The Big Finale

After weeks of hard work, sweat, tears, and little to no sleep, I proudly present our film opening to our movie, "1%".

Creative Critical Reflection

What Would Mickey Mouse Do

Discuss editing struggles

Spring Break!!!

discuss issues of filing

Blue is Not Always the Warmest Color

In the mist of my research, my group member Fabiana

The 5 Stages of Grief

This post is not what you're thinking.
However, I am currently grieving my evident loss of sleep.

Today, my group and I met up at Victoria's house, as we often do, to discuss the ideas gained from our peers during our in-class group meetings on Friday. In light of this, Fabiana shared an amazing idea, proposed by another one of our classmates (thanks Conner!), that we are planning to incorporate within the story line of our film opening. As I have previously discussed, the pace of our film opening speeds up as the "impending doom" of our main character's situation quickly approaches via her phone battery dying. This will be depicted as her phone goes from 5% , and with each intensifying sequence, drops until it gets to 1%. While discussing this concept, Connor proposed to Fabi that it would be interesting to portray the 5 stages of grief within our character while simultaneously showing her phone dying. This juxtaposition of her experiencing the stages of grief with the dying of her phone makes our approach in our portrayal of our narrative more unique and authentic. It, likewise, acts as a method of getting our audience to better empathize with the main character and what she is emotionally going through by visually stating each stage with the correlating battery percent.

Stage 5: Denial - 5%
With each stage, we have planned to create a freeze frame with a sound motif to signal not only the change in grief, but the fall in battery percent. Additionally, we have written the script to mimic that of the main character's thoughts in the form of a voice over. Within the voice over, she will be explaining how she struggled to learn about the 5 stages of grief in class, but how she can finally understand the concept.

Stage 4: Anger - 4%
In the anger sequence, we will use a series of shaky camera movements and fast cuts to change the sudden tone of the scene. Close-ups of confrontation will be used to depict her resistance to the situation she has been forced into.

Stage 3: Bargaining - 3%
Small pieces of dialogue will portray the bargaining aspects of grief such as begging to let her [the main character] go or trading things for her freedom. Additionally, behaviors such as bringing the hands together in prayer will be shown to show her desperation in finding a way out, even by turning to her religion.



Stage 2: Depression - 2%
The mise-en-scene elements of this scene will reflect that of the stage. The saturation will gradually lower as well as the small pops of blue that we have chosen to include to symbolize sex trafficking awareness.


Stage 1: Acceptance - 1%
Acceptance is not only the last step within the stage of grief, but it is the last visual/scene being portrayed within our film opening. Its significance is that it is essentially the start to the main character's story and is the gateway to the start of the plot.

Maybe I Should Get Out More

Fear is quite an interesting thing. It messes with your mind and as a result, it messes with your body. It's like being in the dark, unable to see. You could be in an empty room, in a completely safe space but, the mind does wonders when in comes to creating a frightening imagination. You start hearing things or seeing things that aren't there and then all of a sudden you are effected physically. The heart begins to race, the palms begin to sweat, and boom - fear becomes the established emotion.

Weirdly enough, I like being scared - in a love/hate type of relationship. I can feel as the adrenaline is released into my blood stream and my heart begins to pick up speed. It's somewhat reassuring to know that my body is equipped to recognize when to take flight or fight. However, I am what you would call a "scaredy cat" with the tendencies of a control freak. The minute I feel fear creeping up from behind me, I try to shut it down (because in all honesty - who really wants to feel fear). I tell myself that there's nothing to be scared of and the second I begin convincing myself, the feline part of me panics and assumes that since I'm trying not to be scared, that there is every reason to be scared.

I came to this realization while wondering around the property of an abandoned health institute - which just SCREAMS "you will feel fear". I went with Alex and Vicky as we were location scouting this morning. It had to be 11:22am when we arrived at the weed invested gates of "Plum Village Health Institute", or what remained of it. Fabiana couldn't make it because she had church - the irony.

 

Here's a picture of us before making the decision to - what I must admit - was the scariest and most "high school teenager" thing I've ever done (going to an abandoned health institute).

But, we decided to check out the location because it seemed like the perfect place to shoot the second segment of our film opening where we will make it evident to the audience that the main character has been sex trafficked. 

From My Peers to my Ears

So let me start off by saying that it was extremely hard rolling out of bed this morning (and when I say “roll”, I mean I couldn’t even physically bring myself to get out of bed). I just allowed gravity to take me and ended up falling onto my hard wooden floors. On the bright side, my unexpected start to the day did indeed wake me up. Nothing says “good morning” like the cold, hard embrace of my bedroom floor.

I didn’t even go to bed late! I was just that tired.

Today didn’t even feel like a Friday. It was just one of those days that felt more like a Monday, so I wasn’t in the most desirable mood when I walked into Mrs. Stoklosa's 5th period AICE media class at 7:40 am. However! the day did improve once the class was put into groups for peer feedback. The students in my class are brilliant, and it amazes me how creative and unique each of them are. As a result of this, I really enjoy peer critiques because I know how much they all aid me in the process of improving my portfolio project.

During our meeting, the biggest advice put forward by one of my classmates is to keep our project mature. When representing such a serious issue, it is imperative to stay true to the factual concept through accuracy and appropriate depiction. Therefore, my group and I have been doing extensive research in order to avoid stereotyping/enforcing misconceptions about sex trafficking and those affected by this global issue. Another suggestion given by one of my classmates is to really clarify the idea that our main characters hardships will follow after her phone gets to 1% and then dies. The commencement our of film begins after the 2 minute film opening when the main characters phone dies further establishing our film title “1%”. Additional to this, the pace of our film opening will intensify with each time the main characters battery percent falls (e.g.5% to 4% to 3%). While discussing this aspect, my classmates suggested showing the percent, not just through shots of the phones screen, but by allowing the battery icon to be present in the frame at all times (as shown below). This will be done in post editing to show the icon at the top of the screen to better allow the audience to understand the significance of the phones lifespan being symbolic of the to main characters diminishing hope.

I'm only Bilingual.. or so I was

Eu só falo duas línguas! which translates from Portuguese to "I only speak two languages!"

My family is from Brazil and even though I was born in the US, I grew up speaking two languages. However, when researching for our portfolio project, I had no idea that I would gain the ability to decipher yet another language. Sex trafficking language that is.

With the aim of keeping our project professional and representative of the global issue that is sex trafficking, my group and I have been studying the slangs and dialect typically used by those who take part in the trade. This process has been essential towards making our script as it allows us to stay true to the topic and eliminate any stereotypes of how sex trafficking operates.

In the grand scheme of things, it is easier to understand sex trafficking as the multi-billion dollar criminal industry that it is. It functions in a tedious, organized fashion that enables the business to continue to grow and spread at an alarming rate. According to polarisisproject.org, in the US alone, over 34,700 cases of sex trafficking has been reported since 2007. The key word here being "reported". Like I have previously stated, this industry is one that operates in a strategic way and therefore, the language used by sex traffickers reflects in this manner. The selling and buying of humans is not an activity that goes unnoticed, but it is done in a way that enables it to be subtle. For instance, when police officers/government agents are investigating a sex trafficking case, they go to various lengths such as tapping calls in order to gain probable cause. In doing so however, they must understand potential words/phrases that hint to and/or suggest other suspicious activities.

Some of these words include the following:

• Bottom - a female that is assigned by a pimp to monitor the other girls; reporting if any of the girls have violated the rules and assisting in activities such as booking girls/other victims. For example, in the film "Eden", the bottom was a victim named Abbie that had been one of the older more "loyal" girls.

• Branding - a method of keeping track of the girls and who owns them; can be a marking, tattoo, or carving on a victims body.

• Choosing Up - the process by which a pimp claims ownership of a girl; made when a victim makes eye contact with another pimp.

• Family - when a group of individuals is under the ownership of the same pimp. 

• Kiddie Stroll - location of where prostitution takes place, usually with younger victims.

Sources:
Common Sex Trafficking Language. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sharedhope.org/the-problem/trafficking-terms/
Sex Trafficking. (2018, November 09). Retrieved from https://polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/sex-trafficking

My Search History

 

Sex trafficking research can be a difficult concept to explain to your mom once she’s stumbled upon your search history. My conversation with my mom, and I kid you not, went a little like this:

Mom: "Hey sweetheart, umm so I needed to use your computer for something and I'm a little concerned"
Me:"What about mom?"
*completely oblivious to the fact that I left 300 tabs open about sex trafficking*
Mom: "Are you in some sort of trouble? because if I need to go to the polic-"
Me: "OOOOHHHH"
 *comes to the realization of what my mother is talking about and then proceeds to explain why I am researching sex trafficking*

Over the past view months, I have come to understand that the mise-en-scene and accurate representation is key when it comes to illustrating a story of any kind. Therefore, when my group and I decided that we wanted our main character to be a victim of sex trafficking, we knew that our costume and set design had to match that of real life sex trafficking cases. By definition, a victim of sex trafficking is an individual under the age of 18.

The Visuals

Now that we have solidified our idea, we are getting to work. In the process of making our film opening, my group and I have decided to meet up today and create our storyboard.