Project Components

 FILM FILE

The Life & Go Dept. Clinic

POSTCARD

Front

Back

File Link

SOCIAL MEDIA

Instagram Page

Critical Reflection

By telling an especially odd story alongside a heartfelt, earnest message, The Life & Go Dept. Clinic develops its theme of experiencing life without holding back while keeping its audience engaged. 

The Life & Go Dept. Clinic is built on the backs of inspired productions such as The Tatami Galaxy, Mind Game, and World of Tomorrow. These specific productions were researched since they explore similar themes, and together, each helped form a concise way to explore ‘Life & Go’s’ central message. Specifically, The Tatami Galaxy features its protagonist spending endless hours trapped in a universe made up of only his room, which impacted how ‘Life & Go’ would demonstrate its protagonist doing the same but in a more grounded setting. ‘Life & Go’ was also inspired by Stephen Spielberg’s use of staging, particularly in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg uses staging to tell a story of its own, forming connections and disconnections between characters and their environment. The use of staging is evident in the pan/tilt starting on the Life & Go Dept. Clinic’s business card then sweeping up to Jim and Cricket, forming a strong association between the prop and the characters. 

Many productions with similar themes often use a voiceover to dive deeper into a character’s psyche, like Mind Game, but ‘Life & Go’ challenges this convention by conveying the Protagonist’s internal struggle using only visuals with the occasional dialogue. This is seen when the Protagonist refuses to call his grandma; through context clues and the darker lighting alongside the Protagonist writhing in bed, the audience can assess the reasoning behind his behaviors. This is also seen when the Protagonist reflects on his life with the montage of childhood pictures inspired by The Bear. Being a ‘dramedy,’ The Life & Go Dept. Clinic does conform to the conventions of certain comedy productions, like The Nice Guys. Both productions feature an abrasive, comedic buddy-cop duo: for ‘Life & Go’ this is found in Jim and Cricket. Neither character carries much dramatic depth, but in terms of genre, they aid in the film's comedic tone in balance to its dense messaging. 

The Life & Go Dept. Clinic’s target audience are young adults in the age range 17-25, finishing or starting a new education, likely having a mid-range socioeconomic status. It is common, especially modernly with the abundance of distractions and instant gratification, for life to feel aimless or distant at this age. For the average first-world citizen, that is the time when one finds what they are going to do for the rest of their lives, a daunting task that can lead someone astray from experiencing life as it is. ‘Life & Go’s’ theme is most likely to connect with young adults facing similar struggles to the Protagonist.  

Already engaging its audience with its themes, ‘Life & Go’ continues to engage with its target audience through its Instagram page. Not only is Instagram a platform that young adults typically use, but also ‘Life & Go’s’ postings emphasize engagement with younger adults. Spotify and podcasts are popular with this target audience, so a cast and crew curated Spotify playlist was created to promote engagement, and the film itself, alongside featuring the cast on the 'FilmCast' podcast and posting clips to the Instagram page. Through these and through typical social media marketing postings, like posters, behind the scenes photos, trailers, and audience participation activities, the Instagram page can engage with its young adult audience.  

The film’s postcard continues to engage its audience with its straightforward and intriguing iconography through Jim and Cricket’s faces front and center along with their business card and a striking image of a hand holding up a heart on the back. The Instagram page also featured on the postcard continues to engage the audience.

‘Life & Go’s’ brand consists of its striking iconography alongside its theme of experiencing life. The film can develop the brand to its furthest extent through the business card and heart iconography alongside the messaging explored throughout, hitting its peak in the childhood montage sequence. The film itself is a development of its brand. The social media component does develop the brand but to a lesser extent. The most that the Instagram page can develop the theme is through the tagline, “The meaning of life is the verb,” being featured wherever possible (account bio, posters) and through the trailers. This could be improved through postings discussing the theme more in-depth at length; like interviews with the cast on what they think about the messaging. However, the film’s iconography is developed adequately, with many posts featuring the heart and business card props alongside promoting the characters.  

The postcard faces a similar issue with the social media page as the film's theme is difficult to develop in the medium. Although the tagline could be used here, its inclusion may clutter the postcard too much and make it much less engaging. Still, the film’s iconography is strongly developed through the grand images of Jim and Cricket and the heart. What lacks in the theme branding, these components make up for in the iconography branding through the striking props and characters. All components are successful in working together to develop the brand; this is most evident in every component using the same font (Garamond), keeping the production's branding consistent.

Regarding representation, ‘Life & Go’ does little to represent diverse minority groups. Representation of these groups was not an inherit focus of the film, still, stronger strides could have been made in casting a more diverse cast and changing how they are represented because of it. The main subject the film does represent is the struggle of many young adults to get out of self-sabotaging habits that limit their life. While they could go out and do fulfilling things with their time, they are instead trapped in a perpetual cycle of ‘rotting’ and self-pity. ‘Life & Go’ is successful in addressing the dangerous habit of doing nothing not only by depicting the Protagonist ‘rotting’ but by also addressing the issue as a life-or-death situation. This extreme way of illustrating the issue is effective in depicting the people influenced by the represented mindset, as to them it really is life or death; either they help themselves and live life or they do not do either. 

After working on the film and its components for about two months, I am fulfilled to say The Life & Go Dept. Clinic was a success. It has its flaws: the postcard and Instagram page could have developed the brand of experiencing life better, and with more time I may have been able to do so. Still, I believe that each component was a success, I am modestly proud of my work. I was able to communicate what I wanted to communicate through the film.  

done

Last day. All I really did today was finish the critical reflection essay. Pretty good I think. I also changed the film festival on my postcard to the Florida Film Festival because I realized the Miami Film Festival has a specific focus on Ibero-American films haha. I do think mine would still be technically eligible to enter but better safe than sorry right. Feels weird to be done but I am glad that I am. I'm tired. I liked working on this I liked how the movie turned out I had fun with the other components. I hope someone gets something out of all of this, that'd be cool. Good. Good job. Nothing profound to say unfortunately. Cheers xoxoxo 

oops! all corrupted!

 This has never happened to me before but all the videos we shot this weekend for the promos were corrupted. I think? Whenever I try to play them the video just doesn't play and it will not play. I got very worried very quickly. And y'know frustrated. I tried everything and nothing worked. Then I imported the video to CapCut out of sheer lack of any other options and while the video wasn't working, the audio was!!!! THANK GOD BRO. I think it might have been a storage issue, editing the film entirely on my phone along with every other app and file on my phone has made my phone very buggy the last week or so, really I should have seen this coming. Still I didn't know what to do with only audio until the idea of a podcast dawned on me. Now a podcast is arguably much worse promo material than an interview but at least it is something. I created a podcast visualizer so I have something to post on the Instagram instead of the bare audio and honestly I don't think it turned out too bad. Good on me for doing this improvised! 

Since most of the interviews required the video to make sense (we reference physical things and such) most of the clips were still unusable. So I had to think of more social media postings, I had the idea of character specific posts, so I made them. These would introduce the characters and promote them as a part of the film. I'll start writing my essay tomorrow and finish up everything on Wednesday and it should be good!

Also updated my postcard per my teacher's (Mrs. Stoklosa, shout out) advice, making the hand holding the heart bigger and removing the title from the front.

filmed promos

 I filmed promos yesterday with Ayami and Luis and it took much less time than I was expecting so that's great. We filmed a promo that's based off of Letterboxd's interviews where they ask actors/directors their top four favorite films. It's a cute idea that I think can work for this social media account. Also filmed us answering questions like our favorite moment on set or the hypothetical future of our characters, like something you would see in a cast interview on a talk show or something. Not sure how good the audio is going to be on that because we filmed without a mic (filmed far from phone, no long-distance mic available) but crossing that bridge when I get to it. Yah simple stuff! I'll edit all the promos tomorrow and post them up until Wednesday then do a final release teaser and that's that!

We also did a photo shoot where we recreated Willem Dafoe's odd poses but I'm not doing that, it's too silly and I must control myself. Still here's Ayami and Luis doing it. This is payback for Ayami posting a horrible picture of me on her blog..

postcard development

 Made the postcard! Very straightforward. I had taken pictures during shooting day so I just used those. I did have trouble with the front, specifically with the placement of the text in correlation with the text. I wanted the image to take up the entire cover but I wasn't sure how to do that in a way that showed Jim and Cricket in an effective manner while leaving enough space for the text not to feel awkward. After a while of resizing and cropping and moving I got this:

Not too bad I think, it works. I wanted to leave it mostly empty so the front isn't overcrowded and just gets to the point, here's the title, here's some of the characters, boom, yea.

For the back I chose the Miami Film Festival as the location where the film will be showing. I'm actually not sure if I am allowed to choose whichever film festival I want so that is subject to change! I'll check with my teacher (Mrs. Stoklosa, shout out) on Monday. Liked the image of the heart being held up since it is bold and (I think) intrigues whoever has the postcard as to what the film is about since someone is just holding up a heart. I understand that faces are engaging but I think this heart image works well, I will have to re-check with my teacher (Mrs. Stoklosa, shout out) on Monday.

teaser and finishing touches on film

 I had the idea for a teaser to post on the social media account: a short voiceover before quick cuts of clips set to fast paced jazz then cutting to the title card. I think it doesn't show much of the film but still captures it in a creative manner. So I did it. I used this royalty free jazz track. I also included a quiet riser just to really polish it out and gave it a "Coming this Spring" screen at the end cause that's what teasers do. Here's the link to the teaser post.

I also took the note about the flashback given to me during the group meeting and tried to find a way to make the flashback more apparent. I tried the riser sound that was recommended to me but it sounded a bit out of place so I had the idea of putting the first sound effect heard during the flashback a little earlier as a voiceover, in this case it was a mouse clicking sound effect. I was in between the two so I asked my friends in my class, Ale and Gabi, and he mouse click voiceover was decided on, so yea! I would post it on here but I've been having issues with posting videos on blogs, don't know why unfortunately. Already made plans for cast promos on Saturday and I'll develop exactly what those promos are until then alongside the postcard tomorrow.

last group meeting

Met with some of my classmates today and we discussed each other's projects. It was a pretty solid meeting all around, we all helped each other in places we were struggling and gave advice where we could. We watched my friend, Gabi's, documentary excerpt and gave feedback on it, I said it needed music and a more concrete intro. I also showed them my "finished" film for feedback. 

Here is the feedback I got:

- Riser on flashback(?)

- Make the flashback more apparent

That was it which is INSANE. WHAT?? I really can't believe that was it. The imposter syndrome is off the walls right now what the hell bro. Okay. Ok. I'm going to try a lot of stuff to make the flashback more apparent and I'll make a blog about that. I'm also planning to make about two trailers for the social media and I'll probably make the postcard on Thursday with Instagram posting throughout the week. I think this meeting has solidified what I have to do for this week and how I'll do it. Hopefully I can film cast interviews on Saturday and edit on Sunday then post until Wednesday. Then until then I'll post pre-production stuff, then move onto trailers and the cast stuff. Working on the essay from Sunday to Wednesday. I want to make fan engagement posts on social media but I'm not sure how to do that since the ideas that I have require the viewers to have already seen the film. I asked my teacher (Mrs. Stoklosa) (Shout out) what I should do to explain the fact that audiences had already seen the film despite it technically not being released and she said to just post it, no engagement needed. Great! Cool! Yay! I'm locking in this week.