#stmpno8

Happiness CREDITS:

One memorable moment in my life was when my parents surprised me with a new car on my 18th birthday. I tried my best to recreate this moment but as usual, certain moments are impossible to recreate.

I’m looking to show the tireless work many students do in order to achieve their goals.  Going to college has become a necessity in order to have a career.  The steps of getting through school and being able to live their lives are not always easy.  School is important but there are a lot of things that can occur in life that make being a full time student hard.  By following individuals who have worked hard to get where they are I hope to bring realization to others that while many know education is important it is not always an option for everyone.  

My film will revolve around the lives of individuals who are working.  I’ll start with a general background on my subjects so the audience can get a feel for what they are trying to accomplish.  Then I’ll work on bringing in what causes the conflicts with their lives and school.  Not all the issues will be resolved.  Hopefully some will have a more definitive ending.

This film will revolve around two main characters (maybe 3) and the steps they have taken to get where they are in their education.  Dannie is a junior on her way to receiving a bachelors in business from Berkeley College. Her goal is to open her own dance studio.  In addition to being a full time student she also teaches dance full time.  Dannie’s situation does not allow her much flexibility.  Her work schedule is set from September until June and she does not have any ability to change it. She has to make her school schedule around this availability which limits her class choices.  She doesn’t like school but she loves her job.  

Chris has been out of school for two years.  After high school he received a full scholarship to his University.  By his Junior year he was working three jobs to help support his family.  He ended up dropping out of school and working full time.  Two years later he is working full time in a restaurant and in the process of reapplying to school to finish his Biology degree.

Angie went to community college after high school.  After a semester she decided to stop going to school and just continue working.  She was unaware of job options besides those basic positions everyone grew up hearing about.    Two years later she is attending classes again and has discovered job opportunities she never knew existed.  She is working toward her degree and looking for a position in HR.

There are pressures for everyone to attend college as soon as they graduate high school but school isn’t an option for everyone.  Working full time jobs is a necessity for many students.  When students are forced to take a break from school they also begin receiving judgement from those who are not familiar with their stories. Constantly being asked why they haven’t graduated or what they plan on doing with their lives takes a tole on how they feel about themselves and their ability to move forward.  

Title: NLOL: Not Laughing Out Loud

Hypothesis: I am trying to prove that one of the most popular words used during texting is also the most meaningless.

-          My film will portray actors’ expressions as they type such things as “lol,”, “lmao,” etc.

-          The main conflict in this film is to wonder whether, despite the meaninglessness of these memes, are they necessary.

-          I want the audience to consciously think every time they are about to send one of these memes, and what is actually going through their minds.

Topic: The central topic of this documentary will be the usage of memes such as “lol” or “lmao.” It is essential that the audience be aware of the official meaning of all the memes presented in the documentary (all the memes to be discussed are commonplace).

Action: A conversation between two people, sitting next to each other (for humor purposes), via text. Both of them wearing a poker face, but sending each other “lol” or “lmao” or emoticons.

Characters:

·         Kyle: a high school senior. He is a bit shy, but gets along pretty well. Has a few good friends, and has a crush on Michelle. He is academically driven, and spends most of his time studying in his room.

·         Michelle: She is a typical pretty high school girl. She is very popular, yet hides her own insecurities behind a façade of joy and energy.

·         Corrie: She is a close friend of Michelle, but is jealous of Michelle’s popularity. She follows the motto of “keep your friends close, your enemies closer,” and is always seen with Michelle, although her mind is forever on the lookout for any opportunity to ruin her life.

·         Ms. B: She is a biology teacher in the South Yankton High School. Although she cares a lot about her students, she feels detached because she cannot connect with the current social media, which she believes, is essential to connecting with the students.

Conflict: Kyle wants to be with Michelle. He has hidden his feelings from the world for almost two years, and since high school is about to end, he feels the urge to let her know. Corrie, on the other hand, is jealous of Michelle and wants to harm her at every given opportunity. Michelle wants a happy life and a good grade in biology so that she may get admission into a good medical school.

The central point of the documentary is to show the detrimental effects of verbal memes in social media. This will be achieved by depicting how the memes elicit certain emotions of love and passion in Kyle, which was never the intention of Michelle. The major blow by the memes will be dealt when Corrie convinces Michelle to reply to Kyle in a way that leads to several unexpected consequences. The main confrontation will be when Ms. B finally gets together the three students and everyone begins explaining what has been going on.

Structure: The film will be spaced over a period of three weeks, but we will only see certain moments when the characters are messaging each other. I imagine the climax being a confrontation where Corrie’s real intentions are revealed during the meeting with Ms. B. There will not be any other narratives or sequences except the story of these four characters, which I believe will be enough to express the central idea.

Form and Style: Certain scenes will be shot with background music setting the scene. Perhaps every time Corrie enters, villainous music will play. Certain scenes will also be shot in a dreamy sense, where Kyle imagines what his life would be like with Michelle. Whereas, when things begin going bad, a darker, more intense filter will be used to depict sadness and isolation.

Resolutions: The film will end on a happy note, where Corrie is punished for her wrongdoings while Michelle realizes how Kyle feels and she admits that she too has had feelings for Kyle. Ms. B is finally confident enough now to connect to the students and feels relieved that she does not actually need

    Peer Review—Andrew Blustein

I like the topic. It will be interesting to see if you can bring out what people actually mean in their texts/words and if this will affect the audience. I like the scene of the two people texting face-to-face so the audience can see how “lol” and “lmao” aren’t genuine. But parts of this seem to push beyond documentary/dramatic retelling and into something taken out of a movie. The idea is good, but make sure the structure of the film is true to a documentary.

II. WORKING HYPOTHESIS & INTERPRETATION Answer the following questions in a paragraph: What statement are you interested in making with this film? b. How will your film show this in action?

I’m interesting in examining parallels between complete strangers. My guess is that most riders will be on their way to work in the morning, and on the way home in the evening. At other times, and on weekends, there could definitely be more varied answers. The outliers are the ones I’ll focus on, but I’ll also mind the many people who have the same answer, and group them together with vignettes.

c. What is the main conflict of the film?

It’s subtle, but the conflict is that despite having these many similarities, most of us are still strangers to one another. By the end of my film, I want viewers to want to reach out to others more and explore those similarities.

d. How do you want your audience to feel?

I want my audience to feel compelled by the stories people tell me, and more open to create their own dialogues afterward.

III. TOPIC

I’ll be the film’s main subject as it’s narrator, and with my soliloquy at the very beginning, but all of us will be subjects. My film at large is a film about strangers, but my intention is to demystify my subjects to the viewer.

IV. ACTION Imagine at least one action sequence in your film (where a sequence is generally defined by a collection of scenes that take place in one location or in one chunk of time. A sequence can also be a more elaborate, combined filmic structure that depicts one, specific topic, e.g. montage sequence).

Plan out this sequence by answering the following questions: What is the activity in the sequence and what conflict does it show?

The activity in this scene is that instead of moving around the train, I’ll be standing on one block in Manhattan, on 34th and 7th. Everyone will be on their way to work, so the scenes will be many people saying “Work,” quite quickly and in rapid succession.

b. How does this action and/or conflict relate to the subject?

I’ll be shooting my subjects, and since they’re all saying the same thing, the viewer will look more closely at who these people really are, what they look like, and how they say the word. What sort of workplace are they going to? What sort of work are they doing?

c. What is the subtext for the sequence, that is, how does it act like a metaphor within your film?

This sequence will be a microcosm of the film itself because it will embolden the similarities between these people. Yes, they don’t all do the same things. Yes, they don’t all look the same. But they’re all here to do one thing, and that’s pretty remarkable.

d. What is the overall structure of the sequence, beginning , middle, and end?

This sequence will be based on repetition, and will be peppered with longer vignettes that answer, “What do you do?”

e. How does the sequence support the statement you made in section II?

This sequence supports my working hypothesis because I’m timing it and crafting it to show people on their way to work in the morning, and to highlight that commonality.

f. What facts about your subject will the audience gather from this sequence?

Audiences will gather that all of us are working and all of us have that in common, even if our jobs are widely different than that of the people that pass us on the street.

g. What important or key imagery do you plan to capture in this sequence? What will it look like?

I want to capture the rush of people coming off the train and flooding into midtown in the background in almost an animalistic way. A lot of times, we don’t stop to think about the lives of the people around us, and I want those many lives to be captured here.

209.10 Multimedia Comp - McCarter - Fall 2015 !3

V. CHARACTERS Identify the main characters of your film and describe each of them in a short paragraph. Include the following details:

The only character I can describe is myself, because I’m the only one that exists at this point. My role is as the film’s narrator and instigator of interviews. My perspective in the film will be that I spend a lot of time back and forth for many reasons — work, friends, boyfriend, etc. — so I spend a lot of time on these many modes of transportation, but especially the train. My desire is to explore the lives of the people I see on the train and on the street in ways I don’t normally do.

VI. CONFLICT Decide what is the issue of this film by answering the following questions: Who wants what of whom?

I want to know about the strangers around me.

b. What conflicting beliefs do the characters stand for? We’re individuals with our own unique lives and desires, but we’re also similar in a lot of ways.

c. How does the film somehow put these principles or characters in opposition?

Sometimes these characters will seem very similar, because they all have the same destinations, or because of who they are as people. But sometimes we’ll all feel different, too.

d. What is the “confrontation” of your film? That is, how will we see the confrontation or what will eventually come to light?

The tension will be alleviated by highlighting the fact that both of these facts can be true, and there can still be togetherness and belonging in doing your own thing.

VII. STRUCTURE

In actuality, this film will be shot over many days over a few weeks, but to the viewer, this film takes place over the course of one day. At the beginning of the day, I leave New Brunswick for New York. I walk to work, take a subway at some point, and return home in the end. The important information lies in the answers my subjects give me. The plot will begin with the idea that despite being on the same train, we’re all doing different things. But as the day goes on, it’ll become clear that we’re all doing similar things, too. The falling action will show that we’re all on the way home no matter what we did today.

VIII. FORM & STYLE

Scenes that include similar answers will sometimes be bunched together, but other times will be a part of the larger survey. Intercutting will be important here, and juxtaposition in the answers will be important too. I want my beginning and ending to be similar, and for the middle to be more free form storytelling on the street.

IX. RESOLUTIONS

Erica Monaco

STMPNo8

             The title of my documentary will be “The Twins” this is what me and my twin sister were referred to all the time and it only seems fitting that that is the title for the documentary about us.  The statement I want to make by making this film is to show how strong the bond is between twins. The main conflict of this film will be our separation from each other since we both go to different universities. I want my audience to feel the love and companionship that Rachel and me have for each other.

           This film will be my twin sister Rachel and me. We have been best friends since our birth and I want this documentary to follow us through our early years and come up to present day with us being separate from each other and having to learn how to be individuals and how we still keep contact every single day.

           One of the action sequences that I envision for this documentary is a time lapse of all the times Rachel text and me each other throughout a day. I will achieve this by taking screenshots of her texts that she sends me throughout the day. This will show how we keep in contact and are basically still connected even though we are apart. This sequence relates to the conflict of us be away from each other. The audience will gather from this sequence just how close my twin and I am and how much we talk to each other.

           The main character in this documentary is Rachel and I. My older sister Marisa and my parents will also have minor roles in the video when showing our early years and our family dynamic, such as how Marisa feels with Rachel and I being so close. I want to show that Marisa is just as important as Rachel but how us being twins is a different relationship.

           The conflict of this documentary is the separation and how we have to learn to grow up and be individuals and how we have to learn to make our own friends and conduct our lives apart. The confrontation of the film will be shown through pictures of Rachel with her closest friends at school and the same with me.

           The structure of the film will start with pictures of Rachel and me as babies and progress with us growing up. Then it will show us when I was moving into Rutgers and how we reacted along with interviews of how we felt and then will go into pictures of us separate in school and then the times she visited me and when I came to visit her.

           The form and style will mostly be videos and pictures taken from phones, which show how real and raw the footage is along with interviews and videos from Skype and Face Time. The camera being used is from an iPhone.