Scheduling Conflicts

 In order to shoot, we needed to wake up early one day to drive down the beach, which requires waking up at 4am. I also had to tie in feeding both of my actresses on the way there so nobody was cranky.

I had two seperate days I had to film (scene one for golden hour at the beach and scenes 2-3 at Maddie's house), so I had to find a day where not only am I free, but my actresses are free. Both my actresses are in the school musical with important parts (Maddie was the main female lead and Elena is stage manager), so they had rehersals most days from 12pm-9pm, except for Sundays, which they had free.

I also run a busy schedule and since I work as a soccer ref, sometimes I get game assignments a couple days before I have to be on the field, or in some cases I get assigned at midnight the day beforehand. I also had ball person training for the Miami Open on Sunday (Feb. 19th) from 7:30am-12:30pm, Monday and Thursday (Feb. 20th and 23rd) from 4:30pm-9:30pm, and Saturday and Sunday (Feb. 25th and 26th) from 7:30am-12:30pm. This takes up time and so does my practice schedule for tennis (I try to train twice a week at my academy in Sunrise from 3:30pm-6:30pm) and I coach my little brother's soccer team (who had a game at 1pm on Saturday, Feb. 18th). I also have school tennis practices and school matches, which there was one on Tuesday Feb. 21st.

Here's a visual representation of any open blocks of time

I decided since the school musical was being presented the 23rd-25th, that I should do it the weekened beforehand (18th-20th). I couldn't film during the week either because I got assigned games to ref on Tuesday-Thursday from 5:15pm-10pm. I texted both my actresses to make sure they were definetly free Saturday (Feb. 18th) from 5am-10am. They luckily were and only needed to be back hom for their 12pm rehersal, so I made plans to pick them up early in the morning to drive down to the beach.

I then had to make tentative plans with Maddie to film on Sunday (Feb. 19th), but I wasn't sure of my schedule. I could only film after 1pm and Maddie was only free up until 4pm. There was a chance that I could get assigned games to ref from 1pm-7pm, but luckily this didn't happen, so I was able to film with Maddie on Sunday, so everything was able to get shot.

My Cast

 I knew I was going to cast Maddie as my main character from the very beginning since she’s pretty, in theatre so she knows how to act, is lesbian, and is reliable, so I know she’ll show up for filming. I think Maddie can perfectly fill that masculine female lead I want as the main character while also keeping feminine features, which visually is exactly what I want. She’s also Cuban/Dominican, which I feel there isn’t a lot of female Latin main characters in rom coms, especially in wlw film. Even when there is a Latina in a rom com film, they're just the love interest or a supporting role more often than not. In my film, I wanted to have Maddie as this focus without Hollywood stereotypes about Spanish women as well.

For the love interest, there’s little Filipino representation in film just in general, so having a female Filipino love interest is even less typical. I cast Elena for this reason since I’ve heard her talk about how there’s minimal representation for her nationality. I even spoke to her, asking if she knew any Filipino actors or actresses in Hollywood and she could only name Ned from Spider-Man. I've done research into other Filipino representation in films and there was only Hollywood LGBTQ representation with Lea Salonga acting as Elodie Honrada, a lesbian mother, in "Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin". Elena is also in theatre, but isn’t good at spoken lines, which is why I have her only in the opening sequence where there is no dialogue. She’s reliable as well and I know she will show up and take her role seriously.

Both Maddie and Elena are a part of the LGBTQ community, and I think that's an important feature of this film as well.

Delay, Delivery, and Denying Genre Expectations

 In an earlier post, I was looking into making my film a coming-of-age film, but since I want to create a sense of normalcy to lesbian love, I'm going with the cliche rom com opening most movies have. Coming-of-age films take on heavy and deep issues, which is normally the basis for LGBTQ+ movies, but I want this film to be a happy, feel good film. 

With this, I took to the chick flick subgenre that many heterosexual rom coms use where the plot of the movie is surface level and the focus is just to build a loving, fluffy relationship. The narrative of high school girls being love crazed will be delivering expectations, but I’ll deny the typical heterosexual approach and have the love interest also be female. The main character also isn’t struggling with her homosexuality, she embraces it and is openly out and openly presents herself in a more masculine way, which is a stereotype of lesbian women. Presenting lesbian love in a way that is typical or normal is another denial of expectations since most LGBTQ films focus on the struggle to come out or come to terms with their sexuality, but my main character embraces it. I’ll delay some of the expectations of rom-coms by having no witty dialogue until later on in the film since there’s typically a narrative voiceover or conversation happening, i.e. the intro to "To All The Boys I've Loved Before" and "The Half Of It".

My research into films within the romance comedy genre really helped me narrow down that I wanted to do for my film. I noticed that each of the films I watched like “10 Things I Hate About You” used character reactions, difference in music, and character actions to characterize within the first two minutes. This is similar to “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” where Lara Jean is painted as creative and a hopeless romantic in her daydream sequence at the beginning. It really sets a character up for us to understand their interests and personality even though we’ve only seen them on screen for around a minute. The cinematography of these films have certain shots they use typically, like the upside down angle the To All The Boys series constantly uses. With this, there’s also a certain color scheme to the films as well, like in “Love, Simon”, they constantly use more muted colors except for romance moments or in “Kissing Booth”, they use bright colors that pop out at you. 

Love, Simon still ^

The Kissing Booth still ^

Sound Design

 To create a dreamy feeling for the beach dream sequence at the beginning of the film, I wanted to use a lo-fi artist since I associate these mellower songs with that genre.

Keshi is an artist I listen to a lot and I thought his music would work so I listened to Magnolia. Below is the song and I captioned my thoughts throughout the listen.

Next I thought I’d try Potsu since I listen to them to study since most of the music is instrumental.

Instrumental music seems to result to a heavier hitting baseline to keep listeners attention, so I turned to a lo-fi artist who is also considered R&B (Mac DeMarco).

I couldn’t think of any other artists who has music that fits what I’m imagining, so I scrolled my liked songs on Spotify and spotted Beach House.

I can’t believe this wasn’t my first though since this entire songs feels like the title, like you’re floating through space. I feel like this fits the dream sequence perfectly, so this is the mood music I decided on.

As for the alarm song, I had texted Maddie about scenes 2 and 3 and she sent me a playlist saying she had a “getting ready for school” playlist.

Maddie’s Playlist

I went through and picked “Girls” by The 1975 as the alarm song since it was upbeat enough and I felt the title and lyrics allude to the MC’s interest in girls even more. 

Shot List and Storyboarding

 I spent all my study hall creating my shot list after I had the outline of my film mapped out. 

Scene 1: 

Shot 1: Pan left from the sand on the beach to the sun rising on the horizon 

Shot 2: Close up of seagull 

Shot 3: Tracking shot extreme close up low angle of MC walking 

Shot 4: Axial cut so now we’re farther back still tracking MC walking 

Shot 5: Mid shot of LI (love interest) back turned to us 

Shot 6: Close up of MC looking fond then moving forward 

Shot 7: OTS of MC, tracking of MC moving towards LI 

Shot 8: Mid shot of LI turning to face MC (hair blowing and looks like a dream) 

Shot 9: Close up of hands (MC takes a step forward and takes LI hands in hers) 

Shot 10: Close up of MC smiling then looking down 

Shot 11: Same kind of shot for LI but she looks to her left (towards the ocean) 

Shot 12: Master shot of the 2 girls on the rule of thirds with the sunrise between them 

Shot 13: Extreme close up of LI pulling MC hands towards her 

Shot 14: Long shot of the two hugging then LI pulls back a little and begins to turn towards MC’s ear 

Shot 15: OTS of MC, showing LI mouthing the lyrics to the song that suddenly turns on 

Shot 16: OTS of LI, showing MC confused as the song continues then swish pan 

Scene 2: 

Shot 17: Close up of MC lying in bed, pan right to her smacking the alarm, then pan back to her putting her pillow of her head, groaning, then throwing it away 

Shot 18: MC sliding out of bed 

Shot 19: Close up of her feet (which have mismatched socks on) landing on the floor 

Shot 20: Close up of MC rubbing her eyes then beginning to move forward 

Shot 21: OTB of her opening her closet 

Shot 22: Camera in the same spot but she’s grabbing clothes 

Shot 23: Camera in same spot but she’s sliding on pants 

Shot 24: Camera in same spot but she’s putting on the shirt 

Shot 25: Camera in same spot but she’s looking down at her pants 

Shot 26: Camera in same spot but she begins to unbutton her pants 

Shot 27: Camera in same spot but she’s jumping trying to get on her pants 

Shot 28: Camera in same spot but she’s moving to turn off closet light 

Shot 29: Technically OTS because I want the focus to be on MC in the mirror; starts with lights off and MC flicks lights on 

Shot 30-50: Montage of her brushing her teeth, washing face, doing her hair, putting on makeup 

Shot 51: Camera in same spot but MC is putting on eyeliner when one faint honk can be heard 

Shot 52: Long shot of BFF’s car outside and a second honk can be heard 

Shot 53: Close up of MC, but not through the mirror, the camera is in front of her, tilts down to have her pick up her phone, then tilts back up to show her texting (text shows on screen in post-production). 

Shot 54: Long shot with a still camera in the hallway; the MC runs into her room grabs her bag then runs towards the camera 

Shot 55: Mid shot with still camera; MC opening then shutting door 

Scene 3: 

Shot 56: Mid shot from in the car; BFF is sitting on her phone when the passenger door opens, and MC comes in and closes the door 

Shot 57: Mid shot of BFF (“Took you long enough, did you even grab breakfast?”) 

Shot 57: Mid shot of MC (“You act as if I’m ever out in time-”) 

Shot 58: Mid shot of BFF rolling her eyes and grabbing a bag 

Shot 59: Mid shot of MC (“And no, there’s bare-”); she gets cut off by BFF tossing the bag at her 

Shot 60: Mid shot of BFF starting to change car gears (“Let’s get going then”) 

Shot 61: Long shot of car pulling out of spot (the line the BFF says overlays over this shot) 

Some of these shots will be shot from multiple different angles with shot coverage just to give options, but since the first scene is filmed during golden hour at the beach, we're going to try and limit the extra shots we film and attempt to stick to getting all the needed shots within that time frame.

My art skills aren't the best and as I said in my introduction, I have a very hard time visualizing the shot, which is evident in my storyboarding. I think my descriptions of the shot in the shot list makes the most sense to me and I know what I want out of the film, which works for my image since I'm working alone.

The storyboard is where I lack in the portfolio I'm creating, but I feel my shot list accurately describes what I'm showing on camera and I feel it will come out okay on camera.