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

Group Meeting #2

    Today we came full circle with the ideas we once had in the form of another group meeting. Now that our projects have been filmed and mostly finished, it was so interesting to see all the progress that all of my team members had. Except, I wasn't necessarily there for the beginning of some of their projects, since group members were all shuffled. However, one of my group members this time was a partner of one of the group members I had before. This case was especially interesting because I was aware of the progression and evolution of their plot!

    But that's not all, since the beginning of our CCR chapter was last week, this meeting was dedicated to just that. We first shared many ideas with each other to help form ideas in one another's mind, and each person managed to narrow their ideas down to some awesome creative ideas. My group this time was Marrisa, Nico, Joaquin and me!

(I took the photo again!!!)

Their Ideas:

    Nico had the idea to do a CCR reflective of the popular show, The Tonight Show. He was thinking on this, or more just like a typical game show/ talk show. I feel like this could be a really fun idea, but at the same time, the idea seemed a little basic since I have been hearing a bunch of other recommendations of similar content. Although, Nico also had the idea to do TikTok street interviews, which could be an easy way to get the questions out of the way, but I don't feel like it has that much creative flair. I recommended that maybe he be interrupted by something or someone that causes his course to go astray, making his CCR that more interesting.

    Joaquin had the most creative and unique idea of all, so unique I doubt anyone else would create something like his... he wants to make his CCR David Lynch movie themed. Honestly, I have no idea who David Lynch is, but it is his favorite movie director of all time and do what you love! Another thing he recommended, which I thought was really interesting was a section based off of the game show Hot Ones, where people are asked questions, and if they don't want to answer, they have to eat an insanely spicy chicken wing. If he copied exactly the same thing, it wouldn't be that creative, but his idea could be heavily derived from this to create a hilarious product!

    Marrisa had the idea to base her CCR off of Vouge's 73 Questions. This could be a great way to effectively answer all of the required questions while adding a creative flair to her CCR. She could walk around a creative setting, giving more creative chances to add camera movement and interesting mise-en-scene to her production. She also had the idea to do an Oscars theme for her CCR. This would be really fun, and I pitched the ide of someone booing her as she earns an Oscar, where she then has to justify her win by answering the questions.

My Ideas:

    For me, I'm pretty behind on the creative juices. All of m friends and team members for the film opening project all have well-structured and thought-out ideas, but I really don't have any. I'm honestly starting to get kind of scared and nervous because, THIS IS SERIOUS!!! I guess I could start writing my script for the answered questions before any of the creative parts so I don't waste any precious time, but I still need to figure out my creative ideas, and fast. I did come up with some, but I'm not sure if ill use it in the end. 

    One idea is me as a movie director as the camera cuts to me during a live set. I could create a new personality for this character, and it could be pretty creative, although I don't know how I will incorporate the answering of questions in this scene. 

    I also had the idea of doing a zoom meeting, a very official one, where I happen to be green screening my background. Then, my background malfunctions and it reveals I am actually doing something like a roller coaster or bowling. This could establish myself as a silly, unserious person, and add some creative flair. I would still answer the questions, as I would still be oblivious to what has happened to my background.

     The last idea I had was a western themed approach. I could be a cowboy, riding a toy horse, so it would be comedic, yet serious. I could find ways to ask questions by my opponent, who I would be dueling, who asks the wide variety of CCR questions.

    

Final Boss: CCR

     The time has come to challenge, in my opinion, the hardest final boss of them all, the Creative Critical Reflection. DUN DUN DUNNNNN. I think this has been the thing I have been dreading the entire time, since I can't get ideas from my multiple team members, and I have to figure out a creative way to describe myself through film. I know finding myself shouldn't seem so hard, but it is! There isn't much to pick out there for ideas, and I'm worried I won't be finding the right one, or two. Yes, two, it makes it even harder that I have to figure out two different creative approaches to answer all four questions! Alas, I still have to suck it up and figure it out, so I guess I'll do just that. Today I'll be discussing my initial research about this part of the project along with my CCR question #1!!!

    I've first started in my Media class by taking some notes about all of the questions I need to answer in my CCR. Out if the four questions, today I will be starting with the initial battle, Question 1. Here are a few of the notes I took about question one along with all the key components I need to address to get it done right and well. So, we have question one: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

    So, starting off, we chose to make our film opening a sci-fi film/drama. While we didn't 100% get the traditional sci-fi parts of the movie down, since there aren't many futuristic/science references throughout the film, our film would seem to rely more on the drama parts. Opening immediately in a time loop, the audience can tell something unnatural is happening, but without the futuristic appeal of a normal sci-fi movie. This does NOT follow the normal conventions of a sci-fi film, but we had reasons of doing so. Honestly, we didn't really want to have any science parts in our film opening, or film at all for that matter. It didn't really fit into the plot of our main protagonist, Alice, escaping this repetitive world while also trying to escape the confines of a struggling mental health.

    Moving on, we wanted to represent the struggles of having negative mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. We (hopefully) make it clear that she is in therapy for a much-needed reason; by showing the small stimming she is doing because of stress. The up close and personal camera shots show she feels like she is trapped within herself, while also being trapped within the name setting for an extended period of time. We also show how people with these conditions might not always have the resources they need to seek correct, useful help. While yes, Alice IS in therapy, she is being treated poorly by her therapist, as presented with the Drs. cocky and rude attitude toward her patient and others.

A little inside peek

Well well well. What have my teammates been up to regarding the postproduction aspects of our project? We know I'm on sound effects, but what about the others?

     Grace, our legend and if I could, would give her master editor of the year is our main editor for the project. She has been in charge of splicing most of the clips together to create the final look of the project. After the first edit of our project, she sent it to me, which helped me be able to determine what sound effects I needed in the different places of the film, plus the order in which I needed to place them in. So, very helpful so far! For some quick little BTS, here is Grace being literally awesome and sitting through editing in timelapse form:

    Maiya is our color-coding queen! She is going to be tackling all of the aftereffects for our scenes to give each and every shot its own personal feeling and emotion. So far, we want it not to be eerie, but to be somewhat uncomfortable and confusing. We are thinking of her putting in some dim lighting, along with some more attractive colors to take out the washed-out tones that a natural I-Phone would give someone. Together we all settled on the idea of the blueish undertones throughout the movie to describe our character Alice further. In the mood board I put together a few weeks back, I wanted to incorporate a desaturated Navy/ light blue for Alice since her style is grungy.

    Max is doing the credit sequences I have talked about in the past. He originally got this idea from the game GTA IV, where some of the credits were posted on the wall during an active moving scene. We all collectively thought this was a great idea and something that could make our opening so much more intriguing, and, if we pull it off right, make us look like editing pros. He did find some tutorials online to help him with this process of learning the material to make this happen, and I'm so excited to see the final product! He will also be focusing on trying to make every credit blend in with the environment and not overlap with our characters all too much. Here is a quick demo that Grace put together to set an example for what needs to be done.

Foley Frenzy

     SO. I have been assigned to do the sound part of the music video. So, what does this mean? I have to find all the sound effects needed for the project online, make some foley noises, and rerecord voice lines that are needed. I'm thinking of doing multiple takes of some of these sounds, so we would have plenty of resources to work with. However, today I'll just cover the foley chunks of the soundscape, and everything that happened with it!

Foley:

    Using foley in my work have always been fun for me, and I was given the chance to do that this time! I first had the sound effects I needed in the following list:  

- rec my Alice beginning voice line

- ⁠phone ringtone (marimba)

- ⁠re-record my “and how does it make you feel” line

- ⁠door opening and closing

- ⁠alarm clock sounds + ⁠clicking snooze button sound

- ⁠street noises (like birds and cars and stuff)

- ⁠footsteps (on tile and in concrete)

- ⁠wind sounds

- ⁠background music for therapists office

    I decided to do around half of the sound effects as foley, to make it easy to have the perfect sound needed in our project. But, I also wanted to make it somewhat easy for a foley rookie such as myself, so I stuck to the basic foley sounds I had already learned so far this year. This being the door sounds, alarm clock, footsteps, and wind. 

    For the door sounds, I went back to see what type of door was being opened in closed in the scene needed, and lucky me, it happened to be the same type of door I have at my house! If I'm being honest, I took the easy non-creative way out of this one and just recorded myself opening and closing my door. This may seem dumb, as that's exactly what happened in the scene. But this will emphasize the sound, and not just let it seem into the background noise. This will also make it easier to control the volume of the noise, since all the parts, like the original sound is, will not be all in one file.

     For the footsteps, I happened to have similar shoes (Converse) to what the main character was wearing (Doc Martins), which made it more realistic sounding rather than full of sneakers or crocs. I did two separate types of walking for each setting, which gave more variation to decide what sounds the best. One try I made the sounds just from the bare shoe, without wearing it. The second time I wore the shoes and walked in place. I ended up using the latter since it sounded and felt more realistic without having the empty feel. the shoe being somewhat muffled out because of my weight gave it a better sound.

These are two clips of me trying out each approach for the footsteps

    When doing the alarm clock, I just decided to do something similar as the door, use exactly what was in the video. Since I was the one who had brought the alarm clock on filming day, I had the exact sound it makes with good timing. I honestly just recorded that alarm for a few beeps, and then me shutting off the alarm with a simple click, just like I did in shooting.

    

For the wind, I saw this reddit post online discussing foley sounds for wind, and I found an interesting one I wanted to use. It said to take branches from outside with leaves on then and flow them across the microphone to get that natural wind. I did not like it at all. The mic sounded pretty staticky and distorted from the clunkiness of the leaves and was too distracting and out of place. I ended up just using a premade royalty free noise from pixabay.com to swap out the ratty sound.

Production on overload

        After the 3 entire production posts from last week, this week will mark the beginning of the end of my "time traveling" to that fateful day. Plus, I have been assigned to the soundscape/foley for the entire opening. I am SO excited!!! Adobe Premiere Pro is about to be my best friend over the next week, but this also means I'm probably going to see it more than my actual friends... darn it.

Wandering Whereabouts:

    After our successful filming at my team member Grace's house, we then had to have a location change to a medical plaza nearby. The second we got into the car, we all immediately agreed on putting song the song "You Are" by The Punch Brothers. This is a recall to a past project of ours where we had to create a music video based off of this song. The drive there was smooth, and luckily, we did not crash along the way! During the drive we captured some BTS footage: 

    After our short ride, we drove into a completely empty medical plaza near her home. This made it easy to know there would be no other people in our footage and gave an easily controlled setting. Making this scene in front of a medical plaza reestablish that Alice is in therapy, but the absence of people could also show how her is all alone in this situation. The eeriness of her being alone also fills any plot holes of other people being in the area during the time loop.

    While I wasn't directly a part of the shooting this scene and genuinely could not stand anywhere near them because of a mirrored wall, I was again given the most respectable job... script holder. I know, again, I would say I'm a professional at this point. But anyway, if I did stand near then, I would be in the middle of the road or in shot. But this also affected our videographer. We had to figure out a way where her reflection of the mirrors in front of us would not be shown in the shot, so we put her on the other side of a pillar to block her reflection. I however was wedged in between the pillar and the mirror, so I could not be seen at all.

Soundscape Project all over again:

    I will be doing our soundscape for our opening project... and that means one thing, making and finding the sounds. Foley is so interesting, and since I have some experience from our past soundscape project, I am going to have so much fun with this.

    I've figured out a few of the sounds I am going to need for this project, a few being a door opening, a phone dial, and footsteps. Honestly, I don't know if I'll foley a lot of these, just naturally record them off of my phone or find non-copyright sounds online. Although I can't 100% tell all the sounds I need yet because I don't have the finished video, I'll start looking around on pixabay.com.

Secrets...

  There have been so many bloopers and BTS scenes I haven't shared on here yet, so I'll try and compile a few shots together today. Plus, there's been an "easter egg" during the production of our film opening.

Clipboard:

    One of my props as Dr. Schultz was a clipboard. And what goes on a clip board? Paper! And with no other paper close by, I decide on having multiple uses for our script. It being, well, the script, and it being the notes Dr. Schultz writes down about Alice. On the back of the script, we wrote two things, Alices full name, Alice Jones, and the condition she is in, her eyebags and mental state. Having the script on me at all times was pretty handy, and I got to have the most honorable title in all of filmmaking, Script Holder. Yea, yea, try not to get too jealous. But this still made it easy to just flip the script around and make the necessary changes, while also making remembering my lines all the easier. 

Blooper scenes:

In this scene we film a close up where Alice gets her first phone call from the mysterious caller. While the shot seemed relatively easy, the timing for the phone call she receives was not. Apparently, when you are 10 feet away from each other, it still takes about 5 seconds for a call to fully go through. The stats at the end for this scene alone took 22 phone calls. Twenty. Two. Plus, we had additional retakes from laughing, such as this clip, or technical difficulties. One of these difficulties was the fact that we needed to see the phone for context of our story, except the phone we were filming had a privacy screen on it. So, every time the scene went perfect, but the angle of the phone was slightly off, we would have to redo the entire scene because of it.

Referencing my last post, this is footage of the other angle we see when T. Jacobs walks in. You can see both him and Maiya, which helps show the facial expressions of both characters.