Portfolio Project Planning: Part Three!

Meet the cast of my film opening!

Aneesa Williams- Zora

Caroline Anderson- Bria

 

Claudia DeJesus- Luana

Keira Valentasis- Valencia

 

All of the actresses picked the names of their characters from the list of names I gave them. I wanted them to pick their character's name because I wanted them to be excited and feel a personal connection with the character they are portraying. I want their honest input on all aspects of their individual characters starting with their names all the way to mise-en-scene elements like hair, makeup, and costume design.

A brief synopsis of each character:

Zora 

Age: 19 years old

Overview: She is the leader of the group and had a deep connection with the previous leader of the group aka their mother. She took the death of her mother the hardest because she was the one that adopted at the age of 12 (after her mother was killed in a car crash), trained and taught her everything she knows about fighting and essentially saved her. Zora always uses logic and reasoning and possesses a level of maturity that some question because of how young she is. She is a computer genius that has incredible hacking skills. She is the "brains" of the operations and is quick on her feet when it comes to unpredictable situations. She is able to analyze information quickly and give the rest of the team commands and plans for missions that always ensure the defeat of the bad guy. Because of the death of her mother/ leader and being the oldest of the sisters she feels a great responsibility has been placed on her which she handles very well. She is the provider for the group and has become the maternal figure for the girls even though she's a few years older than them.

Bria

Age: 15 years old 

Overview: She is the serious one of the group.  She doesn't talk much but when she does speak it is important and she does not take her job lightly. Since she is the super quiet and reserved one of the group, she has a mysterious aura. When she's on a mission she is focused and because she has PTSD from witnessing her parent's murders when she was 10 years old, she has to chew gum constantly to lessen the effects of the symptoms she has. The girl's mother adopted Bria after she tried breaking into her car to steal it then later found out she was living in a group home for juvenile delinquents because of her destructive behavior. She is also a tomboy that loves working on cars and other auto mechanical jobs that require her to use her hands. She has an emotional wall that she's put up and still struggles with opening up to people, sometimes even with her sisters, but she is a teddy bear and occasionally lets that wall down and shows her not-so-mean side. Bottling up her emotions and isolating herself has become a coping mechanism for her that her sisters have learned to accept. She keeps a journal detailing every single one the criminals they've defeated so she likes to keep a count of everyone they've taken down.

Luana

Age: 16 years old

Overview: Luana is a Latina with a goofy personality. She is sweet, passionate, cares a lot about others and is very supportive of her sisters. She has a big heart so she volunteers at food drives, animal shelters, hospitals, etc. She works at the local library and on Wednesdays and Thursdays, she reads stories to children in the community. Their mom adopted Luana as an infant because her birth mother was an immigrant in an abusive relationship and she didn't want her daughter to get hurt like she did. She never knew who her birth mother was but she knows the basics of who she was. She wants to see the good in people but when victims come to them and share their stories, she feels compelled to help them the way she knows how. Luana has 2 sides, the sweet, loving side, and the merciless crime-fighting ninja side. She fights like she's dancing with the criminals because that's one of her favorites hobbies if she wasn't a crime-fighting, she'd be a dance instructor.

Valencia

Age: 17 years old

Overview: She has a very loud and over the top personality. You can hear her before she even enters a room and is the drama queen of the sisters. She can be aggressive but only when she's provoked by criminals or if she's mistreated by other people. Being walked over is not something she is accepting of and she is very vocal about her opinion. Her extreme personality is very apparent so when they are on missions she has an interesting way of fighting, she talks to the criminals while fighting. She can talk your ear off and maybe annoying at times but her sisters love her anyways. Valencia belonged to a wealthy family that wanted nothing to do with her and mistreated her. Her adoptive mother took notice of this while working undercover as a teacher at Valencia's elementary school and offered Valencia's parents a lot of money to have them turn over their parental rights to her and basically paid for Valencia's freedom. She was adopted at the age of 8 years old and doesn't

I think this is a good start for the characters because I can build off of this and make tiny adjustments or additions if I need to their personalities, background stories, etc. but I am very satisfied with what I have come up with for now. I don't think I will be deleting elements of the characters traits, I will most likely make additions in the future. I am going to get the actress's inputs and see what they think of their characters. I tried to match their character's personality traits as close as I could real-life personalities so that they would not have to force the acting and can be themselves. The backgrounds of each character are obviously exaggerated to give them more dimension and relatable qualities.

This is going to help me write the voice over script because I will have something to refer back to when writing the background information of each character.

Here are some costume design ideas that I think would work beautifully with each actress:

Zora:

Zora is the leader of the group so I want her to stand out and what color stands out more than red! If everyone is wearing mute colors and she's wearing red, then the viewer can visually tell that she is an important character than was meant to stand out. Since she is a computer genius and is logical I envision her having a business sense of style. She's 19 in the film opening so I want to keep her trendy and not looking too grown up so these pictures are very close to what I think Zora would wear.

Valencia: 

Valencia has an outgoing personality so I want her style to be a defining component to her character. The thing is that I don't want her costume to be too distracting and take away from Zora's costume. Since Zora is the main character and she's narrating the story, she needs to be the center of attention visually when they're in a group. That is why I am having some trouble figuring out what to put Keira in because her character's costume has to be bold but not too bold if that makes sense. The pictures below are an example of what I'm considering as costume options but Keira and I are going to have to discuss it further to reach a final verdict. 

Luana:

I want Luana to be in shorts but I included the third picture with the utility pants as a possibility because I don't want to completely disregard it as a choice. Both me and Claudia agreed that the shorts would be a great option because of the rhinestone fishnet component. Since Luana is a sweetheart and a beast, the fishnets would complement that personality trait she possesses. She would not be in a leather jacket like in the first picture, it would just be her in a tank top, shorts, and the fishnets with the combat boots that I bought for her to wear from the thrift store. I included all 3 of these pictures because they all have articles of clothing that we want to incorporate into her costume: the tights/ boots combo in the first picture, the rhinestone fishnets/ choker in the second picture, and the tank top/ combat boots in the third picture. The fur coat in the second picture is nice but I don't think I will be able to find a fur coat like that in South Florida so I'm not really worried about looking for one.

Bria: 

I definitely think that Bria would wear this kind of outfit based on her background and personality traits. The leather jacket is a MUST and I already bought it from the thrift store yesterday so that is already confirmed.

Of course, I went on Pinterest to receive inspiration for costume designs. The pictures are just inspiration for me and we are going to make adjustments so their costumes will not be identical to the pictures I got offline but it's a start. I want the costumes to be more than just wearing an outfit, I want it to look like something a group fierce crime-fighting women would wear. I don't want to take the easy way out and just have them all wear black, I want to take my film opening to the next level and incorporate actual mise-en-scene costume design elements. These looks are personalized for each character, I know the actresses and I believe I have a good idea of what they would feel confident in and even more importantly comfortable in.

Because I want the costume design to be just right, I understand that I may have to create some of these costume designs from scratch. I have to do multiple fittings, measurements and make adjustments which I will document when we get to that point. I am going to plan a day where the actresses and I try different costume looks and finish assembling their individual costume pieces. My mom gave me permission to go through her closet and look for accessories and pieces that may work for the character's costumes. Like for example, I may find a scarf that's fabric works for part of one of the costumes and I may decide to utilize it differently than it was intended for. Certain things like that that require a large amount of creativity and out of the box thinking which I absolutely love!

Have I found... what I've been searching for?

I found two songs today that I listened to and immediately fell in love with! I think these songs will fit the opening and make it sound really cool! I found this really cool website called Artlist and they have a catalog of music that you can license if you have a membership. I signed up for their 30-day trial so that is how I was granted access to the songs they have available.

The two songs from this particular album I found on the website are called "Believe the hype" and "Do the math" and I'm excited to start working on the audio aspect of the opening. These songs are both in the rock genre which I find hilarious because I wasn't locking at genre on the website, I was just scrolling through the "mood" list and found this album. Even though I found these songs that doesn't mean that I will stop searching for songs to use. I still have to think about diegetic and nondiegetic sounds to use, sound effects, and other sounds in addition to the music.

I still have a lot to figure out but I think I'm pacing myself well! The project is starting to come together, I have my final number of actresses, the costumes are halfway done, and the music is almost confirmed! This week is bound to be chaotic due to schedule conflicts, creative mental blocks, and indecisiveness but I will do my best to minimize the amount of stress I will be placed under and to keep you guys updated on all of it! I'll see you in the next blog!

Sources:

Royalty-Free Music Licensing For Video, Film & Youtube.” Artlist, 2015, artlist.io/.

Silbermann, Ben. “Pinterest.” Pinterest, 2010, www.pinterest.com/.