Distribution Project!

 The project is finally here! I hope you enjoy! 

He Was A Skater Boi Distribution Project Folder (Google Drive)

He Was A Skater Boi (Trailer 1)

He Was A Skater Boi (Trailer 2)

He Was A Skater Boi (Instagram)

Bye, 

Sabrina 

Critical Reflection

He Was A Skater Boi Distribution Project Folder (Google Drive)

Creative Critical Reflection

The trailers for “He Was A Skater Boi” provides a hopeful love story that reflects diversity among the strong latin cast and crew. This diversity  is shown by the actors’ names as well as the characters' last names in the production. For instance, with last names included in the poster such as “Rivero”, “Perez”, “Tavares” and even Staab (which is European), it is hard not to notice the representation of minority groups that takes place in this production. 

For this production, I found it absolutely crucial to use typical conventions associated with romantic comedies. I challenged a few conventions by adding my own twist to it, but ultimately stayed true to my genre. My target audience are 12-24 year old females. This age group watches this genre as a distraction from reality. They want a good, cheesy love story with beautiful music and to get emotionally involved in the story. This is not a postmodernist piece; people find comfort in conventions and that is what I aimed to do in my project for the most part.

I watched countless trailers in the 8 weeks that I was working on this project such as “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”, “She’s The Man”, “A Cinderella Story”, etc.  I learned that most romcom trailers use cheezy transitions such as wipe and split screen so I made sure to include plenty of those in my trailer. I also kept the location in a school like setting as well as a park and bedroom since that is where most of the characters spend their time. 

One convention I did challenge in my project, however, is the point of view. Typically, romcoms follow a woman’s point of view as opposed to a man’s point of view as the targeted audience is young females. Instead of following the conventions for this, I decided to make my trailers focus on both points of view. The first trailer focuses on the character development and point of view of the female while the second trailer focuses on the character development and point of view of the male. I did this because I have seen a lot of Romantic Comedies and have noticed that a lot of them are one sided and only told from the female's perspective. When you look at it marketing wise, it makes sense, but I also believe that seeing both sides of the story is also important and will appeal to many people.

On top of viewing trailers, I also took inspiration from some of my favorite Romantic Comedy movie posters. I noticed in the posters that Arial, Futura, Times New Roman and a combination of black and bright colors with an awkward photo are used for the poster so I did just that. I placed my actors in a position that would go well with the movie and highlighted the fact that the girl is into the boy while he obviously is not. My posters consisted of a Futura Black font in a color similar to maroon. I kept the “He Was A” in black and “Skater Boi” in red to make it pop out. I also noticed that there is often a different background on the poster than what it was when the original photo was taken. I had a pretty sunset in the original photo that I thought would go nice but ultimately ended up going in the direction of an edited background. To keep the sunset colors, however, I created an ombre look of yellow and orange. 

I also kept a sunset ombre color palette for my brand on instagram. I wanted to reinforce the fact that this is a fun and carefree movie to watch. Since most romcoms stick with pink and red colors I decided that it was one of the colors that I had to borrow for my instagram posts. I also went with red, orange and yellow with the color palette because I wanted to have continuity for the colors used in the title but still use more of a neutral tone for the movie instead of just a female one of pink. Even though it is an early 2000s style movie, we are still in the 21st century and things are not just pink and blue anymore; I wanted to create a sense of openness. I used yellow when introducing the photo of McKenzie because even though she can be delusional at times, I wanted to represent the optimistic and hopeful personality that she has. Nick is introduced with the color red because it is associated with love and danger at the same time which I feel represents Nick pretty well. He is mysterious yet he learns he is capable of love during this movie which he didn’t think he was capable of in the beginning. Jake and Sophie, however, are introduced with the color orange because they are positive, friendly and calm throughout the movie. They do not go through any major character developments, they are just there.

On the topic of instagram, I was able to engage with my target audience through posts and stories that included polls, meet the cast, cast takeover days, etc. I included hashtags as one would normally do if they were promoting a movie and even had some strangers liking it which I thought was really funny. This also made me feel that I did a good job on my end if other people are enjoying the content I am putting up.

Upon reflection, after the many weeks I spent working on this project, I look back and there are many things I would have changed. My goal for this year's project was to be open-minded as to the direction I wanted it to go and to not procrastinate. I ended up procrastinating a lot and I was very stressed at the end when I rushed to finish the project. I also think that my Instagram could have definitely been worked on. I loved the interaction with the “fans” but I think that the original color palette(s) for my brand could have been worked on. I liked the idea of the colorful ombre pastel look but ultimately with everything posted, I did not love the way it came out. I think that if I had stuck to one palette instead of the broad pastel ombre idea, it would have come out looking a lot nicer. I ended up redoing the entire social media page before submission and stuck with the colors red, orange and yellow. I was a little worried that because I redid the color palette, all of the posts would have the same date on it and I would get points off for not doing it spread out but I realized that I had my blog posts that I could use to show that I did the work. Overall, I learned a lot and had fun working on this project! I am glad I worked alone and am proud of what I created.

 

changes to social media

Hello, I made changes to my instagram. I realized that although I liked the idea of the pastel ombre color palette,  I did not like how it came out. Instead, I decided to stick with a warm, sunset-like color palette and redid my posts. I included a photo of how the old and new ones looked together before I deleted the old posts. I wanted to write a post explaining the situation because I did not want it to seem that I posted by first photo on instagram a few days before the project was due. 

Editing and last minute changes

 Hello, 

I began editing my trailers now that I have my footage. However, I have little bits of both trailers edited and I need to focus on finishing one before working on the other. I am using a lot of wipes such as gradient and barn doors as well as split and whip transitions. I did research and those are commonly used in many Romcom movies. I also realized that one of the scenes (since I overshot) that I was gonna use in trailer #1 fits better in trailer #2 and I am going to move it and then slow it down for a big dramatic scene. 

I also realized there was 1 shot I really did not like the way it came out and a few other scenes I realized I wanted to add.  My actors agreed to reshoot in the next day or two. That way, I will hopefully be done editing and adding all of the last minute shots to the trailer a day or two before the project is due. This will allow me to spend the rest of the time working on my CCR. 

POSTERS UPDATE

Hello, 

I was asking my classmates (since they are my target audience) about my poster. Overall,  people found it confusing with the "8" due to the font. As a result I changed it to "He Was A Skater Boi".  I kept the "Boi" there as a nice little quirk but it doesn't really do much for the project, it just gives the audience an idea that this will be a quirky film. Here is the updated version. 

Posters!

 Hello, 

After many rough drafts, I finally have my poster done. I actually ended up changing the name to "He Was A Sk8rBoi" instead of just "Sk8rBoi". I was using my notes about what fonts and colors to use and as a result ended up going with red and black colors with  Times New Roman/Futura Black fonts. I decided that the film will have a theatrical release but will then stream exclusively on "Netflix".  As a result,  I obviously had to create two seperate posters: one that's cinematic and one that's for streaming. I was having problems coming up with a color scheme so I went to other Romcoms such as "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" for inspiration. As for the Netflix poster, I went to movies I know that are streaming exclusively on Netflix such as "To All The Boys I've Loved Before" for inspiration. Here is the final work.

FIlming and Poster ideas

 So far, I am very happy with the way filming went last night. I am still in the process of editing, and seeing if anything else needs to be reshot but I think for the most part I got the footage I needed. 

Since I had focused on trailer #1 up until this point and the boys were not really needed until now, I had one of my friends come over to play the role of Jake last night. He completely forgot he had made plans to film and realized last minute when I called him. He ended up not being able to come and it was a mess trying to find somebody. 

Since my friend who plays "McKenzie" is in our school television network and has a competition this week, she would not have been able to film anything until Friday evening and I leave Friday morning for the weekends since it is both Easter weekends and my Grandmother's 80th birthday. 

I was calling everybody that I knew to try to be in my trailer last minute and nobody was able to come in time. Since everybody was already ready at my house, I decided to try my neighbor and ask if he'd be up for it and he said yes! So, there was a last minute addition to the cast: Santiago Rivero. I was a little worried that he wouldn't really fit the character but since the friend is a supporting role, it ended up being alright. He made into the group photo which I posted yesterday right after taking the photos. However, if you'd like to see the photo, I attached it below. 

I also took the photo for the movie poster! Since most posters for my convention that I was looking at have an "awkward" position for the photo, I decided to go for the same on mine. Due to the fact that most of the trailer consists of the girl (McKenzie) in love with the guy (Nick) and he makes it clear that he doesn't feel the same way, I wanted to go with a look that shows his confused face while she's giving him romantic looks.  I originally wanted it to be something along the lines of McKenzie leaning over and hugging Nick and Nick gives an awkward "I don

't want to be here "face but my actress said she didn't feel comfortable doing that. We ended up going for this look which I think came out perfect due to the awkward pose and sunset in the back. I still need to edit the photo and then make it a poster. I have some ideas for the color and font but I will play around with it later today or tomorrow in class. However, I decided to include the photo below.