The End?

 Ok yes, the title is a Minecraft reference. But this is it. I love you all! Thank you everyone for everything anddddd byeeeee!!!!

My CCR:

CCR...

Film Opening:

Regression

Big Finale

 This post marks the last post that will actually be discussing everything about the project. What. The. Flip. These last 8 weeks have been the highlight of my entire school year but at the same time, can't wait for it to be over (hopefully by tomorrow). Here's a pic of the very last in-class meeting we had with our groups. A very sad experience, where I even learned that the absolute diva T. Jacobs is moving to God knows where after he graduates </3.

    I've learned so much over these past few weeks, what is like to be a genuine filmmaker, all of the difficulties that come with it, and how to work well and constructively with my peers. Overall, I think we did amazing! The whole time-loop idea was a bit restricting with the amount of storyline we could use with it, but its not like we were making the whole movie anyway. 

    We did however make the film opening understandable that it is a time loop, which is quite literally the whole point of our opening. The editing was awesome, and not only did I learn so much from the trial and error and tutorials from YouTube, but from my teammates who already had previous experience when working with Premiere Pro. Along with the film opening, I learned a LOT through working with the CCR, being all alone on a project meant that I didn't have that much of a cushion with my peers, while they did help with some technical errors, that was about it.

Wow, an ending so sad I am just about thissss close to shedding a tear.

The End is Nye

    Woah. I just finished almost everything. So far, my first CCR is completely finished, with my second one all filmed and ready to edit together, so I'll probably do that soon before I procrastinate until the very last second. Anyway, I am pretty freaking nervous about everything, but at the same time, I'm confident that I did awesome with both the film opening and CCR. It doesn't help that a couple days ago I had a horrible nightmare about not submitting the project on time (I woke up THANKFUL it wasn't real).

    For filming, I relied on the Shot, Reverse Shot technique for talking to both the pig and the interviewer. When the camera was on me, I set it up at an angle, so I didn't need to look directly at the camera. I tried to use a wide variety of angles and even added some movement of my body to try and not align myself with the common "talking head" submissions. 

    While editing, I already had a good idea in mind for what I wanted to do about the pig sections. I had added a sound effect when the pig was talking, along with subtitles on top of those scenes to depict what the pig was saying. I added a bunch of little effect that came built in Adobe Premiere Pro, like the fade to black and fade from black to change up the setting of the scenes. I also added in a few screenshots of the subject I was talking out to add some variation to the CCR. These sightly zoom in to keep the movement of my CCR going and create more engagement than just a plain screenshot. I also added some scenes from our actual film opening to provide context to what I was talking about.

The PIG...

    Here is the final look of the pig shot for the second CCR, I know it doesn't look that massive, but remember, this is the hallucinations of the pig, not the actual enlarged pig! (I know I sound crazy but trust the process)

    Editing the first CCR together was so so so much fun, and I'm extra excited to finish everything up and hopefully upload the finished project by tomorrow!

The Final Countdown...

    At last, today dawns the final and most important week of my entire life (ok maybe I'm overreacting) ... week 8, the last week of our film opening project. These last few weeks have been some of the most interesting and unbelievably fun days of my life. While yes, I'm feeling some mixed emotions about the end of this greatness, I definitely know that excitement is taking control. 

    Alright, today I will be discussing how I am going to film just about everything. I'm thinking about filming the first part of my CCR tomorrow, and the second part of it on Friday with my friend, so I'll keep everything updated on my blog. 

Who, What, Where:

    So, the exposition scene will be me getting in bed with my pig stuffed animal and falling asleep with it. I'll use a post-production blur on the transition from the physical world to my dream world to further give the effect I'm in a dream. Then, as it fades in to the dream world, it will introduce me looking around a field, which is just my local park, and then me looking almost directly up. It will then show a ginormous version of my pig, which I will hopefully achieve with a good angle on my phone. I'm thinking on using the 0.5 lens to make the stuffie much bigger than it actually is. Although I haven't ACTUALLY tested this... so I'm just going to hope for the best! For the answering of my essential CCR questions, the pig will be asking the first 2. When the pig is speaking, it will cut to the pig's face, play a Minecraft pig snort, and then have English subtitles for the pig's translation. I, however, will be able to perfectly understand this, so I will be able to answer them. We will just go back-to-back asking and answering until I am woken up by the pig's reminder I have an interview.

Here is for reference what it will sound like, plus what the plushie will look like!

    For the second part of the CCR, I will be filming it in an office, and hopefully with my close friend as the interviewer. I'm pretty sure she has a good enough acting background to make this scene all the funnier. So, she will be asking the last two questions, in #4, #3 order, just like a normal interviewer would. Except, the pig, still a figment of my imagination, is both helping and hurting me during this interview. It will keep distracting me but will also remind me of parts of the questions I need to answer. Obviously, since I'm so distracted during the interview, the interviewer will not be fond of me whatsoever. 

Question 4 Script

    Ok. I do think I'm going to swap the order of this question and the second question, so it has an even better finish to my CCR. So pretend that the story progresses in the same order, but just different questions are being answered.

Script:

(I look back at where the pig was, then back at the interviewer and gasp, the pig is on the interviewer's shoulder)

Interviewer:

What do I have something on my shirt? (annoyed)

Me:

Oh! Uhm no! Next question please?

Interviewer:

Okay... how did you incorporate various technologies into your project?

Me:

Well, I'll start with hardware. We didn't have much professional equipment, our camera being the regular I-Phone 14 camera. However, this simple phone also had some cool features such as cinematic mode which made our shots look way cooler and more professional than just a normal video recording. We also had a basic light built in tripod, making our filming lives way easier.

For software we primarily relied on Adobe Premiere Pro for all of our editing. Since it basically has every tool, we needed and came free from the school board, why wouldn't we use it?

Plus, it has a neat sharing feature which made the transportation of work from member to member that much easier.

(Close up on pig)

Pig: (speaking to me in oinks with English subtitles)

Don't forget about online technology.

Me:

Oh, I almost forgot about online technologies. (side-eye to pig)

When doing the sound effects for the project, I wasn't able to foley absolutely everything, so I did use the website pixabay.com to help with the whole process. Here they provided a whole library of online royalty-free sound effects for me to choose from.

Interviewer:

Well, that's all for today. You’re definitely a unique candidate for the job! (basically pushing her out) We will get back to you in 3-5 business millennia.

Me: I don't know if I'll live that lo-

(door shuts in my face)

(I stare at the floor, where the pig stands, and I sigh)

Question 3 Script

    OKAY! I have a very odd, but solidified idea for the first part of my CCR. So, it will introduce myself getting ready for bed, and drifting off into sleep, where the first part will take part in my dream. There I will be greeted with a MASSIVE version of my stuffed animal (which is a Minecraft pig), where they would be the one asking all of the questions. Then, after that segment, I will wake up late for an interview. The interviewer will be asking the questions; however, the figment of my imagination (the pig) will be causing me to fumble my responses.

Script:

Interviewer:

So, how have your skills developed when going through this... project?

Me:

Well... uhm... (looks at pig with a scared look) I've mostly learned through the trial and error of shot ideas and techniques, plus the extremely good feedback I've had through my peers. First of all, during shooting, I learned a great variety of ways to make scenes more appealing. At the start of this project, we had some struggles with planning out our story, but as the weeks progressed, it got easier and easier to come up with new ways to shoot a scene. Just by adding the back-to-back whip pans in our realization scene (show scene here), it gave the whole shot so much more emotion and life. But our ideas didn't always start out this intriguing. There were some shots we had filmed where it just didn't feel right, unnecessary close ups, broken audio, and confusing dialogue.

Interviewer:

So, only the shots and composition caused you trouble?

Me:

(Looking back where the pig was but it's not there anymore)

(slightly shocked because of absent pig) Well, not exactly. Editing the film was one of the hardest things to do but also helped with our editing skills a TON. Doing the foley for this film and putting all the sounds together gave me the opportunity to try and think outside the box. This project helped me realize that there are no real boundaries for creativity, and just about anything could be the right sound I needed!

Question 2 Script

    I might just start putting down my scripts for the questions this week, so I'll be fully ready by the next. Sadly, this does mean this CCR is all that's going to be on my mind, but that's not the worst thing that's happened to me. I'll be working overtime on this CCR this week to just post my scripts that are mostly finished. While the research I did from last week was still good and helped me a ton, I feel like finishing a full script for my questions will make my life soooo much easier. Plus, as I learn more and get more feedback from my instructor and peers, I can always make changes to this script to make it even better! Anyway, here is my first edit of my script for question one. (P.S. Since I don't want to waste time, I wrote up my script without the big pizzazz of creativity, but soon enough ill add it in! So yes, it's very bland and basic.)

Script:

Opposing Speaker:  

Oh, I see, your target audience is primarily young adults/ teens then.

Me: 

Well, yes and no. I recently saw a study that 39% of Americans from ages 50-64 watched science fiction programs online or on TV as of September of last year, greatly showing how the sci-fi aspect of our film could pull-in an older audience.

Opposing Speaker: 

So why did you say, “yes and no?”

Me:

 I’m glad you asked! Our film also does deal with some struggles of being a young adult, such as having struggles with your parents, or more specifically in this case, your mom. Our character Alice is in therapy to help with her struggling mental health, but this type of treatment isn’t necessarily for her, which can be relatable to older teens and young adults.

Opposing Speaker:

   That’s much deeper than what I thought. But how would you be able to spread this message through film to the public?

Me: 

Well, since Tainted Roots Productions is a new, upcoming production company, we don’t have much reputation. So, we will start out by just releasing our film to local film festivals to try and gain popularity for our film and us. Plus, there’s even the option that I could rent out a local theater to privately screen my film for only a few hundred dollars.

(Show a SS of this statement)

After that, we will upload it to a variety of social media cites, like YouTube, to further gain attention to our film, and hopefully gain even more popularity.

Americans who watched science fiction and fantasy programs, by age 2024 | Statista