Film Opening & CCR Links!

Film Opening

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CCR #1

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CCR #2 

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Final Reflection (yay!)

 We're finally done! I'm so happy to be done with this project, we worked so hard and we're honestly to proud of our work so you better love it. I learned a lot from this that I wasn't expecting. 

I knew that I didn't want to do this project by myself because I was going to get overwhelmed, so having a partner helped me lessen my workload and kept me motivated (since I was doing it for both of us obviously.) 

I took film in middle school, but we never went as in depth as we did in this class and I learned so much. I learned about different aspects of film and what goes into the creation (before, during, and after) of a film. 

I had to fix my time management for this project (since I usually put things off for the last minute,) because I knew there were so many things I had to do each week and stay on track to not get overwhelmed. I think I did a good job with this and even became less of a procrastinator with everything I do!

Even though we had 8 weeks to do this project, it went by so fast. I had to much fun spending so much time with my partner since she's one of my best friends. The time we got to spend doing it together and the memories we made are some I'll always remember. 

Lucia and I on our last day of the project

CCR post production

Editing my first CCR, the interrogation, was much easier that I thought. I just went by the questions and answers making sure they were in the right order and added in all the extra details I needed. I had my script and my blog open to make sure I was following them in the order I had planned and It went really smoothly. 

As I was editing my second CCR, the podcast, all I had to do was find a music I liked and pick out the sound clips from my project that I wanted to include. I downloaded the recordings from my phone to my laptop of the actual podcast and just worked around them to add in all the audio clips that I had to include. The hardest part of the podcast for me was creating the ad, I just couldn't come up with an idea, so I left it for the end and included it last. I placed it in the middle of the podcast between the two questions. 

CCR production

For the production of my first CCR, the interrogation, I filmed in my garage (which by the way felt like a million degrees so you should appreciate my commitment) to get the abandoned back room vibe. I used lighting that I had from a while ago and filmed it on my phone, looking at my laptop for my script every once in a while. I forgot to take pictures of this process while I was in the actual garage since I was too focused on the fact that the motion sensing light kept turning on and was ruining my shot, but I vlogged a little behind the scenes moment when I realized I forgot in my room explaining everything I used. If you watch it, don't judge my appearance please, I was very tired from the boiling garage and the long school day I'd had.  

Vlog Link!

 For the production of my second CCR, the podcast, I already had my script written since I included it in my blog, so all I had to do was record my parts. I used the pic on my headphones and recorded at home when my parents were out and my sister was asleep, so there wouldn't be any background noise. It didn't take that long, since I had the script. If I didn't like how I said something, or if I wanted it to be different, I just re did it really quick and changed the vice memo (where I filmed the audio clips.) This was the quickest part of the entire project, because I knew exactly what I was doing. 

Creative Critical Reflection Prep: Question #4

 For the fourth question of my CCR, I need to be sure to answer all parts. The question is already broken down, so I just need to be sure to cover all of it in my answer. I wrote down the points I want to cover for each. 

Hardware

• We filmed our project on our iPhones, we had to change phones depending on battery, but for the most part we filmed it all on the same one. 
• We used flashlights for lighting because we were already going to include them in the scene so it was convenient. 
• there isn't any dialogue, so mics weren't necessary in our film. 

Software

• We used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our entire opening - sound, lighting, color, credits, etc. 
• Blogger was used to plan the entire project and keep us organized.

Online

• I used different online sources for research.
• We got all of our music and sound effects from the YouTube audio library and other online sound resources. 

Script

- ad break - 

transition music

Me: I want to talk more about what actually went into the production process of our project. We used various different technologies to get the result we wanted: hardware, software, and online technology. 

For hardware, we tried to keep it simple so we wouldn't have that many things to handle. We used our phone camera to film and the flashlights we were using as props for lighting. 

For software, we used Adobe Premiere Pro for all of our editing, so sound, color, lighting, etc. and planned on our Blogger blogs. 

Finally, we used various online sources for things like research and music. We found some great things on the YouTube audio library, so we had many options to choose from for our music like these: 

clip of example of music

Me: Overall, we tried to keep everything very minimal so we wouldn't be overwhelmed and we could stay organized. 

music plays during rest of podcast

Me: Thank you for joining me on Anything & Everything, you should all check out our film Amber, I promise you it's amazing! 

Creative Critical Reflection Prep: Question #3

 For the third question, there are different things I had to take into consideration, my planning and production as well as my past experience. I already have very detailed accounts of my planning and production in my blogs, so I just have to put those into words that can be easily explained. For this question, articulating myself well is key. There are other things I want to talk about in my CCR that I didn't include in my blogs. So, as I work on my script I want to be sure to include those. 

For questions 2 and 3 of my CCR I want to incorporate them into a podcast because the sound elements are the most important and I want to emphasize them. So my script needs to be very understandable since there are no visual elements. The only visual I created was a logo for my fake podcast, Anything & Everything with Elisa Hernandez

Script

Intro Music Plays

Me: Hey welcome back to anything and everything! today we're gonna be talking about something different. I wanna discuss a film I made with one of my best friends - shoutout Lucia - for our Aice Media class. 

There's some specific things I want to talk about like our plan, production and decisions - both the good and the bad - and how I learned from all of this. We put a lot into this project and we're so excited and proud of it, so the process of it's creation wasn't easy. 

Transition Music

Me: When we first started, we had a really clear idea. It came to us really fast and all at once and we were sooo excited about it. 

Clip of idea

Me: As the weeks passed our idea got more solidified and we developed a story we really liked. I'd taken a film class in middle school, but never had to plan something out this detailed. We picked out lighting, costumes, and genres that we wanted and how they were gonna go together. The most important part of all the decisions we made though was sound effects. 

Our idea focused around this monster, so we had to make sure to get the sound effects just right. We had a good idea of how we wanted it to sound and it was something like this

clip of our monster noises 

Me: But we ended up finding something a lot better as a reference point, and I think it's much more believable. 

clip of actual monster noises

Me: I am someone who tends to do things very last minute, so having the schedule set to do things by specific times really helped me get this project done and in a the way we liked it. My planning skills definitely improved just by being forced to plan for the production of the opening. 

Transition Music

Me: The best part was the production. We had so much fun going out to film with our friend and creating out detective board. We didn't run into any problems until the very end where we realized we had to film a scene with a lot of people and we couldn't get that many people in the same place at once. 

After finishing, I realized how much I learned. I understand how much goes into making a movie and how hard it really is. Especially when making the detective board, we were making decisions and focusing on the smallest details that the viewers probably wouldn't notice. I started wondering how many times that happens in real films. After doing this I learned to appreciate every part of movies because I noticed the effort that goes into it after doing it myself. 

Transition Music

- ad break - 

Group Meeting Part 2

 This is the second time we had a group meeting. I got a lot done during this one and I'm really glad we did them. I was able to focus on developing ideas for my CCRs and help others with theirs as well. I feel like without these meetings I wouldn't have been able to come up with the ideas the way we did. 

I received feedback about my credit sequence which was really positive and I gave feedback to the others as well. They basically told me to make sure they were evenly distributed throughout the scene because they didn't understand what we were doing, but once I showed it to them it made more sense. They really liked the concept and thought it was really well done. 

One of the girls in my group also gave me an idea for one of my CCRs. She told me to make it like an interrogation to go with the theme of the opening. Like the stereotypical bright light and interrogator thing. I really liked the idea and thought it would work really well. 

Overall I'm think the advice and suggestions I received are really going to help me with the rest of the project.