Multimedia Mise-en-scene

    In class I was assigned a group project where I was tasked to create a character that was mysterious, but the audience learns about them as the story progresses. My goal was to do just that, create a character that was a mystery to the people around her, but the audience gets to know her and her intentions very well.

    We decided that we would name her Avery Norris and make her from a small mountain town. She is 23 and a collage student studying English, to pay for her degree she works as a line cook in a cheap diner. Though she doesn’t just cook out of necessity, she enjoys the precision that it requires and the escape that making a good burger can bring her. She is alone most of the time, making it a point to keep a distance from people. Poe, her cat, keeps her company most of the time. She says she’s fine alone but deep down she wants to have people who care about her. She cut off everyone from her childhood, including friends and family and she has nightmares about it regularly. It’s gotten to a point where Avery turns to reading and coffee as a way to avoid sleeping and escape reality for a couple hours. She wears makeup to cover up her sleepless nights, but it’s always visible. Avery meets Evan at work, he’s kind and charming, and most of all he cares about her. But in the end, it’s not enough. Avery doesn’t believe she’s worthy of love, so she leaves him. 

    To illustrate my character my group created representations of her interests and environment. We used Canva to create a color scheme for the character in different parts of the story. We created a playlist that illustrates her journey from leaving her hometown to where she is at the end of the story, we used YouTube music for this. We created her apartment using Canva, and we created a mood board using Canva as well. All these elements together could give someone a good idea of who Avery Norris is.

    My group organized all our elements in our character station by putting the different elements of our presentation on different computers. We had four in total, one had the playlist, one had her apartment, one had the mood board, and the last one had a description of our character. We printed out the color scheme and brought in a drawing of Avery. We also brought in makeup that represents what Avery would wear on a daily basis to hide that she didn’t sleep well the night before.

    My group developed Avery by thinking about who we were as people, and the trait we needed to represent. The decision the make her female, and present as female was one of the first things we did because something like gender would be essential to who that character is. We gave her a little bit of the feminine girl stereotype. She loves to wear bows and makeup, she wears jewelry and has long hair. But she also loves things like cooking and reading, which wouldn't necessarily fit that same stereotype. We developed Avery in a way that would best represent the person we thought would best fit the card we were given. 

    I feel like my group did a very good job with creating all the elements of Avery’s character. She feels like a fleshed out person and we put a lot of thought into this project. The outcome of the project wasn’t exactly what I was expecting when I first heard the character trait we were given, but overall, I think we made Avery come to life, and that's what this project was about.

Avery Norris Drawing.jpg

Avery Norris Makeup.jpg

  

Avery Norris color palette.jpg

Avery Norris setting.jpg

Avery's Mood Board.pdf

Avery's playlist.MP4

Genre Research Blog Activity

   Content:

  The genre I'm researching today is "Adventure." The adventure genre usually contains a journey or a quest that the main character goes on throughout the plot of the movie. There is usually a villain or a villainous force acting against the protagonist and discouraging them from completing their goal. In the adventure genre there are multiple shots and angles used to show not only the characters, but also the setting, which is usually a danger the protagonist would have to overcome. Natural lighting is used to create a dramatic effect, some use more warm tones, especially those that take place in the dessert (ex: Mad Max - 1979). The editing is mostly fast paced to increase excitement but there are multiple transitional shots added in. There is usually non-diegetic music added in to raise the stakes. 

Marketing:

    The typical target audience for adventure movies is young adults and teenagers (15-25), although many would watch an adventure movie with their family. This is due to the danger and excitement that more mature people enjoy, while many of these movies also being fairly appropriate for children who would be watching with their parents or older siblings. The deadly stakes and harsh environments make them more geared towards males. 

    Many adventure movie posters have warm tones to highlight the danger the protagonists would face. Most also show the main character on the poster along with an important part of the plot like a tomb or a ship.

    When marketing adventure movies, high impact trailers, social media posts, and targeted adds are common to see. Another marketing strategy is to organize an event to make people excited. 

Film Samples:

    A film that embodies this genre is "Jumanji, welcome to the jungle." It is a movie where the main characters need to return a magic jewel to a statue in order to save Jumanji and go back home. This encompasses the genre of adventure because they are going on a journey. Another reason why this is an adventure movie is because of the setting and the near death situations. 

    Another film that embodies the adventure genre is "The Mummy." In this movie an adventurer teams up with an Egyptologist and her brother to go an a journey to find the lost city of Hamunaptra. This encompasses an adventure movie not only because of the journey and exploration of multiple ancient tombs and ruins, but also due to the obstacles and life and death situations. 

    Some more examples of adventure movies would be:

Raiders of the last ark: 

Pirates of the Caribbean:  

National tressure: 

King Kong: 

Fountain of youth:

Sound Project

     In class we have moved on to adding sound into our projects. In class and for homework we watched a couple of videos to teach us about foley art and how professionals add sounds to movies. The sound lesson we had in class taught us about the different types of sound that could added to a production such as voice overs, diegetic sound, and asynchronous sound. 

    After the lesson we did two projects. The first one was purely sound, no video. We were supposed to tell a story with only seven words and no asynchronous sound, so that means we needed to rely on diegetic sound to figure out what was happening in the scene. We needed to make and submit and outline of sounds along with an edited video of us doing foley, and finally the actual fully edited project.  The second project was adding sound to our one word project. We didn't need to just rely on sound this time but it was almost more difficult because we needed to make sure our sounds matched up with what we already recorded. We needed to submit an outline of the sounds we wanted to add along with a link to our one word project with sound.

    When completing sound project one I decided to approach it by thinking about a setting first. After my partner and I decided on a having it take place at a high school party, I tried to think of all the different types of people you could find there. My first thought was a popular girl who is having fun and drinking with all her friends, but then I thought "What if she was popular but she isn't anymore." After that I thought of a character who did something bad and people found out, when she went to the party she was expecting to have a good time being that stereotypical popular girl but then people started whispering.  She ends up having a panic attack and running away. 

    During brainstorming my partner and I made walked though what was happening as if we were that girl, we made a note of every sound we would hear, even the small ones like the wind rustling the trees. The one thing we were having a bit of trouble representing through just sound was the panic attack scene, and it was so important to our story so we needed to get it right. In the end we went with the party sounds slowly fading out and ear ringing getting louder until the only sounds we could hear was her heartbeat and her breathing. We really talked though this scene and referenced things we've seen in other media to try and make it as realistic as possible.

    The outline helped me organize my thoughts by being a reference that I could look back on when I actually started adding the sounds into the project. If I didn't have the outline to look back on there would've been multiple sounds, that I would've forgotten about.  

    I utilized 'Clipchamp' for this project. It works very well in layering the sounds together and editing everything so it was seamless. One of the features I really enjoyed in this particular project was that I could fade the sound in and out. This was great for the panic attack scene because I needed the sound to go stop for the ringing to begin and it would've sounded weird 

    I think I did well on the project overall, I liked how realistic I made the outside and I liked how I did the party scene. I feel like I put in a lot of sounds that you can barely hear but it adds to the scene a lot. Some things I wish I could've improved on was the sounds I couldn't make with foley, they feel a little out of place, especially the car driving past. I tried to make everything cohesive but some sounds just stood out against everything else, and if I tried to lower them you couldn't hear it so those sound a little out of place. But other than that, I feel like I did a good job. 

ReyesArjonaSnow_soundscape_per5.m4a