Sunday, April 7, 2019

CCR

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3CKAu8JcBl5bkJwOEl1MXlEcVNUZWxVTFlyWGJMc20xMWIw/view?usp=sharing

FInal Video

Finally, after weeks of hard work, I am very happy to present our completed film opening, "Infatuation" Enjoy!!

Click here to watch!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nq2OxnICi3ugl1dqO2BLX2AQ8blaq7mc/view

Reflection

Overall, I think this was a very interesting process. I thought this whole project was very stressful and that we did not have sufficient time to do all of the necessary steps for the project, especially with the interruption of spring break and other heaping of work from all of our other classes. I am very happy with the way our project turned out, I just wish that we had a little more time so we could make the project perfect. I think the process was also very rewarding because I got to learn many new things about the production.

  • How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups
  • or issues?

-In our film, we have a female teenager as our lead. We tried to represent teenage love to a
heavy extreme, where the line crosses from attraction to obsession. In most stalker-based films
and tv shows, the male is the aggressor because he asserts his natural dominance over the
victimized female. For example, the recent Netflix TV show, “You,” follows a dominant male, Joe
Goldberg, who stalks a young woman named Guinevere Beck and develops an obsession revolving
around her that eventually leads to him murdering her “out of love.” This is a similar concept to our
film, except we challenged the status quo and made the female the dominant aggressor. It also
represents the issue of mental illness, because something in Lauren (our female lead)’s head
causes her obsession to spin out of control. We tried to represent her mental illness through the
overlap in the voiceover when she says the word “crazy” and it repeats as it fades into the rest of the
film


  • How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
-Our product engages with audiences because the suspense attracts an audience, especially the
target audience of teenage girls. Although in reality, people do not go to the same extremes as it
does in our film, there is a very relatable theme of teen love or having a crush that is present in the film
opening. Most teenage girls can relate to developing a crush while in high school, and the suspense in
the movie draws them in. A technique that we thought would be effective is showing the result of the film
at the beginning. The outcome of the plot is that Lauren ends up killing Christian. This was revealed
in the very beginning of the film, and then the audience is left wondering about the events that led to the
murder. This technique was seen in the movie “The Escape Room” where one of the very last scenes, of
the final escape room, was shown in the first seconds of the film, and the duration of the film showed the
events that led to that scene, with plot twists at the end of the film following the repeated scene of the final
escape room. If the film progressed, we would followthis same technique. If the film were distributed as a
real media film, we would want it to be presented in movie theatres and would target advertising towards teenage females. So we would display mini trailers on social media and before Youtube videos,
and then full trailers before movies in a similar genre of teen drama.


  • How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
-At the beginning of this project, my skill level for production was very very very low. However, throughout
the project, my group members and I learned from each other and combined our strengths to improve our
production skills. A large part in the development of my skills included the rented camera equipment from a
local tv station, Becon TV. We were able to rent a camera and lighting, and as we learned the ins and outs
of the equipment, we developed our skills in production. It was very interesting to apply techniques that we
learned in class, such as the impact of different camera angles, to our film opening. Through collaboration
with my group members and other peers in our class with more advanced skills prior to this project, I was
able to increase my personal production skills.


  • How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

-We integrated technology into the project with our editing software, Wondershare Filmora9. We previously
purchased this software for another project in this class and became familiar with this editing software.
This software allows us to accomplish all of our editing goals and capture the vision we had for our film.
This software allowed us to have clean transitions, an eerie filter effect, and time our voice overs effectively.

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Sound issues and CCR instructions

Hi blog! I have been stressing out a lot because I have not been able to do any work this whole week. It was a very relaxing and fun week, but now the work is starting to catch up to me. I have just gotten back from my vacation over spring break and have finally regained cell service. I was finally able to communicate with my group members again about where we are in the project. The editing is almost finished, however, after we have started editing, we quickly learned that the sounds that we got from filming in the forest scene were not of great quality. We needed a way to fix this issue because we could not refilm all of the scenes to get the sounds, and we are very nervous that any sounds we insert into the films, such as panting, footsteps, or trees rustling, may not have the exact timing and pacing as the scenes we have filmed. Lauren was able to record herself running and we are going to insert those sounds into the film, however, the timing is not perfect. I am hoping that after we find royalty free music and add in the music, as well as add in the voiceover, the sounds will blend together. Below is the script that Lauren has recorded for the voiceover for the film.



I thought the most productive thing I can do today before school starts back up is to review what I have to do for the CCR. I am very confused about the whole concept of the CCR and what I have to do. I am also confused about how I have to make the CCR. I am thinking that I will make a screencast or voiceover with a prezi or powerpoint where I discuss the decisions we made about our film. I am going to talk with my classmates and ask how they plan on creating their CCR. This is going to be a very hectic week. I have multiple tests and quizzes and I wish we had more time to complete this project, especially the individual portions such as the CCR and reflection posts.

Monday, March 25, 2019

Spring break editing

Thankfully, after a long and hard 3rd quarter, spring break is finally here!!! Although spring break technically started a couple days ago, I leave for vacation early tomorrow morning. Lauren has already left for her vacation, and Callie leaves Wednesday. I am very very excited to go on vacation, however, this week will not be very productive for our project. I will be on out of the country and will not come back until late Sunday night. I won't have any service for the 5 days so I will be unable to work on the project. This is a very major roadblock to our film because Lauren has been away for days and has been enjoying her vacation so she not been communicating with Callie and I about the project. She comes back from her vacation around the same time that Callie and I both leave for our vacations so we won't have any time to communicate with Lauren about what is left to do for the project. Thankfully, most of the project is already edited, and we are very ahead of our other classmates. We were able to stay on track with our original schedule, which allows us to enjoy our spring break and not have to worry about falling behind with the project.

After a long discussion through text messages, our group has decided to take our classmates' advice and go against our original outline for our film. We are going to shuffle the two original parts of the film and intertwine the two scenes to make it look more like a film opening than a trailer. The editing process has been difficult so far because we organized all of the scenes on Callie's laptop according to the original outline, so now we have to dig for the scenes and be creative on how we want to shuffle the scenes. We think the best method is trial and error and playing it by ear, rather than rewrite a new outline. We are going to see which order of the clips flows the best and the continue from there. Our goal is to not have to refilm any of the scenes because we have already returned the rented equipment and are unsure if we can get the same camera, and different cameras may lead to inconsistencies within our film. We have edited a good portion of our film using this technique of trial and error, so we are ahead of most of our classmates, which is very relieving because Callie and I will be unable to work on the project for the remainder of spring break, and Lauren is unable to get the footage and editing software off of Callie's computer.

Friday, March 22, 2019

Peer Review pt 2

Hi blog!! This is the last class meeting before spring break, where Lauren, Callie and I will all be away on vacation and unable to really focus on our film. Today in class we had another peer review session, and since the last session was very useful, I was excited to get some input from our classmates after we had already filmed our scenes. Lauren wasn't in class today, but Callie and I tried to reach out to as many of our classmates as we could to get some great feedback.

First, we watched some footage from some of our classmates' films and looked at their blogs to see their progress, and it was very reassuring to know that we were right on track with many of the other groups in our class. We then shared our own ideas with our classmates. We went through our blog posts and showed them our progress, and then showed some raw footage that we filmed. Since the footage was unedited, we had to explain the storyline in depth to our classmates. We were told by one of our classmates that the scenes we shot were good; however, our storyline for our film opening had too much action in it and seemed more like a trailer than a film opening. He suggested maybe shuffling the scenes from part one and part two to make it look more like an opening. Callie thinks this is a good idea, but I still like the original storyline, and maybe instead just having the title sequence play through the second part to make it seem more like an opening, rather than a trailer. We both decided that we would have to talk to Lauren about what she thought, as well. When we get back from spring break we are all going to have a group talk about how we think we should edit the film.

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Reviewing scenes in class

Today in class we reviewed the scenes that we filmed from day 2 and day 3. All of the scenes looked really good and really captured our vision for the film opening! I’m really happy with the way they all cane out and we had surplus shots, so we are able to pick the best ones when we start to edit. Speaking of editing, we have researched a bunch of different editing softwares and we were between using iMovie and Wondershare filmora9. There were pros and cons to both softwares. Imovie was free to use, however we found it to be very limiting in the techniques we were hoping to use. Wondershare filmora9 was more advanced and allowed us more freedom with editing, however it was not free to use. In the end we decided to go with the latter and split the cost of the editing software. We can’t wait to start editing and see our film come to life!!