I Finally Have A Rough Draft For My Story!

After a lot of searching I think I finally have a story rough draft! 

It's about lt a young kid who's running away from home with his parental figure... When he reaches the border, a coyote shoots his dad and kills him leaving the young kid to cross the border on his own. When he crosses he meets his uncle for the first time, he's uncle can't financially support him so he sends him off to live in California with his mom's childhood friend who takes him in sends him to study and gets him a job in the field (he's like 12). While he's working in the field he learns from Guadalupe's (the friend) cousin and the filed's owner takes pity on him, teaching him the grape/wine business. He grows up and continues to learn and care for the old man all while he faces violence in his school and is trying to discover who he is with his friends Luca and Andres. Guadalupe ends up dying of heart complications the day of his graduation ceremony, but she gets to tell him that she loved him like a son and that his mother would be very proud of who he has become...What he doesn't know is that the song his mother used to sing him when he was little is actually a VERY butchered rendition of a star-spangled banner, he sang that as Guadalupe was passing away... In the end, he comes to the realization that his mother had always intended for him to go to America in the search for the American dream... His mother used to say "look up at the stars, you can see them, yes, but you can hear them too... Listen..." That's where the title "The song of the stars" comes from also symbolic because of the iconic song "STAR spangled banner" which is the U.S's national anthem; truly, this film is a coming of age story about a young immigrant chasing the American dream while he struggles to find self-worth because of his rough past. Eventhough it's still a rough draft, I really like this story, it allows me to symbolically represent important social & personal topics while using a narrative that paints imigrant's reality. 

The Creative Process Behind Building My Project's Plot

NOTES: I decided to create two separate postings to present the creative process and the actual plot. 

For the past week, I've been struggling to come up with a plot for my opening; I tried many techniques to stimulate my creative process, I didn't feel any of my ideas were original enough to put into production, through this process I was able to make three rough drafts for a story!

The Creative Process

To help me come up with ideas for an original fiction story I first decided to write themes I would like to address in future productions, I incorporated what I learned from my research into storytelling and story building to create a physical chart on the wall of my room. Any free time I could get my hands on was used trying to figure out what story I wanted to tell, I created timelines, plot lines, brainstorming diagram, and mindmaps to try to organize my thoughts. The methods I used are listed and explained below:

1)Brainstorming: 
I personally brainstorm in a VERY messy way because as thoughts flow out of me they are messy and unorganized; however, after I compile papers full of random words and phrases I try to reassemble them back into context by using a brainstorming diagram. The benefit of brainstorming is that there is no right way to do it! It's a very individual activity which is VERY flexible and can accommodate anyone, whether you wake up halfway throught the night to write something down or you sit for a timed brainstorming session, it helps either way! For the project, I decided to put on a different type of music on, at different times,  on different days (allowing me to change moods/perspectives) and just writing the first thing that came to my mind. By the end of my 3rd day, I could identify constant themes that kept appearing on my notes.

2)Mindmaps:
Mindmaps are basically the same thing as brainstorming diagrams, personally, the only difference is that mindmaps directly try to link preconceived ideas to each other. After completing my plot & creating my characters, I created a mindmap (which can be found in the next posting) to better understand the relationship between my story's characters in a literal and symbolic way; therefore allowing me to better develop the film's opening.

3)Plotlines & Timelines:
Plot lines outline the basic plot of the story including the intro, rising action, climax, falling action, and the resolution. I created a basic plotline to help me see the "big picture" in the development of my story. Timelines are similar with the difference that it is much more specific in the events that occur in the story, it is important for me as a storyteller to be able to identify turning points in the plot and be able to enhance the story by acknowledging their future existence at the beginning (foreshadowing). The timeline can be found in the next post.

4)Physical Door Chart:

I'm a visual learning so I knew that if I wanted to truly be able to organize my ideas fast and fluently I would need a visual representation of them;ergo, I wrote the main themes I identified from my brainstorming session on post-it notes and I pasted them all on my door, keeping open space for what I planned to include. Every time I walked out of my room I would be reminded that I had to choose the themes soon, this afternoon I finally sat down and chose the story's themes, this helped me narrow my ideas when planning the story's narrative.

The Art of Storytelling!

This is a big one.

My hero, Walt Disney, was a master storyteller; he spent his entire life researching and creating new ways to deliver meaningful stories to his audience. Walt’s love for innovation fueled his ability to continue pushing the boundaries of storytelling until his last moments, I strive to do the same. This made my next research topic very personal.

I’ve been extensively researching the most important aspect of filmmaking, storytelling. In my research, I found it isn’t always the story we tell, but the way we tell it that makes for a great film.

Storytelling is an art, NOT a science

There is no perfect formula of how to tell a great story, there are no rules set in stone, and there is no magic wand. However, years of great storytelling in film have made understood guidelines to help facilitate the process of successfully telling a great story. Andrew Stanton, Oscar-winning filmmaker at Pixar, talked about some of these “clues” to great storytelling on his 2012 Ted Talk. “Make me care” Stanton said, the job of a good film opening is to make a promise to the audience, a promise that the story will have some resolution, whatever it may be. I found this to be eye opening, I returned to some of my favorite movies to look for that promise; I found all of them shared this concept of a  “promise” that drove both the narrative towards a resolution and helped keep the audience engaged. Although this was revealing, the most important thing I learned from Stanton’s Ted Talk was the importance of evoking a sense of wonder in viewer; that’s what great cinema does, it evokes a sense wonder in the hope that through that wonder, the audience can learn something from the story. 

Storytelling deals with emotion, a deeper and rawer form of human feelings; it’s because of this that storytelling could never be a science. However, storytelling has components of of one science field, psychology. In a 2018 Ted Talk, Will Storr talked about the aspects that storytelling shares with psychology. One of the six similarities he shared was a love for change, our brains are obsessed with change, every second of every day we are constantly exposed to change and our brains are constantly processing that change by trying to make sense of many individual stimuli. Andrew Stanton called this the “The rule of 2+2”, the basis is simple: Don’t spoon feed the audience, as humans we want to work for our meal. If you give the audience 4, the story is boring and they feel cheated; instead, give the audience 2+2 and let them figure it out. I personally love this guideline, I believe the audience will appreciate connecting the dots in a story as it develops. 

What is behind great a great story?

One of the most common advice when creating a story is “write what you know”. This is often misunderstood, it’s not about only writing the mundane, it’s about including a piece of the ordinary in the extraordinary. Pete Docter, a film director at Pixar Animation Studios, said “Go ahead and write about monsters and explosions and car chases, but put something into it that talks about your own life.” Why? Because that is what brings life and reliability to your story. Everything we experience makes us feel something, by infusing stories with the essence of those experiences, it creates the opportunity for the audience to feel the same way;therefore, giving the story life. Docter talks about Monsters Inc, how it isn’t just about a monster who works scaring children, but it’s truly the story about a sully becoming a father figure to boo, something that Doctor was undergoing as they worked on the film. Including some personal aspect of real life in a story also makes it relatable, because the audience can better relate to the character's situation. 

If a tree falls in the middle of the forest, does it make a sound? Change the context and the is much clearer than this old philosophical question; “If a good story is told for no audience, does it serve its purpose?” No! It doesn’t because one of the most important parts of a story is the audience! In an interview for the Atlantic, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner explained that if a story is told in the middle of the desert for no audience it loses its purpose. Great storytellers understand their audiences and tell their stories so that spectators can learn something from it. It is perfectly logical, a great story needs a great audience because if the viewer isn’t willing to learn anything from the story, they won’t. 

I suppose the greatest aspect of a good story is it’s humanity. For as long as humans has been able to communicate with each other we have been telling stories, our history is nothing more than a recollection of past events, both facts and fiction, that we tell each generation in the hopes of delivering a message about our lives. Great stories are human because we are human, we innately infuse ourselves into the stories we tell, and that’s what in my opinion makes the greatest stories. If we want to truly care for a character, he/she must exhibit a human characteristic; Guillermo del Toro understood this when he filmed the shape of water, he knew that for the audience to care about the fishman, under all the makeup and visual effects, there had to be a certain humanity to him. We relate to, and care for, human stories better, so even if a story doesn’t seem human at first glance, it’s spirit must be human. 

Storytelling changes our perspectives

Recently I read The Things They Carried a novel by Tim O’Brien, although the book mainly revolves around the Vietnam War I learned a VERY important lesson from analyzing it, it’s a book about storytelling and how it has the ability to manipulate our perspectives. I have never better understood the importance of the quote “With great power comes great responsibility” from the deceived legend Stan Lee, storytelling gives the storyteller an incredible amount of power because the delivery of a story can make us laugh or cry and it can certainly shape our way of seeing/approaching a situation. This is why it's so important for storytellers to make responsible decisions about the stories we decide to tell, because we are all storytellers, and our stories will outlive us and affect all those around us. Through this project I want to tell a story that can change perspectives.

Breaking Ground! Drama Genre Research

Drama Films

Typical target audience of the genre

Drama is a very broad genre that encompasses many subgenres and genre hybrids which all have a very specific target market. Because of their content, most dramas are rated R, with PG-13 exceptions for family entertainment. In general, dramas are targeted at adults of both genders ages 25-50. While no gender is specifically targeted under the giant “Drama” umbrella, 89% of females list drama as one of their preferences for genre, while only 80% of males do.

Genre conventions – both within content and production techniques

Content:

• Slow moving plot
• Portray realistic characters in conflict with either themselves, others, or forces of nature.
• Characters mostly experience some sort of tragedy/event which established the conflict
• Dramatic themes often include current issues, societal ills, and problems, concerns or injustices, such as racial prejudice, religious intolerance (such as anti-Semitism), drug addiction, poverty, political unrest, the corruption of power, alcoholism, class divisions, sexual inequality, mental illness, corrupt societal institutions, violence toward women or other explosive issues of the times.
• Modern films often depict an unjust society/conflict of self which the protagonist works against. 
• Editing matches the mood of the scene rather than a consistent pace
• Charged with on-screen symbolism created through the use of props
• Depend heavily on in-depth character development (Characters always grow in some way because of their actions or reactions to their environment)
• Soundtrack tempo usually begins slow and low and builds up ever so slightly to a louder or more intense (not always faster) pace by the end by the end.
• Little to no comedic relief
• The type of lighting used throughout the piece highly varies depending on the tone of the media text.
• Dark color palette which intensifies the depth of the character's situation
• Close-ups and extreme close-ups of protagonists are usual (help build/enhance the emotional connection to the audience)
• Settings are usually urban and mundane
• Intended to provoke deeper thought/ independent pondering within members of the audience

Production:

• Average or even low filming budget, depending on the studio. In general, it’s not higher than action/superhero movies.
• EXTREMELY rare to create a sequel(s) (No sequels)
• Sets are not elaborate, as Mise-en-scène elements are mostly meant to represent normal mundane situations, implying that the events in the film did or could occur in real life.
• Casting a well-known actor or actress in an independent film has no significant effect on the film’s performance. According to the American Film Market, there is no strong correlation between star power and box office performance. In small budget drama films, star power can be a driving force for achiving a sucessful box office return; however, out of the drama films analized, films that grossed over $100 million worldwide (Crash, Lost in Translation, and Billy Elliot) had high, medium, and low star power respectively. 

Institutional conventions – narrative image, marketing, etc.

Narrative Image: Drama films are meant to spark deeper thought in the audience by presenting life through an unconventional, sometimes unorthodox perspective. As in most, drama film trailers are composed of quick snapshots of the entire movie, they present or

strive to allude to the protagonist’s conflict; for example, in the trailer from the 2018 movie “Can you ever forgive me?” it was evident that the film would explore Lee Israel’s conflict of self as she lost her identity while forging letters for a living. Drama trailers don’t usually display fast-paced editing, as it doesn't generally fit the tone of most films. Because the audience for drama films are usually adults, the narrative doesn't incorporate “entertaining” bursts of action or suspense; instead, it focuses on building the story so that it develops the characters right in front of the audience's eyes.

Marketing:

Studios advertise dramas by paying to air the film’s trailer on networks such as NBC, ABC, FOX, and CBS which are the most viewed broadcast and cable networks among adults aged 18 to 49 in the United States acroding to Statista. This promotion is able to reach the prime target audience directly, the constant appearance if the trailer in daily programming serves as a reminder for audiences that they should watch the film. Word-of-mouth promotion is also a big component of marketing a drama film, because of the busy and clouded life of adults, a recommendation from a friend or college is highly valuable. For frequent moviegoers, movie theaters filter the previews they show before each movie, normally categorizing them and showing the trailers to their target markets, this helps to market the film among the genre's lovers as they are more inclined to make plans to watch the upcoming drama films.

Thought the years, many great drama films or hybrid have taken home the Oscar. For the past ten years, all the films (mostly BIG drama films or hybrids) that have won Best Picture have premiered in at one of the BIG 5 film festivals (Sundance, Cannes, Venice, Telluride, and TIFF), it isn’t only after they’ve premiered and are considered for/ have won an Academy Award that they are marketed to the public, a rerelease facilitated by award season. Data shows that the festival which nominates the most drama films for the festival’s main award is Cannes. 

Drama films at the box office:
According to the American Film Market, since the early 2000s, drama movies are most successful (in terms of budget:return) when they are R rated, original screenplays, that are contemporary fiction. These characteristics being part of successful box office returns make perfect sense because they seem to be the most appealing to the target market.

GLOWE: A Media Marketing Project

    Last month, my class was divided into groups of 3 and we were tasked with making a mock marketing campaign for a fabricated band based on our choice on three songs/genres. My group and I choose the song "Float On" my modest mouse and created the fictional upcoming band named "GLOW", for which we developed a marketing campaign based on genre research. The process of creating our marketing camping can be divided into 3 umbrella steps: genre study/ conventions, branding, and promotion development.

We separated our research into 3 categories: "INTRODUCTION TO ALTERNATIVE ROCK MUSIC", "ALTERNATIVE ROCK CONVENTIONS", and "TARGET MARKET". For our research on alternative rock we focused on researching a brief history of the genre and the overall feeling of most brands in it, this helped us gain valuable knowledge that helped us develop our brand to embrace the"cool" and often "edgy" feel of most alternative rock bands. When researching genre conventions, we focused on compiling information about how alternative rock bands' budget is managed by their labels and the distribution and promotion techniques used to increase exposure for new bands. Lastly, in order to properly define our target market [16-27] (and individuals ages 14-16 in order to introduce them to the band & the genre), we filtered interests and characteristics (which we decided upon based on our research) by an algorithm, which found about 220,000 people in the Fort-Lauderdale/Weston Florida area.

We created a promotion plan which included a "social media marketing" and "local & targeted" section ( including live events and a local launch tour). For our social media marketing strategy, we decided to open accounts on major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. The brand was engineered to seem “fresh” and “edgy”, baring an “effortlessly cool” look (the theme for our branding strategy). We understood how necessary it was to have a cohesive look for our brand which makes it easily identifiable on all platforms. We planned to utilize social media advertisements to target specific demographics and local communities. Locally we planned to play live events & local festivals and utilize flyers & storefronts to drive community attendance and engagement. To promote the band we created a music video (FOUND ON WEBSITE) which was an awesome experience to film! Among many other marketing products (such as merchandise), we also created a website (bit.ly/glowe-link) to market the band AND serve as a distribution enzyme.

 Crossing into distribution, we decided to use Spotify, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Google Play Music, and iTunes as our preference streaming services to distribute the band's music. Having a variety of platforms on which our music can be consumed enables inclusion for the greatest possible amount of consumer demographics. Furthermore, we decided to include radio as a primary distribution method because it's still very prominent in the music industry and can serve as a great PR marketing tool locally.

This project taught me to meticulously use genre conventions research in order to make precise decisions about defining the target market, developing marketing products, and choosing distribution platforms. In addition, the project helped me always keep in mind the timeline of the project, whether it be a launch like GLOWE,  or a pre-established brand, the timeline guides a lot of important branding and promotion techniques. I'll keep this all in mind when working on my upcoming portfolio project! 

(Instagram post & Story to be used
for social media promotion, AND 
merchandise found on the website)