Deciding on Genre

Raul and I had a meeting today to share our ideas for the film. Although we couldn't decide yet on a definitive plot, we reached an agreement on our genre. Pretty much, we want to expand on what we did last year. Our film opening was meant to provide a glimpse into the life of an everyday teen, however, I feel as though it fell flat. There were issues with this piece ranging from lighting to just overall selection of characters. Despite the numerous faults from our last attempt, Raul and I think we really have some potential as long as we really focus our efforts on character development and create a smooth well-produced piece. The teen drama genre is what we are leaning to again, noting our lack of budget and access to a large pool of actors in that age range. Plus, I really just love teen dramas. Similar to our film opening "Younger" we want to have a small cast, with the main character essential to the progression of the storyline.

Thankfully, I have already done genre research on both the drama and teen genre.

Drama genre research: https://pearsemediastudies.blogspot.com/2018/12/genre-research-drama.html
Teen drama examples: https://pearsemediastudies.blogspot.com/2019/02/research.html

I'm back

I am excited to announce that I will be resuming this blog in order to document the progress of my AICE Media A Level project!!! Things have definitely stepped up from the last year, with one major and two minor components to get done. Working again with my partner Raul Passarini, we hope to improve on our work last year to create a five-minute short-film that we can really be proud of. Creating an entire short-film is something I have never done before, so I am both excited and nervous to get started on this. This year, we practiced a lot with editing and filming creating projects including a trailer and documentary so I feel like I have a good grasp on what needs to be done and the hard work that is going to be needed.

For this week, I want to put a ton a focus on just thinking about genre and what kind of story we want to tell. From then on, it's about what we are willing to do to make this thing come life. Research and preparation is something I really want to improve on this time around, so this blog will hopefully be reflective of that. Alright, I'm gonna stop typing and start thinking...

Film Opening: Younger

Here it is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zidK6o4N-ibEl3eHVQpWMg8kY-lZk8Ru/view?usp=sharing

Creative Critical Reflection (CCR)

Here is my Creative Critical Reflection to my film opening, Younger.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QRkuI4hcku9cEzOW_o4a2s-yknoaUI6f/view?usp=sharing

Bibliography:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k4T7e_MdRuE7Ba0SauwCI3kQGwNL5LqBdxmWZSmlOik/edit?usp=sharing

Quick Reflections

Overall this project was such a great test of my imagination, time management, and team building skills. I'm glad to have taken this class where I get a chance to test my true creative abilities (even when it makes me sacrifice a weekend editing). Thanks Raul for sticking with my through this whole journey. Now I got to get back to work!

Lighting

Like I said in my post about "The Set for Younger," here is a post about the lighting I used during the filming process. I will be showing screen grabs from the final piece to depict the different lighting styles I used and also to give you a little sneak peak!

 For this scene, we mainly used the lighting inside my room which included multiple hanging lights which I think really fills the shot with light yet still giving a moody vibe.

For this hallway shot, no lighting techniques were really used. Simply the lights on the ceiling did the trick. :)

 This shot is probably where I think we went wrong during the filming process. I was hoping the light from inside would brighten her face more, and sadly the lights on her left don't do much justice in giving her a back light. Mistakes happen!

 For this long shot we again used the LED light box to give off more light in the front, and the positioning of the street light in the back offered light behind the subjects. However, I do find the blaring light a little distracting.

  For this shot I had my friend holding an LED box light high above our heads to give off that "moon light" feel. The lights from inside my room gave him good back light.

For the shots in the kitchen, we just turned on all the lights in kitchen as well as all surrounding areas to give a balanced lighting scheme. We wanted to make the kitchen scene look as authentic as possible.

The Final Stretch

YAY!!!! The final stretch. This week is the last week for creating my film opening which has involved countless hours of editing both my CCR and film opening.

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Here are some things I did during this final week:

I found audio!

 I found this copyright free song and the notice is screenshotted Above!! I found this song about five minutes into my search and I just knew that it was the one.

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I figured out color correcting!!

Here are two screen grabs from footage of the film opening. The one above is the final color corrected footage. From my research I have noticed the success of a orange and teal color scheme. So I took inspiration from that and adapted my own style to the orange and teal style giving the shots an additionally more warm and moody feeling. 

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I Finished editing the film!

I would give you some details about the film but...... you will have to find out on Sunday!

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I began editing my CCR!

Oh boy was this a project, with all these videos of me talking, I guess you can say that I am already sick of myself. I'd say editing the CCR will take twice as long due to me having to condense 25 minutes of me talking to 7 minutes. Also, the amount of times I had to cut out me saying "um" makes me want to punt my computer across my room. But anyways, I will get it done. :)))