I think our settings work perfectly for the narrative of our film. In the flashbacks to when the main characters family was happy, they will be shown in a park on a picnic. The park promotes happiness due to the nature and bright colors they will be surrounded by. The green grass, bright blue sky, and blooming flowers all allow the viewers to understand the mood of the scene, and allow the plot twist to be even more severe with the contrast of the two settings. The present scenes will be set in Caroline’s bedroom, which is dark, lonely, and depressing. By the room being so bland and dark, it supports Caroline’s current mood of sadness and feeling of being alone. The plot twist will be very drastic, as the two settings are polar opposites.

Caroline, our main character, is an artist. To show this, we are going to begin the film with clips of her painting, but are also going to show her room while she does a voice over. On her walls, there will be paintings of her previous artwork. Them being hung up shows that she is proud of her artwork. Also, in the present tense clips, Caroline is depressed, so her room will be very bland and not colorful. This can be portrayed in her bedding as the color gray. Her bed is something she spends a lot of time in, so the color of it matches her personality. Films like ours with depressed and artistic characters often show messy rooms, so we can have schoolwork spread across the floor to further emphasize her depression and lack of care for school. These characters also typically have books in their rooms to highlight the fact that they are introverted.

In our film, the main character, Caroline, and her dad, Ben, both have personality disorders. Caroline is psychotic and her dad is bipolar.

Caroline’s psychotic disorder is caused by her recent passing of her mother. Her disorder makes it hard for her to make good judgements and behave appropriately. As a result, Caroline acts brashly and kills her father in return of him killing her mother. There are different categories of psychotic disorders, yet she has a “brief psychotic disorder,” which is typically caused by a very stressful event such as a death in the family (in her case: her mother).

Ben (Caroline’s dad), has a bipolar disorder, which causes people to have serious shifts in mood and act very impulsively without thoughts of repercussions. This is just the case in Ben, as he acts on his thoughts to kill his wife with no second guessing. He didn’t wish to argue with his wife anymore, yet instead of acting rationally and getting a divorce, he abruptly killed her. He didn’t take his daughter into consideration when he committed this horrible act, completely ruining their relationship.

The mixture of the two’s personality disorders resulted in a lot of pain and death. Help wasn’t sought, and it caused a domino effect of tragedy. https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/guide/mental-health-psychotic-disorders#1 https://www.helpguide.org/articles/bipolar-disorder/bipolar-disorder-signs-and-symptoms.htm

In our final project, color plays a huge part, as our main character is an artist and the film focuses on her artwork. In the beginning, she can be seen painting a memory of her and her family at a park eating a picnic. The painting features bright colors from both the clothes that the family is wearing and the environment/objects surrounding them. The color green, which is seen in the bed of grass the family is sitting on, represents nature, harmony, and safety. The towel the family is laying on will be yellow, as it represents joy, happiness, and energy. The lighthearted and childish color will add innocence to the scene, as it is a flashback to before the family became abusive and toxic. The blue of the sky gives off a feeling of stability and tranquility. This is perfect for the film, as it allows viewers to develop a false sense of security before the twist occurs, and the toxicity of the family is exposed. As for their outfits, the girl can be seen in pink, as it represents youth and vulnerability. This scene will also be shot in a medium long shot to show the lively nature around the family, and still allowing viewers to see their faces, which will have candid smiles on them.

When the twist occurs, the color palette completely flips from bright colors to dark colors. Mostly everything is black or dull gray, from the outfits throughout the house, which gives off a mysterious and depressing vibe. The main character’s current outfit will finally be shown, which consists of a plain black hoodie. The dark, powerful top can show a contrast in her personality since the flashback to the park. Before she wore bold, youthful colors, and now she surrounds herself with gloomy and depressing colors. Her happiness has since disappeared, and she has lost her youthful innocence. https://www.colorpsychology.org/ http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html

For my group’s final project, we are doing a thriller short film. The plot for thriller films tends to be one of the most important micro-elements, as it usually contains a series of sudden and unsuspecting twists. These twists are intended to shock the audience but also must try to maintain verisimilitude to real life. As soon as the film loses its grip with reality, the viewers become disconnected. For the plot of our final product, we are going to include twists about the main character’s family who is seemingly happy and picture-perfect. The use of elements other than just dialogue will increase the shock that the twist gives off. In the opening shot, the girl is seen painting a portrait of her happy family in bright colors and can be heard in voice-over describing her happy family. This provides the audience with more than one source evidence to believe the main character truly does have a happy family. Yet, later the truth of her dark and abusive family will be revealed.

Another key micro-element is the characters of the film. In larger production movies, the quality of the actors plays a key role in the success of thrillers. The actors must be able to accurately convey the emotions a character feels throughout the film. It is important to have protagonists and antagonists in thrillers to help further develop the plot. In our film, the protagonist is the main character, Caroline, and the antagonist is her father, who essentially tore the family apart.

After receiving our plot outline back, there are a few things our instructor said we needed to adjust. For starters, our narrative needs to be more mysterious, and can’t tell a full story. We will tweak it so that there are more elements left out for the viewers to interpret however they please. Our instructor also advised us to be careful with our props, which is why we made sure to have our main character’s room decorated with paintings and drawings. By doing this, we are helping the viewers learn more about the main character’s personality without having to directly state it in dialogue. Another thing that was brought to our attention was to be specific with colors, which we made sure to make use of in the artist’s artwork to guide the story further without obvious dialogue. We made sure to use elements beyond dialogue to further develop and convey our story.

When in production for our final product, I anticipate we will face the same issue we had with our previous projects involving the conversion of the project from the editing program into a regular video file. The reason why is unknown, but with the abundance of time we have for this project, we will ensure it can convert properly. Also, I anticipate that we will face obstacles with operating our editing software, as this project will likely include all of the elements we learned this year, such as sounds, music, angles, and dialogue. It’ll take longer than our other projects, as it has everything we learned this year all in one. However, with the large amount of time we have to plan and work on this project, we can watch tutorial videos on what specific effects or techniques we are using in advance to make the most out of the short amount of time we have in the class period to utilize the computers. We may also include a short phone conversation, which will be bring us back to the very first project we’ve ever done in this class. Last time we struggled to time out the conversation correctly, but we will check the footage while still on our set to determine if we need to reshoot with shorter or longer pauses. While it seems like an arduous project, we have a lot more experience at this point in the year, along with knowledge from viewing and critiquing both professional and student films.

My permanent group for the final product of this class consists of Vanessa, Briana, Sarah, and I. A lot went into consideration when deciding this; such as if the work would be equally divided and if our ideas would align. I didn’t want to work with people who weren’t going to contribute or who have completely different visions than I do. We worked on all of our previous projects together and everything went smooth then: everyone had their certain roles in the group and no one went without doing their part. Also, we all brainstormed together and made adjustments to be able to incorporate everyone’s ideas, ranging from small details such as coloring or angles to larger details such as the dialogue or plot. We aren’t afraid to speak up about our opinions towards whatever we are working on, and all have a quality understanding on all of the details and jargon of filmmaking. Working with this group was the easiest decision I’ve had to make after taking all of this into account. I expect that we will be able to create a quality final project together, especially with the amount of time we have to plan out every detail of every shot and resolve any possible adversities we might face along the road. I also expect a lot of trial and error, as we have to tie in everything we’ve worked on in individual projects into this one project, such as sound, angles, coloring, dialogue, and music.

In my group’s case study for the hegemonic and Marxist theory, we studied the movie “Hidden Figures” for the hegemonic theory. Doing this project revealed how the hegemonic theory is about a form of control being exercised by a dominant or ruling class against a lower or different class. Examples of this include the male gaze theory, racism, sexism, or even homophobia. In the movie Hidden Figures, the theory is shown a lot being that the movie takes place in the ’60s (segregation). White people rule over the African Americans in the movie by enforcing segregated busses, libraries, water fountains, and restrooms. This theory can sometimes be interchangeable with the Marxism theory, and was in Hidden Figures specifically when the main characters persevered through the racism they were given by their colleagues and eventually received respect in their workplace. The hegemonic theory can be used to show conflict in a film, and the Marxist theory when the conflict is overcame or resolved.

     For the case study my group did on the hegemonic and Marxist theory, we chose the 2016 version of Cinderella for the Marxist theory. Throughout this project, I realized how commonly used the Marxist theory is in movies and how easily it can be overlooked. For example, in the movie “Cinderella,” the theory was represented in Cinderella and her step-mother’s relationship. Cinderella was controlled by her step-mother for her whole life and finally stood up against her by disobeying her orders. Cinderella’s step-mother was infuriated by this newfound behavior of Cinderella rebelling against her evil wrath. In response, she shattered Cinderella’s glass slipper out of anger and disapproval. The Marxist theory is used to represent the standing up of a struggling lower class against the larger superior class. This can be interchanged with our case study example for the hegemonic theory as well. The theory is influenced by the theories of Karl Marx, yet is still prevalent in Hollywood today. Many filmgoers understand the “underdog” plot of today’s movies but fail to connect it with the Marxism theory.