Group Meeting!!!

On February 11, we had a meeting with other groups to discuss our ideas for our projects and share our blogs. First, I'd like to say it was an extremely useful meeting as it helped me come up with many of the things I felt my story was lacking.

So, first, we just shared a basic idea of our projects, to later share our blogs and see what type of approach and research each of us had, to see how we could help each other improve. I described my project as a Western and talked a little bit about the type of shots I'd like to use for the opening, explaining how I'd like to use long shots for the credits so the attention can be split between the shot and the credits. In the meeting, we highlighted the importance of the location scout, and how not getting the right one could be a huge issue. The other teams gave me some alternatives like a little path next to a regional park, which is next to a farm, or Vista View Park, that has some mountains with sand. This has a lot of value as we could try to shoot in different locations and force a perspective to connect them, in case we need it for a wider variety of shots. I really like the suggestion of Vista View Park, as these kind of sandy paths will help to establish that the audience will be following the main character on a journey, that later would be explained through her looking for someone.. 

Another huge improvement thanks to this meeting was the developing of the story. I had some ideas in mind, the one I explained being a woman cowboy who is a pacifist trying to survive as she has a bounty on her. But this was clearly an issue; it's too simple. The other teams said they liked the base, but they agreed it needed more. So, as they were talking about their projects, I suggested one of them to enhance the contrast between their characters. With this, I thought of a backstory for my character that would help the story gain more depth, and we could establish subtly in the first two minutes, through visual elements. I thought of a young woman that accidentally killed a man, and now she is searching for this man's son to give him the chance to avenge his father and kill her, claiming also the bounty. This gives a reason for her pacifism, as she earned her bounty by accident. The son of this man will be shown through a close-up of a picture that she is looking at, and she will have a monologue that will be somehow directed to him. We also wanted her being a woman to be a matter of significance, as the gender roles for this time were, of course, different. One of my teammates wanted her to pretend to be a man, so pretending to be a cowboy so people don't hunt her bounty and hide her identity makes a lot of sense. Thanks to this meeting, the story and characters start to have more shape and our decisions meaning. A missing point to connect will be her relationship to the man she killed. We would also like this to portray gender roles. For her sense of justice, we thought of making her religious, as we want to establish most of the story through visual elements. Use a cross and show it in a close-up.

Another thing that I discussed with the other teams was how to make the long shots. As Westerns usually use really long shots, that take their time to reveal details about characters to build the slow pacing. This is a fundamental part of our project, and the other teams helped me come up with some solutions. A friend of mine has a drone that we may be able to use; if not, I explained how we could use our camera and raise the F-stop all the way to get a lot of depth of field. Shots like this are still hard to achieve, so as we show the credits, we will get closer to our character, getting to mid-shots so we can see her clothing and still split the attention with the credits and the title screen. 

(Mcabe and Mrs. Miller 1971)

I really thought this meeting wasn't going to be useful at first, but sharing my idea with people external to my project gave me a different perspective and opened paths to develop my idea and think deeper about how technique will be applied to it. We'll use long shots to establish the journey and show the credits, and we'll use a few close-ups to highlight important details. I'm really excited to move forward as the project is starting to take shape.