Podcast


About this Podcast:

Join Hannah, Jamie, Dasha, and Alex on a journey to discover how different movie directors may impact a film, specifically dissecting the differences between character design of movies directed by men and women. How does the gender of a movie director matter for the outcome of the movie? Come with us as we discuss the impact of this question through modern-day superhero movies.

Relevant Content:

Harley Quinn from the movie “Suicide Squad”.
Harley Quinn from the movie “Birds of Prey”.
Black Widow from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Black Widow from “Black Widow”.
Scarlet Witch
Wanda in WandaVision.

Podcaster Bios:

Alex Chen

Hi my name is Alex Chen, I am currently a senior at Mountain View high school. I am interested in becoming a filmmaker and my future plans are to work with my brothers to create our own content and hopefully get our own Netflix series. Since our topic was about the comparison of female and male gazes in the movie industry, I found it appropriate to talk on this podcast and share my own ideas. Outside of my academic life, I enjoy listening to music and playing basketball.

Jamie Maclean

Hi, Iā€™m Jamie Maclean and I am an 18 year old senior at Los Altos high school. In my free time, I love to create and listen to music, create films, and play badminton. After high school, I plan to go to university but Iā€™m still exploring different areas that I might want to study in. I had a lot of fun recording this podcast and it really gave me a new perspective on how films are created.

Hannah Kitamura

Hi, my name is Hannah Kitamura and I am a senior at Los Altos High School. I have been participating in performing and visual arts since I was a kid, which is how I fell in love with the entertainment industry. Having both experienced the technical and acting aspect of entertainment, I hope to pursue a career in the entertainment industry, whether itā€™s in film and television, or in theatre.

Darya Korepanova

Hello! My name is Darya Korepanova and I am a senior attending Los Altos High School. I have had an interest in art since a very young age, and have been determined to pursue a creative career ever since first grade. Although I focus more on visual design rather than film, I wanted to explore the topic of how costume design effects an audienceā€™s perception of a movie in order to learn more about how these topics can apply to my future work (such as advertisements and product design, for example). Apart from being knee deep in art, I also enjoy hiking and roller skating.

Introduction:

We decided to do the podcast project in order to learn another incredible storytelling medium. Podcasts can be made with a wide range of styles, from fantasy storytelling to interviews on serious topics. We learned how to use sound and effective structuring to convey an idea to the audience, and how listening to speech can be more engaging than reading it to yourself. Since we donā€™t only have control of the words, but the sounds and tones as well, it makes it a lot easier to convey the mood to the audience. Podcasts can also be found everywhere, theyā€™re usually free and can be found on most public platforms such as SoundCloud and Youtube. With it being so widely available, it made sense to learn how to make an effective podcast.
Our inspiration for the podcast was superhero movies in general. As you may have noticed, movies directed by different directors tend to have strong differences in order to pander to a certain audience. We thought it may be interesting to discuss these different tactics through different perspectives, by having two women and two men discuss their views on how effective or ineffective the strategies are.

Process:

Jamie and Darya reading through the script seconds before recording audio.
The group records the podcast together on a couch, using a couch pillow as a stand for the recorder.
An example of what editing looks like in ProTools. Displayed here is an example of how one checks the waveforms of the audio and normalizes them.