Character Development

                                               Character Development

How we came up with the name Avery Dawson 

 

We needed a name for our character. As we wanted her name to not be too common, but also not too unknown. We wanted her name to represent her as both a character and a personality.  We considered various names, such as Amanda, Riley, Abby, and others.  From the time that we came up with the character, just her need to make the first letter of her name an A.  We thought of the name Avery. The name itself is interpreted as meaning "wise". Being associated with wisdom and nature, the name fitted right with our character.

Who is Avery? 

Avery is a seventeen-year-old girl who is actually more reserved and quieter. She is a senior in high school and has one best friend, Raven. Both her best friend and Avery spend the majority of their time together doing typical teenage hobbies. Avery, as far as personality, enjoys art, music, and reading. They have a strained relationship, but Avery doesn't pay too much attention to their time spent together. Overall, our character is a typical quiet girl next door.

Avery Friend.

Also, for her friend's name, we thought about it for a while. We wanted her friend's name to mean something if it was written backwards. While searching, we came across the name Raven, which is spelled backwards, Nevar. Jade had the idea that this would fit perfectly, as our character is meant to write something on the wall of the cell she is trapped in, yet we could never figure out what Avery would write. But Jade came up with the idea that "Nevar" sounds like the word "Never." Since we want our character to look unstable and crazy in some way, having Avery repeatedly write the word Nevar on the wall will give that specific look that my group and I want to project towards the audience. The Nevar name stands out in our film.

 

So, How Did We Get Here? 

 Avery Dawson to be involved in murder, one could say. Let alone a seventeen-year-old is an even head-scratching thought. Not wanted or by choice, but Avery has barely to no recollection of the events that happened on the horrible day of the murder. On this day, it was Avery's eighteenth birthday. With not many plans and her mother is going out of town for the week, she plans to hang out with her best friend. Although Avery was in goods spirit, it seemed something was notably off with her best friend. 

 

Avery Memory is very fuzzy about how she got into this murder and how she is somehow responsible. From the time Avery was brought in for questioning, it was chaos. She didn't have her guardian to assist with questioning, no lawyer, no concrete alibi, just the scrambled recollection of details left in her memory. She felt defeated and miserable that no one would believe her account or story. Yet that's not enough to convince Officer Garcia, the head officer of the case of this peculiar case. Officer Garcia is in charge of overseeing Avery Dawson temporarily in his unit facility. He begins to feel a sense of eeriness and mental insanity from Avery as she scribbles Nevar and tallies all over the walls. 

 

                           Media Theory

Today, I will be talking about the media theory that my group and I have chosen to use in my project, as well as why we chose it. 

There is a lot of different media theories use and that represents how Media is viewed. These theories help develop a further understanding and are displayed throughout in the many different media platforms.  It can be shown on television, in films, by production companies, in marketing, and even on media platforms in the media world. The diverse media theories help us understand how the media world is not only being displayed, but also the thoughts of the concept of what is going on behind the through the behind of the media world is. The knowledge helps open up the awareness that these media theorists develop in their findings of the media.

The media theory that we have chosen to put in my film is the Gender Performativity by Judith Butler. The theory talks about how gender roles are not natural concepts constructed within our society, but rather the repetition within the media world of how their roles are understood. This media theory shows the aspect of my first representations of being a woman in a mental state. Most people think of a female as mentally unstable because of cracks in their marriage, stress, or motherhood. These cause broadcasts that all women's mental instability isn't clearly correct, as there are many reasons, many fall into a mental state. But this "collective understanding" of how can this woman, who is unknown to the viewers, is mentally unstable, and the reasons why she is.

We have chosen this theory because of our point of view that most horror films have mainly a male main character. But there are many movies that have used women as their main focus, and there are still female characters given to the female roles. The stereotypical but "collective" viewpoint of the specific gender roles seen in the elements of media. Our overall goals for our film it will be the viewers' determination in a sense that the beginning portion of the film to understand her reasoning for being trapped in a mentally and physically challenging state. While the opening will give a key understanding of the characters, it will not show much detail of the answer.

Butler's theory is a basic of how the media portrays these societal roles of gender within our everyday lives.

References

Dr. Jordan B Cooper. (2024, May 17). Judith Butler on Gender Performativity (Makers of the Modern World). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuCbcAhU0ig

Welcome To Zscaler Directory Authentication. (2026). Azquotes.com. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1203889

Script and Storyboard

                  Script and Storyboard

This week, my group and I were working together on the script and storyboard for our film, Static. 

My group and I were thinking about the storyboard and script, " How can we portray a clear understanding of the plot, context, as well as purpose within our film?"  A mystery film, while creating mystery and suspense within its genre it can continue with clues or details in its plot throughout the entire story. Given the time restriction in this project, my group will not be able film a lot of scenes. But our ultimate goal is to create a captivating mystery film opening that intrigues the viewer without giving a lot of details away. This makes the storyline more fun and playful.

At the beginning of our film will be the credit sequence.  Our sequence will have a lot of shots of our main protagonist, Avery.  We got an inspiration from the film Vertigo, that creates by Hitchcock, the film's opening sequence of extreme close-ups and panning of a woman's face.  We chose this inspiration to be appealing to the viewers.  We want to use a lot of camera techniques to make the viewer feel connected to Avery. And we are going to use a lot of editing and playing with lighting with our camera techniques, set design, sound, and costume design, so our ultimate goal is to show an eerie prison cell that leads to more questions for the viewer of what is going to happen next. It will make it easy to film.

 

In our script, we have put the Production Name and Company Name with the credits of the people responding. We have broken down our script into four flashbacks.  The scenes are in order of it happening. We chose to make the script for our film on dialogue since it is the best way for us to follow.

The Summary of My Portfolio Project

   The Summary of My Portfolio Project  

Today, I am going to summarize my group project ultimately goal and vision of our group project, which is a two-minute film opening.

                                                                                 Poster made by Jade

Our film project is called Static, made by the JEC Productions company. Static film will focus on a young teenage girl named Avery, who has been put in prison temporarily as she is waiting for an investigation into a murder that happened to people close to her to get investigation.  With her waiting on the law enforcement and also to get the results of her Alibi back, she begins to go into a state of mental insanity in her prison cell as the horror from the terrible night circles inside of her mind. Officer Garcia is the head officer of crimes, who is responsible for this murder. Over this school year, my group and I learn camera, visual, and auditory techniques to be able to create engaging film. We also researched films such as Se7en, Vertigo, The Sixth Sense, and Pyscho that have huge references to display in our film. For the next few weeks, my group and I will be sharing some of the progress we have made in some practice clips of the filming and directing our two-minute film opening.

Group meeting #1

                                   Group meeting # 1

In one of the classes this week, my teacher put us into group meetings to talk about the Portfolio project. In the meeting, I was put into a group with 7 other students, and the main thing that we had to work on was to share our story ideas for the two-minute film opening with each other and learn from one another's feedback and ideas. My group included my classmates Aranteza, Lydia, Andreas, JP, Mateos, Elie, and Amanda.

   

       

      Aranteza- She was the third person to share her plot, which was a coming-of-age film intro. Her film will be about two best friends getting ready to go to college in the summer.  One of the best friends dies, and the other best friend has to live without her best friend and go to college by herself. She didn't know how she would show how or why the best friend dies. We advise her to make the dead best friend look sick or act sick. Or hint at what happened to her. She didn't have a lot of her story down.

      Lydia- She was the fourth person to share her plot, which was a Sci -Fi film intro. Her film will be about this scientist who is working on a technique glasses. When he put it on, he saw 5 days into the future, and he saw that he had died. That is all she had. She asked us what we would add to make the film longer. We advise her to show the scientist take off the glasses and look nervous, locking all of the doors. She said that the scientist was murdered, but he doesn't know that he was murdered.

     Andreas- She was the second person to share her plot, which was a post-dystopian film intro.  Her film will be about a woman walking alone on an abandoned street. The woman is looking through the trash, and she finds a jewel. She throws it into the ground. Show that the jewel is not the most valuable thing in the world, but food is. Then it goes to a family eating, and there was a police officer who offered a man. One of the family members closed the blinds.  We help her but advise her to make the woman and the girl in the family the same people to connect in the film. 

      JP- He was the fifth person to share his plot, which was a thriller film intro. His film will be about a guy getting bullied. It will show the boy getting bullied. Then the boy kills his bully. JP said that he and his group wanted the boy to stab his bully to death. But we advise him to make the boy hit his bully with a rock on his head because it is more realistic. JP said he didn't know how the murder would happen.

  Mateos- He was the sixth person to share his plot, which was a crime film intro. His film will be about a crime family. The main character will be the narrator. He will be introducing us to his family member and the crimes that they have committed. He told us that that's all he has for the intro. We advise him to show a little sneak bit of the crimes that they have committed. 

      Elie - She was the seventh person to share her plot, which was a mystery/thriller. Her film will be about a therapist working with a very crazy and traumatized kid. She had barely anything to her film. We advise her to make the kid connect in some way.

  Amanda- She was the last person to share her plot, which was a sports/coming-of-age film intro. Her film will be about a girl practicing taekwondo. She is trying to do a hard move. She had a flashback of her doing a lot of things in a successful way. She tries to move but she breaks her foot. Then it goes to her in her room, and her mom is telling her. She should go back to practicing taekwondo. 

I was the first person to share my plot. They advise me on how to transition from scene to scene. And what to add to the story.

Three Film Openings

                     Three Film Openings

 

The Importance of Film -

Film openings are important to be able to build the tone of the story that the film will be about. The openings need to immediately engage the viewers and set the world's tone. It hooks into the theme and engages viewers to join forces in a grand entertainment experience for the key characters and themselves. Spreading the mood, genre, and overall piece helps control the expectations for the viewer more clearly. For our genre, Mystery, it creates suspense and a strong opening that resound and creates a sense of wanting to find out more about the plot since it creates "mystery" within the opening.

Films-

Glass Onion -A Knives Out (2022)-

 Knives Out is a mystery film that has a modern "whodunnit," directed by Rian Johnson, that goes from a suffrage aesthetic from gothic New England to a private island of a tech billionaire, Miles Bron, in Greece. The film functions as a sharp social irony of the "disruptor "class, in a group of high-profile friends that includes a politician, a scientist, and a fashion mogul, who were invited to the private island for a staged murder mystery game that turned lethal. The detective Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, remains the sole returning character.  A massive unit cast featuring Edward Norton, Janelle Monae, and Kate Hudson, the film's theme that is based on intellectual property, and the terms to which the elite will go to protect their fame. 

Knives Out starts with a split-screen creating the main suspects getting a massive wooden puzzle box. So, in the opening, a celebrity guest called Yo-Yo Ma, explains the musical concept of a melody that has been layered on top of itself until it gets to transform.  The film's narrative gets into loops, back to the beginning, to show the same events of the film from a different point of view. The opening lets me learn everything about the people in suspects before they even get to speak. One of the characters is a wild party, another is a politician in a frantic office, and another is a scientist. They have their methods of solving the box telegraph their roles in the coming murder. The character Andi simply smashes her box with a hammer.

 

Death on the Nile(2022)-

Death on the Nile is a mystery film that has served as a luxurious follow-up to the Murder on the Orient Express, centering on Agatha Christie's iconic Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. The opening is a traditional whodunnits, beginning with a black and white World War I introduction that acts as an "origin story" for the Poirot's nature and his famous mustache, showing that his facial hair was grown into a hide scar from the battlefields.  In the opening, it starts with Poirot's personal trauma and the loss of his love, Katherine, the film starts with a central theme of obsessive love in the mirrors that the suspects he will encounters on the S.S. Karnak in Egypt. 

Death of the Nile starts with a black-and-white sequence in the trenches of World War I. It provides a literal "origin story" for Poirot's famous hair. We see a young Poirot use his grey cells to foreshadow a gas attack. He succussed.  And by starting with the mud and blood of war, it signals that this isn't a "cozy" mystery. It shows that Poirot is not just a genius, a but a man who is defined by loss. It has sharply cut from the grey trenches and a vibrant, 1930s jazz club. It shows the same human violence Poirot has seen in the war.

A Haunting in Venice(2023) -

A Haunting in Venice is a mystery film that starts immediately with a shift from traditional mystery into a Gothic horror through the film's use of twisted cinematography and a somber, retired Hercule Poirot. The film showcases Poirot's self-imposed exile, the place where he lives a rigid, isolated life protected by a bodyguard. It is his own deep disappointment with the humanity following the war. The tone is shattered by the arrival of Ariadne Oliver, who has lured him to a crumbling, cursed palazzo on the All-Hallows' Eve to witness by a mysterious medium.

A Haunting in Venice starts with a radical shift in Poirot's character and with visual language. It shows Poirot in a sun-soaked but lonely Venice, eating in silence while his bodyguard keeps the people away. The film uses a lot of Dutch angles to create a sense of unease in the film. The mystery begins when the writer Ariadne Oliver arrives. She challenges him to solve a case she claims is truly unexplainable. The opening of the film effectively tricks the viewers into wondering if they keep watching a ghost story or a murder mystery; it is a tension that sustains the plot.

A Haunting in Venice(2023) - - Search Videos. (n.d.). Www.bing.com. Retrieved February 1, 2026, from https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=A+Haunting+in+Venice(2023)+-&&mid=93691483ED780AD8BB9A93691483ED780AD8BB9A&churl=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2-BeLxzUBSs0uSrmzWhJuQ&FORM=VAMGZC

Death on the Nile opening film - Search Videos. (n.d.). Www.bing.com. Retrieved February 1, 2026, from https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=Death+on+the+Nile++opening+film&&mid=6311DCA038B713BADC996311DCA038B713BADC99&churl=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K8UrRQZuwohg2a_K7GFAw&FORM=VCGVRP

Pen English. (2022, December 23). Glass Onion - Solving The invitation part 1. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsM_prTGJjg

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Prop/Set design

                         Prop/Set design

 My group and I were wondering how we could make our design. We first thought of just filming it in a dark room of one of our houses. Our second thought was to film in an all-white room, just like an asylum does. For the first idea, it would be hard to see and have good lighting. Our final idea was to film the two-minute opening in a garage and buy different props. The garage has the best lights for our film.

Our props were a hospital gown, backdrops, walkie talkie, and Emma's dog gate. So, we would build the set design. One of the backdrops would be next to a wall so the actor of our film could pretend to be writing on the wall and be able to write on the wall. The main actor will have a lot of makeup that makes her look very tired and crazy. We would put a mattress in the set to make it look somewhat like an asylum or a prison. The walkie-talkie is for the police officers. We are going to make the hospital gown look very old and bad. To show that she has been there for a long time. We are also buying light to make police lights from a car in one of her flashbacks.