A Major Flat and CCRs

 As a quick note, I am Brazilian. This factors into the second CCR.

A Major Flat

CCR 1

CCR 2

Group Meeting 2

Considering the absence of a blog post about the first one, I'll quickly summarize it as it was very simple. The idea was pitched and it was well liked but unanimously labeled ambitious.

With the second meeting I brought a nearly realized vision to pitch. I begun by pitching the idea of the full movie. At first responses were middling as I brought some of the film's more extreme ideas to the forefront. I then elaborated more on the opening and ideas began to click. A Major Flat begun to see positive reactions after some elaboration on how the opening would elaborate on the events later down in the film. While there was some confusion on the opening's ability to stand alone, there came a discussion about how the movie's later scenes would clarify the gaps in the opening, after which the group near unanimously agreed that while the vision was ambitious, I had a clear plan on how to implement it and would likely succeed.

As for my group members, most brought about a very simple plan, some already filmed, some to film that very day. One did bring about a discussion about the emptiness of a space behind a local AMC, but there isn't much to comment on.

Production: Planning on Your Feet

 I hate using storyboards. I find that they limit the ability to use the scene to adapt to the scene and create a new vision. But it's not impossible to adapt with storyboards, and while we shot our opening, we needed to do just that. We had to make a few on the spot decisions, and I'll use this blog post to detail what we had to adapt to and what we did.

Minor Issues:

The camera we had brought to film was not working so we swapped to filming on an iPhone.

Continuity:

During the shoot, one of our hecklers needed to leave, so we had him drop the Monster can we had him hold and walk away. A hilarious thing he did was scratch his butt for comedic effect, but I cut a little early and we did not have time to retake so we had to settle for what we had. We also asked for a few people around who weren't busy if they would mind being in our small ensemble and so we had them in there and whenever they needed to go, they'd leave either bored at the show or scared of the crowd. All this was to maintain continuity as we had our final shot with the entire crowd showing and we needed to shoot chronologically for proper lighting.

We have not fully finished shooting the video so I might likely update this with details from our second shoot.

Planning: Credits

 A detail within this opening that I've felt extremely confident with has been the credits. While they are not done, they've been interesting to look at. With our credits we have two things, firstly the opening credits, a small sequence demonstrating each role in the production except for a certain few. With it is a small sequence that we engineered to be the opposite of the first few seconds of Whiplash, similar to our story in a way. While Whiplash involves musicians who are skilled but willing to be tortured to succeed, ours involves terrible musicians who think they can cheat their way to success with little effort. With our credits we've chosen an inverse set of colors, instead of white on black, we are using black on white. We also plan to use messy fonts to make it feel much less organized, once again an inverse of Whiplash. While Whiplash uses said opening to exclusively introduce its title, we will do almost everything else, and present the title in the very next frame. The background of jus drumming in Whiplash is instead a complete mess of instruments with zero collaboration. It is fully intended to be messy and clunky in a way that resembles the story at the center of our film. The one thing we will not introduce within those credits are the castings. Within the first closeups of each character, we'll have their casting EXCEPT for the frontman, who's credit will be when he gets beat up. The goal is to capture the characters when they showcase their personality the most. Overall, the credits have a very simple plan but I'm extremely happy with how it fits into our opening.

Production Logo

 With the production company/logo, me and Veronica, sharing the first letter of our names, knew we wanted the letter V and a 2, and Veronica pretty quickly came up with Venture 2 Studios which I was more than approving of, stating the word Venture resembles something grand and risky, such as the project. As for the logo, I'll use Veronica's account as she designed it herself and just ran it by me.

"My first draft was a simple silhouette of a mangrove tree with the roots spelling out “Venture 2” with the word “studios” added beneath it. However, I thought it looked off, like an indie game company logo versus a production company. I realize that does not really make sense, since in both cases there is no real formula for a logo.  I asked for feedback on the logo from my teacher and some friends, and most told me that the “Studios” threw off the whole design. So, I ditched it. "Venture II" is unique enough. I added more details to the leaves and integrated more root hairs on the text to make it blend in smoother, and changed the 2 to roman numerals, and I think it feels more seamless."

Veronica did state that her inspiration for using a mangrove tree was inspired by the Paramount logo's use of the landscape of the artist's hometown, which she used by taking our state of Florida.

Overall I was more than happy with the result and found Veronica did a great job. 

Mise en Scene (Props)

 Within our scene there is a notable collection of props that provide narrative details within their subtext. 

When making a scene about a band, the obvious necessity is instruments. With our four instruments some basics were required, so what's interesting is actually the drums. We originally did want normal drums but that proved unfeasible, so we needed to get crafty. In some way we needed a prop that would both fit the aesthetic that we could use. The simple answer? Buckets. It helps reinforce the frontman's desperation and need to make this work that he'd resort to buckets (Canonically this and all the instruments were bought from money the Frontman scammed out of a guy, more on that in a second).

With the audience of their performance, we wanted to convey a little about society within the subtext. One of the ideas we were most passionate about was hitting the bassist with a monster can, perhaps a cheeky way to do a small comment on homophobia (In previous blogs I clarified the bassist is gay). In a weird twist of fate, one audience member had to unexpectedly leave early, so to maintain continuity we had him drop the can on the floor, which in a neat twist of fate, let us provide a shot of the Monster being picked up on the ground, in a way representing homophobia as the lowest form of hate possible. While the narrative focuses exclusively on the band, the connection of ambition to human nature makes it worth providing some societal commentary.

With the climax of the short film, the Frontman is beaten by a guy in a drastic escalation of the scene. When we were deciding how this climax would arrive, the decision came to utilizing crutches of the keyboardist. We wanted something to pack weight, so the crutches fit perfectly. At the same time there's something to be said about something so fundamental for some being used to cause harm, which we found an interesting way to smack the frontman with reality, making his persistent denial of it more effective.

Character Development

 An intriguing type of character development is actually the lack of any, and thrillers seem to love incorporating this.

In Josh and Benny Safdie's Uncut Gems (Spoilers ahead) Adam Sandler's Howard is constantly taking advantage of people and trying to be one step ahead of every obstacle to success, but every move he does puts him one step behind. Eventually he arrives at his office, beaten and broken down mentally and physically. He breaks down in front of his assistant (Whom he has an affair with). But during this scene he gets an opportunity to fix everything and get away with more than he deserves. He sells a product that has served as a major McGuffin in the plot, but when he receives his payment, a familiar smile enters his eyes. The people who've haunted him all movie come to collect his debt, but Howard, who is an extreme gambler, goes all in and bets the payment on a sports game for a potential payout of over a million dollars. Howard doesn't grow to understand that every time he goes further, he takes a step back. This decision leads to a tense scene of Howard and his debt collectors (Who are stuck in a bulletproof cage within Howard's store) watching a sports game with Howard's fate practically on the line. And he wins. He miraculously pulls through. He lets the debt collectors exit the cage, the leader, for once, appeased. Everyone is about to get everything they want... until one of the leader's henchmen, fed up with Howard for every second of the movie, shoots him in the head, beats up the leader, and ransacks Howard's jewelry store for everything of value. His assistant (Who placed the bet for Howard) walks out successful, and heads off, uncertain whether she cared enough for Howard to share the money or will ambitiously walk of into the sunset presumably leaving Howard to die. Uncut Gems paints a picture of how unending ambition and risk will inevitably lead to permanent consequences, and it is through the complete lack of growth with Howard that this is conveyed.

When applying this type of characterization to "A Major Flat," I knew, perhaps opposite to my partner's perspective, that this story shouldn't have a happy ending. With "A Major Flat," the theme we want to explore is the effect of ambitious people on those who can actually succeed. With the main character of the Frontman, we have a character who may be the protagonist, but he thematically acts as the antagonist, dragging down the one talented person in this band, the keyboardist. Within the opening this is partially developed with the keyboardist being in the back, almost completely drowned out by the frontman. The Keyboardist requiring crutches is perhaps the single biggest indicator of how somebody like the Frontman takes advantage of people, establishing a comparative sense of weakness. The fact that the Keyboardist is forced to stand by the Frontman also shows the lack of care by the frontman. 

When making the opening it's important to have an idea where the movie is going, to establish tone, foreshadowing, and narrative, so I had to make sure I knew where I wanted to the movie to go. Then I thought for 5 seconds, remembered Uncut Gems, and had an epiphany. The keyboardist is a goner. While my partner and I still heavily disagree on this part, the ultimate way to show how the Frontman drags the keyboardist down is to have the keyboardist die in some way thanks to the Frontman.

While this might seem like an extreme jump, the film constantly has a similar relation to the Frontman and Howard where their ambition constantly drives them to make moves that hurt them in the long run. These become more violent and life threatening until the film's climax, where although I'm undecided on specific details, I know that the Frontman will be the first domino in a chain that will lead to the keyboardist's tragic death. The lack of character development on the Frontman's end is the driving factor behind every event in the movie down to this very tragic one.

The Frontman and Keyboardist are not the only members of this band, however. With the drummer, me and my partner were pretty much in agreement there'd be another lack of development. A simplistic lazy character mainly there to build dynamics with the rest of the band. The lack of importance and development will be partially relevant to his desire to just ignore any obstacle or problem as he has his whole life, putting little effort to change or even notice if it is needed. With the bassist there's still some uncertainty. Right now, I'd like him to stick with the band at the end, stuck to this group. I'm still very unsure about this character and if I were to expand this into a feature, his arc would need to be complex and deeply explored.