IMM Senior Thesis – Fall 2019

My project has a few key areas of study that will lead to my final presentation. The most important components of my project are video and entrepreneurship. For my project I have broken video down into two categories. “Commercial video” in this case is a term that can be used to describe any video created working with another person or business for a specific price. “Creative video” in this case is a term that can be used to describe any video not made for immediate financial gain. For my final presentation I want to have both elements displayed. Right now I have a goal set of 3 short films(5-20 minutes long) and 10 commercial videos, among the goals that come along with attempting to build an actual business.

What I have learned about creative video and short films: Through research I have found that there are a few key steps to script-writing. First is the ideation process and basic outline for your story. In this step you decide generally what is going to happen in your story, the characters, etc. Next up is the character development phase. In this stage you decide exactly who your characters are, what their background is, their mannerisms, how they speak, etc. From there you are able to write out a detailed script based around your character development and your general story that you have outlined. Once there is a finalized script, you can move to your storyboarding, which is a visual representation of how your shots are going to be framed, and what is going to happen in them. Finally you just have to find your actors, actresses, and your location.

I wanted to learn exactly what goes in to script-writing so that when it comes time to make a short film I will have an organized process that I can follow. What I have found is that a scene in a script is composed of some very basic elements, and is streamlined for efficiency. I have broken this down into 4 pieces, setting/time of day, characters, action, and dialogue.

Eg.

Int: Bedroom, night. Blue light from computer monitors fills a corner of the room.

Camera pans from a shot of the room to Jim at his desk.

Desk is covered in disheveled papers and empty water bottles.

Jim types furiously at his keyboard. He stops and looks at his watch.

Jim

This is ridiculous!

Entrepreneurship and small businesses: I have also been gathering statistics about small businesses in New Jersey that connect to the entrepreneurship part of my project. I have gathered two pieces of data that are very important to me. First, according to the 2018 small business profile from the U.S Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, in 2018 there were 861,373 small businesses. This is important to me because my LLC will be working directly with small businesses. The next statistic I have found is from Richard Carufel of Agility PR Solutions who has found that 38 percent of small businesses do not have social media. This means that around 327,321 small businesses have no social media or content online. That is my market. 320,000 small businesses sounds like a big number but in reality that number is going to be significantly less when the type of small business is considered. Not every business is going to be compatible with my LLC or the work we do. However there is still a massive amount of potential business to be done.

For starting up I have looked into an online service called “legalzoom” that is great for media based businesses. I picked out a package for obtaining my LLC, EIN, Operating agreement, and a few other little things. I learned that this package is going to run me about $400-$500 which isn’t terrible considering that amount can be made back easily in selling 1-3 videos at a cheap price. The other major component I am going to have written up is basic work contracts. This is just going to be an agreement between my LLC and the small business I am working for on pre-determined amount or a pre-determined hourly rate for my work. Either way this contract is an important piece of the business and when it has been drawn up once as a template in can be re-used for future jobs which is very helpful to the process.

I’ve been researching and preparing to take on my main character puppets. I need to make sure I know what I’m doing before I start them because faux fur is a lot different than the nylon fleece I used for my prototype puppet, and also a lot more expensive. I bought some tutorials from Project Puppet, and have started watching those and practicing stitches while I wait for my faux fur to arrive from the Etsy seller.

I’m feeling pretty nervous about finally taking on the actual characters in the show. I’m afraid that the image in my head just won’t happen, and I’ll feel like I don’t have control over the product. Whenever I’m feeling creatively anxious or blocked, I read Lynda Barry, who is a famous cartoonist, painter, writer, etc. (and just won the MacArthur Genius grant), so I’m including that in my research as well. She has a quote about how young people stop drawing when they can’t get their drawing to look like the vision in their head. She says, “Well, that’s impossible. The thing in your head is not a drawing.” I’m trying to take a similar attitude to these puppets, and release a little control. I won’t know what details and designs are possible until I try to do it. I’ve pulled back a little in designing every detail in paper and pencil, because a drawing is not a puppet! The limitations of working with fabric, thread, etc. will always push the design in another direction, and that’s ok.

As I work on the technical parts of my project, I’m also working on researching the tone and themes of my pilot. While my plot and script are final enough to work on characters and rough sets, I’m still looking for ways to improve the dialogue and puppeteering. I’ve been working off of the list of research topics on my previous post to try and perfect the balance between audiences that the referenced shows achieved. I’ve also been reading Making A Good Script Great by Linda Seger.

Next research update, I’ll have the beginning of one of my main characters and some lessons learned from my theme and tone research.

For the first part of my research I looked for articles based on electronic waste. I want to focus my project more towards the contributions technology has to recycling and the damaging effects to the planet. The article I found The Global Cost of Electronic Waste published by The Atlantic in 2016 discusses Apple products and the continuous replacing of perfectly good devices we do. Apple sells millions of new iPhones when the new generation is released, replacing perfectly good recent models. This is because everyone wants the “new” fad. After having an iPhone for a year or two, it could possibly show signs of wear such as glass may be cracked, the home button could stick, etc. However, few people choose to repair their phones over getting an upgrade. Not only phones are being thrown out at slight inconvenience, tablets, laptops, music players, etc are being wasted and thrown away because of laziness or a lust for the future. Throwing away thousands of electronic devices has several effects on the ecosystem. First, it increases mini and procurement for the materials that are needed to produce the devices. It also produces large quantities of electronic waste which could be reduced through resale, reuse, or repair. The quantity and speed of discarded electronics has increased quickly over the years, being far from when households would keep their tv’s for more than a year. “As per the report of ENDS Europe agency, built-in obsolescence increased the proportions of all units sold to replace defective appliances from 3.5 percent in 2004 to 8.3 percent in 2012. The share of large household appliances that had to be replaced within the first five years grew from 7 percent of total replacements in 2004 to 13 percent in 2013. According to a 2014 Gallup poll, 89 percent of young adults (18 to 29) own smartphones; 41 percent of the older generation owned VCRs at the same age.” 

By having this increase in need for devices, it has made the manufacturing inexpensive and repairing them more difficult. Companies also have increasingly ended support for older models of phones with old operating systems. WhatsApp and Facebook announced they will stop providing support for apps on certain models of Blackberry. Not only does this have to do with portable electronic devices, printer manufacturers realized they can make more money selling ink and toner than the printer itself. “According to a Financial Times report, a gallon of ink for the typical printer costs the consumer around $8,000. But the prices of printers are so low that once their initial ink supply is spent, the consumer is tempted to buy a whole new machine” The concept of steering customers to buy new items by reducing their lifespan of products is nothing new. In 1924, Phoebus made sure that lightbulbs did not exceed their expected life span of 1,000 hours. 

Electronic waste raises concern about air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, information security, and human exploitation. When scavengers burn electronic waste to get the copper, air can be polluted, and if it’s not disposed properly toxins from electronic waste can enter soil and water supplies. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/the-global-cost-of-electronic-waste/502019/