ACTUAL Project Idea!!!! +inspo

 Hey blog!!!!

SO! We FINALLY have our opening idea established and pretty much finalized!!! So, I will now explain it to you guys!! 

Story Idea:

Two best friends have been excitedly planning to go to college together practically since they met. From planning to room together to choosing the same major and taking the same classes, these friends knew they were going to stay together, the same way they had stayed together years prior upon meeting. However, this plan would be disrupted when one of the girls catches an illness, which would eventually lead to her death. The problem? She has been keeping it a secret from her best friend. Her best friend does not know and still believes they will be doing everything they had been planning since they were young. She will be left grieving her best friend and plans for the next chapter of her life and will need to learn how to overcome this obstacle in her life, shaping her into the person she is meant to become.

Opening Idea:

The 2 best friends excitedly bike (YAY WE INCLUDED THE BIKES) to the ill girl's house to check if she was also accepted to the same college as the other. Upon seeing the thick letter in her mailbox, they run into her house to let her mom know before planning on running to tell their other friends. As they are leaving, however, the ill girl's mother reminds her that it is around the time she must take her pills (the audience doesn't know specifically what because the girl interrupts her mother before she can finish the sentence). The girl tells her friend to wait for her outside as she runs to where her medicine is and takes a few pills, leaving the camera focused on the pills.

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Inspiration

So, Arantza and I knew we definitely wanted to do a summer film and since we were both at a point in life where we are about to graduate high school and go to college, we thought it was fitting to make the story about that chapter in life, hoping others could relate to it, as well (to a certain extent, of course, not including... the death). Arantza really wanted to have a bright summer aesthetic while I wanted to make it take place in the 90s or 2000s, so we combined our ideas and made one we both loved. We also grew up watching films with those same types of vibes, so it felt fitting to use it to symbolize the ending of the characters'/our childhoods. And as you know, we were very set on adding a bike scene, so that also helped develop the first part of our opening and choose the specific time period this took place in. 

Also serving as inspiration for this opening were other TV shows/series and movies. One example is the 2007 film "Bridge to Terabithia." While we aren't using the overall aesthetic of this film, the whole best friend death plot fit a lot with our story and we thought the emotional aspect of our film would be very similar to the one in this one. Also the deep connection the two main protagonists have is very special and one we really want our main protagonists to have, as well. So, I think emotion wise, both the characters' and the audiences,' is what we want to take from this film. That irreplaceable childhood friendship that audiences so deeply love being ruined by a death that will forever change the life of the one that was left alone is such a deep concept that evokes a lot of emotions. And well, we liked that, so we're making it.

"Summer of 85," "Stranger Things," and "ET" all served as inspiration in many aspects. "Summer of 85" and the third season of "Stranger Things" really helped us come up with the look of our opening. Overall, visually we want our opening to look like "Summer of 85," with the nostalgic, textured quality and warm tones throughout the whole film, but we also love the brightness (color-wise) in the third season of "Stranger Things" and the exciting, innocent summer vibe. And for our infamous bike scene, both the first season of "Stranger Things" and "ET" helped us figure out how we wanted to develop that idea and even helped us come up with specific shot ideas. And lastly, all these films take place a little bit earlier in the 1900s than we want our opening to be, but it still shows the different fashion choices used in different decades and locations that we might be interested in researching more about. It also, overall, just helped us figure out what time period we actually wanted to have our film take place in.