BMG UPDATE/ NEW SONG

   The update is that BMG never updated me! I sent BMG the email about me wanting to use the song "Reptilia" by The Strokes three days ago, and still haven't gotten a response. Most of my opening will have the character "Axl" playing guitar to a song, I need to be able to storyboard around that song. Since BMG hasn't written me back, and I need to get the ball rolling with storyboarding, I found a non-copyrighted song that will work instead of Reptilia.

 

   I looked at many copyright free music sites such as "https://www.purple-planet.com/", and "https://www.free-stock-music.com/", but I found my song on "https://www.bensound.com/". This song has the exact vibe I was going for, and somewhat reminds me of "Reptilia".  Although this isn't my first choice for this project, I am still very satisfied with song. I can't wait to see what comes next.

Setting

 

For the setting of my film opening, I wanted a typical messy teen room, so what better than to use my own! My room is perfect for this film. It has many musical elements to it that would match Axl's character perfectly. I was thinking for parts of the credits, we can see closeups of random knickknacks in Axl's room, and I have loads of them. Here are some pictures of exactly what the room will look like. 

Main Song!

 After looking for what felt like hours for copyright free rock music, I learned one thing: Copyright free music sucks! I looked far and wide to find a copyright free song, and found some decent ones, but none that really stood out. I used websites like https://www.purple-planet.com/ and https://splice.com and couldn’t find anything that really fit. When I first thought of this project, the song that immediately came to my head was “Reptilia” by The Strokes. So instead of wasting my time trying to find more copyright free music, I decided to write an email to BMG records to see if I can use Reptilia. This is the email I sent them:

“ Dear BMG Licensing,
My name is Jack Leventhal. I am doing a project for school and would love to use a song under your label with your permission. The project is a short film opening. How would I go about using this song? Get back to me whenever you can. Thank you so much.

Name: Jack Leventhal

Project Name: Cambridge Film Opening

Project: FILM OPENING

Description: Film opens up on a kid wearing sunglasses and headphones, sitting in is room playing guitar. The cuts are very fast and upbeat. The credits will happen as he is playing. From the distance, we hear multiple people calling out his name. His bedroom door swings open to reveal his band mates yelling at him that they are late for a performance. When he gets up, he picks up a mobility stick to reveal that he is blind. This is where the film opening will end.

Request: I would like to use the song “Reptilia” by “The Strokes” in the first minute and a half of my project.

Artist: The Strokes

Explain: Song fits the vibe of the opening perfectly.

Length of music in minutes: 1:19

What media rights are needed: N/A

Sincerely,  
 Jack Leventhal”

I hoping BMG allows me to use the song, and I’ll keep you updated.

Main Character Name

 For the name of my main character, I wanted something bold. A name that when you hear it, you immediately think “rockstar”. So I did some research, and found that a very “rockstar-esque” name is Axl. 

When you search “popular rockstar names” into google, the first 3 websites had the name Axl in their top 20. To see if the name would fit the rockstar persona, I ran a test. I asked my brother (14 years old), my parents (46/48 years old), and a friend (17 years old) what name screams out “ROCKSTAR” to them? 

-Sebastian

 -Luke 

-James

-Zane

-Axl. 

Three out of Four said the name “Axl” stood out the most. Overall, I think Axl is the perfect name for my main character.

Film Title

 When I talked to my grandma about what I should title my film, she responded with “Blind Man Plays Guitar”. I responded with “It could use some work”. For the title of my film I don’t want to do something that gives the plot away. I want something simple yet doesn’t really tell you what the story is fully going to be about. I thought about this for a while, and what kept popping in my head was the five senses. 

When you loose one sense, your others become heightened, so I thought what better than to incorporate that into my film title. At first I wanted to include hearing. I thought of a few names, but nothing really seemed to fit. Finally it came to me: Touch (Feel). The title of my film is “Feel It”.

Idea!

I have been thinking a lot about what i’d like to do for my film opening, and I have decided on what I am going to do. 

- Film opens up on a kid wearing sunglasses and headphones, sitting in is room playing guitar. The cuts are very fast and upbeat. The credits will happen as he is playing. From the distance, we hear multiple people calling out his name. His bedroom door swings open to reveal his band mates yelling at him that they are late for a performance. When he gets up, he picks up a mobility stick to reveal that he is blind. This is where the film opening will end.

I don’t have a ton of details yet, but I think this is a good outline of what the story should be. As always, I’ll keep everyone updated.

Desicion

 After looking at the pros and cons for both genres of coming of age and horror, I have made my decision. My film opening will be in the coming of age genre. I don’t know exactly what I want to have the plot to be, but I want there to be some kind of conflict. 

I want my film opening to rely heavily on music. I want to keep it simple, and not really give the whole plot away. I am very exited to see where this project goes, and I’ll keep you updated.

CONFLICT!

 Going into this project, I was dead-set on doing something in the horror genre. After doing some light research on horror, I have surprisingly stumbled on some good coming of age film openings and ideas. There are pros and cons to each genre.

Horror pros

-More ideas come to mind

-Working with sound will be fun/interesting

-I am more knowledgable in the horror genre itself

Horror cons

-Final project may come off as corny

-As someone who's strong-suit is NOT editing, the ideas I have will be very challenging.

Coming of age pros

-Have worked with this genre before

-Ideas I have will not have the craziest editing

-Story can be more concise than horror, less likely to go overtime

Coming of age cons

-More dialogue would be involved (good actors)

-Ideas really aren't coming to me as much

Overall, I should know by tomorrow what I want to do. I'll keep you updated!

 

WEEK 1 PORTFOLIO PROJECT

 Finnaly, the long awaited “Portfolio project”. I’m still thinking about the details of the project, but I know I want to do something in the horror genre. To start off my project, I really want to research in depth the genre of horror (that being the genre I want for my film opening). I will do this by watching openings to many horror movies. That’s really all I have planned for now, but there is so much to come. I am very exited to see where this project goes.

BLÜME MARKETING PROJECT PT.2 (OVERVIEW)

                                                                                   BY: JACK LEVENTHAL 

   To start this project, we did 4 case study's on artists that had a somewhat similar vibe to our artist "BLUME". We researched artists like Tyler the Creator and Childish Gambino to really get a feel of how we should market our artist. We found these artist used things such as social media presence, and billboards to market themselves, and we really took inspiration from that. 

     

  Next, we researched our target audience to see how to present BLUME to them. We found that teens and young adults were the main people who would be listening to BLUME's music. We decided on a floral/nature motif to complement our artist. We chose greens, pinks, and flowers to represent BLÜME. These elements are things that I think our target audience would really enjoy.

   To get BLUME's name out there, we decided that our heavy hitters would be social media, billboards, live performances, and a pop up shop. For social media, we gave our audience a look inside BLUME's work behind the scenes. Focusing on instagram, we teased our music video, put out some album art, and gave a number to call to hear a sneak peak of BLUME's new song. Billboards would be scattered all over Los Angeles for everyone to see. These billboards are super vibrant and eye-catching, and would be a sight you cannot miss. Live performances such as "The Tonight Show" and "NPR Tiny Desk Concert" are great ways we can get BLUME's name to many different audiences. Finally, BLUME would host a pop up shop on the day of the album release where he would sign autographs, sell merchandise, and overall just meet and connect with fans.

 For BLUME's music video for his single "Me and Your Mama" we took an artistic/promotional approach. Since greens, pinks, and flowers are a part of BLUME's image, we wanted to include all of that into the music video. We made a storyboard for the video, and filmed a couple of days later. To keep up with the nature theme, we shot the majority of the music video in a local park. I shot the beginning and end of the video in my bathroom, where i was surrounded by flowers again keeping with the theme.

   Finally we worked on our presentation. We wanted to make our presentation super vibrant and colorful to match our artist. We made sure to add crucial information to the slides, but not bombard the audience with useless facts. We assigned each member of the group multiple slides to present, and each practiced them.

   I absolutely loved this project. Learning about how music artist are marketed was so interesting. We did face some avoidable obstacles such as time management, lack of equipment, and going off task, but I am extremely happy with the result of our project. I hope to do more projects similar to this one in the future.