Today in review...

 Today was a decently busy day!

    I got to work early in the afternoon with a plan in mind: Do research and complete my planning to answer the first to compulsory questions in one video. I decided that in the enhanced podcast format, I would answer the first two questions provided by Cambridge:

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

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

Here are my notes/script:

    In this script, I also made sure to add small notes of what graphics to include so I could reference this paper later, and have a good idea of what to add in during editing

    Later in the afternoon, I began to film. As I had already created and practiced what to say, and my friend's(Nicole, who was filming with me) lines were very short, this process was very straightforward. Below, I will insert a picture of what our filming area looked like.

After a long time of researching, filming, and editing, this CCR is finally done. However, I have two questions I would like to ask my teacher before uploading my CCR, as I still must complete my second CCR(I will be completing this video tomorrow). I would like to ask if:

Do both CCRs need to be combined into one video and posted in one blog post?

And...

Do the citations go at the end of each CCR, or at the end of both videos combined?(This question will change depending on the answer of the question above.)

(I have all my websites to be created into citations saved safely on my phone, and I will be inserting the citations depending on what I am told in class.)

Soooo...for a quick recap of what is still left to do:

-Complete remaining CCR(and figure out exactly how to post it)

-Post the  final film opening(Alex is doing some finishing touches, and our film opening will be complete and ready tomorrow.)

Quick Review

     I hate to make it sound like I'm procrastinating...

    I thought I should share an update on my progress(and today's lack of...) and explain why! 

Today my friends and I celebrated my partner in this project, Alex's, birthday. We had a full, busy day and yes, I will admit, did not get any wok done. However, this is not a major worry for me. I was around both my group members, Alex and Andrea, all day, and we didn't have any worries. 

Our final video should be completed by tomorrow, as well as the filming for both(hopefully) of my CCR's. Tomorrow at around 2pm, my friend Nicole(mentioned in a previous podcast) will be helping me film one of my videos.

For this CCR, I plan to do a sit down podcast kind of video, in which we will be reviewing some questions in an interview format. The video would look something like these,(The Stiff Socks Podcast, or one of my personal favorites, Emergency Intercom.)

Unfortunate timing...

     Hi blog, this spring break has given me a lot of unexpected twists and turns, so I thought it would be best to explain in a post today.

    With the due date of the project approaching rapidly, I was planning on working diligently in the beginning days of this week to complete editing and create my CCRs. Unfortunately, I started feeling really sick on Tuesday and had almost completely lost my voice. I was speaking with a lot of struggle, and many words coming out no louder than a whisper. Come Wednesday and I went to see my doctor, and I was diagnosed with strep throat. I have since been taking my medicine and it isn't anything major, I've just really been struggling with trying to recover my voice. 

    Because the project is due in less than a week, I have become immensely stressed over being able to get my voice back and having enough time to film my CCRs. I have been mostly bedbound and am strictly leaving my house only for some doctors visits and passport renewal appointments. As I write this, my sickness seems to be getting better, and my voice is slowly but surely recovering. I have spoken with my friend Nicole, who has AICE Media Studies AS in a different period, and she has offered to help me film my CCR on Sunday, so that I hopefully have enough time to make a decent recovery before then, and have just enough time after to edit and post my CCRs.

    When I have been feeling more comfortable throughout the day, I have been slowly making progress on sound editing(I will insert an image below). I have honestly been procrastinating it, but I know this must be completed incredibly soon and this will not only affect me, but my partners as well.

    I know this is incredibly unfortunate timing, but I am trying to do my best in this situation. Until next time!

(On the left, you can see the notes created by my teammate, Alex, on what sound effects should be inserted and when. On the right, you can see the sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro that I am using to edit the sound.)

Minor Changes

 Today, we have made just a few small adjustments.

    As I mentioned in one of this week's blog posts, I found a font that I thought would make our video look more professional. However, Alex implemented into the video and... I'm not a fan.

    We agree that the curves and overall design of the font just looks a bit too childish and silly, and that it does not look bold or professional enough for our credits. To solve this issue, Alex was able to quickly find a new font, that looks very similar but has a more sleek, professional look. In combination with deciding production and distribution company names, our credits are almost complete...

    Now, the only thing missing is actor names! For safety reasons, we decided it would be best not to use our own names for the actor names, as well as for aesthetic reasons, as our names would be repeated in the credits. We tried to use Artificial Intelligence to help us out, as seen below, and well... these names weren't too great. Alex and Andrea will be trying to find more inspiration and develop these actor names, so I will come back and update you guys in a future blog in the next few days! 

    Last but not least, Alex finally completed the editing in which the text messages show up on screen, in which I mentioned in a blog a few weeks back.

    I'm a fan of how it looks, but if I'm honest, in the video, I wish the text messages would show up individually. Although Alex is the video editor, I may try to edit this part on my own just to lighten the load, and try to aesthetically improve our project. I feel like improving this would also make our project look better because it will include more advanced editing techniques.

Production and Distribution Company

 As I am reviewing how our video is currently, I decided to take on the issue that my partners and I had not yet decided on names for either our production or distribution companies. Using https://www.shopify.com/tools/business-name-generator , I was able to generate names for both of these companies. Since this website is prompt-based, I will show my results below.

In the image, highlighted were the potential options we liked as a group(red highlight for the production company, yellow highlight for the distribution company). We settled on 'Silver Screen' for our production company, and Reel Magic Entertainment' for distribution. Our conversation can be seen below.

Alex will soon be adding these company names into the credits of our film opening, and I'll get to editing sound soon!

Preview to our final video

     Good news! Alex has made great progress with the editing of our film opening. Unfortunately, Alex is going on a cruise for the week, so we are making a few pointers of things we would like to change in our film opening. Without revealing too much of the film, I will point out some things I want to change.

    The most critical thing I want to change is the font in which our credits are written in. This can be easily changed, and I just think we can replace this standard font with a more bold font like this one. I think a more bold and sleek font is a quick and easy change, but it would make our video look much more professional and nice looking.

    The only other thing I commented for Alex to fix in editing was the length of some clips, but Alex already fixed that quickly! I honestly greatly appreciate her so much as a work partner, as she is so compliant and easy to work with. Thank you, Alex!

    Due to scheduling complications, Alex should be done fixing these little things within the weekend, but I won't rush her as these are quick and easy fixes.

Editing Techniques

    Now that we have finished filming, we are moving into the editing stages of this project. We have decided to divide editing between me and Alex, where she is editing the video and I am editing the sound. Alex has experience with editing videos, so we decided to split the workload because I created a soundscape project earlier this year and we were all content with the sound editing skills I showcased in the project. As of today, Thursday, March 14th, Alex has already begun editing the video. As soon as she completes the editing, I will be sent the video and work on editing its audio.

    We have also been trying to brainstorm and discuss a few ideas to either implement in our video. We want to film just one more clip(described below) to make some scene transitions smoother together.

    Another idea we plan to apply in our film opening through editing is to make text messages appear on the screen.  We have filmed scenes with Mara(played by Alex) on her phone, in which we plan on making text messages show up. This will help make our film opening unique and create visual interest for our audience. The image below shows how this technique will look.

    Alex is still currently editing, but if we continue to follow our schedule, we should be complete with editing soon.

CCR Introductions

 Today in class we had a lesson, in which we learned all about our Creative Critical Reflections for the portfolio project. In my notes, I covered most of the important aspects that you need to know.

In class after learning about the CCR questions, I tried to brainstorm ideas for the creative pieces in which we answer the CCR questions. I know that there have to be TWO pieces, but so far I have only come up with one idea that I would like to play around with. 

One kind of interview that I have seen with many celebrities are known as The Puppy(or occasionally Kitten) Interviews from Buzzfeed, in which celebrities are interviewed while playing with small puppies. Not only does this create an enjoyable video for a viewer to watch because there are cute dogs running around the screen, but also it creates visual interest because there is movement on screen with the dogs running around, rather then the actor just plainly answering interview questions.

Here is a link to access a playlist of these interviews, and embedded below is an example of one of these interviews.

This idea is only potential, but if I were to follow through with this, I am dog-sitting a dog named 'Io' for a month, and this should give me time to film my CCR with Io. Additionally, my partner for this portfolio project, Alex, said that If I do follow through with this idea, I ca also film with her dog, Baci. I will insert images of both Io and Baci.

Filming

Today was the day!

    So, today we finally filmed! It took us about 5 hours, with some laughs, snacks, and breaks included. We started filming at around 2pm, but luckily, daylight savings time has just begun and the sun set right when we finished filming all the scenes that required daylight just in time for the sun to set (which was around 7:30 pm.)

    We only had one MAJOR change today caused by scheduling conflicts, but we were able to solve it. Originally, our actor for Bella was my friend Andreina, but she was unable to come, as both she and I just got back from a 3-day school trip for our French competitions(Go Cypress!!). With some convincing, our friend Gabriela(Gaby) was able to take the position. So, today our actors were as follows: Andrea as Valerie, Alex as Mara, Gaby as Isabella, and myself on cinematography(with help from those who were not being filmed depending on the shot). Our filming did really go well, with no major hiccups, and we all had a good day. Coming up next is video and sound editing, which will be completed by me and Alex. More to come soon!

(Here are some pictures from the filming)

5 stages of grief

The 5 Stages of Grief-and how we want to implement them in our film opening.

In class earlier this week, my partners and I we’re discussing ideas for the very ending of our opening, when I remembered how the movie ‘La La Land’ is split into different seasons, and I came up with an idea.

Rather than split our film into seasons, I proposed to that we split our film into 5, deriving from the five stages of grief. This way, we could do something similar to ‘La La Land’ and write on the screen which stage of grief Valerie is experiencing at the time.
While we were originally planning on showcasing Valerie sometime after her sister's death, using grief as a divider will make this much more clear.


Grief is the most emotional time when a person is suffering the loss of a loved one, so in this point of the movie, Valerie will be more depressed and upset, as she is only just beginning her journey of accepting this death. In our film opening, we will only briefly show Valerie's suffering, but the audience will see enough to understand the deepness of her pain. A clear and easy way of showing grief is like crying and releasing emotions, so we plan to implementing this into our film opening.

Mise-en-scene

 Mise-en-scene is a major part of developing a film, however there are a lot of different aspects of mise-en-scene, and not each one is relevant to our particular film opening.

    Originally, I thought that lighting would be an important aspect in our film opening, and we as a group 

The most important mise-en-scene for our film opening are:

-location/set design

-costume design & makeup

    For the location/set design, we are filming entirely inside Andrea's house, using her and her parents' room for the sisters' rooms. We plan on decorating the rooms to look more 'girly' by using pillows and throw blankets and other small accessories that would commonly be seen in a teenage girl's room. Below is somewhat of a tour of Andrea's house, showing all the rooms that we may film in, depending on what angles we use when filming. The filming location is nothing out of this world, as it not meant to be the focus of our film opening. Similarly, we are focusing on the use of natural lighting for our film opening. Originally, we were planning on making a contrast in the sisters by using lighting and color, such as using blue lightning to show sadness versus orange lighting to show happiness. However, after discussing our teacher, we decided against this because it would be difficult for the viewer to watch. To emphasize the character's contrasting emotions, we will focus on costume design instead.

Costume Design:

    I think we will style Mara in a dark, baggy outfit like this to emphasize her sadness and somewhat of a disinterest in looking presentable.

For Valerie, as a group we have not discussed an outfit, but I believe we will do a simple basic outfit, in order to show how she is just like any regular teenager. I will insert inspiration below.

We will most likely have both characters with little to no makeup, as we are going for a more natural look. However, one of our actors,  Andreina, is very talented in doing makeup so there may be a little bit of makeup to show the characters emotion.

Here is an example of natural makeup:

Film Opening Research

 Film Openings: Samples and Interesting Techniques Found

The film opening that has supplied a majority of my inspiration for our film opening is the one of The Virgin Suicides. While it obviously covers the topic of a teenage girl's suicide, which is relevant to my film opening, I was also always attracted to the entire film and its opening, as it introduces the aesthetic of the piece nicely while still being able to provide context for the story. The opening uses text on the screen stylistically to provide context and add visual appeal, which I would like to use in my film opening. 

The opening also uses dialogue sparingly, choosing strong phrases to really impact the audience, such as "Obviously doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl." Dialogue like this is used to evoke emotions in its audience. In this case, it makes you feel sorry for the character, as she is suffering in life from such a young age and feels misunderstood. By using strong dialogue in my own film opening, I will be able to somewhat manipulate the audience's emotions, making them feel bad for the characters in my film opening, and making them want to continue watching.

My absolute favorite part of this film's opening is the title card. I really just like how it looks. As it repeatedly shows the title of the film in different fonts, it gives a very 'cute' feeling and somewhat of a girly vibe to the opening, which helps to introduce that the target audience of the film is more focused towards the female gender.