Here it is! The long-awaited (hopefully) opening of Birdcage, our new coming-of-age fiction film.
Thank you to everyone who has tuned in. On behalf of both me and Jaxson, we hope you enjoy!
Here is a link as well: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i36Nu553qMlJIy1LkGUZ0XkP8RiF22yx/view?usp=sharing
We're almost there! I finished my script and now I will start filming my CCR. I plan to film my face using the webcam built into my MacBook, because I don't think I'll have enough time to film with my camera, plus I like the comfort of being able to see myself. But I don't plan to show myself THAT much (mostly because I don't want to), because I want there to be more graphics like photos and videos than my face. I'm doing everyone a favor really.
Creating the script was relatively easily. But, I'm not sure this is considered a full script, more like a script-outline hybrid of some sorts. I wrote down inserts and dialogue to transition from each topic to the other, but I didn't write down every single word I plan to say. I figure I'm a well-enough speaker that I can improvise if I get stuck, so why waste the time creating something I wasn't going to use. Because of this, the script looks similar to the outline, but I promise they're not exactly the same. It actually took a while to figure out a segway from one topic to another, because I don't want it to appear as if I took the questions, answered them, and am just reading off what I wrote. I want this CCR to be fun and original. Moreover, I've included glosses of what I plan to sign. Glossing is a term used in ASL where we "translate" English into written ASL structure. It's not that complicated to explain, but this is a media class, so I'll leave this link here explaining it if anyone is interested in learning!
One component necessary in our CCR is the citation of our sources. I plan to list my sources all at the end of my video and have them scroll out of the screen like the beginning of the Star Wars movies. I plan to cite specific websites that we used in genre research and deaf research. I also plan to cite my blog (of course) and show our important documents, like our script, storyboard, schedule, and anything I reference while I'm talking. So, here's the script, and I plan to start filming tomorrow and edit tomorrow and Monday. We're cutting it close, but we WILL be done!
Now that we finished the actual opening, there is still one more component of the portfolio left: the Creative Critical Reflection. In class, we learned about the CCR, what we need to include and what we should accomplish. We also saw some student samples, which really helped me envision what I needed to do. There are three main goals we should attain in a CCR:
You read that right, we finished!! It's very anticlimactic because there's nowhere for us to submit it until its due date, but nonetheless, this has still felt monumental. I have been editing this all throughout my trip, so it feels surreal to be finally done. I think both my partner and I can agree that this project has been/is kind of like our baby. But overall, we are content with our opening and proud of all that we have accomplished. We feel the opening truly encompasses the coming-of-age feel. Considering our budget (literally nothing) and our experience in film-making (little to nothing), we created the best opening that we could create.
We had to make some changes while we were editing. First, we were a little over time after putting all the clips together, so we had to either get rid of some or shorten some clips in order for us to meet the 2 minute requirement. We also had to download our title font from a different website (freebestfonts.com), because--we didn't realize this before-- the other website required us to pay to download the fonts. Moreover, we recorded the audio separately (as mentioned before) but it sounded a little bad at times when I went back and listened to it. So, I kept some of the original audio in certain clips. If it was truly necessary, then I inserted the recorded audio, which was a little time-consuming but worthwhile in the end.
Here's the last screenshot of our opening. I plan to export it tomorrow, since it's late tonight, but we are done!
Now that we have finished filming, we have to start editing. It IS Spring Break right now, so we don't have as much time to edit, but we planned for this accordingly. We will start editing either tonight or tomorrow, because it has taken a while for me to import the clips. I said before that everything went smoothly with the filming process, and in saying that I kind of jinxed myself because later that day I tried imported the clips to my computer and I didn't have sufficient storage. Luckily, this was an easy fix: all I had to do was clear out items on my computer, but this was not a quick process. I have a lot of stuff on my computer mainly because of school, so it took a while to clear out the unimportant documents (which was surprisingly little). I finally had sufficient storage this morning, which is when I started importing the clips. It is usually a lengthy process (I have done this before), so it took all morning. But now, all the clips are imported, as well as audio, and we are ready to start editing!
My partner and I have taken film classes in middle school, and in those classes we were taught primarily on Adobe Premiere Pro. I, however, also learned special effects editing on Adobe After Effects throughout this time. Since I am the one with the apps already on my personal computer, I will be the main editor while Jaxson helps with decision-making and support. I've primarily used After Effects, but I am comfortable using both softwares. Because this project doesn't require much visual effects and motion effects, I will likely stick to using Premiere Pro because it is a system we are both comfortable with, so Jaxson can also help contribute. Plus, Premiere is perfect for coloring and audio effects, both of which we need for our opening.
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| The software we plan on using: Adobe Premiere Pro. |
So we know we wanted to film this past weekend, but like always, something came up and we had to move back our filming. But, we are not worried because we have had everything planned out for a while, and we purposely set aside a lot of time for editing in our schedule-- in case filming ran a little late. So we are planning to film all day tomorrow because it's an early-release day, so we have more time to get things done.
We finally decided on a cast! We chose two of our friends to play the distinctive roles of Ava and Sydney, as well as my own mother to play Mrs. Parker. The girl we chose to play Sydney is named Vicky and she is an ASL 4 student. This was imperative because we wanted the signing and acting to be synonymous and be as realistic as possible, which is what she can achieve. In addition, both of our friends have been involved in drama for years, and continue to this day. This will make their acting more natural, and is ultimately why we decided to pick them as our actresses. They are very well-prepared in terms of acting experience, which is exactly what we need for this project to actually come out how we want it to. These are our actresses (excluding my mother):
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| Our friend Katie, who will play Ava Parker. |
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| Our friend Vicky, who will play Sydney Parker. |
Moreover, for camera equipment, we plan to use a DSLR camera along with a tripod. We unfortunately don't have ready access to audio equipment. But we plan to include some foley in post-production-- but we are not too worried about sound because it is one of the lesser qualities that will be judged. The camera we plan to use is the Canon Rebel T6, and we hope using this will compensate for the less-professional audio quality, because it is a nice camera that provides high-definition videos. We also don't have access to lighting kits, but we plan to fix this by filming at specific times (middle of the day) where the lighting is better, and by using lamps or phone lights to add better lighting.
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| The camera we plan on using. |
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| Sydney's bedroom design. |
We realized that we haven't said much about the actual characters themselves in our blogs. One thing that we found very helpful this year was the character background process that we did in a previous project. In that, we created a character and wrote a complete background for them, including their upbringing, relationships, personality, etc. So, we decided to do a less-extensive version of that for this project. This is for our benefit mostly, because this will help us get more in touch with our characters, and it allowed us to develop distinct, realistic stories for each character. We decided to do the main three characters that will be in the opening (Sydney, Ava, and Mrs. Parker) as well as Thomas (he becomes a vital role AFTER the opening, but we still felt it was important to include him. Here are some backgrounds/personality/upbringing descriptions for each character:
Sydney Parker
Sydney is a junior in high school. She was born deaf into a family that is all hearing. She lives with her mother Laura and her older sister Ava. Her father left the family short after Sydney was born because he did not want to deal with raising a deaf daughter. Sydney decided that she does not want a cochlear implant. Ever since elementary school, she has been mainstreamed and attended public schools with other hearing kids. She has not met any other deaf people in her life. Her mother still restricts what Sydney is allowed to do and does not let her do the same things that she allows Ava to do.
Sydney has a more reserved personality than her older sister. Sydney does not leave the house much due to her mom’s restrictions. The only time she really leaves the house is when she goes to school, and at school she is even more quiet. She does very well in school but she doesn’t interact with any of the other students there. Sydney loves to read books because it allows her to escape and live her life through the characters. Sydney tends to feel more alienated because of her deafness, and is more ashamed than proud because of the environment in which she's grown up in.
Ava Parker
Ava is Sydney's older sister, she is a senior in high school. Even though they are only a year apart, they could not be any more different. Their mother loves Ava and allows her to do basically anything she wants to do. Ava is always out hanging with her friends or at parties. Ava is also very involved in school, she is the cheer captain and does very well in all of her classes.
Ava’s personality is very different from that of her sister. While her sister is quiet and wears darker color clothes, she is very social and peppy and wears bright colors. Sydney and Ava do not have the best relationship because Sydney is jealous of the life Ava is allowed to live. Ava always tries to talk to Sydney and build their connection but Sydney ignores her attempts because of her extreme jealousy and resentment for her sister.
Thomas Martinez
Thomas is Sydney’s platonic interest/friend that she will meet later in the movie. He is deaf and is fluent in sign language; his mother is also deaf, but his father is hearing. He moved from Rochester, NY– a city with one of the highest populations of deaf people in the country– to South Florida. Thomas’ parents are Colombian, so he has a strong hispanic background involved in his deaf upbringing, and knows only a little Colombian Sign Language.
Thomas grew up in an environment that was very welcoming towards deaf people. He attended a specialized school for the deaf before his move, so he has not been mainstreamed (up until now) like Sydney. Thomas is sound in his deafness and comfortable interacting with both the deaf and hearing communities. He will be the one to bring Sydney “out of her shell” once they meet; he has a lively personality and isn't afraid to speak his mind.
Mrs. Parker
Sydney’s mother is hearing. She grew up from the town in which they live; her and her husband were high school sweethearts. She was very popular back in her high school days: captain of the cheer team, prom queen, etc. So, she can relate a lot more with Ava than with Sydney. She loves Sydney despite her deafness, but she can’t find ways to relate with her like she can with Ava.
Because of Sydney’s deafness, Mrs. Parker tends to try to control every aspect of her life and shelter her from all the “bad people” (people who look down on deaf people). She babies Sydney and gives her little to no freedom, which will become a problem when Sydney meets Thomas. However, she allows Ava unrestricted freedom to “enjoy her high school years”.
My partner and I plan to not only include dialogue, but also captions in our opening. Captioning is essential because we plan to include signing portions in our opening, so this will make it accessible to all people, hearing and deaf. Because of this, we have to do some research on the types of fonts to use for subtitles. There are universal fonts used, and universal colors. For instance, we plan to use yellow captions, like many movies and documentaries do. I went on several websites to find the most commonly used and easy-to-read captions used in film-making. Some websites I used were checksub.com and rev.com, and here are the most popularly-used fonts:
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| Arial |
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| Helvetica |
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| Antique-Olive |
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| Myriad |
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| Consolas |
So right now my partner and I are thinking of a title for our film. We want something that relates to the deaf community, but still can stand by itself as a title. We want it to be short and concise, rather than something very long and symbolic. Mostly because it is a coming-of-age movie, and these films tend to have artsier names. Also, our target audience is teenagers and young adults, so they are most likely to be enticed by shorter titles rather than long ones that require more thinking to understand. Because of this, my partner and I have spent all weekend researching deaf culture and trying to find deaf vocabulary that would be enticing enough to use as our title. As of now, we haven't found anything that REALLY sticks out to us, but we have ideas.
We want something artsy, because that goes with our genre. We were thinking something like "Sound of ...", although it is kinda of overused among deaf movies. We already know movies like the Sound of Metal and the Sound of Fury, so we would have to do something unique if we were to go down this route. We also had and idea where we name our film "Birdcage". Birdcages are common symbolism of being or feeling trapped, which is something our main character struggles with. So, we think this is the best of both worlds in terms of what we are hoping to achieve: a short, easy-to-read name, and something that has symbolic meaning.
Moreover, we have also been looking at fonts for our movie title and credits. Since we plan to make the title so large, we want the font to be something eye-catching but simple. These are some examples we have found from fontsinuse.com that we will take into consideration:
So as of now, my partner and I have finished storyboarding and are planning our filming schedule. We plan to reach out to people this weekend in terms of casting, and see when they are available to film. But, we want to get most, if not all, of the filming done next weekend, so we can start editing as soon as possible. We plan to film at my house, because my room mostly resembles the grunge (???) atmosphere we are looking for. I have many posters and tapestries on my walls that would help develop our main character's personality. Our setting choices are pretty limited because of where we live: a pretty small town with infrastructure that is ALL the same (literally every house looks the same). So, we chose conveniency when it came to the setting. Besides filming, there is not much that we need to do before; our opening has little to no dialogue, so we don't necessarily need to create a script. Here is a VERY rough outline of our future schedule:
Right now, we are mainly thinking of title names. As mentioned before, we want the title to be in big yellow letters, and take up most of the screen in size. We also want it to be synchronized with the beat of the music, which will happen in post-production. But, as for the actual name, my partner and I are kind of lost. We want a short, appealing name, most likely one to two words. We also want it to related to the deaf community and be something that they understand. However, we don't want to make the title something corny that will make it seem as if the entire plot revolves around the MC being deaf. Coda (2021), is a great example of a title that relates to the deaf community. It stands for child of a deaf adult, and represents hearing children from deaf parents. This is something that deaf people understand and can resonate with, so we ultimately want to do something similar for our opening title.
Accurately representing the deaf community as a whole in our opening is of utmost importance. Although we are just high school students, we feel inclined to pay homage to the community, otherwise our idea would be futile. My partner and I are both in ASL class, as I mentioned before. Because of this, we've been exposed to a lot of knowledge and information on deaf people and ASL. This definitely played a part in our decision to do this idea, because we know so much about the topic. In class, we watched numerous videos and documentaries on the lives of deaf people, and one topic that causes much conflict in the community is cochlear implants. Cochlear implants are small electronic devices that electrically stimulate the cochlear nerve (nerve for hearing). Simply put, they're electrical machinery that allow deaf people to hear to a certain degree. We toyed with the idea of the main character in our film having one of these implants, that way they would talk orally. But we realized that, from what we learned, some members of the deaf community see the implants as a form of oppression, taking away their most prized cultural aspect: they're signed language. We also didn't know how we were going to include a cochlear implant in the opening because they are very VERY expensive, we wouldn't be allowed one besides medical necessity, and a dupe would look too unrealistic (could be portrayed mockery as well). In having a character who is deaf and uses ASL as their primary form of communication, the deaf community would receive the most raw form of representation, because signed language is the essence of their culture.
Above is the trailer for a 2000 documentary my partner and I watched, called Sound and Fury, and it showcases the deaf community's divisive feelings on cochlear implants. The deaf parents in the film don't want their deaf child to receive the implant, like other deaf members, but the hearing family members believe they're making the wrong decision. The deaf community's feelings on this topic play into our goals for representation in this opening. Obviously, we want to show media representation of deaf people who use signed language, which has been pretty uncommon up until the recent release of Coda (2021). We also want to represent deaf children in hearing families who have to suffer from divisive ideas on their deafness, which is very prominent but not talked about enough.
One problem I briefly mentioned in my previous posting was our conflicts with casting. Having a deaf actor would be ideal for us, because of the representation it would bring, but unfortunately our environment and school does not allow for this. Because we are choosing to have the main character sign (not talk), we need to cast someone who is pretty much fluent in sign language. We both are in ASL 3, which definitely helps our chances of finding an eligible candidate. So instead of finding a deaf actor, which is almost impossible, we are looking at our classmates to see who can act. We already have a few candidates, most of whom are in drama class as well. This is highly important because drama students in ASL are another level of emotive and expressive when signing, which is what we need in order to showcase the most accurate representation. This may seem like a lot considering they'll barely be signing in our opening, but we want to make sure the few lines they DO sign are accurate and a positive representation of the deaf community.
Our idea finally got approved! Now, we can go full-force into developing our opening and storyline. So, we're going with the idea of doing a coming-of-age movie about a deaf character. We want to create a "typical" coming-of-age opening, but provide tiny details about the character's eventual conflicts (external and internal) they will face. Our story will be about a deaf character who's been mainstreamed (deaf term for being put into "regular" schools instead of deaf schools). They are isolated/protected by their family, particularly mother, but they befriend another deaf student who transfers from out of town. The conflict will be the main character becoming enlightened of a life outside of restraint (that the secondary character showed them), and how their family reacts. We want their relationship to be platonic so the focus can be o the main character's development and acceptance of their differences in society. In the opening, we plan to develop the main character and their personality by showing their room. We also will include music that pertains to their personality to further develop the character. We will introduce their sibling (who is "perfect") as being opposite the MC in terms of personality. Then, we plan to include minimal "dialogue" (signing), to let the audience know the character is deaf. Here is a basic outline of our opening:
Starts with black screen (a ___ production)
Music beings playing while screen is still black
Sibling getting ready. Show parts of the room, typical coming of age (like the example we watched).
Cuts to MC getting ready and sound/music is muffled (indicate loss of hearing). Sibling comes behind MC and talks to them but MC does not turn around.
Close-up shots of MC's room: posters, record player, pictures with family, decorations
Show extreme close-up of flier (football game that night/any public outing for school)
Sibling comes into MC's rooms and turns off record player, music also stops playing (synchronous sound)
Sibling tells MC they're going to leave for school (??)
MC goes into kitchen with flier and shows it to mom. Mom refutes the idea, tells them to be home straight after school (show how protective mother is).
MC is upset but hides it; walks out and slams the front door. Title shows up when they are walking/getting into the car.
Sibling and MC in the car (??) Music is still playing (asynchronous).
Getting out at school…maybe or we end before that
This is just a basic outline of our opening. We have a broad idea of how we want it to go, now we will being storyboarding and tweaking our outline as we go. As seen in the question marks, there are certain parts where we don't know which direction to go in. Signing is a big part of this opening and story, BUT we don't want to bore our audience by constantly having to read subtitles. To help this problem, my partner and I will begin the casting process soon, so we can have an actor that will be emotive and exciting to watch when signing. Casting is essential to this opening and we will detail this process and decision later. But because our casting is so limited and specific, we will have to tweak our story after casting; so we cannot determine whether or not the main character is male or female until after we cast, same for their sibling.
For now, here are some things that we definitely know we are doing for the opening:
Unfortunately, we had a substitute teacher today (the universe is not on our side), so we could not get our teachers approval for our idea. That means we won’t be able to get our story approved until Friday, and because of this, we didn’t want to finalize anything today without this approval. So, this left us in a difficult situation, because we knew we needed to be going further in our research, but this was limited if our idea was not solidified. But, we were able to find something productive to do today, and something that is essentially vital to our opening: music.
Like I’ve said countless times, we really want to focus on audio and sound effects as well as visual components (but mostly audio because of our low budget). So, my partner and I took all class today to find music for our opening. We also came up with character backgrounds, but not too in-depth because we wanted to finalize our story first. We wanted to find music that symbolizes and represents our characters personality. We want our main character to like more grunge/rock music than their siblings who enjoy more indie/pop music. We thought we could emphasize their different personalities through music in the opening, when we envision to show them each getting ready. We both wanted to look for royalty free music first before delving into our favorite songs, simply because the emailing process to get the rights to use the song would be a bear. Luckily, my partner found a website called uppbeat.io that had a vast library of royalty free music in countless genres. So, we went searching, and although it took a while, we found two songs we really like. They are symbolic of the characters differing personalities, and we pretty much have an idea on how to incorporate them into the opening. But, we will still continue casually searching for songs in case we find something EVEN better.
