CCR

Here is my Creative Critical Reflection!!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ct0SX8KJsH3UnB40P918_kil9c3ZNjit/view?usp=sharing

Erased

Our short-film "Erased" is finally finished!!! It has definitely been a crazy roller coaster ride to the finished product but I am proud of the work that I was able to do. Coming up with and executing this whole idea was definitely fun and I am really proud of my family for putting up with me through all the retakes. This film was a fun one to make and I'm excited to look back on it in the future to remember these crazy times.

Anyways, here are all the links:

Short-film

Postcard: Front
                Back

Website

Reflection

     I would have never guessed this project would turn out the way it did. When we first got assigned the Portfolio Project in class and started brainstorming Raul and I were really having a tough time coming up with a story. We settled with a story that was adventurous and creative, and I even wrote up a whole script detailing events in a group of teenager's lives. But suddenly, a big scary virus known as Coronavirus shut the entire world down, including all possibilities of Raul and I filmed at public locations with actors let alone each other. School was cancelled too, and our fourth quarter was to be finished via online learning. With my senioritis raging at full capacity, I had to find a way to come up with a story that can be filmed at my house, include only my family as actors, and fit within the five-minute cap.

     Somehow, I did it and spent a lot of time just kind of thinking of new stories that I could tell. Don't ask me how ended up making a story about the government being taken over and forcing you to remove everything individual in your home, but it is something new and spicey. After some mental planning, I got the filming done around two weeks before the deadline and I don't think it could have gone even smoother. I was filming with a purpose, and I knew exactly how I wanted the story to develop in my head. My parents kinda killed it with the acting and I barely had to reshoot the scenes with them in it. Heading on into editing process, I fixed my computer storage issues by getting a flash drive, and started with laying all the footage out on Premiere. I was extremely happy to get permission for the song Chapels by Giant Rooks as I feel it really fits with the footage and the overall vibe of the film. I basically edited the non-dialouge footage completely around the song, and I made direct edits to the song such as slowing it down and rearranging the chronology of it in order to match the direction of the movie. Color-corretion was pretty simple, I just added some orange and blue highlights, added in some fade, and adjusted the exposure and contrast accordingly. Overall the edit went smoothly and I comfortably finished the film before the deadline.
     
       Working with Raul as my partner, he definitely took a lot of weight of my shoulders by taking control of the website and the post card. Staying connected with him has been extremely vital throughout this process as we have continuously been bouncing ideas off of each other and collaborating since this project began. I think we really stepped it up from what we did last year, and I think that says a lot knowing we had to complete this film under lockdown.

Song Permission

Going into the editing process, I had a pretty good vision in my head of what I wanted the end product to look like. I big part of that process for me is editing around the main song that will be included throughout the movie. So I knew before I started editing that the song I will be using was Chapels by Giant Rooks. As such, I sent out an email to the management of the band, Giant Rooks asking for permission for use of their song.

After sending that email nine days before the deadline for the project, I definitely got a little lucky getting a response so fast from Alex Ruhl so I am able comfortably to edit knowing I can actually use the song I am basing my edit around. Here is the email he sent back to me:

{Edit: I am not allowed to upload images of the email due to privacy}
He sent back a short email saying that we can use the song as long as we do not make money off of it.

So basically I am free to use the song as long as I don't make any money off of the film. Works fine with me! 

Second Day of Filming

Today I just filled in the blanks from what I did not film from yesterday. I thought a cool idea to get rid of photos was to burn them, so I got out the fire pit in my backyard and I really got some cool images! Behind some music, these videos will look really nice in the finished project!

Editing Begins

This is the part of the process where I am the most excited for. I know I'm not the best at cinematography, and I know the acting was a little troubling looking back on that first day of filming. Based on that, I'm really going to have to do my best to make this look like something that wasn't just thrown together by a family who has no idea what to do when it comes to standing in front of a camera.

Going to import all of my footage onto my computer, I realized that I had zero storage to store the nearly 6 gigabytes of footage I took onto my laptop's hard drive. So I went on a little quarantine road trip to Walgreens to get myself an external hard drive.

Little to my surprise, Walgreens did not sell external hard drives so I just bought this pretty hefty SanDisk flash drive that can store 32 Gigabytes, which is the perfect amount of storage I need to comfortably get this project done.

As seen from the screenshot above I am pretty much trying to organize all the footage and sort of quickly get the spine of the storyline on the timeline. For right now, I have just enough footage but I have noticed there are some holes in the plot that might need some refilming. So my next steps are to continue editing and tighten everything up before I make the determination that I need to film additional footage.

Progress on smaller components

Since I was finally able to shoot, I quickly sent Raul some cool screengrabs and photos relating to the film so that he can get to work on the website and the postcard ad. We have about nine days to submit our complete project so its important Raul has the time he needs to really make something cohesive and professional.

Here are some of the photos I sent over:

Since I have a lot of work to do with editing, I'm giving Raul total control over the art direction for the postcard and the website. For more images to be put on the website, I will be soon sending Raul numerous screengrabs to be displayed.