First Group Meeting

    Our group met up at my house over the weekend for us to have our first out-of-class meeting. We considered rescheduling as Luise couldn't join us since she was working, but there were no other days that our group would all be available before we needed to finish our project proposal. In an ideal world, she would've been present, however, she is the sound designer so the group agreed we could still do planning without Luise and just fill her in.

    Though I am the cinematographer and not the director, I was the one who mediated for most of our meeting - asking questions, writing down ideas/information, etc. As I mentioned in my post about the origins of the La Llorona story, there are two "types" of the La Llorona story; origin and encounter. The first topic we addressed in our meeting was which type we'd be selecting - unanimously deciding to do an encounter story rather than an origin. Even when we had first decided to do a film about La Llorona, all of our initial ideas were encounter stories of sorts. The concept of our encounter story would be that a boyfriend is suspected of cheating by his girlfriend and as a result of his infidelity La Llorona haunts him.

    The next topic was actors and roles. Gabby already had two friends who were willing to play the couple in the film, as well as another who was willing to step up if needed. The other role that needed to be filled was La Llorona. I messaged my friend Abby because I knew she was good with SFX makeup and would probably be interested. She quickly responded, saying she was more than happy to be part of the film. Just like that, all of our roles were filled. 

    The final element of story planning we did was to discuss the story itself as well as how we'd progress the story during the opening scene. The image below contains the story which we decided upon and how it will be ordered:

    Based on this story layout though, we also briefly scouted out locations before everyone left. The only locations we scouted though were the areas outside my home (on the side, out front). As we did this we stood in various places to get a feel for how we could possibly frame shots. This helped us visualize our movie a lot better, and will help me create the storyboard. Below are some of the pictures we took when scouting outside my house:

Side of my house where the opening will be shot

The front of my house angled toward the right side
where La Llorona will be seen by Anthony

The front of my house angled more toward the
front door

    

    Our roles for the project proposal were decided by Gabby and were assigned based on how our roles would apply to that section of the project proposal. For example, as the cinematographer, I would not do the statement since my role in the overall production has no bearing in that area. The roles for the project proposal are listed below:

    Overall, the meeting was super productive and with the ideas for our movie now laid out, we need to complete our individual and collaborative portion of the project proposal so we can begin filming ASAP. We're aiming to complete the project proposal by the end of the week so we can begin filming next weekend.