Hi guys, my name is Mateo Grauer and this is my romance film, “Tulipan Sin Agua.” I worked with my partner, Ana Rubin for weeks to master what is now our finished film opening. Before we begin, I want to explain the meaning of the title. “Tulipan Sin Agua” translates to tulip without water, which means that even though tulips are beautiful, with no water, it has no chance for survival. However, the water does not need the tulip at all, much like our guy character who heavily relies on the girl he falls in love with, however, the girl does not require the water to live and is not affected by the life of the tulip. This can suggest the lives of the two main protagonists, as the girl is a free-spirited and confident human, and her dancing and actions can portray her personality, while the boy is a more keeps-to-himself and quiet kind of guy. He is more focused on his future, shown by the business podcast he is listening to, while the girl lives more in the moment. The sporadic cuts and different scenes were used to create a fast paced film but while also not giving too much away in the two minute time frame that we had. While most films portray the man as the heartbreaker, we decided to challenge that by hinting that the woman is in fact the real heartbreaker. However, apart from that, we wanted to remain in the general conventions of a rom-com film, so that the audience can feel a little more comfortable with our film while knowing the general outcome due to the conventions, but while keeping some hidden twists and turns. This results in Ana and I making the film a little bit more ours and personal, as breaking the general rom-com conventions allows us to have a little bit more room to be creative in what we wanted in our film. We also decided to use a somewhat pink shadowing when editing to give the film opening more of an aesthetic feel as well as an artistic feel. We used the public transportation of Miami to indicate the social groups being presented in our film, the middle class. The boy is shown going to work, which can be interpreted from his business casual look and the podcast he is listening to, “Entrepreneur 101,” a podcast that I designed on the idea that our boy is a potential future businessman, as his hopes desire. The girl is seen dancing for money, but don’t worry, that is not her real job. Ana and I discussed during our brainstorming process that the female actress enjoyed dancing for fun, as her free spirit indicates, which counters the organized life of the boy. This shows that the opposite personalities could be the reason that they breakup, as the girl does not want to think about the future, while the boy is thinking about opening a business. He is more structured in his plans with her, and her indecisiveness with the future could be what leads to the heartbreak. We also want to portray how breakup is an ordinary aspect of many lives, and we hope to lighten the effects of breakups by showing how normal breakups are, and how our audience members might have also experienced breakups. Ana and I decided that our film would best be distributed by a real media text by a company such as A24, a distribution company behind hit films such as “Lady Bird,” “Moonlight,” and “The Witch.” However, our film is more similar to films such as “Call Me By Your Name,” or “Blue Is the Warmest Color.” Our target audience is young adults anywhere from 16 to around 25. This means that our most effective form of promoting would be through the use of social media applications such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Having a distribution company that is large can allow us to gain some audience, which is why I believe that joining a distribution company would benefit in promoting our film opening. My production techniques have drastically improved since we first started recording the film opening. First of all, I learn to place shots and angles into place. For example, we recorded the girl actor from below, which indicates power, and as I said before, she is a free-spirited and someone who lives in the moment. We used a lot of close shots of the faces and actions of our characters, which allows the audience to form a connection with the actors by allowing them to see their actions and emotions. We also implemented a lot of two shot, which showed the relationship and the emotional connection between our actors, as lovers in the film.
We also used an establishing shot of the city to exemplify the location of the opening, which is Miami. We also recorded a lot of back up footage, as Miami is a far drive from where we currently live, and returning might have not been an option. Luckily, this worked out perfectly to create fluidity in the film and it ended up in us having many wonderful panoramic shots of the city. This meant that we had finished the filming ahead of time, and that allowed us to finish with spare time to master the editing and our final post, the CCR. Lastly, the camera we rented from BECON-TV was amazing. It allowed us to film high quality shots and make our film opening seem a lot more professional. We had to learn many aspects, such as the sensitivity of the microphone, how to correctly set up the tripod, or how to fluidly zoom in and out. Through the use of hardware, my group and I integrated technology into our film. Apps like canva allowed us to create moodboards for the outfits we wanted our actors to wear. Internet applications like YouTube and Google allowed me to conduct background research on the rom-com/ indie romance genre, and recording videos on YouTube helped me on how to effectively shoot different shots, such as establishing shots or closing shots. A video that I watched on YouTube by RhinoCameraGear, was a concise video on the best way to shoot an establishing shot. This resulted in my group and I having an awesome establishing shot of the city and its train station. Finally, editing was the last process. I have never been good at editing, but Final Cut Pro allowed for easy accessibility and all the tools required to make our film look as clean and professional as possible. Like I said before, my group intended to use quick cuts to create the film opening seem quick paced, and Final Cut Pro made this very easy. Adding subtitles was a little hard though. We decided to implement subtitles as the song we are using, “Siempre Tu,” is in Spanish, and this might make it a little hard for our audience to understand the lyrics without the subtitles. The poem, which was made by Ana and was a voiceover from a mutual friend, was also in Spanish, from Eastern Spain. The accent gave a nice appeal to the film, which is the main reason why we decided to use Pau, our friend. Lastly, we used an application called LUTs, which I have never heard of before this project, which allowed us to add coloring to our film. There were thousands of options, and it took a very long time to figure out which one to go with, as Ana and I had narrowed it down to over 20 different shades, but we decided to go with a nice light pink, as it added a little bit of brightness to the film and gave it a nice aesthetic that both me and Ana liked. This is my final movie, I hope you guys enjoyed.
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