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.

BLÜME MARKETING PROJECT

BLÜME MARKETING PROJECT

BY: JACK LEVENTHAL

    To start this music marketing project we came up with ideas and concepts for what the overall vibe of the campaign would be. We chose a floral/nature theme that would fit best for our artist “BLÜME”. We decided to link BLÜME with greens, pinks, and flowers. We used a combination of digital and physical marketing. The brand of our artist, BLÜME, was something we really wanted to focus on. We came up with many ideas, including a music video, billboards, live performances, interviews, social media, and even a pop-up shop for BLÜME’s merchandise. We came up with these ideas through the marketing research and case studies we did on similar artists. We discussed how to put these ideas into action and concluded that the release of the music video and the pop-up store would be our most important events.

We chose to use an aesthetic and promotional strategy that would complement the artists vibe for the video. We knew we wanted to include a lot of flowers and bright colors in the video, so we looked for a setting that would allow us to do so. We chose a park with several hills, trees, and a playground for our location. We also created a storyboard and plotted out the various shots we wanted to use in our video.

Over the course of creating this campaign, we faced several obstacles that could have been preventable. The most serious issue was our group’s time management. We are doing ok now, and are back on schedule and have completed the majority of the project, but we definitely could’ve planned our time better. We could have completed sooner if we had stayed focused on the project, and if we worked more from home. Shooting and editing the music video, as well as to turning our marketing strategy into a presentation is the next step in creating this campaign. The music video will be shot over two days, with the first day being for the majority of the video and the second day being for any re-shoots. The editing will likewise take place over the course of a single day. Overall I think our campaign will be successful, and I am very happy with where it is heading.