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