: neutral colored walls, grey door, STALLS, maybe a little bit rundown but not horribly disgusting either.

The first one they visited was at Regional Park, our first choice for filming. This choice wasn't so bad as the stall doors were grey, the color we wanted (typical in all the photos of school bathroom vandalism we found) but we could tell it was recently remodelled because no one remembered these bathrooms being this nice. J felt bad about messing around with this bathroom so their search continued.

Nice walls and floors, clean, accent wall?? Too nice.

Then they visited Town Center, a local shopping mall because we remembered there were bathroom stalls there that hardly get used because most people use the restroom in the shop/restaurant they're in, not the public ones. If i was there, I would have told them that I was pretty sure the center was privately owned therefore highly likely to have nice bathrooms but alas, it was part of the adventure. Turns out, not only were the bathrooms really nice and far from looking like a school environment, but they also has MARBLE WALLS. So Town Center was a definite no.

They really invested in marble walls for bathrooms no one uses.

I had mentioned a back up park in case Regional didn't work, so they set off towards Peace Mound Park. To be honest, I suggested it just because I knew they HAD bathrooms, not because I remembered any details about them. Turns out, not only were the bathrooms nice (again), they were private style not stalls, and on top of that were BEAUTIFUL. Tell me this doesn't look like a secret garden.

Glass doors and everything...

At this point my group took a moment to contemplate feeling a little defeated, but the realization struck that this is 100% just an issue of privilege (thank you upper middle class suburbia!). The solution: drive 10 minutes to the next town over and check out the bathrooms there.

At last, they stumbled upon Vista View Park's bathrooms. J said the men's bathroom looked horrible, but M took some pictures in the empty women's bathroom and it wasn't half as bad. The walls were white, on the yellowing side, the bathroom STALLS (hurray stalls!!) were grey (HURRAY GREY!) and the mirrors were slightly dirty but still visible (yay imperfection!) It was imperfectly perfect.

Thank you City of Davie for being average!

Now that we found our dream bathroom, we're set to film upon my return. I need to contact Lynda and check what days she's free (which might be an issue if she's not) but luckily the film is majority Moon and M is willing to make that time sacrifice for the group more than the one who's grade isn't on the line. I'm planning on using equipment from my TV program at school to film and hopefully we can execute our plans well!

Problem Solving

What's up blog. I haven't really discussed it much on the blog since the beginning, but a problem that has impeded us from filming thus far has been the bathroom situation: a large part of our film is set in a school bathroom, and the vandalization of a door in said bathroom, and the challenge is how do we pull this off without 1) getting in trouble by the school 2) disturbing strangers 3) getting arrested or kicked out in public bathrooms of the world. 

My idea was that we film at our own school during after school hours when there's not many security or teachers left to interrupt. Realistically, we wouldn't be doing anything wrong if all the shots I get only include a fully dressed M as Moon, as well as not actually vandalizing (an issue I'll get to later). However, J really did not want to risk anything, as there's security cameras and people might get the wrong idea seeing a tripod and camera enter the potty space. 

Luckily, during our most recent group meetings a friend suggested looking for a public restroom that can pass as a school bathroom, as most government style buildings use similar infrastructures including the way they build lavatories. 

We're thinking a nearby public park?

As for the wall we draw on itself, there were some talks about making our own door. However I wasn't sure how to create a realistic looking dupe, and real bathroom stall doors were kinda out of budget to buy: 

Cheapest 300?!

J suggested using any similar plastic board and painting it grey but last year I ran into a lot of trouble with painting a large prop so I voted against that idea. Plus, I doubted my ability to shoot the film to make it look as if our fake door was shot in the same place as the bathroom so all around we didn't love the fake door idea.

Another idea, we could draw straight on the door, use markers that were washable and make sure to clean up after ourselves when done. I tested my washable markers at home and saw that they did come off all the surfaces I tried. However, this would still technically involve the act of vandalism and trying to undo said vandalism so J and M were still not fans of this idea, even if it could work (still risky).

The winning idea was suggested by a classmate who said we could use clear tape. We weren't fans of this idea at first, but it did get the ball rolling, perhaps we could find a clear plastic film (hopefully with less shine/gloss that a clear tape roll would have) that we could draw on and attach to the door, then remove once done shooting. This would also allow us to prepare our door before filming and minimize our overall bathroom time.

The imagined tape roll (but see how even in this stock picture there's already a shine?)

J said he would do some testing with plastic wrap but I think we'll probably have to explore the stores for the right material. We're thinking of using the bathrooms at regional park, but I want J and M to go location scout before we show up with camera, tripod, and fake bathroom door and realize it doesn't fit our needs. With these issues resolved, we're finally way more prepared to film.

Storyboard and stuff

What's up blog. I'm in Colombia but J worked on finishing the storyboard. Last time I talked with my group, I discussed including an ending that has both Sun and Moon interacting, not just Moon, as the script felt a little incomplete without something like that of the sorts. There's a couple changes I wanted to add to the middle where it seems like it's missing a bit of clarification, but in the meantime this hits our needs for creating a finalized film schedule. Here's the storyboard:

Opening sequence

Est Moon's feelings for Sun

Conflict and resolution (want to change the structure here to include more conflict)

New final scene in the classroom.

We color coded the storyboard to match with days needed to film. When I return from break, we'll have one full week of filming available to us, and a couple days to edit. That looks like: 

Yellow= Thursday/Friday

Friday Blue= Saturday/Sunday 

Green= Monday 

Obviously not the situation we love to have found ourselves in, but that's where we ended up after 3 weeks of indecision and inability to film. I know I'm going to have to play a big part in the success of our film serving as the director, cinematographer, and editor so I'm a bit nervous for the return from Spring Break. But for now, I hope that back home M and J do what they can so we don't fall behind on social media and our print component. Our plan feels more solid at last so time to lean on it and follow as much as possible.

Settling

What's up blog. It's pretty hard making a short film when you're missing the actor for your main character. Even though Lynda agreed to help us, after writing the script we realized she would fit better for the "Sun" character (placeholder name that we still haven't changed) meaning we still needed to find someone to play "Moon." I tried asking M and J if they knew anyone, as I already did my part finding our first actor (sorry gang) but this resulted in no luck and we still didn't have an actor. To be honest, I was willing to sacrifice myself and be on camera (but I really really really do not want to and I'd much rather be DP/Directing) but luckily M decided to offer herself up. This actually relieves me to because with M being apart of our project, we don't have to work around someone else's schedule, and when we decide on our days to film, M can prioritize it more than anyone outside our group could. 

Now that we know M is going to be our "Moon" we started thinking of outfits for her to wear. We know that Moon is going to have slight physical transformation to reflect her inner confidence change, so ideally her initial outfit is a little drab, covering a lot of skin (think hoodies), while her final outfit is more colorful, wearing shiny/unique jewelry, and possibly tank top/cropped shirt (I'm imagining a really cute green top M has that would look pretty).

Drab outfit in the beginning inspo.

More confident, unique outfit for the end inspo.

Hopefully, having M as our actress can help us, maybe even J and M can find time during spring break to film clips for a teaser. If not, we'll have to go crazy after we return from break. Now off I go to Colombia...

Group Meeting

What's up blog. So we had another peer review/group meeting session and it was nice discussing with others with the progress on their different projects. The main advice I got was from Dani after she read our script, was that she felt the resolution wasn't strong enough, that it ends anticlimactic if our protagonists never meet. I completely agree and after class I brought this up to M and J and we agreed we would go back and rework the script. Here's what my other classmates were up to:

Duda
- Working on her documentary
- Improving upon her football team documentary 
- Filmed her interviews already

Dani
- Short film is sci-fi and follows an AI bot over 60 days
- Message wants to send is appreciate your humanity
- Needed help/critiques on the middle of the script and if the story made sense
- Working on props
- Filming over spring break

Sammy
- Working on documentary - theme overcoming insecurities - wants to create the last 5 minutes of the first episode
- Wanted advice for b roll shots: suggested using b roll where the interviewee speaks as well (interview shot wouldn't get repetitive)
- Also filming over spring break

Zain
- Working on a short film with Martina, behind schedule because writer has been travelling
- Script has been written but it's not the intended comedic vision so it needs to be rewritten
- Ideally want to use actual adult actors since it takes place in an office

Thank you Zain.

Getting to discuss was helpful, but also got my group worrying as we know I'm going to be out of the country over spring break and will likely have to film the majority of our project upon return. I suggested to M and J they could location scout while gone or try to film some promotional clips for social media so hopefully we don't fall too behind. 

Canva Nation please rise

What's up blog. I was absent again (still sick) so we didn't meet to talk about script changes. However, M and J did take another stab at social media and we decided to use Canva to simulate a social media page rather than awkwardly pumping out posts on a practical Instagram page. This also allows us to be flexible with our dates and change and mistakes or errors we catch along the way. Making a real page maybe would be fun later on if we actually post our film to the public, but for the sake of out portfolio, sticking to Canva seems to be the move.  

Home page.

M and J found a template that looks like an Instagram page viewed from a mobile device (phone screen) and imported our bathroom wall graphic we made previously. This will be used as the account's profile picture and a pinned post at the top of the home page. The way our Canva is set up is so that the first slide is an image of the account's home page with posts line up grid style, while the rest of the Canva slides would expand into each post with their captions and comments included. 

Created by lifting drawings off our original graphic onto a new background.

Some ideas we have for these posts are "Meet the director/producers/actors" including a headshot, more promotional posts with the date or title on them, release date posts (counting down), and behind the scenes. Hopefully some can be done over break, and finished once we get shots of the actual film.