CCR 2 #41

 HELLOO! Down below i’ll attach the second CCR. Enjoy! :) 

CCR 1 #40

 Hi there! Down below i’ll attach my first CCR. Enjoy! :)

Final Film #39

YIPPE! The time has finally come!! Down below you’ll finally be able to see all the hard work come to reality. I REALLY hope you enjoy it! 

 https://youtu.be/4n_R70ZEHTE

Self Reflection #38

What a year! 

Welcome backk you guys! :) For some of you today’s blog may be a little bitter-sweet considering this is the end of our journey. However, to create more of an uplifting tone I want to reflect on the past few months and all the new information that i’ve gathered. 

To begin with i’ve learned so many new camera angles and its impact on films! For example, for a character to feel more superior and “powerful” it’s best to do a low angle. Whereas if a character wanted to appear weaker and more fragile a low angle would be the best option. Not to mention, I now understand the importance of diagetic and non-diagetic sound and how they both heavily influence a films central theme and the emotions being displayed. I don’t want to bore you with to much info hence the manyyy long detailed blogs prior. That said, let’s reflect on my personal experience in this class. 

Although this class wasn’t my first option or initial course, i’m glad I took it and got to experience first hand the production process of a film. Now, would I take it again? Definitely not! This was a once and a life time experience and i’m glad to finally end this chapter lol. However, I do have so much respect for the filmmakers who pour a lot of time and energy into filming, editing and producing films! 

That’s all for today, till next time! 

Filming my second CCR! #37

AH, what a long journey this has been. 

Welcome back!! For today’s blog I want to dive into what my second CCR journey has been like. As a friendly reminder this second CCR requires us to answer the remaining two questions. (3) How did your production skills develop throughout this project? (4) How did you integrate technologies in this project? These were pretty straight forward compared to the last two therefore I wont spend to much time explaining it. 

As i’ve mentioned before, when it comes to me talking AND recording myself I don’t do very well. That said, I figured why not do another voice over! Only this time I included images to help the audience get a visual representation of what i’m tryna to say. Most of these images were found online whereas others were from my actual short film. 

In terms of editing, I wanted to add a news channel background to the beginning to reiterate the fact that this is a news channel station and to make the voiceover sound surreal. Additionally, I had another voice-over audio in the background to add to the drama. However, I did notice that some pictures came out blurry and i’m not quite sure why. It can possibly be because they’re screen shots but overall it looks pretty good. 

I hope I didn’t yap too much for you guys. 

Stay tuned to see the final result! 

Filming my first CCR! #36

Hi there! 

Due to all the previous complications I’ve had to take a little break from filming my CCR’S. But we’re back on! 

As a friendly reminder in this first CCR i’m targeting two main questions. (1) How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? (2) How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text? 

For those of you who are a little confused just as I was, I’ll break down what the questions are asking. For question one: how does your genre (drama) fit/ or not fit the typical standards for that genre and how does the film represent social groups or issues? For question two: how does this project capture the audiences attention and how would I get this out in movie theaters? These are all things I want to keep in mind while filming. 

Luckily for this CCR i’m not showing my face which is a huge life saver considering when it comes to me showing my face AND TALKING I get super camera shy and stutter a lot. For those of you who may have forgotten this CCR is meant to mimic a radio show that ultimately reveals me winning best film reward. They will then proceed to ask me for a short interview promoting me to answering the following two questions. 

Was their anything you would change? 

Absolutely yes! I had the bright idea to film the radio guy (aka me talking in a British voice) all in one shot and the guest (aka winner; aka me) all in one shot as well. Let me tell you, biggest mistake. This made editing SOO much harder than it needed to be like honestly. I had to trim the whole video which took forever because I kept stuttering and would let the video play only making it longer and harder to cut. After about three hours of me editing the whole two videos down I was finally able to put everything together on Capcut. 

Yes their all in my recently deleted because I cannot bear to deal with seeing these videos again! 

Moreover, I didn’t want to just have the audio and the blank screen so the next best idea was to input a photo of me for when the “guest” would speak and a photo of some random british character online who would ultimately be the “radio man”.

That’s it for today stay tuned for my second CCR!

Let’s plan this new film out! #35

Hey. 

Welcome back guys. Today we are running on a tight schedule. Considering this is super last minute I didn’t really have much planned. However, I did have a super long mirror in my room with a new box of cookies and chocolates at arms reach. 

What did I add to the film? 

For starters I included a variety of shots. One to create realism and two to make transitions appear way smoother. Some shots included mid angle, low angle, side view and my favorite, P.O.V shots. The P.O.V shot of my character looking at herself in the mirror and grabbing her stomach is my favorite being that I believe it truly does reveal the struggles that someone with an eating disorder may experience in terms of insecurity’s. 

Like isn’t that shot just perfect! 

What were some changes made in this new film?

Well not only were the shots different but I also added Andres’s guitar instrumental as background music. It was perfect and all I had to do was loop the sound on CapCut to make it last throughout the film. 

This was a very minor change that took very little editing. Speaking of editing, I basically did the same thing as I did in the other film which was use “fade-in” and “fade-out” to transition between each character. This was very effective and made the cuts appear seem less. I also decided to film in my bedroom this time being that this film is targeted towards teens and I believe teens spend the most time in their room as a form of comfort. So what better way to create realism than putting myself in their shoes! Andres’s part was pretty simple being that he left everything the same and only changed about two scenes being that they were filmed vertically and Ethan also changed up his film after watching the Youtube video I linked last blog. 

What mis-en-scene did I add? 

Well, as I mentioned up above I changed my setting from the dinning room table to my bedroom. This was to help the audience (mainly teens) personally connect with this film. Additionally, for props I used food such as chocolates and cookies to emphasize my characters unhealthy eating habits (her addition to bad food) ultimately causing her to feel “fatter” leading to an eating disorder. I also added a blanket as a prop and this is used to shield and comfort the characters, to hide the “ugliness”. In terms of clothing I purposely used a shorter shirt so that my stomach can be out ultimately causing the character to feel insecure in her own skin. I’m then shown putting on a jacket and this is used to reinforce her insecurities and to provide comfort and shield her from the thoughts of her looking “bigger” than what she actually is. 

Well that was easier than I thought. Thank God! 

ALERT ALERT 🚨 #34

GUYS OMG YOU WONT BELIVE WHAT HAPPENED. 

So as you guys saw in the last blog we finally completed the film(mind you I edited it all and everything). Awesome right… NO! Not awesome at all and let me tell you why. For starters we were all super excited to film, that said, we weren’t really looking over the rubric as much as we SHOULD HAVE. We made the rookie mistake of recording our film vertically instead of horizontally. 🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️

As a matter a fact, let me show you guys the moment we all came to realization. 

Incredible right! Well we did try fixing the film: 

As you can see above that doesn’t look like an actual film leaving us with no choice but to re- record. See i’m not one to self diagnose but moments like these make me feel like I have anxiety and that I might be experiencing an anxiety attack. Up against time we decided to re- record as soon as possible. 

An upside to this is that now we have an opportunity to fix some minute errors that I wasn’t fond with last time around. 

(1) For the previous film we had Andres playing the guitar however, it wasn’t an original piece. To avoid copyrighting I think it’ll be better if the guitar is an original piece from him. Not to mention, it’ll make the film more original! 

(2) I felt as though ethan’s piece wasn’t showcasing the realities of depression nor was he displaying any hardships or signs of hardships. To help solve that problem I sent Ethan a short film on youtube to give him some better inspiration. Down below i’ll attach the direct link to the video! 

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxQHKXOzH8CTMgoH_wjmTj2kETFz6bKMY8?si=sQI3yuEcZSUllkck

(3) I didn’t realize this till after but I left my blinds open and it was night time… Mind you I was eating breakfast in the film. So it looked completely wrong. 

Anyways, stay tuned to see the process of filming a WHOLE OTHER FILM. 🥲

Editing our 2-minute film #33

Heyy guys! 

Welcome back! For today’s blog i’ll take you guys along my journey as editor for this film (big role I KNOW). I was very nervous to take upon this role but I wanted to challenge myself even if it doesn’t come out exactly as I wished. 

So how did I edit the film and what do the scenes represent? 

(Disclaimer the following paragraphs may be in a different font being that i’m copying and pasting what I wrote to my peers in our “media studies” group chat) 

 

✨Sound- There’s both non-diagetic and diagetic throughout the short film. During the times that the characters showcase their “struggles” the audio goes from both diagetic and non-diagetic to just non- diagetic. This is because we want the audience to focus solely on the characters forms of expression and how this may contribute to their mental state. I extended the instrumental guitar audio throughout the short film because it’s used as a form of comfort to the characters and because the guitar reflects the characters inner hurt.

(attach screen recording of guitar audio) 

 

✨Lightning- there was only one edit made towards the lighting post film and that was towards the ending of the film where the title “drowning in silence” is displayed. Additionally i lowered the brightness to zero and put the contrasts to 40 to emphasize the dark state these characters are in. In andres’s scene the lightning naturally tends to be darker with a red hue. Red in film is often correlated to intense emotions such as danger while also symbolizing themes of warning which is what our end goal as producers is to do. We want to warn the audience about the dangers of substance abuse and how normalized it’s become for teens. Not to mention how easily accessible it is. 

✨Editing- in terms of editing just as i mentioned above i added an extended clip of an instrumental guitar audio. I also added many pieces of texts throughout the film such as the opening credits and the title at the end of the short film. I chose the font “ReenieBeanie” for all the texts expect for the title. This font stood out to me because of its disorganized nature. I believe that it symbolizes how unorganized and unstructured the brain of those who experience these difficult mental struggles may be. As for the title i chose the font “plunet”. The lettering here appears longer and slimer almost as if the words it’s self are drowning. For my piece i added a camera focus affect for the high shot to display another p.o.v of me receiving the food. This draws the attention of the audience to the main idea of my scene which is food and the struggles my character has when eating it. Then during my floor shot the transitions are fast-paced to convey a sense of urgency to the situation at hand. Additionally when switching between people i would use the affect “fade in” and “fade out” to create a clean transition between the settings. 

Now that you guys got a little overview of how the film will look, I hope it fills you with excitement as to what will come! 

2-minute film progress pt.2 #32

Hay! 

Anddd welcome BACK to another blog! 

Throughout today’s blog i’ll be breaking down what was used for my portion of the 2-minute film. 

Kinda nervous… 

Por fin what did I use for/in my film and how I applied it? 

Well, for technological devices I used my iPhone 16. Now I’ll give you guys a friendly reminder that once again i’m not the best with anything technology related. That said, although I have the newest iPhone which comes with the “best features” doesn’t mean I used those features to its extent. Some of you might ask why don’t I research the phone’s features to get a better understanding and trust me i’m one step ahead however it’s not as easy as it seems. Yes of course researching how to use it is pretty simple but the application process, not so simple. But no worries I filmed using the regular video mode being that the cameras cinematic mode looked to blurry when recorded from a certain distance. 

A selfie stick tripod came in very handy in terms of filming. 

So of course for all the low-angle shots I placed my phone on the floor. For the full, medium and high angle shots the selfie stick tripod was a tremendous help. Being that I didn’t really have any family members who wanted to partake in this filming process, I had to find a way to record myself with the use of a variety of angles and what better way than a selfie stick! 

In terms of props, I used two breakfast items. One of which was used for a transition and I used my ratty dog (adorable but musty). 

These two breakfast items were the food source my character was struggling to eat. 

Stay tuned to see the transition I make with the waffle box ;)

This is my ratty dog that I used for the film. Surprisingly he managed to eat the waffles from my hand which was perfect because I wanted to make it appear as though my character is struggling to eat their food and the best way to keep their mental struggle hidden from everyone is to give the food to the dog. This portrays the harsh realities of eating disorders. 

See very musty. 

But no worries he does have his cute moments! That’s all for today’s blog stay tuned to see the final outcome and the editing process! 

2-minute film progress pt.1 #31

Hi there…

Welcome back you guys (imagine this in a very sad unmotivated tone). Few unexpected changes have been made so bare with me.

Where do I even begin. Well, for starters, as i’ve stated in previous blogs I was planning on having my sister Miley be the actor for my piece so that I can film her, all the more creating a smoother process for me. Well, guess what??? We got into a huge argument and she opted out on helping me super last minute. The odds right. If this taught me anything it’s to ALWAYS have a backup plan. Although this doesn’t change to much, I just have to find an alternative way of filming myself in multiple angles while also being the actor. 

OH THE PERFECT IDEA JUST CAME TO MIND!! 

My step mom is alwayss bringing selfie sticks when we go on trips. So i’ll just borrow one of hers for the video! 

On a brighter note I finished my portion for the 2-minute film (whoop whoop). I’m so happy to finally have that out of the way. As everyone likes to say “out of sight, out of mind”. 

Here it is hope you enjoy! 

Other set back was that Ethan and Andre’s pieces came out a little lengthier than anticipated and because they filmed earlier than I did, I had to cut my time a little shorter. However, this worked out perfectly and I look forward to editing it all together.

In another blog i’ll give you guys an overview of how I edited it all! :)