Keeping Up With CCR - Part 3

“Dearest gentle reader,” - Bridgerton 

The journey of the CCRs is almost at the end. Here, I present one of the most interesting questions (in my opinion)—question 3. In this question, we are to discuss how our production skills developed throughout this project. Before I even entered the AICE Media course, I had some knowledge about certain production techniques because I took classes in film and TV production. However, just being in these classes was not enough compared to the new knowledge I have gained in the course of media studies. Media studies taught me a range of materials that I wouldn't have thought of learning so soon, but within the production techniques, it allowed me to understand why certain techniques might have been done in a certain way. 

Moving into the time frame of my film opening, my skills have grown during this time as I get to work more often and learn from the other members in my group. For instance, before starting the film opening, I hadn't done anything film related as I am more of a news person. But, oh well, I had to break out of that shell. So, I did it by working with people that have a better knowledge on film and doing the extensive research that truly helped me in succeeding in the course of the project. There is a visible change in the process from the One Word Film (one of the first things this year) up to our film opening. For example, in the One Word Film, we made an error of me not being in frame:

 

But thanks to making that error during production early in the start, it taught me to be more careful. And especially as the Director of the film opening, I should be paying attention to the small details during the shooting time, so that there are no issues of having to reshoot a scene. 

Another skill that I have developed throughout this project is color grading. Even thought I am not the one color grading our whole film opening, I took the initiative to try it out and learn more about it, seeing videos and asking other people that may know it better how to do it. This all has help to improve my skills and know more on the steps to take for future projects. 

Overall, I feel like having this "big" project allowed me to learn more about the things I am capable of doing and experimenting on new things I wouldn't have thought of before. 

Keeping Up With CCR - Part 2

“Dearest gentle reader,” - Bridgerton 

After giving it some thought into the questions that I have to respond to, I have gotten the answers. Like I previously mentioned, throughout my two CCRs I have to answer in some way the four questions of: 

• Question 1: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
• Question 2: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
• Question 3: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
• Question 4: How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online in this project? 

In today's blog, I want to focus primarily on the answer for question 2. Answering these questions was no easy task, as I have taken time to reflect on every step of the way. And especially question 2 has two questions in one. Let's break it down...

1. How "Ataraxia" engages with audiences?
2. How would we distribute it?

So you might wonder how we engage with audiences...Well, first and foremost, our targeted audience is teenagers, we got to this as my group and I decided to have a teenager be the star of the show. Although our film has a sci-fi factor, the drama aspect of it all has a bigger part and tends to resonate with the younger generations on a deeper level. In Ataraxia, our girl Halley is going through a truly devastating time, which she just feels lost, alone, and is careless. Events like this happen often in teens' lives more than we think. In fact, since our film included the depression factor we took our time to do a bit of research about it and:

(3.1 million with major depression)

Being this said, we want to give audiences awareness of what can happen to individuals going through hard times and that no matter who they are, you should always give out a hand, especially when you see someone acting the way that is seen in Ataraxia. Our film opening engages with the side of the individual as the star, and our purpose was to share her way of acting, so that those going through something similar (without the planet part) can connect and feel seen. 

Moreover, the other question "how would we distribute it?", our film will be available on platforms like YouTube movies, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime. Besides being on the online platform, it would be shown at the Cypress Bay Lighting Festival, which is a film festival done by our school. Also, it was submitted to a Broward County program called Shortcuts, they accept student films, and if chosen, could be shown in their social media and other platforms. 

This is it for now, there were the answers for these specific questions. Stay tuned for the other questions and the final script for the two CCRs. My first CCR will be question 2 and question 4, so stay on the lookout for the script. 

Sources: 

Depression

Check in - Group meeting #2

“Dearest gentle reader,” - Bridgerton 

Today marks our second group meeting of our long long project. The groups changed as expected, and the topic of conversation as well, as we are in the last few weeks of our project (just thinking about it makes me nervous). So, this time my group consisted of 4 other students and their names are: Grace, Nina, Sebastian, and Justin. In my previous meeting, I had been with Sebastian and it was good to know how his film opening is coming together. 

This is the group and we talked for the most part about the CCR as that is the next step of the way. Before getting into too much about the CCR talk, let me tell you a little bit about the progress that each of the team members talked about. In the case of Grace, she told us that she is almost done and there are just some details that her group is finishing up. Then, Nina has almost everything, just some scenes to finish up and already in the edit. Justin shows us part of the raw footage and it looks interesting, and he asked us for an opinion about whether he should reshoot certain scenes, which is the most important. We suggested that it might be good to reshoot if that scene is really important to the purpose of his film. Lastly, Sebastian talked about the changes that were made from the idea at the start and what he actually filmed. 

As of the progress I shared, I asked if what we have so far made sense for the sequencing and the feedback was good. All of them liked it and agreed that it makes sense and all flows together. I am really proud of what my team has so far and it is looking good! 

The CCR talk...it was interesting to hear the different ideas that each of us had and also brainstorm on new ideas. It really helped me since I was having a block on what I could do and couldn't, but in reality, anything is valid, just that it should be creative as it is a Creative Reflection. There were different approaches like maybe doing an unboxing while talking about their film opening, and others I can't even remember. All the ideas really got me thinking and it was a great way to think about my own idea. 

Prepping for CCR

 “Dearest gentle reader,” - Bridgerton 

After all this week's work on the film opening, it is time to switch gears and think back on the process. It's time for the Creative Critical Reflection, also known as the CCR. During the journey of this step, I will be reflecting in my production choices within the planning, production, and final details. Within this project, the main thing I learned is that I can talk about my production in whichever way I would like, but overall it should be creative. 

I am still thinking of what would be my best fit, but some options that I have thought about are approaching it as if someone was doing an interview on me. Multiple types of interviews could be done. For example, an actual interview with only me talking and footage shows as I talk, or doing it like this type: 

It is the concept of the "most searched questions about you," which in my case would be about the film opening and if going with that approach, I would develop the script accordingly, and the process of the questions and answers. 

Moreover, in class I learned some of the elements that we have to include in our CCR, such as responding to four different questions. Here is a look at the notes I took:

For now, I will be focusing more on showing the notes for question one, as that is the one that I want to talk about right now. So question one focuses on talking about "How does my product use or challenge conventions, and how does it represent social groups or issues? 

Some of the things that would be covered in this question would be how film has a message and represents the concept of a teenage girl going through depression and conflicts in her life. Due to the conflict of the planet and earth, our film opening follows the sci-fi drama conventions of conflicts being present. 

Keep it going - editing!

“Dearest gentle reader,” - Bridgerton 

After starting the line edit of our film opening, other steps occur in the process, such as color grading, VFX, opening credits, and title credits. All these elements come into play to make our film opening a true film opening. Without further ado, let me talk about the color grading process of our film.

Here are some of the clips that we worked with, the before: 

Color grading was a big part of our project since there are both inside and outside scenes, not only that, but with the outside lighting that tends to change, so shots look a bit darker than others. Keeping this in mind, we had to work with different tools to achieve a cohesive look throughout the film. 

Part of the steps taken were white balancing the footage since some of it came out either blue or it had a hint of purple. To fix that issue, white balancing was a great help as well as playing with the tint and saturation of the basic correction in Adobe Premiere. Some we had to turn up the warmth and greens, while others not as much. Another step into this process was getting the correct brightness, which means that we went back and forth between the contrast and the exposure to see what fit best. 

Here is the after by color correcting and color grading the clips: 

We are almost at the finish line with our film opening and can't wait to share it!

Getting started with editing!

  “Dearest gentle reader,” - Bridgerton 

It is official! Time to get the editing going... Before diving too deep on the editing part, I would like to talk about a few of the tools I will be using during this editing journey. First and foremost, the editing software that will be my best friend is Adobe Premiere Pro, I currently have the latest edition, which will be the one I will use to edit, (fun fact, I am Adobe Premiere certified). Other software that my group would be using for things such as the VFX effect would be Adobe After Effects and Blender. 

On the other hand, let me share some techniques that I used to stay organized in the process of editing. First thing I do is put all the footage into a folder and sort it by section to make my process easier. It is a technique that I have used in multiple projects and it usually works best for me. 

Here is how I divided the outside scenes into different sections to know where each thing would go in the timeline. For example, there are the car scenes and planet scenes which help me identify what each shot in those folders means. Another thing was making a folder for error shots and some extra scenes that we got, instead of deleting the bad scenes I put them in a folder to keep them there just in case and for the extra shots it just helps to know what is outside of our shot list and storyboards and whenever we need it is there to add it. 

Getting started in Adobe Premiere...

Step 1: Opening a project file 

Step 2: Importing the files into Premiere

Step 3: Start the project in the timeline

That's what I will share for now, more is coming sooner than you think!

Show the fit? - costume design

 “Dearest gentle reader,” - Bridgerton 

As I had said in a past blog, we were trying to figure out what Halley's style would be. Well, after going through costume design we found the perfect outfit. As I mentioned, we already got done with Day 1 of shooting most of the scenes and the finalized costume for Halley looked like this: 

                

To finalize the outfit, some digging was needed to find certain parts of it. However, some of the easiest items of the costume were the jeans and the shoes. The shoes ended up being some blue converse and the jeans were a little lighter than the ones we had thought about, but the important part of the jeans was to be baggy and we got that. In the case of the shirt, we had multiple options, such as a white one, and two black ones, but we decided that the one that she was wearing was going to be the best one for her character. For the aspect of her using her iconic headphones, we used my headphones, which are some cable JLB headphones, and we connected them to an iPod that Halley used when she listened to her music. Here is a visual of both items: 

 

So yea, this is what her outfit consisted of and soon you will be able to see how the film starts to come together! 

Uh Oh - we have a problem

“Dearest gentle reader,” - Bridgerton

Just like I said last time, there has been an obstacle within our process of Day 1...

During the filming of Day 1, we thought everything would go as planned and keep our selfs on track, but when we arrived at the location, there were certain obstacles with being able to film it all. SO, we got there and did the outside scenes first. When we were halfway through and ready to film the inside scenes, we asked for permission and it happened to be that there was no manager available that day. Meaning that we were not able to get permission and had to work around it, we were able to do a scene of Halley walking from the inside of the store to the outside. But besides that, nothing else was possible to do inside. However, it was not all bad, they just told us to come back another day and we will be able to film with the manager present. Sooo, stay tuned for a day two. 

Regardless of being able to just come back another day, there is another small issue with the schedule. Previously we had planned around the fact that our team is currently taking part in a national competition named Student Television Network, which means that if anything went wrong during day one, then we would have to adapt. So since we weren't able to get it all, we have to wait until we come back to be able to get back on track and finish it all. For now, we are going to work on what we have so far and soon be on the post-production. 

Here is a picture of the competition I am in: