Research: Font Types

 Research: Font Types

•      Why are fonts so important? If it took you more than 2 times to read that question, then you should already know the answer. Fonts are very important as they make your content readable for the viewers and increases its visibility on the internet. Fonts also play a critical role in establishing the message and tone of the text and design. With only a single chosen font in digital media, our messages and many different companies would just look very bland and uncreative. With the addition of a variety of fonts, this enhances creativity within people to help convey what they are trying to put out into the media world.
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  Fonts are often used as a part of branding. With the help of fonts, we can establish a brands identity and other forms of representation within the brand. For example, people who graffiti everywhere always have a certain bubble letter font where the letters are always touching each other. This design in which they spray paint helps represent who they are as people. In this picture example, we can see how visually pleasing the word 'DELTA' looks like the font design contains sharp edges, and the letter are touching each other. 
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       In my Opening Film, my group and I will be looking into many other font designs and choose the one we will be working with that represent the title of the film opening. We will be using a visual font that captures the main essence of what our film is about. Some fonts I am thinking about using in our film title is going to be the following:
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• Verdana: This font is very straight forward and also looks like it is in bold while not being in bold letters. This would be very good to use for the Film Title as it is very easy to read and is visually pleasing.
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• Kanit: I am thinking about using this font as it is also very straightforward to read and even though it doesn't have much design to it I like how it is almost similar to the default font.
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• Pacifico: I really like this font as it is very eye catchy and is not very hard to read while also looking nice. 
  
  My overall decision in choosing to research font design is to have a very clear idea of what font me and my group will be using to represent the identity of our film. The font that we will be choosing when times comes will definitely capture the main essence of our film with the font design.
  

  
  

  
  

First Obstacle

Overcoming my First obstacle

     In the last week we were in lockdown for safety precautions at my school. During this time, me and my group made a group chat and started planning our schedule for this week of blogging. One major problem I am facing is that I am going to be at a soccer tournament at IMG this weekend and will be coming back home on Monday so I will have very limited time to discuss our progress about this week's journey, but I will certainly try my best. In this tournament we will be playing 6 games in 4 days, (Friday-Monday). I will be trying my best to find time to complete research but this will be a team travel so we will be on a very tight schedule with recovery and team meetings. My group members will be creating a schedule for next week's production process/planning, and we will be getting right to work with our film opening. I'm not going to lie; I have been so excited about this entire journey and don't know how I'm going to focus on my showcase without thinking about my final film opening. I want this film opening to meet the highest expectations as I believe my group works really well together. So, for this week I will be researching Font types/titles, and color schemes. Without further a due, lets continue the journey.

Psychological Horror Subgenre

Psychological Horror Subgenre

     What is psychological horror? Psychological horror is a subgenre that combines horror and psychological fiction. What does this genre focus on? This genre focuses on mental, emotional, or psychological states in order to disturb the audience. The genre focuses on psychological fears like madness, anxiety, guilt, and paranoia. The genre uses elements of mystery and characters who have unstable, reliable, or disturbed psychological states. My group is researching 3 other horror sub-genres which is slasher (Dave), vampire (Lenny) and Paranormal (Lucas). In the end we will be choosing one of the genres and use it in our own horror film opening.

Major successful Psychological Horror Films

   

    American Psycho (2000)                       Audition (1973)

                                        

-Takes place in New York City (1987)           -Disturbing Japanese thriller (Ryo Ishibashi)

-Patrick Bateman lives as a gruesome         -Release date: August 8, 2001 

serial killer by night                                       -Director: Takashi Miike

-Is a completely different character by          -Box office: 131,296 USD 

nighttime

-Box office: 34.3 million USD

-Budget: 7-8 million USD

     My group will be using this research to take inspiration on which subgenre we will be choosing. Sub-genres allow the viewer to pinpoint more accurately what it is they want to watch. In our film opening we would like to have a subgenre in which our film falls under so that our main target audience can watch our film by basically pinpointing it. If it weren't for subgenres, many famous movies would just get lost under the vast horror genre with no categories to satisfy the viewer. My main decision in choosing to research Psychological Horror is to compare with my group members with their subgenres and we will decide on one of the subgenres to specify with our film opening. This will give us a direct idea of what we will be accomplishing within this project.

Research: Horror Genre

 Horror Genre

     What is horror? Horror is a genre of storytelling intended to scare, shock, and thrill its audience. Horror can be interpreted in many different ways such as the supernatural movements, monster, or a threat that is being posed on the "main character". The horror genre is often a reflection of the culture and what it fears at the time. In this blog post, we will be taking a look at the history of the horror genre, its conventions, and the main reasons why horror is still popular in todays' society. The reason why im choosing to research the horror genre is because my group is thinking of creating a horror film opening and we would like to take inspiration from other successful horror films. This will help to strengthen our 2-minute film opening as we will know what we are looking to achieve which is hopefully to give the audience a sense of horror and unexpectancy. 

History of the horror genre in film:

     Mellies created “Le Manoir du Diable,” aka “The Haunted Castle” or “The House of the Devil,” in 1898, and it is widely believed to be the first horror movie. As we reach the 1910s, horror films began to solidify the aesthetic that is still used to this day. The main question to answer is what makes a good horror film. An example I will be using is "Pyscho" directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and stars Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, and John Gavin. 

     In Hitchcock's 'Pyscho' we can see the groundbreaking cinematic techniques for their time such as the handheld camera in shower scene which was revolutionary and had a lasting impact on the horror genre. The plot was also very suspenseful but even more importantly, is the representation that this film had. Such as when the girl's blood was going down into the drain spiraling which represents that her death was just a grain of sand on a beach. This was represented beautifully as the scene had a pan movement to the newspaper to show that life moves on. The violent murder scene in the shower was a traditional horror element, and this mix of revolutionary cinematography and traditional horror elements is what really helped separate this film from others at the time period. In my own film opening my group won't be including a kill scene as we will just be creating suspense for the 2-minute time period and hopefully the audience will be left on the edge of their seat wanting to watch more. Some key takeaways we will be using, will be the different horror elements used in "Pyscho" such as the camera movements. However, we will mainly be taking inspiration from "The Conjuring" with the dialogue between the characters, and this will help to create a story within 2 minutes of film. 

Research: Editing Techniques

 Research: Editing Techniques

     I would say that editing is probably my biggest weakness when it comes to filming and creating content. In class, we learned many different editing techniques such as: Shot/reverse shot, continuity editing, action match, graphic match, parallel editing, cutaway, insert, and the jump cut. These different editing techniques are very important to use in my opening film, as it gives a higher level of understanding the importance of editing to create an emotional aspect to the viewer. Me and my group members have already decided that we will be working on 'Premiere Pro' as this editing app gives us all of the resources, we need to fulfill what we're aiming to achieve within this portfolio project.

these notes taken in class about different editing techniques and how they give depth in cinematography will help our group to have ideas of what different edits we will be using to best match the representation of the scene. With all the notetaking from class, me and my group will need to understand how to use Premiere Pro. 

     

     At first glance, Premiere Pro looks very intimidating with all the different choices and options. I don't know where to start or how to make changes. These clips that I used are soccer clips from some of my games that I will be testing out and using different editing techniques on them. this link will be where I get my information and will learn how to edit and work with the settings of Premiere Pro. Within that website we can see how to place titles, speed up clips, assemble and refine sequences, and also import/export video and audio files. With all this info I can now start to play around with premiere pro and have a clearer view of how to use it. 

     

     These Tutorials on how to use Premiere Pro are very helpful and helped me learn how to use the essential tools such as the 'razor' which splits the same clip in two sections which allows for different pace change with that clip. Also, I learned how to do zoom in with editing. Layers are also a very key aspect in editing as many things should be going on in some clips or else you would just have a very bland scene with no sound and different edits of the same representation of the scene such as different shots and angles. My decision in researching how to edit on Premiere Pro is to help me and my group members be more time efficient on this app as we will now how to use it with easy and this will be one less obstacle that my group will be encountering throughout this project. These editing tutorials will help my overall project be crisp and clean so that hopefully we won't have any unsmooth/choppy edits within the film opening.

       

Research: Opening Shots

     Research: Opening Shots

Why do opening shots matter? I've never realized that the opening shots is what grabs the viewers' attention and if the first couple of shots aren't engaging then the viewer will just click off the screen in a heartbeat. So how do we create the opening shot? Well first of all, the opening shot of a film is one of the most important parts of a movie as it establishes the tone and the background/setting that the film will take place in. there are many different ways to start off an opening scene such as Introducing different types of conflict such as: 

• Character vs self
• Character vs character
• Character vs nature
• Character vs supernatural
• Character vs technology
• Character vs Society

These notes will help me to create a very meaningful 2-minute opening film as I will be establishing the tone and will be developing purpose within the 2-minute limit. My overall decision in choosing to research opening shots/films is to get a strong idea of how to implement some of these techniques in my own opening film. Developing characters by using mise-en-scene costum designs and interactions with the character to other people will help to develop who we are trying to represent in the opening film. 

"The Conjuring" is a horror film that uses a variety of techniques to establish a suspenseful tone. Some major takeaways I got out from the film was the impactful sound choices which has moments where the music gradually gets louder and deeper to present a jump scare or a moment of horror. Another takeaway I learned from this film was the character development, in the first 2 minutes we see the interaction about the doll between the daughter and her mom and we automatically understand who the characters are and their personality. Throughout the film, there is many moments of foreshadowing such as the evil spirit moments before it reveals itself. In my opening film, I will be introducing the characters in a similar way of "The Conjuring. "Also, me and my group will be using sound techniques to really bring our content to life and try to engage the audience in the beginning. This film will be used as inspiration for my portfolio project. My choice of using this film as an example, was that I have watched it many times with family and friends, and I feel that I can take inspiration from this film and apply it to parts of my project to create a meaningful opening shot. 

                                                                                

  

Research: Blog Postings

 Research: Blog Postings

     Blogs are a beautiful way to express how people feel towards whatever they are aiming to achieve, but there are also many ways that people can enhance the level of their blogs by 2x. Many people like me when blogging about my past projects, I would always miss out on the Why's on how my overall choices effect my final product. During the Nearpod lesson in class, I learned a whole lot about how to make blogs much better and especially looking at student examples, it really helped me catch mistakes that I have been doing but never realized. After looking throughout these student examples I learned that I should include 'HOW' research informs the process, decisions, and the overall productions. Most importantly, I learned that no matter how hard the times get with blogging I should always document the highest and the lowest points of my project. 

The notes that I took in this Blogging lesson helped me surpass the first obstacle that I was facing with this overall project which was 'how to create a well-written blog?' This question seems easy to answer in my head, but I can never really seem to jot down my true feelings as I get embarrassed or feel stressed when I have to blog about something where I didn't meet the highest expectations. In this Nearpod blogging lesson I learned that these are the key parts that make your blog standout, and this shows how the journey isn't as smooth as it seems. The main issue that I need to do work on and fix about my blogs is tying all the information back together to the main topic. 

Blogs should include:

• research
• Planning (Storyboard, layout examples)
• Production (Raw footage, half constructed pages)
• Revision (Two versions of one scene)
• Reflection

                 "Blog Post should end with a final decision and why each choice was chosen."

     With these main takeaways, I will be implementing all 5 of them to my overall project. The planning page will help me to be more organized within my production process and will make everything smoother as I have a layout of what I will be doing and would only have to execute. In my upcoming blogs in further weeks, I will be uploading and taking pictures of us behind the scenes and will talk about how these moments had an impact on the overall scene and the decision-making process behind every move. My final decision in choosing to research blogging was to clear up my mind on what I should and shouldn't do and make this blogging pathway as clear as glass. Without further a due, I am ready to keep on creating amazing blogging content throughout Rafa's Journey. 

Rafa's Journey

 The beginning of Rafa's journey: 

Hello and welcome to this adventurous journey. When I first joined this class, I had no idea what to expect and if someone would have told me I would be making a 2-minute film opening I wouldn't have believed them, but here we are. Blogging this entire journey will keep me in a safe space to release all the knots and ties inside of my mind while overcoming this project. I still have no idea where or how I am going to start off this project, but this blog posting is my first step. I am still in the process of deciding what genre I will be working with, and the overall film process of this project but I sure am very excited to get started. My approach going into this project will be to research and select upon the many genres that there are such as Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Crime, and Drama. I'm currently between choosing either a coming of age, or comedy type of film opening as I feel that I can express myself much better and I can relate to both of these genres. I'm currently doing this project alone as I want to be in control of everything that is going on and if anything happens then it will be my responsibility. I know that there will be many ups and downs throughout this project, so I am preparing both mentally and physically. Hope you enjoy this project journey, and I can't wait to start the filming process!

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

 Rafael Matamoros 

Period. 6

2/8/2023

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

Research Process:

In our research chart for the music marketing project, we divided the chart into 4 sections in which all 4 group members completed their part of the research chart in order to complete it faster than having one person doing the whole thing. I did the History inform
ation pm Sony Music Entertainment, and also 1 of the case studies (Metallica). My other 3 group members completed the case studies and also the Artists/Groups part of the research project. This allowed us to complete the research chart in only 2 days which helped us spend more time on creating our music video. Our genre was rock so the process of finding relevant rock artists/bands within the last 5 year was definitely very challenging for us, but we got through it. I would say this was the easiest part of the project as we all put in the work and got it done. We mostly worked on this part of the project in class and finished the last parts of it at home. Overall, the research chart in this project was very helpful as I learned a lot from it, and this helped me write my media context essay and also served as statistical objective data for our presentation to help support our overall music marketing project.

Brainstorming/Planning Process:

Our brainstorming process consisted of firstly choosing our setting for the music video. We ended up choosing 3 settings which was Vista View Park, Markham Park, and Weston Town Center. We ended up filming the entire music video in Town Center as we found the best spots which consisted of both lighting mise-en-scene elements and also the nature in the background. The storyboard really helped us film our music video as we drew up the shot ideas and used them in our actual film such as the Close up on the guitar and the Artists' eyes with the use of an extreme close up. The schedule that we made was also very useful as we completed each task in a timely manner. For example, we finished the Research project, storyboard, music video, then presentation in that same order as the due dates for each came up before one another so we made sure to be organized when completing this project.

Production Process:

Our production process had many ups-and-downs as we faced a couple of problems such as recording the day to night transitions with the sunset only lasting around 15 minutes. One thing I think we could have done better was to start filming a little bit earlier such as 5pm instead of our chosen time of 5:30/5:45. We only had a limited amount of time to film our day shots as we mostly focused on the nighttime shots as that were our goal for the music video to show the transition between day and night as soon as the beat dropped in the song. Another thing I feel we could have done better was to get more singing shots as most of the shots were covered by different lighting which completely blinded the viewers view that our artist was even singing the song. We only had around 5 different shots of the artist singing which is way too low for a promotional music video. Other than that, our music video filming was very fun to make as we were deciding on different camera shots and angles to create a deeper meaning within our final product. We tried to have many different angles and shots that were on the same time of cut as the music tempo which helps make the viewing smoother to watch. My favorite part about the production process was when we asked a police officer if we could use his red and blue lights from the cop car and he said yes, this was a very fun part as I feel that the lighting that those lights gave off really set a firm tone within the end of the song as the first part consisted or normal and some high key lighting. The editing part of this project was done by my group member Lenny who I feel did a great job on the editing as the video is very smooth and is on time with the tempo of the song. Overall, our production process went better than expected as once we got that first shot, the rest of the shots just started flowing in and we immediately were in the zone while filming this promotional music video for the song "My Name Is Human."

Post-Production Process:

Once we completed the music video, we sent all the clips to Lenny for him to edit and make the music video come to life. He got the music video editing done in around 2 days. Once we finished completing the production process of the music video, we all felt very relieved, but we were also re watching some clips to see if there was any need for improvement within the clips. After we finished with the music video, we started working heavily and putting all of our attention towards the PowerPoint presentation where we presented to the class. The entire group was collaborating with Lenny, and we would give suggestions on different editing techniques that we should implement to really make the music video stand out. Overall, the post-production process went very smoothly and there was no issues with this part of the project.

Presentation Process:

 Our presentation process went very smoothly as we created all the slides necessary and just started filling out all the information. We put up only a few words on each PowerPoint slide and we read off of what we had in memory as we each wrote down our speeches on a separate google doc to help stay on track on what we will be saying once presentation comes around. I did my speech pretty late which is why I had a couple of awkward pauses where I was trying to remember what I was going to say. I should have made the speech a day before, but I was caught up with high school soccer and other homework from other classes. Once the ppt was shared between all of us, we each split up the PowerPoint slides into 4 sections. I took charge of the 'Technological Convergence' slide and also the 'Logo' slide.

This is my speech that I typed up in google docs and I was studying the night before which was probably my biggest mistake as it was already too late to memories all that information in one night. I did remember most of the information of the Logo slide as I was practicing it a lot at home. The technological convergence slide was a little bit challenging as I had to give examples and tie all the information back together on how the medium forums are used as technological convergence. Overall, my group presented their parts of the presentation very well such as when Dave was letting the audience interact with the show of hands on how many people use TikTok in their day to day lives. This part made the audience very engaged within our presentation which helped us to achieve a good scoring within our comments that they left us.

Final Paragraph: 

Overall, I feel that this project really widened my view of the music world, and this gave me a deeper look into how artists really market their brand and music to their target audience. I used to believe that artists would only post music videos and not do anything else besides create music. The truth is that it is only a small portion of what they do. In reality they have deals with record labels, partnerships with top brands, and also, they are genius' at marketing their product to the correct group of people. I learned the different ways of marketing through social media and other mediums whether its physical or digital. The main takeaways that I will be implementing in my Cambridge portfolio is the time management that my group had while creating the music video. I will also be keeping in mind the time it takes to edit the final product and how I will be marketing it to the correct group of people. I will also be incorporating the use of similar research techniques to really get a deeper understanding of who my target audience is and what they like to see visually. This project will be very helpful to look back on while I create my Cambridge Portfolio project.