The Continuation of the Portfolio Project

     Hello everyone, welcome back and happy Valentine's Day! Hope everyone has been having a great day with their loved ones. I for one have been planning this film opening almost all day. There have been many new ideas which have come up but also many other difficult situations. For the most part, these obstacles won't drastically affect my project. I'm still not sure if I am going to film alone or with a partner, but in case I am filming alone I have purchased some equipment that will benefit me for my filming process. I am in the process of planning and organizing the shots and angles I want to use to capture the storyline in the best possible way. Most likely I will continue with the genre horror, as I love horror films and believe they are the best film openers out of all the other genres.

    The storyline is pretty far from complete but there are many ideas that I have for this film opener. The first idea I have is about a person who is in a relationship with someone else, but little does he know she's very possessive and demonic. He fell in love with her solely by lust and wants to see someone else. Instead of telling her the truth, he goes out with the other girl and she figures this out and ends up conducting many rituals and demonic spells. The guy does not know what is happening and is clueless, little does he know death will come his way and the way of his new lover.

    Another idea which I have been planning and really focused on was about a car crash. In this scene, a group of friends is leaving a party very wasted and they are driving home recklessly. One of the friends is actually sober and ends up leaving with them but he continuously has visions of something bad that is going to happen to him and his friends. He doesn't think too deep into them and ends up ignoring them, but when they are on their way home they crash and die. Miraculously, the guy who has visions comes back to the party and goes through the same events, but this time he convinces his friends not to drive off and instead take an Uber. The driver ends up leaving by himself and the other 4 friends take an Uber, the friend who drove off by himself dies and the rest have to survive these supernatural events. A bunch of scenarios happens which lead up to fatal incidents and they all get attacked in chronological order from the first person who died to the last.

    Although these are some of my ideas for the film opening I still am not very sure as to what idea I and going to go with or even if I'm using any of these ideas. I am still researching the genre of horror and the camera shots, camera angles, and sound to see what will make my film opening stand out and be excellent. I will continue to talk with other people to see which one sounds better to film and ask my teacher for her thoughts. Apart from this, I will continue to work and research so that my film opening portrays the storyline as I want it. There will be many more blogs coming along the next week, and I will continue to update everyone on the journey of this project. Thank you for reading and I hope you all have a wonderful day!

The Beginning of the Portfolio Project

    Hello everyone, my name is Kenneth Garzon and I will begin my journey of creating a 2-minute film opening during the next 6 weeks. Many emotions are going through my head from excitement to anxiety. This project is very large and will consume a great amount of my time. I will be incorporating all the techniques, camera shots, angles, and knowledge I have learned throughout this entire course. Unlike the past years, there will be many different obstacles that will present themselves because of COVID-19, but just like every other obstacle, they will be overcome.

    As of right now, I am in the planning stages of this project. For me, this is the most complicated part of the project as there are so many ideas that arise in my head and different aspects that I want to cover. All this freedom can end up leading me to get stuck as I have thought so many ideas but truly still don't know what I want to do. For now, I don't really know what genre I will be focusing on but I have eliminated some choices such as comedy and romance. I think I am leaning more to the horror side for this film opening after researching through the genres. I have not yet got a solid answer, but I believe I will also be working on this project for myself as I believe this will be a great opportunity to display my skills in filming and directing. I will further continue my research on genres and put slightly more focus on horror.

    With the knowledge that I have obtained through the course, I feel as if it crucial for an opening to perform a variety of different angles and sounds for a film opening. Especially if I am going to choose the horror genre I feel as if these aspects of the opening need to be perfect. When watching these horror films much of the time there is not a lot of dialogue and the scariest parts are when the camera shots, angles, and sound are used in harmony. That's why I will be going to put heavy emphasis on these aspects of my film opening if I am going to proceed with horror. By Monday I will have confirmed the genre that this film opening will be. I am ready for this challenge and will update everyone through the process and production of this film opening. 

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

    The Music Marketing Project was a project which objective was to create a band. We would create an entire marketing campaign for the band as well as explain how we would distribute the band's music. The group all agreed upon choosing the song Rise Above, the genre of the song is Alternative Rock. One of the most important components of the Music Marketing project was that we had to create a music video that correlated to the chosen song and would be best suited to commercialize. 

    During the creation of the band, the group unanimously agreed upon the name HighTide. We felt as if it gave off the sensation of Alternative Rock while still being a fairly simple and catchy name. As we continued the project none of us really had a firm idea of how to market a band or even what the alternative rock was. The group began to research these topics and discovered two very successful companies, Warner Music Group and Columbia Records. These companies contained many Alternative Rock bands, our group analyzed many of them and there were two that stood out which was Vampire Weekend and 143 Records. After further analysis and investigation, our group adopted some ideas and took inspiration from these companies and bands to create our campaign and music video.

    

    Before we began to create the music video, my group and I drew out the scenes which we all were going to perform and how the music video should follow. During the screenplay, the entire group displayed and collaborated their own ideas on how the music video should turn out to look. The name of the music video was titled Move On which was based on the song we chose Rise Above. The group and I agreed on the fact that the song should be storytelling as the lyrics really made each one of us picture a story in our heads. We all split up the video Jake one of my partners shot the first part of the video, I then shot the second part of the video, and Sai the other partner shot the third part of the video. The entire group split the video according to their roles in the project. 

    

    After the entire group had filmed their parts we all ended up sending it to Jake as he knew the best who to edit the entire video so that it fits perfectly with the song. He also knew as well how to time the video and create better visuals so that it seemed more appealing to the audience. Although Jake did do almost all of the editing, it is not to take credit with the scenes and the contributions both Sai and I made.

    Throughout the entire project, I learned many lessons and new ideas that I would have never known if it weren't for this project. I learned all the aspects it takes to create a new brand and all the marketing that has to go into promoting the band. This will help me in my future developing my Cambridge portfolio because I would have learned how to promote a brand and build one.

Music Marketing

 Music Marketing Project 

    In this project, we are assigned a group in which we work with 3 other classmates. My group consists of Jake Steinlauf, Alessia Romer, and SaiPavankalyan Nakka. These classmates are very excellent and prolific students, they are all always trying to find ways to improve on our work and be better each day. As a group, we all work very well and everyone knows what their role is and what they all have to do. Recently we just finished up our research for our project.

    When working on this we all put in our effort to making this chart as informative and valuable as it is. In the beginning when we were thinking about the companies we were going to do it was a little rough as we don't know much about companies. Sai and Jake both found great companies that we were going to work on. From there we split up the work, Jake and Alessia did the research on the company Columbia while Sai and I did the research on Warner Music Group. While we were in these pairs we ended up splitting up the work as it was quicker and easier for everyone. Sai took the Artists/Groups and Case Study #1 while I took the History and Case Study #2. Jake and Alessia split the work as well. During my research on the History of Warner Music Group, I found many intriguing details and facts about the company, and the Case Study on Helium 3 was very interesting. Since the work was so interesting it made it fairly easy for me to find good content for my research chart. We all as a group believed it was pretty interesting and none of us had a hard time with it once we started going.

    While we were doing our work we faced off some difficulties but as a group, we overcame these obstacles. The first obstacle we faced was communication, since we live in a time where the whole world is going through a pandemic it made communicating very hard. This meant we were no longer in an ideal situation where we could be face to face with our fellow classmates and discuss the research. Also, my internet would constantly interrupt and sometimes even kick me out, and it was hard to communicate with each other after school as some of us had extracurricular activities. The group ended making a group chat and would consistently communicate through the group chat and assign people what work they had to get done. This group chat helped us with the brainstorming as we were all able to tell our ideas with no interruptions and the messages saved so we could all look back on the messages later on.

    Our biggest difficulty was the genre itself. Although it was pretty easy once we started to get going, in the beginning, it was extremely hard to find the company on which we were going to do our research. The genre itself seemed pretty easy as it is a pretty popular genre in our generation, but that did not help. Also, no one in the group really knew what the genre was, this didn't help either. This lack of knowledge in this genre made it difficult to figure out which bands or artists were in this genre. Although it was difficult with hours of research we finally found which artists and companies we were going to write our research upon. The upside of not knowing the genre and bands is that we learned many new things that we would have never learned on our own. Now we have to look on to doing our next assignment which is the Music Video Story Board. We are taking it step by step and looking for the best quality.

  

Representation Analysis

    There are many representations of our modern day society some may be good representations and other may be very dreadful. Representation has a huge impact on the way some people interpret our modern day society.

    The first advertisement that I will be dissecting is an Axe body spray commercial that aired on MTV in 2006. In the beginning of this commercial there can be seen a woman who is in the middle of a jungle wearing a bikini, and she is running through the jungle like a wild animal. Later there can be seen multiple different women who are wearing bikinis running through different locations like wild animals. Then a man appears who is applying the Axe body spray and the all these women are rushing to him. The man, after realizing all these women rushing towards him, makes a satisfied smiles. 

    While this commercial is probably going to persuade many men to go out and buy Axe's product, it is creating a negative statement towards society. The directors of this commercial want the consumers to believe that their product would attract many women, like in the commercial but not as exaggerated. This Axe commercial also creates a unrealistic standard towards women. In the commercial many of these women are small waisted, big chested, and very slim. The commercial also makes it seem as these women are wild animals and they have no self-control towards themselves and their own desires. All the women that were involved in this commercial were highly objectified and were depicted as animals, this could create a huge misconception in many people as they could possibly believe women have no self control. The quote at the end, "Spray More Get More" is objectifying women as it is saying that women are seen as numbers and objects, and if they spray more they will receive a higher number of women.

    

    Another commercial I will talk about is the Tide commercial that aired. This ad begins with a mother and her daughter in the living room, the mother is wearing very light colors like pink and the daughter is wearing darker colored cloths like the camouflage jacket with a grey shirt and shorts. The mother then talks about how she tried to get her daughter to like pink and it didn't work, and she talks about the time where she left her crayons in her pocket. The mother thought that the crayons were gonna ruin the cloths but Tide cleaned the clothes and the mother was unable to away the clothes. While she was saying the story she gave a happy mood about the crayons almost destroying her cloths, but then disappointed that Tide cleaned her clothes. She then says a remark saying it's too bad, signifying that she wished the cloths would have been destroyed. She then says sarcastically that the car garage her daughter made was beautiful. The ad ends with the quote "Style is an option. Clean is not".

    Although this advertisement could be pretty funny it also has a very negative impact on our society. This ad is giving off the interpretation that all women have to be super feminine and like the bright colors like pink. The lady is well dressed in her in her white skirt and pink sweater.  The house is well decorated and is very neat and tidy, all the furniture is very feminine with feminine patterns. This also gives bad influence on women as it is trying to show that everyone should act and behave in a very feminine way as the mother was in the commercial. This could negatively influence on our society as it is trying to say that no matter what some girls might like to do they have to try and fit into these standards the society has created, they can not like things that have to do with getting dirty. The girl is dressed in very masculine colors like the camouflage and very masculine clothing such as cargo shorts. The girl is playing with toys like building blocks and cars, which are not as feminine as the mother likes. Throughout the ad the mother says how she tried for her daughter to like the color pink and dress more feminine. This causes a negative impact as it is trying say that the girls won't be accepted and have to confine with the standards of society. The mother has even tried to throw out the little girl's clothes but Tide was able to clean all the stains from the crayons. The mother in the ad is being portrayed as the mother who can not accept and is upset about her daughter being more masculine than other girls.

How is it Action?

   Genre:

  Action movies are arguably the most popular genre around the world and does not seem that it will stop dominating. One reason for the grand success of the genre Action is the sub genre Superhero. Superhero films are films about a superhero or superhuman who uses their newly obtained ability to help either their communities. Many of these superheroes are taken from famous comics, this in turn motivates many people to go out and watch these films. The emotions such as thrill, excitement, and amazement play a huge role in why so many people love these action superhero films.

    Target Audience:

    One of the main reasons why Superhero films are so popular is because of the target audience. This target audience is not like other movie genres or sub genres, the target audience is aimed for younger adults but can really catch the attention to middle aged adults, younger children, and older adults as well. Many of the middle to older aged adults grew up on reading these comics on the heroes they loved as a child, and many younger children fall in love with the amounts of action and thrills these movies have. A prime example is Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, the first movie. This movie was a huge hit as Sam Raimi only had a budget of 139 million and grossed about 825 million dollars. This movie is a prime example of the target audience because many middle to older aged in 1962 Spider-Man blew up in the comics after Stan Lee took control of Spider-Man and wrote the last issue of Marvel's Comic's Amazing Fantasy no. 15. After that many people began to fall in love with the friendly neighborhood web-slinger, so when the movie came out many people that fell in love with the comic were older. Spider-Man himself catches the eyes of many younger children as how acrobatic and fearless he is, and how he is always so strong and determined to do what is right. This movie was attracted many people from all audiences. 

    Content:

    The content of these films are all pretty similar in they way they concentrate on the same concept which is protecting their city, doing good for the people, saving as many lives as they can, and defeating the super villain to prevent anymore chaos in the city. Although they are all portrayed differently in their films, they all have a very similar outline. 

    The overall purpose of a superhero film is to showcase good vs bad. For example, Black Panther directed by Ryan Coogler showcases this good versus evil as the main character T'Challa otherwise known as the Black Panther has to fight Erik Killmonger otherwise known as Killmonger. T'Challa has to fight off Killmonger so that he can save Wakanda and the people from the corruption and evil of Killmonger. This is a prime example of a superhero film which main overall purpose is to showcase good vs. bad. No matter what superhero film is created there always has to be an antagonist or a super villain who is trying to destroy the superhero's hometown or the city the superhero vowed to protect. The plot of these films are all very similar in the sense that the superhero has to defeat the villain and save the day.

    These superheroes films have many things in common to other ones and one of the most common things are the superheroes themselves. Many of these Superheroes have a tragic back story as to why they started the life of being a superhero, or an event happened in their life and with that they were motivated to becoming superheroes. This gives an emotional connection to the audience as they grieve for his lost, this also inspires many people as they see how through the tragic events they still go out and protect the innocent people. It inspires the audience to see how the superhero coped with the tragedy and is now prevailing  Also, many of these superheroes have a very similar moral codes. This moral code could be no killing any bad guys or it could be them risking their lives to save innocent people. Secret identity is one of the biggest similarities between all the superheroes. Many of these superheroes hide their secret identity in order to protect the people that they most love.

    Production Techniques:

    Like many other genres, superhero films focus and concentrate on certain production techniques. One of the main techniques that superhero films use is camera movement. Camera movement is key in any of the superhero films taking the perfect shots and correct angels is essential in all superhero films. Pan, Tilt, establishing shot, and many more are essential to capture the action packed superhero films. 

    Costumes is another essential focus on these superhero films. Many of these superheroes wear these costumes that make it automatically recognizable to the audience. Also, capes are one of the most iconic parts of the costume, although not many superheroes wear capes. These costumes are what makes the superhero what they are they are how the audience recognizes the superheroes. These costumes usually cover their faces to hide their identities and they are super tight, like latex suites. Without these costumes these superheroes would not be as iconic as they are.

    Colors is arguably one of the most important aspects in a superhero film. Colors could represent are so important that they represent superheroes. For example, Spider-Man wears red and blue and he is iconic known as the hero who wears red and blue, also Superman. Batman wears black and yellow and its iconic known throughout society that black and yellow are the colors of Batman. These colors can also depict the settings, as in Spider-Man movies it is very colorful and vibrant, unlike Batman movies where the color scheme is much darker and more serious 

     The location of many superhero movies takes place in New York, but not all of them. The layout of many of these superhero movies is usually all the same, they are all a very populated city which has many tall buildings. The location of these movies also take place in very heavily populated cities. This makes it more intriguing for the super villains to create chaos in these cities.

    How is genre marketed?

    Usually these films are marketed in many forms of advertisements. For example, they are usually in many ads of games or video streaming, where they present a small trailer of the movie. These advertisements are as commonly seen in posters outside of places such as the movie theater or fast food restaurants. For example, McDonald's goes as far as to promote the movie by putting posters outside of their restaurant and they make toys related to the movie so that more children want their food. There are also many posts that go all around social media which promote these superhero films.

    Sample #1

    Man of Steel is a movie which came out June 14, 2013. This is a great representation of a Action superhero film. It is a movie based on the famously known superhero Super Man. This movie is about how Superman and his origin story and how he has come to Earth and now going to use his super human abilities to save the city of Metropolis from any evil. He has to fight the evil villain General Zod who is trying to destroy the Earth. After the destruction of Krypton, General Zod wanted to transform Earth to Krypton. But Superman arrived to Earth first and after rebooting his ship got information from his biological father that he has to protect Earth and guide the people. General Zod attempted to transform but Superman destroyed all his machines. After that General Zod vowed to destroy the entire planet, but Superman is there preventing him from attempting to destroy the planet. At the end, Superman ends up killing General Zod and saves the entire planet. This is a great representation as the overall purpose showed the good vs. bad, it also hits every point in the production techniques. The movie takes place in Metropolis a fake city but is highly populated with many buildings, has an iconic costume and an iconic symbol, and contains lots of color. The content is also very similar as the superhero has a tragic back story as to way he became the superhero he is, has a moral code of protecting and guiding the people on Earth, and Superman has a secret identity, and risking his life to save innocent people. In the movie Man of Steel all of the production techniques and content points the film to being an action superhero film.

Sample #2

    Spider-Man directed by Sam Raimi, came out on May 3, 2002, is another great representation of a superhero film. This film is about the most iconic superhero known Spider-Man. The movie is about  Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and how he gets bitten by a radioactive spider. This spider then morphs him into being Spider-Man but not the one that saves the city. He goes to a wrestling match where he wins but does not receive the full amount of money he was supposed to receive. A thief then robs the place and Spider-Man lets him go, but after unfortunate events the same thief kills Spider-Man's uncle Ben. After this Spider-Man vowed to do go and protect innocent people. Then Green Goblin is introduced in the movie, Green Goblin offers Spider-Man a place his side but Spider-Man refuses. The Green Goblin then beats Spider-Man, but they have one last fight where Spider-Man over powers Green Goblin. The Green Goblin is pleading for forgiveness, but is controlling his glider to spear Spider-Man but then ends up spearing himself. This movie is a prime example of a superhero movie. This movie contains all of the production techniques such as camera movements, costumes which is iconic and the iconic spider symbol, contains vivid amount of color on the costume and movie, and has very similar location as other superhero movies (New York highly populated city). This can also be said for the content as this movie contains the overall purpose of good vs. bad, and the character development is extremely similar. The character has a back story as to why he became a superhero, has a moral code of no killing people, risking their life for innocent people, and hiding their secret identity. Spider-Man is a prime example of an action superhero movie.

Other Film Examples

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

 

Iron Man (2008)

Captain Marvel (2019)

Batman Begins (2005)

Wonder Woman (2017) 

Introductory Post

Hello my name is Kenneth and welcome to my blog. The purpose of this blog is to serve as a document for Cambridge. This blog will help Cambridge observe and evaluate my progression throughout the course AICE Media Studies. This blog will also be a factor to determine the score I receive in the AICE exam. I am a senior who attends Cypress Bay High School. I am also an athlete who plays travel soccer for the club Weston FC. I aspire to continue my soccer career and play division 1 soccer in college and possibly go professional.