CCR

Here is my Creative Critical Reflection for my film "Valid"

Watch it HERE

Finished Opening!

I am extremely happy to present my group's finished film opening, "Valid"

Click HERE to watch it!

Project Reflection

My project has taken a couple of unexpected turns since my group first started. When we first had our opening concept and ideas we didn't know it yet but we were way in over our heads. We started with the concept of a schizophrenic girl who uses art to control her illness. We were really into this idea and even had a little storyboard down but after receiving input from our peers and teacher we knew we were thinking way too big and representation would be extremely hard for us. After a couple of hours of thinking of new ideas we came up with something we have all experienced to a certain degree or know someone who has, this idea is "Social Media Addiction" we spent a bit polishing the idea and went into pre-production thinking more realistic than we would have if we had not thought of the schizophrenia idea first. We spent a lot of time trying to make an empty room in Oliver's house look natural and like a real bedroom but to no avail. Katherine spent a considerable amount of time setting her room up and killed it with mise-en-scene so we switched our setting to her room. During this time The Coronavirus scare was beginning, this led to not being able to buy more props and perfect our set, even with all the problems Corona caused we were still able to find a day to film and Katherine absolutely nailed the set and acting even though we were not able to buy any of the props we wanted. After this, I set up a station in my office at home where Oliver and I could edit the opening. When Corona got worse both Oliver and I were stuck in our houses so it was up to me to finish the edit. We were able to communicate online and Oliver was still able to help me edit from a distance. I have seen my production skills and creativity grow a ton during this project and it also helped me come up with solutions on the fly. I made sure to get some feedback from others before I sent out the opening to my partners and with that being finished I am extremely relieved and happy that our opening turned out the way it did. It was a nice change from the usual projects I am given in my school courses.

Our Final Edit

Hello! I am not sure if I mentioned it previously but I despise editing. I have learned through many projects that I like being behind the scenes and not in the spotlight. However, editing is the exception,  I love learning SFX and implementing them but I find line editing extremely monotonous and not fun in the slightest. Our group perfectly navigated this by deciding to have Oliver who is a great editor do all the line editing with my creative oversight. Due to The Coronavirus, this put us in a position where I would be the only one finishing the final edit that Oliver started. My main method of voice communication is an application called discord that I love using. One of the program's features allows somebody to stream their monitor and audio to someone else in a call while you are talking to them. Using this Oliver was able to guide me through the process and make the whole situation a little less painful. After we got it to a good point and Oliver had to go to work I called up my close friends Ryan Orejarena and Nick Ramos to get their opinions so the final product would be as polished as possible. Using their advice I was able to polish my color grading and audio to make our final edit. If anyone from discord is reading this please sponsor me.

The CCR

For my CCR I have decided to record a video of myself while bringing up relevant pictures and videos when they are necessary. I think this will be the most personal option while also not being boring as I am going to bring in pictures and videos so the viewer won't be tired of watching. For my equipment, I will be editing once again with my favorite software Premiere Pro 2019 and using my webcam which is a 1080p Logitech C920 for my main recording of me talking as I do not own a camera other than my phone.

Logitech C920

Premiere Pro 2019

CCR Review

For my CCR I plan to review some key points given to me by my teacher. I want to address them now so I can work them into my script.


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

• My film opening takes on the issue of social media addiction and the effect it can have on people
• Our opening represents social media addiction as a bad thing as it can pull you in and stop you from having real interaction with those around you.

-How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

• Our opening engages with the audience by facing a very real and current issue that affects a large number of young adults and teens.
• Our film would be distributed by small film festivals and video sites like youtube.

-How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

• My production skills developed heavily with time management and filming in a short timeframe. 

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

• We used a DSLR for our hardware
• For other technologies we used Whatsapp to communicate, Blogger to document our progress, Premiere Pro to edit, and YouTube to find more information on the production.

A Talk About Editing

I realized I haven't gone in-depth yet about my editing process so I wanted to address that a little bit. The software I have been using for editing is Adobe Premiere Pro 2019. I chose to use the 2019 version over the 2020 version as the 2020 version is still relatively new and has its fair share of bugs. I have sufficient experience with Premiere Pro as I had been taking film and television programs for the last 4 years that allowed me to become more skilled at editing.

Our Premiere Timeline

CCR Ramblings

With the due date for our project nearing fast, I started to think about my CCR and how I want to present it. In class our teacher talked about being original and that we shouldn’t just sit in front of a camera and ramble on. For my CCR what I am thinking of doing for now is a commentary where I incorporate little drawings that I make really simply in ms paint interlaced with actual pictures. I think that something like this would be pretty personalized as it is the reflection as I see it. Thats my plan right now but I am going to work on it for a bit and see what else I can come up with.

Prequel to my Cabin Fever

I wasn’t too sad about missing school at first but as the quarantine continues I find myself missing school more and more. I like to come up with random electronic projects and being around a lot of people led to some really funny ideas for me to make. Being stuck at home is really killing my creativity for now since I don’t have a ton of people to draw inspiration from or bounce ideas off of. I have been watching Netflix’s series “Drive To Survive” for now since that keeps me pretty entertained. Also, our AICE Media Studies class had our first online meeting and it was pretty interesting. We all were able to give our weekly media recommendations which allowed for a bit or normality in this weird time.

Corona Part 2

There hasnt been much work on our opening since our last post. We have been continuing talks of how we want our editing pacing to be and what fonts we are going to use for the final edit. From now on it looks like I am an online student because of corona. Meeting up in person now is really hard because of the social distancing we are following for the time being. Looks like even my group is going online for now.

I am bored.

Hello, No new news on the project today. School is still closed and I wish this whole thing could end already. At my current job my position is no longer needed as there is not enough people in the restaurant to justify it so it looks like i will have a lot of free time this week. Enough bad news though! The place Oliver works wants to hire me! I put in my two weeks and I am pretty excited to start working with Oliver. I wish I had more to write about the project but hopefully my personal news will suffice.

Editing commences

With filming done the next step is to edit together the video. Oliver and I are both very experienced with Premiere Pro so we are using that. As I said in the last posting, Oliver's computer is not strong enough to run Premiere so he convinced his parents to come over to my house. I grabbed another powerful computer I had so we are able to have workstations. We started working on a rough draft and got a basic timeline set up before Oliver had to go to work. Oliver is a better editor than I am so he is doing the tedious work and I am working on fine tuning and working off his ideas.

Our very messy workstation (with my cat Moe)

Filming Complete

Hey, OUR FILMING IS DONE!!!! I am extremely happy with how it came out. We started filming at around 11am and finished at 3pm. We had a ton of fun filming and Katherine's mise-en-scene she did in her room was fantastic. Oliver's camera battery has a pretty small capacity so it died a couple times while filming and we had to take breaks and charge it. But other than that it went great and I am so relieved it is over. With the coronavirus having everyone paranoid I can only hope Oliver is able to come over and edit as his computer is not strong enough to edit.

Here is our finished set, we moved over to Katherine's bedroom as it would be easier to make believable

Basically the Black Plague

Ok, so this post is going to be a depressive heap of our problems, I really wish I didn't have to make this. Currently this corona-virus is bringing a lot to a halt in my area. Oliver was the first victim of it without even being infected with his competition cancellation and now it seems like the whole world is up in flames. I am hoping this won't affect us too horribly but going shopping for props and such is going to be less than ideal. If any of us catch this I don't even want to think about the consequences this will have on our project. After reading this back I think I should worry more about the real consequences this could have that aren't just school. The only thing I can do now though is just take precautions and hope the next post is filled with happiness.

Film Opening Name

VALID

One decision that I have not made a post about yet is our film opening title. We wanted our title to be simple and to the point. We went through a lot of different names and iterations but ended up with the title Valid for the time being. For my groups last project we made a wacky indie band called Super Cyberpunk Space Cowboy Band, yeah the name is a bit excessive. It worked with our target audience though, just how that long crazy name worked with its audience I feel that having such a basic and simple title will resonate more with the teenage audience our film would be marketed towards.

Script DONE

Our group finished writing our script for our opening. This will allow us to spend less time filming as we already have our characters script finished and our actor Katherine is practicing the lines to allow our filming to go as efficiently as possible

Int. Photo Studio- morning

CAMILLE is on the phone talking with a friend. A bunch of clothes sprawled along the floor can be seen, and there are smudges of makeup on the mirror.

CAMILLE

What do you want?...No I don't think I can today, I need to make a post... Yes again! I can't just not post, I'll lose followers... ok, ok, I'll see if I can... sure, whatever.

She hangs up and takes a few selfies. Disgusted with the photos, she begins frantically adjusting her outfit and changing in and out of clothes.

CAMILLE

(turning to mirror)

Ew my thighs...it's fine.

CAMILLE dashes to her makeup desk and starts applying makeup. She screws up when she starts applying mascara and then proceeds to aggressively rub off her makeup. She then runs back to the mirror to take more selfies. Each photo she takes looks worse and worse, and she finally cracks down.

CAMILLE

Ugh fuck I can't do this!

She chucks her phone across the room and flips her makeup table in a fit.

Int. Photo Studio- Later During the day

CAMILLE is wearing sweats with disheveled makeup, scrolling through her cracked phone. She's scrolling through instagram accounts of famous social media influencers. Feeling hopeless, she starts crying.

New Schedule

My group has figured out a new schedule after not being able to meet our previous filming date, one of our reasons for trying to film so early is that our group member Oliver had to compete at a television competition called STN in Washington D.C. Oliver was supposed to be gone until March 16th so we wanted to have a headstart. The trip was cancelled midway through because of coronavirus so Oliver returned early. This allowed us to have some talks about our overall vision while drinking Milk tea at a local Korean restaurant.

New Schedule:

March 17th - Finish Filming

March 23-28 - Editing

Visual Storyboard

Hello everyone! We have reached a big step in planning that I believe will be extremely beneficial when we film on our revised date of March 17th. The director of Lil Nas X's "Panini" music video, Mike Diva talks about how he uses visual storyboards with his cell phone to map out a video before he shoots it in this video. I really liked his method and it is also similar to a project we did in our AICE Media Studies class at the start of the year where we made a storyboard with only photos. After being inspired by Mike Diva's pre-production techniques I mentioned it to my group and we worked on it today. We are still deciding how we are going to convey our final shots but here is a slideshow of our visual storyboard for our opening.

A bit of our set!

Hello! Today's blog is going to be a short one as not much has happened between the last posting and now. Today Katherine and I had a really short time frame to go to Oliver's house and arrange his room to become a "Social Media Influencer's room". Our choice for the room consisted of blacks and creme colors while attempting to keep things minimalist. We chose these for the room based on influencers we studied, one thing not pictured is the large creme closet the room has. The bottom picture has already been changed a lot to remove the wooden table and stool and even add a clothing rack to the side. We will not make our filming time of tomorrow so we will improve on our room and do a visual storyboard.

Storyboard Draft Complete

For today and the next 2 days my group will be meeting up to get more work done on our opening. Today's meeting was based solely around our storyboard and what direction we think our opening should go in. It took us a while since we took so many snack breaks but in the end I am pretty happy with our storyboard and now that we have it done our filming should be much easier. During our meeting we also discussed the room layout and how we want to design it. We ordered some props, one big one being a clothing rack to have on the side of the room.

Below is a collection of our storyboard and some of our planning papers. There is a lot of pictures so I did not want to clutter my blog page with all of them

Planning Papers Album

Group Meeting Feedback

Today in class we had the opportunity to discuss our current film opening progress with our peers. Getting an inside look at how other people are furthering their projects gave me a better idea of continuing with my own production. I think one of the biggest things that interested me was hearing other peoples problems. Now, this may sound counterproductive as learning about others problems won't help me create my opening. However, through learning about some group members struggles (one big one being set design) I am going to talk with my group and figure out how we can navigate further. With our current schedule we are set to begin filming on Sunday, after hearing about problems with others setting up their sets the day of filming I am going to try going to Oliver's house a day early to get our set finalized.

Plans in motion

Today my group was able to all meet up and finish our 1st draft for our film opening. This is really big for us as we are staying perfectly on schedule and organized. We also decided on a filming location of Oliver's spare room in his house, the room is mainly empty which will allow us to create our ideal set without many problems. Between the 3 of us, my group has a good amount of mise-en-scene elements for right now. We may have to do a small amount of shopping to make it exactly how we envision it though. That is pretty much the extent of our work today, I will be uploading pictures of our first storyboard draft tomorrow when I get them. I hope everyone is enjoying watching our journey and I hope you will not be disappointed with the final result!

Our story, but for real!

Im back again! This time i wanted to bring in the real story of Essena O’Neill that relates to our film opening plot. In case you haven’t read my previous posts, my film opening for my aice media studies class is going to be based around a online model and her toxic relationship with social media. This isn’t a crazy out of this world idea, here is it happening for real (Article) the model that speaks out against how people can become obsessed and absorbed in social media said “Without realizing, I’ve spent the majority of my teenage life succumbing to social media addiction, social approval, social status, and my physical appearance,” O’Neill wrote in an October 27th Instagram post. “Social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real. It’s a system based on social approval, likes, validation in views, success in followers. It’s perfectly orchestrated self-absorbed judgment.” This is perfect for how we want to present our story and we can continue to look at this her story as a reference.

Back to the beginning

Big updates on the opening! My group has collectively decided that we will stray away from our current film opening dealing with a schizophrenic character. We have come to this decision after getting outsider opinions and realizing the difficulty to properly convey the message while having correct representation. We are not at that level yet to stray that far out of our comfort zone but hopefully by the end of the year we are confident enough to take on more ambitious projects! Our revised idea is dealing with the perception of what you present yourself to be to the public and who you actually are. We are going to do this by telling the story of an Instagram model coming to terms with this and realizing the toxic relationship they have with social media.

In our new film opening idea we really want to introduce the character and the characters relationship with social media. Our current idea is that the character is struggling with seeming happy all the time on social media and in her posts. This is much easier to convey than a character dealing with schizophrenia and our new idea is much more relatable with a wider audience. This weekend my group is meeting up to discuss in more detail and I should have some first drafts of our storyboards up soon. We are thankfully still within our scheduled planning period so no corners will have to be cut for us.

Music Permissions

Hello! In this look into our project I want to focus on music! Music for our film is going to be really important in juxtaposing a sense of calm over the intense tone of the video. If we decided to not put in music there would be a lot of super quiet parts that feel.... well awkward to watch. Implementing music masks that awkwardness and will allow the viewer to to continue watching comfortably. Out of what we have found, the best music by far is FTA by Whitney. The problem with this is it is copyrighted music and we will require artist permission to use it in our video. However, with Whitney being a relatively new indie band (Formed in 2015) we are hoping they would be open to giving us permission to use the song in our film opening. Their use of the piano and guitar in the song is perfectly interlaced to create a feeling of homeliness. Have a listen for yourself below.

Plot Update!

With this week coming to a close, I met up with Oliver during lunch today and narrowed down the main plot idea and how we are going to present it. We want our film to be about a characters acceptance and overcoming of their schizophrenia through their art. Schizophrenic art can be really interesting as a lot of the time it has a uncomfortable feeling to it.

Schizophrenic Art

The idea of using art as a coping mechanism isn't an out of this world idea either. One girl, Kate Fenner draws her hallucinations and what her voices tell her to cope with her condition and bring awareness to it. In our film we want to focus a lot on the art as a form of catharsis. Oliver's drawing style would be easily adapted to fit this.

Oliver's Art Portfolio

Our group plans to have the storyboard draft done by the end of this week and then jump right in to wrapping up planning and begin our production. Updates coming soon!

Planning Updates!

Hey again! So between my last blog post and now we have began scheduling our overall proeuction outline. Our story planning is going to have to wait until we all meet up again as in person talks are much better for that type of thing. We wanted to set up a set schedule of what we will be doing on what days until our opening is due on April 5th. Having a set schedule would relieve a lot of stress so we don't have to rush certain parts of the project and can give each section(filming, editing, storyboarding, etc) the best amount of time possible. However, our group comes across a roadblock(hopefully this isn't foreshadowing things to come). Oliver and I both work about 4 days a week at different jobs. Our schedules conflict a lot and we only get our schedules a week in advance so planning a month ahead is difficult. I'm not looking forward to having this talk with my manager so soon after taking a ton of time off for my last project.

I really want to focus on proper planning for this video. In our last big project in AICE Media Studies AS I worked with Oliver and Katherine again on making a music campaign for a new band that we created(Summary of the project here). My biggest takeaway from that project was the importance of planning, for the music campaign our planning was pretty lackluster. This brought about a lot of stress and rush nearing the due date of the project and I do not wish to ever have to go through that again. We are collectively going to keep looking at dates to figure out our schedule and I will write an update on that when I have one.

Film Opening Plot Ideas

In class today my group made a rough outline of our plot for our film opening project. Our current idea is about an artist with schizophrenia. One other idea we discussed was a darker drama about a boy being blackmailed online. However, with the idea being so common and us wanting to take a more lighthearted approach, that idea was scrapped. We were talking about how we did not wanted to have accurate as possible representation and did not want to make people with schizophrenia seem like monsters as a lot of the internet does. We ended up finding a TED talk from someone with schizophrenia that helped us out.

Watching the video helped reinforce that our representation mattered heavily. We are going to continue doing our research on the disorder to narrow down how we can advance the plot. My group member Oliver is going to be talking with his AICE Psychology teacher to find out more info and get reputable sources of information. That is all I have to talk about for now but by my next posting I should hopefully have more information on our production.

Drama Film Openings

Hello! While doing research I on my genre I went out and watched some drama film openings to see how other films of the genre did it. Here are a two of the openings that I watched and my thoughts on them.

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather's opening was brilliant! While watching the opening a few different moments stood out to me. The first shot's lighting showed the mans face in a skeleton like manner. This could be showing that he feels like he is "dead" and all out of options. I really enjoyed this film opening as it perfectly demonstrated the genre of drama by introducing characters in a modern setting dealing with their human emotions and struggles. The opening also gives a good amount of introduction about the characters. The Godfather is shown playing with his cat which shows his inner kindness. He is also shown in a position of power by the mise-en-scene of where he is sitting. 

Moonlight (2016)

In this opening the character and his environment are both introduced. The smooth cinematography shows the characters comfort with the world around him. A lot of the environment is also shown by the man begging for drugs and the small homes with the old cars in the driveways. The environment is shown as a low income neighborhood. The man running along the street as the supporting character says "go get em" also gives a greater idea of where they live. The camera circles a lot giving an idea of the relationships of all the characters. The supporting character is also seen as a drug dealer, furthering the low income neighborhood environment.

Drama Genre Research

For my end of the year project, my group has decided to make a film opening in the drama genre. To begin our planning I have done some research on the genre and here is what I have found.

Films in the drama genre typically focus around the emotional development of realistic characters. Themes in the genre genre revolve around real life issues and problems. Drama films strive to tell a story of human struggle, whether it be against others or against themselves. Some of dramas popular sub genres are period piece, tragedy, romance, and political.

Production Techniques

A lot of the production techniques that are used to deliver an effective message in this genre are based around cinematography and acting. The actors need to be able to deliver their lines believably and seem immersed in the world around them. Use of space is going to be very important during filming for this genre as it can tell the viewers a lot about characters' relationships with things around them. Closeups can also be used to give the viewer a deeper look into the character.

Moonlight (2016)

12 Years A Slave (2013)

Ford V Ferrari (2019)

Finished Campaign!

Hello! Just last week I finished a music marketing campaign that I worked on alongside my 2 group members, Oliver and Katherine. We picked the song "Night Running" by Cage The Elephant. For our project we created a new artist called "Super Cyber-Punk Space Cowboy Band" and an identity around them as a new Alternative/Indie group.

While researching our genre we came to the conclusion that our audience would wall under the 16-25 years old range and target people that would consider themselves hippies or that don't follow the norm based on other bands with the same genre. We followed the trend of using twitter heavily for marketing. During our research we found that 80% of Twitter users are millennial which gives presence for our target audience Cage The Elephant, another Alternate/Indie artist has 9,345 tweets and tweets around 3 times a day. We also found that bands in this genre do not focus as much on the individual and instead focus on the aesthetics and ideas of the group as a whole.

We decided to develop the brand of our artist by following in the footsteps of Cage The Elephant and having a large social media presence. We wanted to market ourselves as a relatable and trendy group that our target audience could feel at home with. We are using twitter as our main social media where we constantly post teasers, Q&A sessions, and interact with fans. Our Instagram will be used as a place where fans could see more of our aesthetics. They are able to see this through promotional pictures and behind the scenes of whats happening currently.  

We also created a website that will be used as our hub for all information. Fans can find our newest videos,songs, more information about us, and even buy merch. Our website includes links to all of our social media so fans can find more of our content as the press of a button. Our band is selling low cost stickers, patches and vinyl of our branding as that type of low cost merch is popular among our target audience.

Throughout the making of the music video I learned how important time management and planning shots are. For the marketing campaign I learned just how important social media is in gaining a wider reach and gaining fans. By using what we learned from our mistakes I'm excited to see how our portfolio project that we are starting soon goes!