Critical Reflection Questions

 • How do your products represent social groups or issues?

My products represent social groups or issues through various ways. I believe that the short film can bring awareness to the dangers of social media. In the past, I’ve always put a subtle theme of how powerful social media can be. In today's day in age social media has become a part of the way we communicate with one another. It has become one of the main ways we communicate. Social media has the ability to connect people, keep people in touch, and share news. Although there are a lot of positive aspects, there are some negative aspects that social media can bring. Social media allows people to become anonymous. Anonymity gives users the ability to disguise themselves to lure their victims in. Since the victims can’t truly know who’s on the other side of the screen, they can’t defend themselves. It hides the true identity of a predator. Another issue that the film can bring into life is the gender stereotype of only men being the predator. Yes, the majority cases, the man is the one that preys on the victim of their choice. However, there are cases that women are the predators that prey on victims. These types of cases do not receive the same amount of recognition as the others. This film shows the audience to always be careful. Even though the film is the main form of representation, the other products like the postcard, website, and platforms, help in solidifying what the film represents. 

• How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

The elements that we tried to merge together are social media and miami. Two things that really don’t have much in common. However, we made it work. We used how popular social media is and pointed out the flaws that it has. The social media that was highlighted in the film was Instagram, but our message of branding can be applied to all social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, Snapchat, and even Linkedin. In every major city, social media is heavily used. Here in South Florida you constantly see individuals tagging locations such as our beaches, restaurants, city, park, and just about everywhere else with a view in South Florida and that is about every single place you go down here. So when creating the story we wanted the sense of branding to show flashy ‘Instagram worthy’ locations, and how those locations can lead to in-person stocking or kidnapping situations which have happened several times in our community and around the world. Throughout the film, we connected social media with Miami by filming at some of the most popular places in South Florida. We filmed at the second largest statue in North America the Gulfstream Pegasus, which has been tagged a total of 58,608 times on Instagram. Then we filmed in Wynwood, Florida which has been tagged more than 3.4 million times on Instagram. Likewise, we filmed at Las Olas which has been tagged over 366 thousand times. These locations were utilized to build a brand and show the audience a connection between how easy it is for someone to track one’s location via Social Media.

• How do your products engage with the audience?

The products engage the audience in special ways. I decided that it was important to make sure that the audience has the ability to connect with the film and the other products as well. With whatever the message of a film may be, it’s important that it engages with the audience. Even though the main purpose of a film is to entertain its audience, it needs to do this while being engaging. Ways to engage the audience can be through different ways. One being to allow the audience to interpret scenes and use their imagination. Another being allowing the audience to identify with an event of a story and project its meaning. The last being to allow the audience to pinpoint certain things within the story that explains events that happened. We chose to use the second way of engaging the audience. Since the story itself is about the dangers of social media and never knowing who a person is, we thought it best to let the audience relate to it. We wanted to challenge them to view their own social media habits. Who they were interacting with. If they really knew the kind of person they are. The amount of information that they are letting be known. The film is engaging through asking the audience if they are using social media safely. After watching the film, the audience should self reflect. The other products like the postcard, website, and platforms are used to promote the film. Since it helps in promoting the film, it’s helping spread the awareness of how to use social media safely. Of course, the film is to be interpreted in any way the audience sees fit, so they will engage with it how they feel. 

• How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Our Short film challenges the positives and negatives of social media. We wrote our short film to bring to light some of the many dangers present with social media. As seen in our product we show how easily social media can be stalked and how much information can be leaked and gained. Our product shows how easy it would be for someone to stalk someone anonymously and ‘introduce’ themselves’. This can and does happen often when individuals make friendships seem natural and innocent. When in reality they are being forced into friendship due to the large amount of information individuals release via social media. Our product challenges our audience to break the social conventions of constantly updating and sharing information with large masses of people on social media. Iit can lead to a clear and present danger in the future much like our main character Leo ran into during the short film. Although our short film had a dramatic ending of death, it is really not. Every year nearly 134 children are kidnapped due to social media contact. Some of these children were never found and still remained lost, so this dramatic ending for our main character could be compared as peaceful to the real pain social media has caused others. Likewise over forty-one percent of individuals have had a bad experience dealing with social media. Our film does not blatantly tell the audience to stop using social media, but it challenges them to reevaluate the necessity of constant location updates and posting as it could lead to kidnapping, harassment, or even death.

Short film package

 At First Sight 

Link to Short film

Link to website

Our Postcard 

Scheduled to film!

 After talking to the team we decided that over the weekend would be best to film the last scene of our film. Since the deadline is coming up soon so we want to make sure that everything is in order. We want to make sure that this film is our best work. Both Jonathon and I want this film to reflect our best abilities and what we're capable of as a team. The scenes should take no more than an hour and a half. Then we can use the rest of the time to edit. We also need to polish off the website. It all honestly seems like a lot but we've budgeted out time really well. We're not stressing out...that bad. I've done the majority of the postcard. It only needs a little bit more work. All the social media is up to date. It was fun to post on the social media. Trying to think of creative ways to post on the social media was fun. Playing around with the social media is exciting to do because it channels a different art form. The social media includes Instagram, facebook, twitter, and youtube. We also have our website. Since this is a film class, being able to dabble in a different art form is fun. In the end, all of our team members are excited for our film. We think it's gonna turn our great. 

Getting ready to start up again!

And we're back! After speaking to Jonathon, we've decided that our top priority is start the process of filming and editing again. As I said in the previous blogs, we had a COVID scare among our team so we had to stop filming. It's most important that we put our safety before anything else. So this meant putting everything on hold until we found out the results of the tests. Thankfully no one who is a vital team member tested positive so we can continue to film. I'm happy to say that we planned accordingly so our schedule wasn't affected. But the deadline is coming up soon so we want to make sure that we have all our ducks in a line before we turn anything in. We want to make sure that this film is our best work. Both Jonathon and I want this film to reflect our best abilities and what we're capable of as a team. We need to consult with the members of our team to figure out when they're available to film the last couple of scenes. We think that we'd be able to film these scenes in no more than an hour and a half. Then we can use the rest of the time to edit. We also need to polish off the website and the postcard. It all honestly seems like a lot but we've budgeted out time really well. We're not stressing out...that bad. The postcard is exciting to do because it channels a different art form. Since this is a film class, being able to dabble in a different art form is fun. In the end, all of our team members are excited for our film. We think it's gonna turn our great. 

COVID Results!!!

 Today all of our team members received their COVID-19 results from the December 23rd scare. Fortunately, the majority of us tested negative for the coronavirus. Unfortunately one of our actors who were not with us earlier, but scheduled for a later scene tested positive for the virus. This news brings us sadness, but we will be sure to keep in touch with her and wish her a speedy recovery. In terms of how to move forward, it seems as if weeks have passed. When in reality it has been about 5 days. As everyone received their results, Jonathon and I started reaching out asking for availability. Unfortunately, a good amount of our team members will be away until the new year. So it seems as if we will have to push back our final film date to the beginning of 2021. This will most definitely push back our entire schedule of events. Luckily, Jonathon and I planned early to have an ambitious start time. This means we should still be able to finish well before needed. As we came to this realization Jonathon and I hopped on a call and made the determination it was safest to not see each other until after break since we were both having heavy interaction with our family members. This is to ensure the absolute safety of everyone on our team as we complete this project. As we move forward with planning we will make sure to add extra safety steps. Likewise, we look forward to finishing filming our one scene in Downtown, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As previously stated we will not be able to do this until the new year now. Until then we wish you a happy new year and a safe one too. Be sure to read our next blog as we hope will be done filming with no more scare surprises. 

Editing day 1

  It has been roughly two days since we got our COVID test and no one on our team has received their results. So, I hopped on a phone call with Jonathon and we talked how we can make the best use of our time in our session as we await our results. We agreed that no one on our team should meet in person until we receive the results. So after brainstorming we decided to start the editing process as best as we can via zoom to ensure a collaborative effort. We started by dumping all the footage. It surprisingly was around 20 gigabytes of footage. As you can imagine this took a while to transfer to the computer. After we got it all we imported it into iMovie and started reviewing the clips. This did become an issue over zoom just because it was a lot for the computer to handle. But, we kept trying to push through it in order to maximize our time. We were able to review quite a bit of the gulf stream footage. Over the zoom platform the slowness was becoming a barrier we realized we cannot get by. Jonathon still decided to try to edit some of the videos by and wait to finalize anything until the next time we see each other. I know we will still have more than enough time to edit, so at this point in time, I am not worried. As we move forward with planning we have to be very cautious. We will just plan everything in a best scenario situation and hope for the best. But, if we test positive we will plan around how we can still get everything done. Anyway, we hope the results will come back soon and negative. Until then we will wait and hope for the best.

Filming day 3- COVID SCARE

 As we all met up to record scenes the final scenes Jonathon received a phone call. He answered just in case it was an emergency, but he soon found out that a close friend of his just tested positive for COVID-19. Now although we were taking precautions as a group we also all ate lunch together. Additionally, additional members of our team were exposed to the same individual. At this point, we were wondering what steps should we take forward to move. Jonathon and I talked it over and decided the safest option was to postpone all filming to a further date. At this point, Jonathon and I felt extremely bad for putting everyone in this position a day before Christmas Eve. Many of us not sure what to do regarding family and testing. So Jonathon and I asked the whole team who wanted to get tested and drove everyone to a testing site in Miami. As we drove everyone to Miami the constant fear of possibly spreading to COVID was in our minds. The last thing we were thinking about last night was media studies or filming. As we started approaching the location we waited in a line and all the members of our team who wanted to get tested got tested. Unfortunately, the results are not rapid it actually takes upwards from 2 to 4 days. As we wait for the results we will be in a constant fear of not knowing what to do. Right now we are hoping no one on our team has COVID and we can move forward with the project. This will push back our anticipated finish date. Nonetheless, I am happy we made that decision as it was the best one to ensure safety for us, our family, and those around us. As we move forward we will be sure to keep in mind how easy the virus can spread. On this Christmas Eve, we are hoping for the best and wishing everyone negative results.