#final proj

Sigma Lambda Gamma National Sorority Inc. Meet the Greeks Fall 2020

feels like we’re floating (2016) explores eros from a posthuman perspective. love is a dynamical system, influenced by both time and space. however, in a digital age, emotional embodiment is complicated by pervasive intangible factors. this leads one to question if the durational presence of one or more bodies within a given space is necessary for the creation of interpersonal love. when physical bodies are joined by both time and space, their spiritual connection is strengthened. when these forms are represented digitally, the impact of this spiritual connection is amplified.

since initiating a romantic relationship with my partner, i have become increasingly in touch with my physical body. while laying in bed one night i was, for the first time in my life, acutely aware that beneath my flesh, my organs were contained within a three-dimensional structure bound by bones. a single moment of talking to someone i love about my rib cage made my physical reality more evident than decades of tactile engagement with skeletons with rib cages. it became evident to me that sensory negotiation is often a secondary means of communication. information, regardless of whether its content is physical, may not be best transmitted physically, but psychically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5h6Y_Vjs6c&list=PL4D89F9C31422AD19

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4_mn6rBE6M&list=PL4D89F9C31422AD19

(Please watch Both videos, it is 2 parts for every one full episode)

Background:

            Girlfriends, created by Mara Brock Akil, is a sitcom from the early 2000s. The show follows the friendship of four African American women and their relationships with men.  In the first episode of the show (the two videos above) revolves around the celebration of Joan, the main characters, birthday. During the show we see that Joan’s best friend Tony is dating Joan’s ex-boyfriend. The plot of this episode is about how the two ladies and the other friends Myia and Lynn, deal with the issue of dating your friend’s ex.

Hegemony is the assertion of power by a dominate group through the dissemination of messages about standards for society. These hegemonic standards put in place are both disrupted and enforced in Girlfriends.  To prove this is true Casey will be showing how the show enforces hegemony on her blog and I will be showing how it disrupts hegemony. The three main points we will be arguing are the shows character portrayals, is displays of beauty and consumerism, and the family unit created by the woman’s friendship. 

Character Portrayal:

Girlfriends was loved by so many African American women, including myself. But why did I love it, what about it calls to me? I believe one of the main reasons this show is so loved is definitely for its positive depiction of the African American female. The media usually shows women of color as very animalistic or poor. Very rarely is a character that is a woman of color shown who is a strong, intelligent, and successful; let alone is she the main character of a show. However, Joan, for example, breaks this stereotypical depiction of women of color. We see that Joan is a successful lawyer who is doing so well at her job she is about to be promoted to junior partner. Bell Hooks points out in her essay The Oppositional Gaze: Black female spectators the “Black female spectator [chooses] not to identify with the film’s imaginary subject because such identification [is] disenabling” when it comes to a women of color viewing media featuring White characters. This oppositional gaze is usually formed because of the differences in construction of gender roles between races. However, it is the positive diction of women of color that allows the African-American viewer to ultimately identify with the characters of Girlfriends and not have an oppositional gaze.

Beauty and Consumerism:

            As the women search for relationships, a focus is put onto appearance and consumerism. However, the character Lynn disrupts the hegemonic standards set by the other characters. She disrupts the ideal beauty standards through her clothing. When all four women are seen together three of their outfits are basically the same: Business appropriate or tights and revealing, sleek, and on trend. However Lynn is usually shown in outfits that stand out more. Whether it is a tutu or long bohemian type skirts, she doesn’t follow the trends set by the magazines. Rather she embraces her own unique personal style. Not only does she disrupt the message of beauty, but she also disrupts the message of consumerism. As a counter balance to extreme materialism of Tony, Lynn is more earthy, enjoying life and free. We see that she is not concerned with materialistic things; she has no house, no car, and no job. Lynn does not live her life based off of the commodity image system, which as Sut Jhally states in “Image-Based Cultrure” is “a particular mode of self-validation that is integrally connected with what one has, rather than what one is.” Her absence of concern over her lack of wealth adds to her ability disrupt the hegemonic messages of consumerism within the show.

Family Unit:

As the tile of the show points out, rather overtly, the characters are all friends. However, these women are not just friends they are a family unit. Just like in Sex and the City, this family unit disrupts the norms defined by heterosexuality. “The connections they have with each other create an alternative to their boyfriends, an alternative that , by its very existence, grants the women options different from those traditionally signified as ‘heterosexual’”(Jane Gerhard, “Sex and the City: Carrie Bradshaw’s queer postfeminism). They find love and support in each other. As they search for the “right man” the women subsequently find each other and it is this relationship that they rely on. The end of this episode makes this point even more evident when Tony and Joan both realize their relationship is more valuable than some man. This scene disrupts the hegemonic ideals because even though they are both heterosexual women, they choose each other over a man that had fulfilled most of their requirements for a life mate.

There's definitely a distinct order in which the development of the shot list should go.  Due to casting issues, our rehearsal was slated for the Thursday before production, but, in future, I'd want to be rehearsing with the cast well before the production.  And this comes down to the freedom you give to your actors.  With all of our shots and lighting set ups close to locked, we're going to have to be ready to change shots quickly, or ask our actors to cut down their performances to fit our setups, neither of which are ideal.  This leads me to a map I made of the process, as I'm beginning to understand it, or, at least, a better way forward than I adopted before:

N.B. Certain steps have been skipped for this post, but it's only because I'm trying to look specifically at the shot-plan/set up area of pre-prod for this post.

Planning! Cannot stress that enough!  Also, tic tacs!

Script -> Rehearsals - After the script is locked, start rehearsing with the actors, preferably somewhere set up as close to the actual location as possible. This allows character-based changes from your actors, and a sense of the movement of the scene.

Rehearsals -> Floor Plan - From there, you can start putting together a floor plan for the location, with an idea of where your cast are moving. This allows you to map out the floor plans and start working out what camera angles are possible, and where lights are needed.

Floor Plan -> Shot List - With your cast's movements mapped, you can work out a shot list of what you want to show the audience.  This also allows you to work out where you need to change the blocking, if necessary.

Shot List -> DoP's Shot List - However, it's your DoP who will do the fine tuning of this, working out where the camera and lights need to go to allow you to get the shots you need.  He/she may also need to adapt your shots to something that's actually physically possible, and amalgamate shots to cut down the set up changes.

DoP's Shot List -> Lighting Plans - With the positioning sorted out, lighting plans can be drawn up to help let the team know where the lights need to go.  The ideal is that lighting tests can be done before you're even shooting, but it's not always the case, especially at my current level.

You probably actually want something drawn in the storyboards, but only if you want the rest of your team to be able to work from them.

DoP's Shot List -> Storyboard - At the same time, the storyboards can finally be worked up to show everybody how the film should come together in the edit.  You can then sit down with your editor to work out if this order will work, or if there are shots missing that will be required for the narrative.

What I actually did for The Wardrobe was more in the region of script -> shot list/floor plans -> DoP's shot list -> rehearsal.  It was better than nothing, but it definitely was not ideal, which helped bring me to the above list.  The more planning, the more preparation, the smoother the shoot will go.  Though we got everything filmed, it could have been a LOT smoother, and I think that's down to my pre-production, particularly this business.  We had no storyboards and I was unable to properly coordinate with my DoP about the shot list.

Well, this post was supposed to turn up during production, but either way, it seems like a good time to review my pre-production process.  I have a feeling I might need to add an amendment in the near future, as we find out what was sorely missing from the pre-prod that would have saved us production problems or post issues that we've had, are having, or will have before this goes in.  But, for now, let's have a look at how it's gone.

For starters, in future, I want more of distinct gap between script development and pre-production starting.  I realise that in the industry, this should be the case anyway, as the scripts get optioned, or written before people sign on, but at the stage I'm at, there's the option to mix the two in together.  LESSON LEARNT.  This is NOT a good plan.  When you start bringing in other people and asking them to do stuff for your film, you need to be singing from the same hymn sheet, and you need to not be changing what they're working on every couple of days.

The "hymn sheet".  Look, it's not a dynamic shot, but I'm working on having better ones!

I would like to draw the distinction here between asking them to adapt what they're working on, and changing the source, because it's inevitable that you might end up asking someone "hmm, more horns maybe?" or "he wouldn't wear that shirt" to make the production fit the narrative.  But having people work on something and to then say "no, we dropped the character" isn't really a useful way to handle your team, and is going to piss people off, especially if they're working for little or no pay.  I don't think we've done this, but I don't want to skirt too close to the possibility in future.

Also, collecting personnel I would like to have sorted a lot sooner.  The fact that we were still bringing cast and crew on in the week before filming not only was not settling, but also meant that we did not have the time I would have liked to spend on briefing them, developing characters, the style of the design, colour palettes, etc.  In future, I'm putting a ruling down that all personnel must be sorted two weeks in advance of filming, with the week following this deadline as being the "emergency track down people" time, instead of the week leading up to actually shooting!

Oh yes, I actually managed to think in terms of colour palettes.  I've never felt as far from being an IT techie as I do typing that.

I've been meaning to finish this post for a while now, so I'm finally getting round to it this afternoon.  We're now just under a month before filming kicks off.

It's probably about time for another update of how The Wardrobe is coming along.  Encouragingly, it's coming along nicely.  We're in the middle of crewing up, location hunting, storyboard, redrafting and more, which means busy-ness ("busy-ness" not "business", though technically it still works) across the board.  I'm going to be pretty vague with some of the stuff at this stage, as I want to make sure that things are concrete before announcing them on the internet.  If I ever want to get far in this industry, it's probably something I need to learn sooner rather than later.

Don't think I've posted this one - this will be us in one month (that's Martyn, our editor).

In script terms, I'm now pretty happy with where it currently stands.  There's always space for tweaks and amendments, but I think that by this stage, I don't want to be doing too much more to mess about with the structure or the general progression.  I've been through the draft that has me sat trying to justify every scene and I think it's pretty close to, if not completely, locked.

So, in crew terms, we are now pretty close to being staffed.  Helen and I have talked about what we need, and we've talked to various people about what we think we need, and hopefully, we have a pretty good reading on who we need.  We've been quite fortunate with people we've talked to and have got a good team together.  Still got a couple of roles left to fill, but we still have time at this stage, so we'll see how that goes.

In other pre-prod news, we have our kit signed off for our shooting dates, and we are close to securing our location.  I think the plan is for us to basically set up shop in there across the time that we have it, and, from there, we can get all of our scenes rehearsed, set up and shot, with a decent amount of time spent on actually doing it right.  We're now starting to cast as well, which is exciting and nerve-racking all in one go, because now I've got to ask people to play my story and sell it to the audience!

Er, our kit might be a little more digital than this!