CCR Q#4

     Finally, the last CCR question! You know the drill, since I already explained my filming ideas I'll just get right into the question.
    How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?
    I'll split this post up into three parts to make it easy to navigate (mostly for myself)
- Software
- Hardware
- Online

Software:

    In this project, The software I utilized the most was Adobe Premiere Pro. This was to edit my ENTIRE film opening! I feel as through it's pretty obvious as to how that one was integrated. Another form of software I used was Voice memos and Pixabay. Both of these were used for sound purposes, but one was for recording while the other was for looking for copyright free sound effects. Voice memos was used specifically while I was recording the opening music, and Pixabay was only really needed for the fluorescent buzzing sound. Pixabay specifically was used since it provides copyright free audios that are downloadable without any form of account creation needed.

Hardware:

    Hardware was a big one for me! First of all, the hardware used to film was literally just my iPhone 13. I was a bit worried going into the filming knowing I would only have my iPhone for the recording, so i asked my friend if he could bring in his camera, but sadly it was having issues and couldn't be used. For my lighting I had bought two lights with color filter sheets, and a sunset lamp. The sunset lamp was most important to the film since it had settings with natural sunlight replicating light, and accurate lighting used in dorm rooms, so my setting was more accurate with it. On top of this, I also had to use my HP laptop to edit everything. Also my keyboard to play the opening music I made, which, by the way, wasn't specifically composed. I just sat down and played whatever felt right for the film after picking a chord.

Online:

    Now for online. First of all, I use blogger to post about my project! This not only helped me stay organized but also helped me document every time something important was going on with the film. I also used WhatsApp to communicate with my actors, and also send myself everything recorded on my phone to transport it to my laptop. I also used google drive to save my project in between edits. Most importantly, YouTube had helped me a LOT since it gave me a platform to upload my project, and also gave me a ton of tutorials for how to do some specific techniques on Adobe Premiere.

CCR Q#3

     Question 3 time! Since I've already explained my video ideas (that might need to get changed due to my Sunday rehearsal getting cut short), I will just get straight into the question!

    How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

    Now let me say, they developed a LOT. For starters, I went into the project clueless. Barely any filming experience other than past group projects from this class, and even with those I had group members to help me out. I was really nervous! I really locked in when it came to research, so the filming at a point came easy to me. I learned a lot about filming techniques and how important behind the scenes aspects of film are during this project, too. I had a LOT of lighting techniques I utilized for the film since I needed it to have very specific looks most of the time.

    On top of this, my skill that improved the MOST was definitely my editing skills. When I say I COULD NOT EDIT before this project I am not lying. And even during the process of this I would've said it too, but somehow I just started playing around with the buttons and figured it all out. I'd say my film opening came together really well with the editing I did. My friends who took AICE Media in the past gave me a ton of tips, like how to make text fade in and out, or how to make the audio seamlessly flow into the next clip. All of these tips came out to be super useful to the final product, and I'm super proud of how it turned out. If you were to check back at my editing timeline from before learning all of this and now, you would see a MAJOR difference in me just incorporating more techniques into the film.

CCR Q#2

     Now that I'm researching for the second question, I want to have my second CCR video idea too. I was thinking about splitting it up to be 1&3 then 2&4 since I know some of the questions will take longer for me to answer. 

    For the second video, I need to really work with the small amount of time I have. Since I have 9-6 rehearsal this Sunday, which would be my ideal time to film, I want to maybe work around that and include it. This would be easy for me to work around my schedule. I was thinking I could create a fake documentary of what goes on during rehearsal while we are on lunch break. It would sort of be edited to resemble The Office, where it is very jokey and allows the
personalities of the characters to shine through.

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

    First of all, my film's target audience is definitely Gen Z. Knowing how they are evolving with technology, social media would definitely be a good way to engage with my audiences. Having an Instagram and a TikTok account just for the film would be a great way to promote, and then actively reply to fans. Another thing I would do to engage with audiences that I see often online would be having the cast members do Q&As on social media sites such as YouTube to have some sort of interaction with viewers. I would definitely also post a bunch of behind the scenes on these sites to make the filming process feel more relatable to audiences. In my research, if a viewer feels as though they could connect to a piece of media, they are more likely to continue to come back to those works. This will help me a strong fanbase through these methods.

    As for distribution, first thing I would do is release it in local movie theatres. Locally, this would be big for me, and in any given city if the right people showed up to the screenings it could be huge. Next I would post it for free on YouTube (with ads). After gaining profit and some recognition through this, I would contact a few streaming platforms to see if I could get it licensed to be streamed on those. Of course, I only think that part would be successful if my film got a lot of attention through my first few distribution strategies. I would also create a lot of overall hype around the film through releasing promotional trailers or clips of the movie, so that I will be more successful in the distribution part.

Group Meeting #2

     Today we did our second group meeting! We discussed everything about our films production and such, and I got a lot of great feedback from the group that will definitely help my project improve!

    The first person to present her film was Brynn. She had trouble coming up with a film name so we had given her some suggestions. What we settled on for her was "20 Questions" since the film is a Romcom about a girl getting a mysterious message from a boy in her math class asking to play 20 questions. The film is shot in her house and she mostly focused on using lighting to convey meaning in the opening. She said the film is meant to represent girlhood and femininity. She is also filming her CCRs today which is ahead of the rest of our group! 

    The next person to present was me, and since this is my blog you already know about my project, so I'll keep this brief. I filled everyone in on my ideas and showed them parts of my film, and told them the MANY new conflicts I've encountered within the past week (ALL of my editing got deleted and I needed to restart.) I also told them about how I decided to compose my own opening music! I really had wanted to find a hip-hop song that would go with it, but since all of the songs that fit well were by very large artists, I decided to take the opposite approach and compose a dissonant and ominous piece that would last for the first 30-ish seconds of my opening.

    Sergio went after me, and he had a LOT done! He also composed his opening music and he is almost done filming, since he had some location and timing conflicts. His film is a sports drama about a Med student with a terminal illness so he started to obsess over powerlifting to stay alive. He said he took a lot of inspiration from The Batman (2022) movie, which is ironic to me since I took a lot of inspiration from The Joker (2019).  His CCR idea was a super creative idea too! He said he was going to do a self-interview type of video where he would literally edit him interviewing himself. He had struggled to come up with a name, and we sadly couldn't help him come up with one he liked.

    Next was Oona, and I REALLY liked her opening. We really had no critiques to give her at all. She is also doing a sports drama, this one is about a girl who is injured and is training for a gymnastics competition. She filmed in an actual gymnastics studio, too! All of her filming and editing was done and the only bit of critique we gave her was that we didn't think the font for her title really fit, which she agreed with.

    Finally, Maria went. Maria is doing a mystery/drama about a girl who is a model citizen and went missing, and detectives find out she is involved in some drug scandal. The title is "Interwoven" and a lot of her conflicts took place during the actual filming. From what she told us, I believe she is done filming and almost done editing, and she is having trouble finding CCR ideas while remaining creative. Her previous idea was to recreate Hot Ones, but she realized she should either add a twist to it to make it personalized or change the idea so she wouldn't be copying someone else's work.

CCR TIME!!! (Question 1)

     Finally, It's time to focus on the CCR! This is getting real, It's the final stretch of this project! First things first, I need to come up with an idea for the video of this and another question. Right now, I think a good way to set up the questions in a fun way that would also showcase my personality would be a Billy On The Street style video. Basically, the way that would work is I run around interviewing random people (obviously, this would be staged and the would all know about the video) and I ask the questions that I'm meant to answer. Usually on the show, when someone gets the answer wrong he tells them the actual answer in a funny manner. I think this would be a super fun and entertaining way to do one of my CCR videos. I could even include my actors as special guests since that's often done in Billy On The Street. 

    Now for answering the first question, how does my product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

    First let's discuss genre conventions. My film had utilized a multitude of genre conventions considering Psychological Dramas. First of all, all of the films I have seen in this genre also take the approach of specific color schemes to make the main character specifically stand out. A good example of this (Like I had mentioned before) would be The Joker. I had also taken a lot of inspiration from the opening credits of films like these (ex. Whiplash). Though, I had challenged some conventions, too. The main thing I had challenged was the main character being the protagonist. In my film, the main character is actually the antagonist of the film, even though that isn't specifically brought up in the opening. I had also made the psychological issue of the main character something a lot more abstract (I mean, I don't think films usually have a clown that only one person can see putting tape over people mouths...) But in all seriousness, I think I stuck to the genre pretty well, even though I took a bunch of my own creative liberties with it too.

    The next part of this question is representation, and that is a big one for me and this film. I had specifically planned out for the two main characters to represent a new oppressive government and revolution. Though, it's a bit hard to make that clear within the opening. The whole concept of the film itself is representing how some countries take away freedom of speech for their citizens. The whole point of the silencing is how Charles, the 'new government', doesn't listen to things he doesn't want to hear. There is slightly more to it than that though. While that description is baseline, I could honestly argue instead of it showing Charles not listening, it shows Charles genuinely not allowing that person to express that idea anymore after they speak out against him.  This is why within the opening I show Jackson, the revolution, rip his tape off. Some people will put their lives, or in the case of the film friendships, on the line to actually be able to voice their opinion. While the film itself may have a less serious tone, it represents a much larger issue.

Time to edit!

     Finally it's time to edit! As I've most likely mentioned before, I'm still relatively new to editing, so this has been a challenge for me the past few days. Figuring out everything on my own was super difficult for me, but I'm glad I got it done. To edit this film, I used Adobe Premiere Pro.

    For the sake of my project, I had watched a ton of tutorials on YouTube for more techniques than just basic ones. My top concern was the final clip of the opening with all the overlapping audio and video. Luckily, I was able to figure it all out with the tutorials. 

    Since a lot of this film is back and forth between the actors, I definitely utilized shot-reverse shots a lot here. While doing this, I filmed in the exact spot one character was while I filmed the other one as they both would say their lines that come before and after each other. This made editing a lot easier for me, too, since I didn't have to cut out unnecessary silence in the beginnings and ends of clips. 

    While editing, I also realized I needed to put the credits in. For the credits, I will have some of them overlapping with the scene until it gets to a more important part. This had easily let me give credits to everyone involved, without interrupting the film and also keeping the opening nice and short. 

    The issue I realized while editing was my first scene lasted WAY too long, though. Unfortunately, this mean I will have to cut out unnecessary lines from the second scene or even the whole scene all together. I still need to film more people saying "Charles" in the red room, so It will depend on how long that final part will last, since the first and last scenes I wrote for the opening matter the most.

A million problems to solve

    Figuring out how to avoid EVERY SINGLE CONFLICT was so difficult for me. My number one issue was figuring out a filming date. My original filming date was the 24th of February. Clearly that ended up not working, because I had a rehearsal for a show I'm in.  So we kept pushing it back until we found a date that everyone in my group could do.

    My next issue was the set location. Knowing that I wanted an outside student center looking set, my filming would have most likely taken place in the dark. When we set our film date we realized how we needed to film afterschool when everyone was available, so it was already dark outside. To me, this was an issue, but everyone else pointed out studying at night is completely normal and all we had to do was set up lighting to make it look like they were in a public place rather than my patio.

    Finally, my biggest issue of all (for my sanity, at least) was one of my actors hair being red. I don't even mean a ginger type of red, I mean RED. No matter what that could not be seen in my film. I took hours coming up with a good solution to this while also juggling figuring out every other aspect of my film. After working it out with the actor, they finally suggested that they have a black wig that could cover up the red hair. After styling it, it finally looked realistic enough to be used in the film.

    Overall, there were so many obstacles I had to overcome in this process, but I made it work! I think next time I should clear a date with my cast way ahead of time to assure none of us had any conflicts so I wouldn't need to stress about the date or time. I think the red hair issue wasn't ACTUALLY that big of a deal, but it was stressful to think about on top of everything else, which is definitely why I stressed over it the most.

It's filming time!!

     Today was filming day! FINALLY all my actors were available to film! Luckily, school wasn't an issue today since all my actors were able to come at the same time after school and they were so easy to work with it was so quick! Jumping into filming from weeks and weeks of planning was honestly a bit stressful. Thankfully, my actors made it so much easier. They all gave me their input on some of the acting choices and really made the characters their own.

    My actors also made the whole process super quick since all of them do theatre outside of this film. They really knew how to understand the characters and also memorize their lines. Of course, we still had some slip ups here and there, but it made the whole filming process a lot more bearable. Not saying I hated it, but it took a lot of stress off me since they made it feel more like a hangout with my friends while still taking it seriously.

Video of one of our outtakes

    To illustrate what the day of filming looked like, we started with getting everyone in costume and makeup if needed. My sister was able to do the Figment's makeup flawlessly and I was super impressed with the end results. We filmed Charles' scene with Jackson first, which really helped me get the hang of things. Then we took a quick break and moved outside for the next scene with the rest of the characters. This scene took the longest since it was easy to mess up with a larger group of people. Along with some of the actors mess-ups, I often would stop recording before we were finished with the sequence of lines, which made me realize I should probably wait until a large gap of silence to stop filming. 

    Then, we went back into my room to film the final scene in the opening, which is when my technical director had the idea to make all the lights in the room red. Immediately I fell in love with this idea, and changed all of the light's colors. This scene took SO. MANY. TRIES. When I say that, I mean it. It is totally not his fault, but the actor playing the Figment literally could not take off the piece of tape without gloves. We retried this over and over until we finally got it right, but after that, we finished filming!

    I think I really learned a lot from filming today, and I can't wait to apply it more in future projects.