CCR #2 Idea

For my second CCR, I’m going to do a talk show style interview. I got inspired by "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." The thing about my "show" will be that i’ll be playing both the host and the guest, and I would be switching outfits to make it feel more real an entertaining. I’ll set up a simple talk show set in my living room. I can put two chairs and a table in the middle with two mugs, Like in the Ellen DeGeneres show. Something like this: 

The video will start with an introduction like the ones in a real talk show. I can put some music in the background and make a title to put onscreen. The host (me) will say something like, “Welcome back to (The name of my show I still haven't decided)! Tonight, we have a special guest! A new filmmaker who just finished an amazing project. Give it up for… me!” I think that touch would add some humor, and be a little turn of events. Then i’ll cut to another shot of myself walking in and sitting down. Throughout the whole interview I would add audience sounds laughing or clapping like in the real TV interview shows. Something a little like this: 

Finally, the interview will go through the last 2 CCR questions, but in a fun and engaging way. The host will ask the questions with a lot of energy and I’ll answer as the guest. I will add jokes and short clips from my project. At the end, the host will end the show saying something like “That’s all for tonight! Make sure to check out Dear Diary; playing nowhere except by my teacher and in Cambridge! See you next time!” I’ll add some applause sound effects to make it feel like a real show.

Research for #4 question of CCR

 For the 4th and last question of the CCR, I will also be answering it in the interview with myself. The question asks:

- How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware and online - in this project?

Software

The whole project was edited on Adobre Premire Pro, which was a software we used. I put all the clips and cut them to fit the time frame, and to match the storyline. Here you can see a little bit from when I started editing the project.

Hardware

The whole project was shot on Santina's mom's old camera. We thought this was the best idea to make the shots look more professional, serious, and just give it a better look overall. We felt it looked more put together if the clips had better quality. In one of the shots we also used my phone. It can be seen in the scene where Maddie hesitates to ask her friend to hang out, and than see they're all at a party she isn't invited to. 

Online

When we were done filming everything, I uploaded all the clips into a google drive. Here you can see all the shots and some of the takes we took of everything in our last day of filming, after we had the whole problem.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1T1uA7N50cjpLoT6V5vSzHST_XZGMhcLu?usp=sharing

Google drive was a software we utilized. Lastly, as an online design tool we utilized Canva a lot. On canva we made the template for the "Dear Diary;" title, and the production studio logo which you can see here: 

Research for #3 question of CCR

For my 3rd question of the CCR, I have decided to make a different CCR. This will be and interview with Maddie, except I will play the interviewer and the guest. I think it will add a humorous touch to the interview to make it more engaging, and more original and just asking someone to do it with me. I plan on using a lot of shot counter shot between the conversation of the two on screen.

One of the 2 questions I will be answering is:

 - How did your production skills develop through this project?

Two major things where developed. My editing skills, and my filming skills. We learned a lot on how lighting played a huge role in the quality of productions, and how important it was to have a steady camera. We used Santina's sister tripod to film, for the third time, and it was a total game changer. I also learned that you can do many things on Canva to help you with editing words or screen pop ups, like the title and credits. We also learned a lot about mise-en-scene, and how important it is to make everything look put together, and in place. One thing we would have to improve is in some quality of the shots, and how to focus the camera more, for example in this shot of Maddie. Its not super bad, but it shows room for improvement. She is the main thing on frame but its un-focused, making it look wired:

Time management was also a big struggle for me. I have so many activities afterschool and it was hard to get everything done on time. But overall, I think this project helped me learn many things just from trying it out. I will definitely be incorporating these for future projects to make them the best I can.

Research for #2 question of CCR

The second question for the CCR is:

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

I plan on answering this in the same way as the first question of the CCR, doing the 73 Questions with Vogue. I would answer the two questions while I do this. Our product is very focused on Maddies teenage years, and how she is getting through it, which would be seen throughout the film. Many teenagers even if some don't realize they might go through this on a daily basis. I think the film opening would make them feel represented, and heard. It would engage them to watch it. Seeing people in the same situation as you makes you feel better about it, and seeing how Maddie will tackle on these challenges will bring an audience. This is a chart of adolescents suicide rates in the US in the past years, it has increased by 35% since the year 2000. 

Since this film is something small it probably wouldn't have a big launch. The film would get distributes by a small independent film distributer. We would make a lot of advertising on social media, especially because that's where the teenage audience is. We would post teasers on instagram, tiktok, twitter and snapchat. The film would begin to play in the local small theaters, and if it gets fame, eventually around the state and even country.

Group Meeting #2

 Today we had our 2nd general meeting in class to discuss about our projects. In my group I got paired up with Octavio, Adriana, Julian and Gabriel. Throughout all our discussion I took notes on my laptop to then write this blog post for you guys :)) Here you can see a screen shot of everything I jotted down:

We all began talking about what we where doing for our projects. We than got into our filming process, than CCR's, our blogs, how were editing, and than our film actors. Here is everything we got from each group member:

Octavio

He is doing a film opening about a couple that is going through a rough time in a relationship. He told us he was working alone, he is directing and filming everything, and his friends will be his actors. The title of his film opening is "Mending," he told us he chose this name because of the meaning of the word, he says that he wanted it to be related to the content of the film opening. He picked mending because he says the word means repairing, which is just what the main characters want to do with their relationship in the film.

The film opening consists of some fights between the couple and than the aftermath of the fight, than next day. The girl goes on a run and runs into someone she knows, it focuses on developing on her character. Octavio told us he is basically done with his project, he showed us some of his clips, he already has all his shots to begin editing, he said he will be using premiere pro. He says he wants to begin adding foley sounds and maybe some music at the beginning. When we where talking about how long our film opening where, he realized his was too short, and he didn't have any credits. We gave him ideas on how to make it longer and where to add the credit scenes.

For his CCR, Octavio told us he wanted to do some sort of a short film, or just him talking with pictures inserted into screen to make it engaging

Adriana

She began telling us about her film opening plot, its based on a toxic, abusive relationship. She tells us how the film takes place in a party, the guy is a drunk, and he doesn't remember hitting his girlfriend, but she wants to finally end it with him. He production title is "Turbulence." She told us they where supposed to film some time ago, that her group partner was going to host a party and they would film there. Something happened and they couldn't host the party, so they will film today. Adriana also told us she wasn't going to be participating in the film, her cousin and friend where going to be acting.

For her CCR Adriana told us she wanted to do an interview with a teacher. Her partner and her would both be in it, 2 questions she would answer and use for her CCR, and 2 would go to her partner. The second CCR she wanted to do a power point with a voice over.

Julian

Julian's film opening is inspired on the video game "Hello Neighbor," they want to do a video game type horror genre. The concept of the film opening is that the main character goes into the game, and has to escape the bad guy. If the bad guy catches him her will throw him into the basement, and the point is to escape. He told us he was going to play the kid in the game, and his partner would be the one chasing him. 

Julian told us his problem with their film opening, they didn't have a title. We all brainstormed and thought about some ideas. We told him he could name it something like "Escape," for the purpose of the game. Or Gabriel came up with the name "Game Over," since it is based on a video game, he wrote down our ideas.

He told us they had already filmed 3/4 of his project, they're just missing the last part and editing it. 

Gabriel

His film openings name is "Airball," its based on a boy who's brother is a super basketball athlete. They kid wants to be as good as his brother but is always in his shadow. He wants to be as good as his brother and struggles with that. He tells us he is the only one who doesn't appear in the film, his other 3 group member. He told us he is going to be editing in premiere pro. For his CCR he was planning on doing an interview or podcast with his dad. 

We saw each other blogs and gave each other feedback, its very good, he has a lot of information in detail about the project and I like how he includes pictures, it makes the blog posts more entertaining.

This is us working on our blog posts about the group meeting:

Feedback/Constructive Criticism

I told the group the group my idea, and Gabriel looked at my blog. He told me he really likes the research 1 post, and that its a good idea for my CCR. He told me I should add more research on the actual question. He said its good that I have been editing. He saw how I did a whole post on the problem we had with the project, and said it was a good thing how I was honest about it. He also enjoyed watching how we fixed problems creatively, like using the vanity mirror for better lighting in the production post. Lastly he told me I could focus more on talking about the techniques we use and go more in depth with that.

Octavio gave me the idea to create the title on Canva, and than insert it into the project making it look like it was written on. This really helped me because I didn't know how I was going to edit this in. I also mentioned how my group and I where struggling with adding music to out project, Adrian suggested to make it diegetic maybe Maddie turns on a radio or something, to make it smoother.

This group meeting really helped all of us, and I will be doing many of the things I mentioned to improve my project. Here you can see a final picture of our group during the discussion: 

Research for #1 question of CCR

For my first CCR question I know I want to do something that doesn't bore whoever is watching it, I don't want to just be a talking head, and I don't want it to just be a screen filled with paragraphs that no one wants to read. I have 1 idea which I would like to do to answer this question. The idea I had was something like a 73 Questions Vogue does while I answered the question.

The first questions to the CCR is "How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?"

Our film challenges the conventions of regular Drama movie convention because even though its based around Maddies life drama, it does include how she will grow from that, and have character development. Some of the genre drama film conventions are lighting, dialogue, monologue, set, costuming, and entrances/exits. Our film opening doest contain much dialogue, it mostly focuses on expressing Maddies emotions and how she is feeling. We also incorporate a bit of coming-of-age genre, blending the two together. Our film represents social groups of issues by tackling the mental health in teenagers. It incorporates how social media can have an impact on teenagers more than some one knows. Being depressed in todays society is not something that is talked about a lot, and our film can make teens that feel like this feel heard. That their not the odd one out for going through this, but to keep going, just like Maddie. 

The idea I thought of doing is a "73 questions with vogue." It is basically an interview with someone where the person behind the camera visits them, and asks questions while their doing something. While I talk I wold also include many pictures and clips to keep the viewers engaged. I also plan on using a loud voice tone to prevent people from getting bored. Since this is something a lot of teenagers are into in social media because famous people do them, I think that it would be perfect since the character i'm playing is a teenager that lets social media affect her.  This is a video that I saw that gave me the inspo for this:

Post-production process (editing) #2

 As you already know, our project had a very big bump in the road this week when we decided to re-film everything and start from 0. This caused us to get a little behind on editing. But no worries, now that we have all of the final shots, this process can officially begin. Even though the rough draft is very different, due to the different storyline, it did help to save time for all the room shots. Now we can sort of know how long we want the shots, and the order of them. It helped us save a lot of time.

Santina sent us the production logo, which is edited in the beginning of the film opening, the first thing the audience will see. This is what she created using Canva:

Than, I exported all of the files into Premiere Pro, and began to place them in the order we want them to play. First the production logo, than the credits, the 1 part of the room scene, film opening title, and lastly the second part of the room shots. This is a screen shot of the beginning of editing:

As I had said before, I love editing things, but there is some things i'm not familiar with using Premiere Pro. We had two things we had to edit in that took some effort: the credits & title, and the music. For the music, Maria (in my group), actually made music for this project. She loves to play the instruments and offered to make something we could use for the film opening. We are still deciding which audio will fit best with the mood, but here you can see the options we will be picking from:

Than, the writing. That has also been a challenge, I had to figure out how to insert it but everything worked out fine thankfully. Everything is finally coming together, and there is nothing better than seeing our hard work begin to pay off. So stay tuned to see how our project will turn out!

Production process

 2 days after we realized the mess we made with the film opening, we met up again to re-record our whole project. We got together today in the afternoon after school and set everything up, this time we where more prepared. We first went over all the shots we had to record and everything we wanted to get done, we also gathered up all our props. Here you can see mostly everything we used:

We hung up the board with all of Maddies pictures, the one of her and her dad, we changed the light bulb of the night light to one that it cold lighting, and set up the diary. Santina brought her moms camera to record, we thought this was going to add a more professional look to the film and make it look more serious. She also borrowed her sisters tripod so that we could record and the camera was steady. This helped us a lot to get good shots. It was hard figuring out how to make the camera stay on the tripod, but we figured it out. We began to film everything chronologically, and took a few shots of everything to see which we liked best at the end. Here you can see behind the scenes of us filming the shot where Maddie walks into her room:

One of the biggest struggles while filming today was trying to get everything we needed to done before the sun went down. This is also why we filmed everything in chronological order and didn't jump around from scene to scene. Once we filmed the shot where Maddie closes her blinds we where going to be okay, because we didn't need good, natural light if her curtains where going to be closed, but before that we did. We also needed the good lighting because if not there was going to be no difference between the before and after shots of the blinds closed, when everything needed to be a bit darker to emphasize how Maddie felt. 

Thankfully we got to record everything we needed with the light before the sun went down. But now without the sun we also had a problem. In the shots, the only light in Maddies room was going to be coming from her nightlight, but it wasn't enough, so we had to improvise. We ended up having to use a vanity mirror as a light to make the shots look good, we where going around plugging it in everywhere to make everything look good. We put it on a rolling chair and would just move it around the room, here you can see how it was set up:

Finally we finished recording, now we just have to edit everything together. It feels like such a relief to have everything done. Some shots aren't the best, we know, but we put all our effort into this so we hope we have the best final result we can have. Here is another behind the scene of the last shot we took with my mom :))

Turn of events

 A you know, we had already got together with my group and began recording or film opening. Once we where done we collected all the shots and did a rough draft of what our project would look like. I don't think I have ever felt so stressed in my life. We did not like how it turned out, nothing about it: the shots, storyline, or even the quality. We didn't know what to do, and we were running out of time. When we put all the clips into Capcut to see how it would look quickly, the story felt too resolved, we knew it wasn't what we wanted. 

We all sat down and began to brainstorm on a way to fix this. We thought that the story felt super rushed, it didn't feel like a film opening, it felt like the whole movie had gone by in 2 minutes. We decided that cutting off the unnecessary parts of the story was best, and made a whole new story board to follow. Here is a picture of it.

We came to an agreement that we were going to get rid of the whole scene in school, in the car, and Maddie walking into her house. We just want to focus on when she is in her room. We also decided we are going to make everything more slow paced, everything happened so fast in the rough draft it didn't covey the feeling we wanted. We agreed to meet up in 2 days and record everything.

The story was now going to go like this. The film opening starts with the production studio clip, which Santina created in canva, its called "Look for Productions." Than there is going to be clips of components in Maddie room that will appear in the opening, the diary, the portrait with her dad, the calendar indicating its summer, and the board with the pictures of her friend who moved. She is going to walk in and lay in her bed, she looks very sad, bored, and lonely. Maddie will open her phone and text her friend for plans, she hesitates in sending the message, opens snapchat, and see her "friend" had posted a picture saying she was going to a party. Maddie wasn't invited. She got back to the chat and deletes the message. Maddie, very sad, gets up and closes her curtains, thats where we will edit in the title of the production, "Dear Diary;" The screen will fade into black and than a light will turn on, we will see her nightlight with the diary, a picture of her and her best friend who moved, and the lamp. She grabs the diary, sits down on her best, and flips the pages to find a blank one. As she goes through the pages you can see how the mood and vibe of her writing went from happy to depressing. Here you can see the diary we created:

She will write in her diary and than the same thing as before, her mom will come in and take her out fr ice cream. 

There might be a few altercations to the story line, but this is the new idea we had, so stay tuned!

Post-production process post (editing) #1

Today we got together with our group to record the final shots we needed for our project. Once we where done we sat down with Santina and Julia to go over them. We exported everything into capcut to see how the project would look. We will edit the actual film opening on Adobe Premire Pro, but this was just to see a rough draft of what it was going to be.

As soon as we exported everything, we began to place the shots in order of the story. We dropped everything to the right length and realized that it was way too long. Since it was also a rough draft we didn't have the clips of the production studio yet, or the title of the film. So it was going to go way over too. 

I have always liked editing videos and doing that type of things for fun, so I offered to do it for this project, of course with the help of my group. This rough draft made us realize we had to re do our project due to various problems. It felt very rushed and resolved, the quality wasn't good, or the lighting. But all I can say is that were so glad we edited this in the moment to make us realize the problem, and fix it before it was too late. After we re-record I will be editing this all in Adobe Premire Pro, but with all said, here is the edited rough draft of our project (which we will not use):

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KPtOxl0nf7hw-s8AlDjmWj1nEkkfgof8?usp=sharing

Production process: Room scenes

 Yesterday morning my group and I got together to film the project, they came to my house and we got started. We where planning on filming everything we needed to but couldn't. The film is supposed to be shot a little after school ends, but since it was morning the sun was as radiant as ever, and we thought that lighting wouldn't evoke the feeling we want to portray. We got one shot done, when Maddie gets to her room, and closes the curtains. 

All of my room lights where off, we just had the natural light coming from the window. It didn't really matter because the curtain was going to close either way. This is the part of the film opening where the title will appear. I will close the curtains, the screen will fade to black, and slowly the title will appear on screen. For this part of the room scene we wanted to do 2 shots. One of Maddie walking towards her window, obviously looking very sad, we wanted to make it a mid shot. And than another shot from the back of her actually closing the curtains. We took this shot many times because we couldn't decide if we wanted the curtains to be closed aggressively, or slowly. We decided on something in the middle.

All of the remaining shots we will record them at the beginning of next week, everything in the downstairs, and al the diary scene, so soon you will the the process on that.

Here you can first see the first shot of "Maddie" walking towards her window, and than the one of her actually closing the curtains.