Keep Being Curious Keep Asking Questions

 Yes the title to this blog post is a TikTok reference.....but I swear I'm not addicted. I have not opened the app in 2 weeks and I feel pretty good, even if I spend the time elsewhere like on tv or movies I feel like I'm learning more than if I was using TikTok, I feel more fulfilled even if I am still allocating the same amount of time to do homework. 

Anyways, the point of this blog post is to talk about some of the ideas I had for one of the components of the portfolio project, the media article. Right now I am thinking that a Q&A would be perfect because it will allow people to see our thought process. I have seen other films do it this way in order to get publicity but honestly I do not find Q&As enjoyable to read, but there must be a reason it is continually used and I won't let my personal opinion affect the quality of the product. SO obviously the questions should be targeted towards me because right now I am brainstorming questions in terms of my ideas and my experiences so I have an idea of how I'd answer them which would make the creation easier.

Questions:

Q: What made you want to create a documentary about culture or specifically the maintenance of culture?

Q:What do you hope the audience to take away from this production? What's the central message?

Q: Are you planning to do more seasons?

Q:What makes -American unique and different from other docs focused on culture like Ugly Delicious?

Q: What was production like during the pandemic?

Q:Who do you hope to reach with this project? Why?

(the placement of these questions is not set in stone I think I'd organize them differently but I'm not sure)

MOOOOOMMM Colin's making a title sequence *guitar chord*

 Who doesn't love a little Phineas and Ferb? (Candace was the best character let's not lie)

 I started working on the title sequence a little bit today and I am not sure I like it as much as I thought I was going to like it. To me it feels like it needs more, I haven't shown it to Shreya yet though so we will see what she says. It is missing an element of complexity right now it feels too simple and maybe I'm being too much of a self-critic because it is only a rough draft but we are trying to get the ball rolling, I don't want to trip us up on the little things. There are some aspects like music that I haven't even thought about but I am rethinking using Canva for the intro just because it isn't as flexible time length wise as I would like it to be. Don't get me wrong the animation is engaging but the problem is that it is briefly engaging, the movement of the different flags is quite literally 2 seconds. Now I've tried to slow it down but it isn't transferring as well as I want it to transfer. I might attempt using actual stop motion with printed out flags, the problem is I do not have colored ink so I think I am stuck with this for now. I could do the animations in iMovie itself and do it that way but we will see what shreya says.

Can-va's Back Alright!

 If you didn't sing the title of this posting to the tune of 'Backstreet's Back' I don't know if we can still be friends >_< JK jk haha. But in all seriousness I have once again turned to Canva for all my graphic needs. 

I first started using Canva at the beginning of this school year although I have been introduced to it before this is the first year I have used it so often. The school newspaper got a premium Canva account which I am using for this project, it gives me access to loads of elements and options that my free account doesn't. In a previous blog post I mentioned that we had decided on a working title, "-American," and we've actually progressed a bit from there. When we did group meetings someone offered Shreya the idea of doing an intro using the flags of different countries in a stop motion way and I really liked that idea. I tweaked it a bit and used Canva to make a page with a bunch of different flags at different sizes, kind of like a scrapbook/collage of flags of the world. I am not sure where to go from here but I did add an animation to make it cool and visually engaging. It is really fast and I can't figure out how to slow it down yet but I think my only option is to use iMovie and slow it down. 

Meeting

 Today Shreya and I had a meeting where we discussed our plans moving forward with the project. We discussed the people we would like to interview and we broke it down by picking people we know are parts of different communities so there is not a lot of overlap and instead more representation of a variety of communities to broaden the people who might watch the documentary. By offering a wide variety we can attract more people instead of narrowing our culture topic to one geographical area. 

We also spoke about general logistics but we haven't come to a decision on how to format the interviews, because we are thinking of interviewing one of my neighbors and my sister, I have easy access to them and safely interview them in person but with other people we do not have that option. There would be quality inconsistencies but I think that variety it would provide would be nice. I also mentioned how I looked into Instagram handles for our project and I found one that will work but I haven't set it up yet. 

Sooooooo we have a title...maybe?

 Recently we have been using the term -American (read dash American) to better condense the term we are trying to say, essentially generalizing the idea of someone being of both American culture and another one. This term allows us to be general and gives us flexibility. Recently I have been pitching it to Shreya and we both agree that this should be our working title moving forward, but if something changes or one of us gets a sudden inspiration I have no problems changing it. 

Because our target audience has a short attention span having a long title that is complex would not be received well and might be considered boring and "work" to watch not something for enjoyment or entertainment. Also the short title could easily be designed using canva so we could design a logo for the show. Personally I think that this title really encompasses everything that our doc is about it has the perfect amount of simplicity without being too vague. 

TTTTTTTARGET

 So I've hinted to it in previous posts but in this one and one more next week I will be explaining our target audience and the decisions that we have made accordingly to fit their wants. As soon as we started brainstorming for this documentary, Shreya and I knew that we wanted to create something that we could relate to, something that we had some personal knowledge about. Subsequently, we decided that because we were picking a topic that we related to, a lot of our peers and those younger than us would probably relate to it as well. That was our though process behind choosing gen z to be our target audience. 

Generation Z or those born between 1997-2012(about then there is some debate about the end date) are the most multicultural generation the world has ever seen. This is largely due the massive amount of globalization that has occurred during the second industrial revolution (tech revolution) as well as increased connectedness that allowed for far more intercultural connections. Shreya and I both relate to this because our families have immigrated from other places to America and we both have family that still live abroad and not in the United States. We want this generation which has such a unique understanding and arguably more tolerance for other cultures to be interested in a doc like this because we believe they could see themselves in it. We are planning to include a variety of shots including the interviews, graphics, and animation to keep the doc visually engaging. 

From The Top

 So Shreya and I met this week to discuss the specifics of our production because we really want to get the ball rolling next week (crossing our fingers that we will be prepared enough to start filming). Early on we decided that the excerpt that we choose to do should be the first five minutes of an episode, not something from the middle of the show or near the end. We just felt that this would be the best path forward for us because it would allow us to do so many different things creatively. After really fleshing out the gist of each of our episodes (news alert we've planned for there to be 5, following our teacher's advice to have an odd number of episodes) we decided that the best way to start is from the very beginning, the first episode, so we don't have to worry about context for the other episodes. 

The general structure that we have so far is:

intro- 20-30 secs

History of recent immigrant communities in America (brief)- 2-3 mins 

interview #1- 1 min

interview#2- 1min 

^interspersed with graphics and maybe animation(simple canva) 

We aren't really sure which interviews we are doing yet but we have some ideas. One idea that I had that kind of changes who we are going to interview is that we should interview younger people like teenagers and young adults to see how their identity is maybe different than that of their parents or grandparents. This would make the production more relatable to the target audience.