The Film

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4whpEiK1L4

https://vacantthemovie.wixsite.com/vacancy

CCR

 

1.      How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or issues?

Our commercial does a critical thing to challenge current conventions and Wendy’s commercial standards as a whole by breaking the fourth wall and trying to connect with the audience on a deeper level. This commercial tries to talk directly to the audience through comedy, which time and time again has shown that it is a proficient way of connecting with audiences, young and old and getting more buyers of a product, no matter what that product is. Humor has proved such a strong catalyst for consumerism that comedy has been a potent tool in any advertiser’s belt of strategies. Knowing this, we made a unanimous decision that our commercial would include humor as a main draw and hopefully that everything would go well. Thankfully, it did. Sadly, our commercial did not to anything revolutionary in the terms of social reforms or political issues, but we were not trying to go for such a hard-hitting point, as we were more trying to sell chicken nuggets than trying to raise protest in the streets. We decided against this because we are aware of the controversy surrounding other companies who have tried to do something as drastic as that, such as Pepsi with the infamous commercial that made their stocks drop by a staggering amount for a simple commercial with a simple view. Ignoring any social issues proved to be a positive, as we as a team were able to focus and pin down the answers to many questions plaguing our project at the time: Thankfully, all of these questions were answered and more.

 

2. How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text?

 

      This product appeals to millennial humor by being funny and random. This new form of humor has been proven effective multiple times in the past and is now at the forefront of many advertising firms current and most likely future strategies for outsourced advertising jobs. This new, flashy and colorful approach is now a mainstream affair. Our team decided to try and appeal this 49-year company to a new generation through this humor, and we feel like we succeeded. Further playing into this strategy, we would focus less on television ads and focus more on social media prevalence. This is because television viewership numbers have been steadily dwindling in the past few decades and we would want as many trendy and younger people seeing our advertisement as much as possible, as another part of advertising is to grab the viewers attention as quickly as you can, because the information getting into the watchers brain is more important than the watcher seeing the advert as a whole. When the main topic is put in front of the user immediately when they crave something or have a problem they will hopefully think immediately to that funny time they were introduced to the product and hopefully be a future customer. Our product engages with the audience beautifully, through humor.

 

 

3.      How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

 

            My Production skills developed exponentially throughout the length of this project because this was my first introduction to filmmaking and all of its aspects. This class went through all of the film making processes, such as editing, filming, acting and even finding the right music for the video. Every single detail was carefully curated by the tail end of the project, and everyone in our group was at least proficient in the programs we used and the camera angles and even our line. The great thing about this class is that it compresses down the complete filmmaking process into bite sized chunks, allowing us students to experience an often multi million-multi-year job in only a few days with the camera equipment being provided for by the school, meaning no one had to pay a dime. When I first started this project, I had little to no idea what the first aspect of filmmaking was, and now i can tell you every step off of the top of my head: including some of the different jobs that go into making a feature length film. Luckily, my group did not assign jobs to each other, meaning I was able to experience every aspect. Editing, acting, camerawork, everything! This allowed me to know many things about film. In terms of production, our group of course went through our bumpy bits in the beginning, but through the leadership of our teachers and the determination of all of us, we were able to streamline production, however much production that may mean. We were all directors by the end of the project, and we were all extremely proud on what seeing four idiots with a camera could do and make people laugh .

 

4. How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

Our main technology for this project were as follows: a camera and its accessories, and a computer with pinnacle studios installed. First, we made our storyboard on paper but uploaded it to our blogspots so we could see it from anywhere, even outside where we were filming. Blogspot allowed us to keep and store essential story and acting information for later use so we did not have to lug around an absurd amount of papers for one little project. The bread and butter of this project, though, of witch it would not be completed without, was the camera. Our camera was a small little dinky digital camera, but the lens was fantastic and the footage always came out great. The only problem our team had with the camera was the time constraints put upon us by its battery, with a meager life of around 2 hours. Ours, sadly, was not fully charged, and we were restricted to less than a class period of camera. Luckily, this proved to be more than enough for our ragtag group of heroes to complete the footage in a mere day to their exquisite standard. While the raw footage strung together would make a passible commercial on its own, we decided to spice it up a bit with pinnacle studios, allowing us to use royalty free smoke transitions and surprisingly catchy music that went in our comercial without inner team debate. All in all, technology was such an important part of our project we could not have hoped to finish it without our tools. Learning and using this tech to the best of our ability was separated from the development process, but a treat nonetheless.

 

The Day of Filming

  Today we filmed. Before everyone started showing up Eva made the fake blood. Eva mixed cornstarch, water, and food dye. I instructed her to microwave it so it would be thicker. With no surprise, It turned out great and was quite thick. At first, I thought there was going to be a repeat of what happened on Friday. Two people canceled on us once again. It was already two o’clock and I thought we would have to postpone again. But, I already had extras scheduled to arrive. This meant Eva did not have to act and she could be solely the cinematographer and director. It also means we had another person to check for any issues in the background of the shot. We changed the name of Allie to Alex to fit the gender of the extra person. The cast ended up being:

• Sean as James
• Andrew as Connor
• Michael as Eddie
• Esteban as Alex
• Trent as a Homeless Person

Filming started at roughly three o’clock. We filmed slightly out of order. We started off filming the flashback scene because it was the only scene at a secondary location. So, we walked down to the park. This scene took roughly twenty minutes, including walking there and back. We filmed the rest

Planning

 Today I have set up the plans to film. Everyone in our group will be able to come but, we need at least one more actor, preferably two. We have arranged filming to be set on Friday afternoon. Everyone should be available since mid-Terms will be finished and no one has scheduled any other plans. We intend on inviting two friends who have either worked with us before or have previously taken an AICE media class. Are props will be minimal: we will need tattered clothes (the homeless man character), prop weapons (a hammer), and fake blood. Making fake blood shouldn't be too hard for us since we made some in our last film. It is simply food dye, water, corn starch and xanthan powder. After that we heat it in the microwave to thicken it even more. Safety is our number one priority so, we have made sure all of the ingredients in our fake blood are non-toxic and easily digestible. We will be filming at three main locations: in our house, our crawlspace and a park down the street. We have already made sure all of these locations are cinematically pleasing.

Editing

  My editing skills are only strong in Photoshop and Illustrator so, I am leaving the majority of the editing for Eva. I can however edit the audio so, that is what I will most likely be doing. Eva created a new project in Premiere. I then imported it. The first thing Eva did was line up the clips. This took much longer than I thought it would. Last year it was much quicker. This was because they were only two minutes for the film last year. The hardest part, according o Eva, was lining up the conversation shots. This is because they all look the same. So, she had to watch all of the clips multiple times just to get the order. Currently looking at the footage I fear that we don’t have enough to get to five minutes. I am currently at 2 and a half minutes. I already used a bit over half of the footage.

Update: I finished lining up all of the footage. With place holders for the main titles, it made it to exactly five minutes. This is exactly where it needs to be. This was a great start to the editing process. Now that everything is lined up I have to add transitions, effects, and finish the titles.

The Day After Filming

  This blog is a continuation of yesterday's blog. Looking back at the filming process it went very well and smoothly. A few things we did differently from last year is the amount of planning we did and the quantity of dialogue. The planning helped make sure everything went smoothly. I think my favorite scene was when Eddie scared Sean. I think it was a nice funny scene that lightened the original mood of the movie. That offered a drastic contrast to the ending. One thing I was not a fan of was filming under the scenes under the house. It was fine when we checked when we were scouting where we filmed. I did not anticipate how uncomfortable crouching the entire time we were filming would be. Eva seemed to be slightly bothered by the amount of bugs under the house. I on the oher hand was expecting this.

I haven’t thoroughly reviewed all of the footage yet. I will be doing that tomorrow.  But, from what I can see the lighting was good throughout. One thing I am now worried about is making sure it is not choppy. A lot of the scenes were filmed separately and we have not done a film with heavy dialogue. But, I am confident that it will turn out well. I can’t wait for editing because I feel like our acting had much to be desired.

A Cancelled Event

 Today we had to cancel our filming plans. Not all of our actors were able to make it. There must have been a communication error because our actor stated that he was unable to make the time he previously agreed to. There is nothing we can do about it now, however. We will just schedule our filming for a future date. This may have been a blessing in disguise since I have recently come to discover we are lacking the majority of our props. Hopefully we will be more prepared. To mitigate the threat of having to reschedule for a second time, I made sure we would have extras in case someone doesn't show up. Two actors outside of the class have been contacted along with three extras who will be contacted. When we do schedule our filming, it will likely be some time next week, this will be when everyone is on winter break and everyone is available. We will now have to ask everyone which days they will be available. Then we will be able to schedule a day.