Filmmaking Class Week 3

Brainstorm Screenplay Ideas

Brainstorm ideas for a screenplay using the “Personal Menu”. Choose 3 different things you put on the list and think of times in your life that illustrate each. Write about the moment or time in your life when you realized each thing was true. Start in class and finish for homework.

My Answer: This does not quite fit the assignment. The screenplay is for a fiction project that will be produced into a 3 to 5 minute short film. I’ve never written fiction before so I am struggling to come up with ideas related to my personal menu. I do like some of my six word memoirs.
These are candidates:
“Middle schoolers make my head hurt.”
“Learn. Engage. Question. Fight. Have fun. “
I think I can use either to write a script and film around middle school students.

They are only related to my Personal Menu in that I listed coaching, teaching and relationship building as part of my menu.

Analysis Three Commercials

Find and watch commercials for three different products/services. As you watch each, identify the following elements (list form is fine!):

• Age, gender, number of different characters
• Problem presented
• Solution to the problem
• Number of locations
• Length of commercial
• Why would this product/service appeal to the target audience

For each commercial you are writing about, please provide a link to view it (and a title if possible).

Commercial 1: Budweiser 2017 Super Bowl Commercial | “Born The Hard Way”

The story centers Adolphus Busch, Anheuser-Busch founder, and his journey to America in pursuit of his dream to open a brewery. The commercial begins with Busch in a dark bar and ends with him in a dark bar shaking has with Eberhard Anheuser in a neighborhood bar owned by Anheuser in the 1850s.

All characters are middle age, white and, all but 2, masculine presenting.

The characters, locations and scenes include:

-A 1850s bar with three white men

-Mid Shot of Busch on ship

-Close up of Busch’s hands writing in a journal

-Ship on stormy sea with wild waves and high winds

-Several white men in an transatlantic ship being tossed from their bunks during a storms

-A white, male, middle aged doctor stitching Busch’s who speaks in German (with English subtitles)

-Close up of Busch’s entry card being stamped

-Close shot of Busch looking at his entry card

-Mid shot of white man bumping Busch’s shoulder and yelling in his face “Go back home!”

-Crowd of white people, mostly adult and male, on the 1850s streets of New York City walking around Busch

-A detail shot of a paddle wheel coming out of the water

-Mid shot of Busch standing at the boat rail read his journal

-Close up of open journal

-Wide shot Busch and a BLACK man on the rail of a paddle wheel steamer at dusk

-Several white men jumping from the burning steamer

-Detail shot of ship burning

-Busch in the water with burning ship in background

-Art shot of longboat full of backlit people shot through reeds or cattails

-Long boat full of white people including two women framing Busch who is reading his journal

-People walking in the sloppy mud shot from the knees down (camera at knee level)

– Back of Busch as he stands on a street watching white people walk by

-Busch’s face as he stands on a street watching white men walk by on the muddy streets of 1850s St. Louis

-Mid shot of Busch(facing camera) standing in bar

-Camera zooms out to show a wide view of three white men in a dark bar

-Mid shot of Busch(back to camera) standing in bar

-Close of Busch’s journal open on the bar

-Busch and Anheuser centered in a dark bar shake hands

-Credit

Length of commercial is 1 minute with at least 27 scenes.

Target Audience is beer drinkers who watched the 2017 Super Bowl.

Last year, 72% of homes with TVs in use on Super Bowl Sunday were tuned into the Super Bowl telecast, drawing an average of 99 million viewers. Adults ages 44 and under are the largest part of the audience. The bulk of American football fans are a combination of male and female sports enthusiasts who live in rural areas, small towns, or subdivisions outside mid-sized cities.

Of note: Anheuser-Busch advertises the Budweiser brand heavily, expending $up 449 million in 2012 in the United States alone. [1]Presenting Budweiser as the most advertised drink brand in America, and accounted for a third of the company’s US marketing budget.

[1] “Infographic: Meet America’s 25 Biggest Advertisers”. Advertising Age. Detroit. July 8, 2013. Retrieved February 16, 2017

[2] “Anheuser-Busch InBev’s advertising spending in the United States from 2009 to 2014 (in billion U.S. dollars)”. statista.com. Statista. n.d. Retrieved February 16, 2017.

Commercial 2 Full Pepsi Commercial | SuperBowl 2019 | More Than Okay

At the beginning of the ad, when a customer asks a waiter for a Coke and he replies, “Is Pepsi OK?”  Celebrities Steve Carrell, Lil Jon and Cardi B tell the server that Pepsi’s “more than OK,” all of whom have signature versions of the word “OK” in their catchphrase repertoire.

The name “Coke” has become universally and synonymously for any brown bubbly drink similar to Coca-cola. (Though Coca Cola holds the most market share, Pepsi has been around for over a 100 years is still has a loyal following. )

The ad has female presenting and male presenting featured characters . There is one female presenting Latinx and one male presenting black among the 15 identifiable actors.

The video was shot in one location, a diner, with about 35 shots and runs 59 second.

Notes: Celebrity Effect – the ability of famous people to influence others. Companies can use that star power and influence to boost their own products and services.

I had no idea who the celebrities in the commercial are so looked them up.

Commercial 3: 84 Lumber /Super Bowl Commercial 2017/ The Entire Journey

This is the full, uncut 84 Lumber Super Bowl promotional film. The ad was shot in the desert, in a house, in a small village and at the Border Wall. There are about 40 scenes, if different parts of the desert are “scenes.”

A mother and daughter’s symbolic migrant make a harrowing journey towards becoming legal American citizens, and then confront a giant wall.

During the trek across the desert, the daughter collects scraps of fabric as they traveled, so she could eventually stitch them together into an American flag.

They find a door in the wall and walk through it, as text appears onscreen: “The will to succeed is always welcome here.”

The ad was banned from the Super Bowl broadcast.

The main characters are a 30ish woman and a child who appears to be 6ish. They are from Mexico. The choice to depict Mexican characters was deliberate.

The commercial runs 5:44. 84 Lumber said that its Super Bowl commercial was intended to be part of a year-long recruiting campaign to get more workers. Ad Age quoted Maggie Hardy Magerko, owner of 84 Lumber, as saying: “We need to hire and train people differently. We need to cast a wider net, and to let the world know that 84 Lumber is a place for people who don’t always fit nicely into a box. We want people interested in creating their own path.”

Stand-alone Scene

What is your favorite feature-length movie? Identify a single scene from that movie that could stand on its own as a short with a beginning, middle, and end. Explain why.

My Answer:

Black Panther /2018 / PG-13 / 2h 14m

Marvel Studios’ Black Panther – Official Trailer

T’Challa, heir to the hidden but advanced kingdom of Wakanda, must step forward to lead his people into a new future and must confront a challenger from his country’s past.

Director: Ryan Coogler

Writers: Ryan Coogler, Joe Robert Cole, Stan Lee(based on the Marvel comics)

My favorite movie is Black Panther. The second scene could stand alone as a short movie since it has a beginning, middle and an end.

Beginning – The son sees King arrives

Middle – King and kills his brother

End – The son finds dead dad

During his time as King, part of Wakanda’s vibranium cache was stolen by Ulysses Klaue, leading to T’Chaka discovering that it was his younger brother N’Jobu who had aided Klaue. In an attempt to arrest N’Jobu, T’Chaka killed him and abandons N’Jobu’s son Erik in order to prevent the Wakandan people from learning the truth.

Three Column Scramble

My answer:

• Character: Hiker
• Setting: Cemetery
• Prop: Notebook

The old cemetery was a curious sight for the Hiker to come upon while walking the Appalachian Trail. It was tiny, ancient and nearly consumed by tees, brush and earth.

The Hiker stepped inside the pitted iron fence and lichen-encrusted stonewall and sat down on a grave and leaded against her overstuffed backpack.

“I wonder how long since anyone was buried here?” she wrote a tattered blue notebook and daydreamed.

Adobe Premiere Tutorials

Six-Word Memoir Film

My Six-Word Memoir Film

My Reflection:

I shot three different SWMs but was not happy with my collection of shot types, shot angles and camera movements for any of the three.

When the teacher listed all the options on the board showing a host of options, I realized I needed more variety in my footage. Art class was low-hanging fruit since I spend large parts of my day hanging out there.

I shot most of footage yesterday and it edited last night on my iPhone SE (2020) using the InShot app (while laying in bed).

The voiceover is a clip from the art teacher’s advisory recorded Jan 2022, when I was collecting 60-second sound bites for another project. I found the clip by sorting through my collection. My second choice would have to record a minute of myself talking about art. The “thanks for watching” is has be my standard closing for a few years. I need an updated, more professional one.