Media Studies and TV Production: Collision?

Although having both TV Production and Media Studies complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, having both can be a curse.

While TV encourages productions made quickly to get the job done, Media Studies encourages a slower and more slow, methodical and time-consuming approach behind making more meaningful productions. Skills in Media Studies can help develop writing, camera technique, and editing. TV can help improve speed and efficiency. No matter the benefits of each one, overwhelming work is simply too much.

While other classes release their usual assignments, projects, and assessments for me to do, TV only assigns projects that require real, though-provoking work. They weren't just those "get it done" types of assignments. For a good grade, not only is it required to plan correctly, but also to schedule correctly. Even if I scheduled correctly, some of the equipment may not be available at the time, prompting me to change the schedule. Such an addition to my curriculum drains my energy and takes away time for Media Studies.

So although I may want to focus on activities like volleyball and other activities that I find more rewarding or productive, I have to reap the consequences of choosing a schedule too rigorous to allow enough time for my personal life, especially in the week. 

Nonetheless, me and Zach have scheduled to do a storyboard on Thursday, and will continue to progress through the project to our best abilities.

Characters and Fashion

As for the characters, we decided the roles. Zach and I will be the men that find the dog, and Eric will be the businessman who lost his dog. We will use either Zach or Eric's dog.

The props will include Eric's modified car and Zach's convertible to demonstrate the businessman's wealth. His clothes and accessories will also reflect this fact.

Eric's look for the project. This will include a combination of sunglasses, an expensive watch, and expensive clothes.

Zach and I, on the other hand, will try to look as dumb as possible, while keeping an "appropriate" atmosphere.

We chose these outfits to maintain the aspect of comedy while looking like stereotypical male businessmen with the ordeal of dealing with something they've never dealt with before.

A Realization: Recurring Theme

In the past several films that I have researched, I began to notice a common theme of fatherhood. However, as is with social norms, this theme is not always represented in a positive light. Although these films usually end on a positive note where the lead overcomes such problems, the prospect of being a father in comedy is often made fun of.

In all of the movies in the family comedy subgenre, the male lead(s) have all had some kind of trouble with work, or work is an obstacle. For example, in The Pacifier, Vin Diesel is demonstrated as a tough Navy SEAL who has been through many serious tasks that are usually completed by men. However, as soon as he is assigned a mission that deals with children or the simulation of being a father, he has much more trouble and is shown dealing with constant issues.

The case is similar for 3 Men and a Baby and Daddy Day Care. As men who are used to working, they have trouble doing something they have never had to do before, which is being a father. While a woman with a child would usually be shown as a miracle or something beautiful, a man with a child is oftentimes demonstrated as funny or as an ordeal.

Nonetheless, our film will focus on a similar basis as these movies, because it is funny. Whether it be dark comedy or comedy that puts a group in a negative light, comedy is subjective. Although women are evidently favored as the main parental figure, it is true that both genders are meant for their respective natural roles. Of a father that protects and provides, and a mother that loves and tends to their children. With this in mind, our film will present two men with something they have had to deal with before, taking care of baby.

Movies Similar to My Plot

Although 3 men and a baby is very similar to our plot, there are other movies that hold a similar idea. The comedy genre consists of dozens of different types of plot lines, and whether it be an action or a family comedy, many include the prospect of babies, or something of the same nature that the lead must take care of.

One of these movies is Daddy Daycare. 

In Daddy Daycare, two men named Charlie Hinton and Phil Ryerson get laid off and have to become stay-at-home fathers. Consequently, they are having trouble finding jobs. This inspires them to open their own day care center. The hilarity provided by this film will be similar to ours, as the characters go through the troubles of dealing with children and/or dogs. 

The Pacifier is another one of these movies, but with an twist of action.

In The Pacifier, Elite Navy SEAL Shane Wolfe is a tough guy who could handle almost anything. However, after making the mistake of failing to protect scientist Howard Plummer, Wolfe has a shot at redemption by being assigned to protect Plummer's five children, including Zoe, Seth, Lulu, and a baby. This film also resembles the idea of a character forced and struggling to take care of kids/pets.

With our constant researching and learning of the comedy genre, Zach and I will continue to adapt techniques from these movies into ours. 

Comedy Film Plot #1

In any film, an important part of the planning process is always to form the plot. The plot, or the story itself, consists of the main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence. Although there are many different plot types, our movie will consist of a group of individuals that have to overcome an issue of having to deal with an issue, and through a cycleof hilarity, will ultimately solve it. 

Our plot will be similar to the movie "Three Men and a Baby", a movie in which two successful yet unmarried men come across a baby in front of their loft, abandond by a young woman. They also receive a letter stating that the child, named Mary, belongs to Jack, but he's away on business. Michael and Peter are then forced to care for Mary and though they make hopeless babysitters, they soon become attached to the girl. 

However, instead of a baby, we will film the concept of a dog lost by its owner, Eric. The dog will show up to our porch, and Zach and I will have to take care of this dog. While we do this, we will have to find Eric to return the dog to him in the process. As our project a film opening, we will include the part of Zach and I coming home, and not an address, but a city on the dog's collar to return him to. 

Moving forward, we will attempt to adapt this plot and improve it if necessary.

Group Meeting #1

After several missed classes, I showed up to class after the second lockdown and began a group meeting. As stated before, this group meeting was productive, and shed light on many new perspectives on plot and themes in our video. Although my partner Zach was not there, now I feel as if I can imrpove the plot and suggest it to Zach next time I see him, as I had several valuable conversations that I feel could help me brainstorm ideas. 

My teacher, who had been conducting these group meetings for years, split us up into three groups of four so that we could all have some time to talk about our plot, listen to others' ideas and suggestions, then repeat the same process with every individual student in the group. Almost all students had a deeper idea or theme that they wanted to demonstrate. For example, Victoria wanted to show that queer relationships don't have to be portrayed in a homophobic light.

This is when I realized my plot so far is, undoubtedly, superficial, and a bigger theme is necessary to create a good plot. A higher purpose will, in most cases, greatly improve a film and attract a larger audience. In the future, I will use this learning experience to my advantage to improve my story.

Lockdown and Other Obstacles

Although Zach and I could have gotten a fair amount of work done, missing several classes was beginning to prove to be a formidable obstacle in our planning. First off, I missed a very important class because of a SkillsUSA regionals competition. This class explained, by other accounts, the entire Cambridge Portfolio project. For the first week, I had not completed any blogs because of this lack on knowledge, and it was mainly my mistake because I did not properly read the instructions online. 

Another important reason why I was oblivious was because of unprecented events that happened in my school, Cypress Bay. Shotgun shells had been found in the boys' locker room not only once, but twice. As a result, we were on lockdown and I missed another important class of blog work, but only during the first lockdown. The second lockdown happened today, and although my class only had one hour, we conducted a productive group meeting and talked about the current state of our school and its safety.

At any rate, I have continued on and started making up my blogs, and I intend to do many more as soon as I meet with Zach again. We are planning to establish the plot next time we see each other, while also starting and hopefully finishing the storyboard next week. Moving forward, I will make sure to check the blogging schedule and complete all my blogs with the allocated time.

The Comedy Genre

Our genre, comedy, is usually fictitious refers to discourses or works that are meant to make people laugh, whether they appear in theater, movies, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other form of entertainment.

Out of the many types of comedies, some of the most popular are: Satire, Parody, and Dark comedies.

One example of a Satire is Don't Look Up. In this movie, two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth. The only issue is, that nobody really cares and people are corrupted by the media into believing otherwise. Even with scientific proof, people will not care about something that could greatly affect them largely because of modern ignorance and politics. The director uses comedic elements to make light of the serious issues that the film represents.

One example of a Parody is Ace Ventura. Ace Ventura is a detective that, with the help of pets, looks into the cases such as the abduction of the dolphin mascot of Miami's NFL team. With this premise, the film creates a parody of Sherlock Holmes. By creating a character of a similar occupation of Sherlock Holmes with a silly and comedic twist, the director incites laughter and amusement.

Finally, one example of a Dark comedy is Jojo Rabbit. This film follows a young German boy, Jojo, living in the era World War II. He is training to be a Nazi soldier, and goes through many obstacles that make the film comedic. His life is turned upside down when he discovers that his single mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic, which adds a theme of blind nationalism and acceptance to an already dark movie. However, the dark war themes of the movie are contrasted by elements of humor and the light upbringing of a young boy.

With this research, our partner and I are actively increasing our knowledge in the comedy genre, prompting the use of more sophisticated planning and technique for our film.

Cambridge Portfolio #1

Transitioning into the Cambrdige Portfolio project, I am now more confident in my abilities to create media in a more sophisticated manner. I have already chosen Zach Simpson as my team member, and although we're good friends and we mess around a bit, we work well together and get our work done.

So far we have already thought of our film idea. A comedy film based on three men and a dog, combined with aspects of drama. We will find a third actor, preferrably our friend Eric (who is not in the class) who we think could fulfill the role of goofiness, our goal for this film. By making people laugh through silliness, we will aim for a wide target audience from teens to the elderly.

With this idea in mind, I will continue to use what I learned throughout the year and past projects to nurture this project in the best of my ability.

Music Marketing #2

Instead of making a storyboard digitally on Thursday, we decided to make the storyboard during our classtime the day after. These changes in plans paid off, and my group was able be proactive and create a viable storyboard in one class period. This feat was only made possible by our combined efforts to pitch in ideas and shots; each individual played a role in planning the music video. We had also brainstormed the band name "Marz" and the song name "Resile" during our planning phase.

This was our first page of the storyboard used for the music video. We had our group members Clover and Zach draw the images, as they were more artistically inclined.

After we completed our story board, most of my group met up in person to finally record the music video. While the main role of Zach and I was to act as characters in the music video, Clover and Bia directed the shots, mise-en-scene, and other elements in the video. Although we didn't record every shot in the storyboard, it gave us a sense of direction during filming and allowed us to complete our music video after two days of filming. Hailey was the only one that couldn't show up, yet did the most work out of all of us. In fact, Hailey made almost the entire powerpoint, and only after we finished the music video did we pitch in to finish it and review her work, which we barely modified because of the quality. We greatly appreciated her role as the "backbone" of our group.

One of the PowerPoint slides arranged by Hailey, demonstrating our promotional Instragram page. Other pages that we made include a Marz website and a few product samples for marketing.

Finally, we began the production phase. We all decided that I would edit the video, and I'd send them the final product to review and see any changes we could make. I made sure to sync everything to the best of my ability; the song timestamps on the storyboard mdae this task much easier, though I also took it upon myself to sync a purposely erratic and heavily edited introduction to the music video. Through the editing process of the music video, I made sure to incorporate numerous techniques such as reverses and speed-ups for the faster and more chaotic parts of the music video. Zooms and black-and-white shifts were used in the slower sections, including a decreased frequency in shots. We also made sure to use blue lighting in one of the sadder shots to emphasize the characters' mood.

The use of blue lighting around the subject symbolizes coldness and sorrow.

We then smoothly presented our project to the class, as we had assigned slides divided evenly between each person. All of us practiced our slides and outlined them effectively, including the showcase of the Instagram page, our website, and our music video. I was the one to explain the music video after its showcase, as I was the one who edited the video for several hours.

Ultimately, this project taught me, most importantly, that organization is everything. Planning, coordination, or however it may be called, it always involves preparation and readiness. Without planning the shots, planning the meet-ups, and without assigning our roles or slides, our project would have fallen apart. In fact, no good projects are ever made without proper preparation. There are definitely ways that we could've coordinated better, which would've resulted in a more sophisticated product, but that is a learning experience that can now be applied to future projects. The daily human experience is that of constant growth, majorly comprised of growth from mistakes. Moving forward I will continue to learn from my mistakes to constantly improve the quality of my work.