I couldn't think of a better way to end my first class at ITP. I am sincerely grateful to my teammates Tawania and Fen for pulling this together with me, and all of our talented friends who agreed to play along with us.
The idea for "Emotional IQ" evolved quite a bit over the course of the past week, even after we wrapped the shoot. Editing gave us the opportunity to really specify the characters and their relationship, even beyond the actors' (Amanda Wallace and Rel Holla) actual choices during the shoot.
We didn't write the script until after the rough edit, which was another place were we were able to tie up the narrative and complete the world we created for "Emotional IQ." I went into some heavy youtube research of pharmaceutical commercials and picked a couple of key elements to parody for the script, such as:
- There's never more than ~30% copy, while side effects fill the rest of the VO
- Side effects are eerily narrated in the same sing-songy voice as the ad copy, making it feel like it has the intention of subliminal suggestion since you sort of tune out of listening
-Unnatural emotional reveals
- Some sort of relationship tension that is relieved (suggesting onset of medication?)
- Weird "American nostalgia"
Rough draft crit was extraordinarily helpful, it revealed redundancies, that music would be a super important choice (we found ours on a royalty-free youtube video site called Alumo), and that voiceover would be a big driver as a professional polish on the project. I believe we checked all boxes.
It was especially fun to learn how to sneak around some continuity errors ;) Looking forward to sharing tomorrow, and receiving final critique. Thanks, Marina!