Creative Critical Reflection

Hello all! This is my Creative Critical Reflection on my film opening "Valid."

Click here to watch

 I hope you all enjoy

Film Opening

Hello all!
After months of hard work and perseverance, I present to you all my film opening: Valid!

Click the link here to watch.

Hope you all enjoy!

Project Reflection

What started out as a film opening about an artist struggling with Schizophrenia to one about a social media influencer, has been this film opening project that my group and I have been working since February! As I come to see the ending of this project process, I look back and see how much my group and I have gone through and grown together. To be honest it's been a lot and I'm beyond pleased to have worked with the both Austin and Katherine for the time that I have. Katherine has been the creative mind and voice of common ground and reason when the two "dudes" were freaking out about what to do next and not only is she a great set designer, but actress as well. Austin has been the brains and technical guru throughout, as well as coming up with the finalized concept and edit of the project. And that leaves, me, who has proudly served as the cinematographer, equipment manager, and producer for our opening. Throughout the around two months this project took, I have seen myself learn that the inner workings behind making even a film opening is a lot easier said than done. Even though it is a lot of work, I never thought of it in the way I normally think of school projects (a chore). It was incredibly refreshing to have a project that challenged and drove me creatively to the point where I looked forward to working and adding to the production process.



As much as I will miss creating this film opening, I am incredibly relieved to have completed it all. All that's left is to finish my CCR and I. AM. DONE. Until next school year my people!

Eh-da-ting

Due to the distancing this quarantine and increasing regulation against social interaction from both my city and parents, the task of editing has been mainly bestowed upon Austin due to us beginning at his house where I have not seen since I began line editing. Austin has been working on various tweaks to be done for editing in the comfort of his own home by himself. Throughout the week, he would be giving my updates on to his progress until today when we decided to get on a Discord call to lay out our final touches on the opening ad for me to review what he has done so far.

Discord logo

The great thing about using Discord is that he could share his screen while in Adobe premiere so I could see exactly how the film has been edited and what we can do. It's as if there was no quarantine! 

The first cut of the film opening he showed me was more potential than polished. Which is where we discussed the addition of a different font, use of color grading, as well as helping him with something that would really help the opening get to the next level was our audio. We decided how to lay the audio tracks for the music, when to up the levels, and what sound effects we could add to help give the opening more depth when viewing. When shown to our friends and each other, the consensus was that all of these tweaks and changes helped make for a greater film opening that I am more than pleased to say has been finished editing. 

Source: Tenor

The final cut of the opening will be posted soon on my blog soon for everyone's viewing pleasure :)

CCR Update

Happy Friday to all! Hope everyone is doing well (all pandemic events considered). After a long complicated week online at school, I am beginning to work on my CCR and well...

Source: Giphy

There is a lot of information about the entire production process that I not only have to be able to discuss, but also do so in great detail. So as of now, I decided to break down the main four questions that I have to address in my CCR and outlined some notes on what to say. Here they are:

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
1. Genre was drama- character journey and change throughout film (we followed)
2. Social media influencers, as well as teenagers and young people (16-24). Deal with issues regarding social media portrayal and the negative effect the need for validation through these platforms can have
2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
1. Engages with audiences through use of relevant topics and issues in a way that can relate to viewers and create an effect/change in their lives. 
2. Would be distributed through streaming services due to prevalence in use by target audience
3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
1. Originally schizophrenia so planning to use trippy visuals and complex stuff
2. Production skills of camera work to convey a story were improved upon (working with tv and stn before helped). 
3. Research included use of color and mis-en-scene to help storytelling
4. Learned working with others better
4. How did you integrate technologies-software, hardware and online- into this project?
1. Technologies include my camera, tripod, (lighting supposed to)
2. Adobe, blogger, WHATSAPP

I will of course add more to the script and flesh it out further but this was done just to have a basis for how to script and go about writing my entire reflection. Will keep you guys posted on further updates to this script!

The Marathon Continues

Today, my teacher had set up an online class meeting to discuss all of our progress on our projects and relay us important information. What I had taken away from this meeting was that despite the pandemic and uncertainty of it all, there still will be a final assessment and to continue working on our projects despite whatever obstacles may arise. She continued to give us more information about how online learning will go from now on and to keep pushing forward in our work and to not let the online barrier push us back any further. This was a major reassurance to know that all of our hard work and perseverance through the entire portfolio project will be deserving at the end and will count for something. Additionally, there was a bit more pressure put upon us when she introduced the possibility that this portfolio project could by itself be our entire grade rather than just a portion of it that it used to be. Despite this I feel confident in me and my group's end product result; the only other deciding factor will be my Creative Critical Reflection in which I give an in-depth analysis about the entire project production process at large. I am excited to really delve into the depths of the hard work my team and I have accomplished together, but at the same time have been procrastinating writing it. Will give you all an update as to how I get this next milestone done (hopefully) very soon!

Brave New World

The time has come. It is the first day of distant learning. Up until this point and even today, most of my peers and I really had no idea how or if the transition to online learning would realistically work. It kinda felt like we were all left in the dark, however my teachers had sent numerous messages to me about how their classes would run and had already put up assignments for me to complete which really cleared up a lot of confusion. And how this day ended up all in all was: hectic.

(For me at least)

The online learning model has pulled back the strict and scheduled regimen that us students had to follow on regular school days and given us both the blessing and burden of organizing our own schedules. This wasn't necessarily the easiest thing for me to adjust to as I now wake up five hours later than I normally would for school and as soon as I do I have to jump into a meeting and begin my online assignments, which at this point (the starting point) seem to already be piling on top of one another. This experience really opened my eyes just in the course of a single day that I really need to discipline myself and organize my time for each subject and assignment or else it would be game over. So basically:

Current To Do List

As of right now, I have yet been able to return to Austin's house to continue editing with him and we still are not done. From my last post, the list of needs still hold true and here they are with their progress in bullet format:

• Add Credits-We have established our roles for credits and the order in which they will be presented in the opening, but have yet to edit them into the piece.
• Find Music-We have yet to find a definite song for use, but Katherine has been searching the past  few days for some strong candidates. It will be something suspenseful that can effectively convey the character's inner feelings and is something to be decided upon by all of us in the near future.
• Establish Font-For the font that we are to use for the credits and title card, we all agreed upon a font that would be very clean and sharp to be reminiscent of a font that would be used on a computer or mobile device. This helps to establish the tone for the film and Austin will be experimenting with different types of fonts and will let us know as to which ones will be strong contenders.

I am glad to have a sort of grocery list of tasks to accomplish for our film opening, especially since filming is not on there which relieves a lot of stress off my plate. Seeing it all written down with the progress we have made, does put a smile on my face...

*I hope the reference is understood.*

Progress on Editing

So, in terms of being able to meet up and edit, the times in which both Austin and I are able to have become few and far between due to the pandemic and increase in the practice of social distancing, isolation, and parents being more strict on my whereabouts. However, I was able to sneak in a visit to his house where we had established to be our location for editing. This is due to Austin having not only the most optimal computer and hardware, but also having the best editing software (Adobe Premier 2019). When I went to his house, I was able to complete the entirety of line editing for the opening before I had to leave. 

This puts us in a great track to complete everything on time with the rest of editing comprising of more or less what I like to call: "the seasoning." This includes the credits, what font to use, syncing up recorded audio, and the music and sound effects.

 And yes. That is our workplace.

How to Film a Mirror

During the filming process, there were a variety of techniques we had to implement in order to create our opening. One of the most unique and helpful happened when Austin and I had to film Katherine in front of a mirror taking mirror selfies for a scene. The only issue arises when the camera we were filming with and myself would show up in the reflection; therefore, ruining the shot. So we had to think on our feet and improvise how to overcome this obstacle, and that is exactly what we did.

I came up with the idea to have Katherine screen record her phone while taking pictures of herself in the mirror in various poses, so that while filming Katherine will just have to match the movement of herself in the video. This allows us to film herself and her phone in the mirror taking pictures without having the camera in the video which is exactly the shots that we needed.

We Filmed!

The long awaited day has come and we delivered as promised! We finished the filming phase of our project. We began at around 10:30 in the morning and took us until around 2:30 in the afternoon to wrap everything up. I would say it took longer than I expected but I had a feeling it would take at least three hours, considering how specific we would all be with shots and mis-en-scene. We began with all of the set design mainly set up from the day before thanks to Katherine and began filming right away after some quick debriefing between me and my team. It went by pretty smoothly considering our planned storyboards, script, and order of events that we have established over the past weeks.

I am incredibly satisfied with what we have filmed and the fact we finally overcame this milestone. Now, it's on to editing!