CCR research?

 Life update and research!

 

This blog is a mix between a little life update and also some CCR research that I will take into account for the actual thing. To start this week has been rocky at best between my group and figuring everything out, we are almost finished like I said in my last post and I dont doubt we will finish, but there is not much left for me to do on my part so I do not have much to write about project wise. I found the foley sounds as I stated in my last post and things look like they are turning out well. I was going to do some research for the CCR and create a post answering the questions, however I realized that this would be almost redundant as I am going to be answering the questions in the CCR anyways, as well as the fact that in order to answer the question I really just need to look back on my blogs I have already posted.

For instance, I have stated before through my genre analysis for post-apocalyptic films and my post on target audience that usually the characters are male and these films are more inclined for male audiences, however in our film it centers around a female protagonist. This also serves as representation as it places a woman in a strong protagonist role that is often not seen in media. 

For distribution I was thinking the obvious route of using YouTube, however I also think that with my connections to the TV production club in my school, I could also promote my film through Beacons short cuts which is a student made show that airs in the Broward area. I also got this idea after watching a past friends CCR from last year named Tati, where she notes this as a way to distribute her film opening as well.

For production skills I plan on discussing how I learned the importance of planning and organization as like I have said in many of my blogs that was a major issue my group has struggled with. I also learned some cool effects and more about the pre-production process.

Lastly for how we integrated technology, I plan to discuss the numerous platforms and websites we used to plan,storyboard and discuss, while also going over the actual physical equipment we used. For physical equipment I want to specifically highlight lighting, as that was an issue during production that was difficult but also fun to work around. 

Sadly I have been unable to meet with my group after Yesterday mornings meeting as it is Passover and I am a little swept up in the holidays with family and everything, but since we are back to school tomorrow I hope to end off this whole process with a bang! Cant wait to show yall our film opening!

Almost there!

 Finishing Touches!

My last blog on Sunday I stated I wanted to finish asap and since this is being posted on Saturday, I think yall can tell things took a little bit of a different turn. Not only did some of my group members have things happen that were out of their control but also we realized that its spring break, so might as well take a break! But we are back at it and today we discussed and started on the finishing touches of our film opening and not to toot our own horn, (get it because the train in the opening :p) but I think it is coming out really well! Today we finally all had some time to go over the finishing touches and we assigned what every one should be working on, Isa is going to finish up the volumetric lighting for one of the opening shots and add the particle/dust effects to add atmosphere to the shot, Sabrina is going to add in the credits, and Kim and I are going to find the rest of the foley sounds. 

Sabrina also showed us some changes and additions she made to the edit that I thought were really good details! For starters, she made the opening credits have a flickering effect that adds that extra layer of the vibe we are going for! She also added a zoom on one of the beginning security camera shots that not only matches with the camera sound underneath, but also adds depth to the story about whether or not the protagonist is being watched! Also there is a really good L cut towards the end of the film opening that creates a natural transition from when the protagonist is inside the building to them being outside! 

We obviously could not get a real train for our opening so we have an added sound effect for it, we noticed when watch the opening back that it may be a little confusing that you can hear the sound of the train but not actually see it. To work around this we are going to try and lower the gain of the train sound and also either add some reverb or echo to make it seem as though it is farther away than originally thought, this way we can keep the final shot and effect we are going for. Also we plan on after showing the title graphic over the train tracks, cutting to black and then having the sound of a train physically passing the character to create that last moment of suspense about why there is a train!

I hope to update yall on some CCR research later and soon post our final film opening!

Font

The only thing we had left to do for our film opening was the opening credits, the title screen, and Isa wants to do a volumetric lighting effect one of the beginning shots of the opening. Right now we are deciding on the font for the opening credits and the title screen, and I really wanted to make sure that it fit with the vibe of our film. Kim ran by some ideas she had for the font and first suggested something like the font for Mad Max, I thought this would not fit because of the pacing and difference in sub genre between that film and our own. Our film is slower paced, starting with a more dramatic and almost thriller like tension, where as Mad Max has action and adventure, these feelings clashed so we needed to look for a font different than Mad Max. We continued looking and discussed whether or not the font for the opening credits themselves should match the title, after looking at a past years opening made by my friend Ryan Orejarena. In Ryans' opening his title had a fun and unique font that matched with the genre of his film, while the opening credits remained more plain and legible so audiences could read who contributed. I felt we should follow this model, so we set to work making a graphic with a unique font for the title and decided to go with a plainer, less distracting font for the credits themselves as to not distract from the shots that are playing under the credits. I would put a photo of the fonts and potential graphic we are using, but one) nothing is 100 percent decided and two) I dont want to ruin the surprise! I will update yall and hopefully wrap up this film opening asap because I want to start discussing the CCR! I hope everything goes as planned, till next time!

Editing!

 Whats up everyone! This post was going to be a combination of what we did editing wise on Friday as well as finishing up today, but we had some scheduling issues, so I am just going to cover what we edited so far. I will inform yall on the finishing touches either tomorrow or sometime during the week!

To start off, we actually got a lot of editing done, in fact the film opening itself is essentially finished and we just need to add the opening credits and title graphic and we should be all set to finish. So far I already discussed in my blog yesterday one of the effects we created for the security camera shots, but other than that we also gathered all our sounds, music, tested some luts, and basically line edited the whole piece together. While editing we tried to follow the story board as best as possible, however, it obviously was not going to be a one to one match and so we used our decision making skills to decide whether rearranging some shots or placing a cut away would be better than what we originally planned. For example one shot shows our protagonist entering the building from a medium shot and following her as she looks from room to room for supplies, as she enters the building she drags her hand along a desk, while shooting we noticed this and got a cut away shot. The reason for this is because during pre-production, we placed fake blood on the hands and nails of our actor to give them character. The cut away close up shot allowed us to better showcase the make up on the actor and show the audience they are toughened.

Here are some of examples of the before and after of some of the different Luts we are using!

 

This shot is the cutaway I mentioned earlier that showcases the blood on the nails!

 Lastly for the music and sound effects in our film we made sure to use all completely copyright free sounds and music. We accomplished this by using YouTube audio library, a free resource for anyone with a YouTube account that allows you to download copyright free sounds and music. We also used Epidemicsound which is a website that provides royalty free sounds and music, however this one requires a subscription, but it had a 15 day free trial that we used to get the sounds we wanted! Throughout the majority of the opening there is a bed of ambient and dramatic music titled Murmur that we found on Epidemicsound. We found the sound of the train, noises for the cameras, noise for the flashlight, and an ambient sound effect that we used for a transition, all on Epidemicsound. For some of the outside shots at the end of the opening, we found a track titled "Spring Day Forest" on YouTube audio library.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pretty cool effect!

Throughout my planning and production process, I have repeatedly stated how my group planned to start off the beginning of our film opening through the lens of a security camera. I noted we would achieve this effect either through using the actual security cameras at the filming location or by doing so in post, and since the cameras at the location did not cover the areas we needed, we resorted to getting the shots ourselves. How we did this during production, is we had one member stand at the top of the latter and get a nice wide shot of the area that we later added effects to in post. First we added grain to the shot as security cameras are known for their poor visual quality, then we under saturated the footage in premiere to take away a lot of color from the shot, and we added a time code in the bottom right of the shot to really show case that it was a recording from a separate entity within the world of our film. Also in order to make the shot look as close to a realistic security camera as possible, we researched the frame rate of security cameras and found that the average frame rate for security cameras is 15 fps, so we set our footage to the same frame rate in premiere. We managed to edit a good amount of the rest of the film opening as well, but I wanted to just highlight this one really cool effect before covering the general editing process in my next blog post. Hope you guys found this as cool as I did!

Before 

After

Also one last note! We will be finishing up the editing process tomorrow and plan on adding the number of each camera to the top left corner of each security camera shot, so this is just an example for how it looks now. It may change slightly in the final production but for now I think it looks great and I really wanted to showcase it!

Group meetings 2!

Quick Update!

Today was another group meeting day in class before the break. As I have mentioned time and time again, this project has been worrying me but today was good reassurance that I am on the right track. After talking with my fellow class mates, I realized that not only have I already filmed and three out of the four others in the meeting with me have not, I also planned more than they have and made sure I had a clear vision before filming. My group is essentially taking a break until Friday to work on our project as we want to use the free day to edit our project since we have already filmed and we feel that we need a break to prioritize other work since this is the last week of the quarter. What I did discuss with my class mates in the group meeting was a reminder to us all that our film opening is just an inkling of whats to come. You want your audience to ask what happens next? It would be unnecessary to reveal the full plot so don't. Also my classmates did help me realize how important it is to find music, I thought about it previously but having the discussion really just opened my eyes and I plan on finding a good royalty free score through YouTube audio library or epidemic sound. The reason why I do not feel I should use copyrighted music and reach out to an artist is because I feel that to make sure the score best fits the opening, I want to first line edit the footage together to see if the pacing will match, and because of this I do not feel I would have enough time to reach out to an artist. Anyways, like I said we plan on editing on Friday and if needed Saturday so I will update yall then with how it goes!

Filming!

 Production Day!

Today was both rewarding and absolutely exhausting! Based on my previous blogs, I think many can tell I am a very anxious person and have been during this whole project but filming today was good reassurance for our project. We managed to film everything we needed, but like anyone who has worked on some form of production would know, things will go wrong and you will be forced to adapt. Time was the number one factor we knew we had against us, so while we were filming we cut some shots and scenes we deemed weren't necessary as they didn't flow with the story or add anything to the context of our film. Originally we planned to have a scene where the protagonist goes into a room and finds a knife or some other tool to showcase they are scavenging, however we realized that this was just unnecessary filler and we decided that if we wanted to get done we had to cut it out. The other main issue we faced was lighting. The context of our film opening is our protagonist is exploring an abandoned building for supplies in a post-apocalyptic world where one would assume there is no power anymore, because of this we filmed in low light situations as the lights in the building were off. To work around this we used natural lighting and a light kit as best as we could to still create the low lighting effect of the shot, but also still see our subject. Also we made sure to have our iris as open as possible and bumped the ISO, we didn't want our shots to be too grainy but there is a level of balance between wanting low grain and also wanting to actually see your shot so some shots we just had to deal with it. Also for the shots in which we were filming from the perspective of a security camera, we had one person go to the top of a latter with a camera and another hold them from behind to make sure we were as safe as possible. Sabrina brought make up and fake blood to make herself look dirtied and roughed up, which helped add to the mise-en-scene of our film and our characters look. She added extra shading under her eyes to make herself look tired, messed up her hair, and added fake blood under her nails and to her arm under a bandage to make it as though she has to take care of her self. Lastly, although we did use a tripod for some wider establishing shots, we realized that to get the realistic and intimate effect that we wanted to portray, especially for our genre, we switched to primarily close hand held shots. All in all, I am really happy with the progress we have made and I really think our film opening will come out well. It might not come out how we expected, but that's the fun part, right?! 

Directing!

As I have said before when choosing the roles for our group, myself and Isa would most likely be co-directing/filming the opening. As luck would have it, our adviser has posted a couple informational videos and articles on directing as a way of offering us more tools at our disposal. In order to prepare for filming on Saturday I reviewed the sources my instructor provided and I learned a bit. 

 Directing Tips!

• Every frame is important!
• Being aware of what happens in every frame allows a director to better tell their audience everything that is happening within the scene.
  

• Get to know your actors and adjust to them
• The more you know your actors and their mannerisms, the better you can explain to them how you want them to act in the scene.
• Also since the actor I am working with is one of my friends, we have a level of familiarity and comfortability with each other so it will be easier to explain to each other what we want.
  

• Make use of negative space to showcase isolation
• This tip specifically was very eye opening to me, because although I probably realized it subconsciously, utilizing negative space is a great way to showcase a character is alone through their surroundings.
  

•  Know what you want your audience to feel when they watch your piece
• I have already discussed previously what I want my audience to feel when watching my opening but to summarize I want them to end asking what happens next? I want them to feel intrigue and wonder what the deeper story line is of the film.
  

• Being a good listener as a director is important
• Being a good director allows take in all the info and make a decision based off of it, or take something from one crew member and adjust it so you can say it to another.

•  Be able to adapt, everything rarely goes as planned
• Based on my previous blogs, we can see how plans have already fallen through and we had to adapt such as my storyboard earlier. 
  

•  Small directors wear a bunch of hats, editor, cinematographer, writer, etc 
• This tip is already a very well known aspect of small productions and as someone who has worked on numerous productions I know what its like to do multiple jobs on a production.
  

• See the movie in your mind
• Have an idea of what you will be filming before you film it, have a vision, "watch the movie before you film it."
  

 

Preparation for Filming and CCR

 Filming on Friday!

Since my group and I made our storyboard yesterday and plan on filming on Friday, I feel as though we are in a good place for our opening. Sabrina already has all of the necessary clothing and the backpack for the shoot, however before Saturday we still need to make sure that we get the only other prop we need, the Twinkies! My team has not talked much outside of story boarding and so we are essentially just waiting to film on Saturday before we can do anything really big for the project. We also discussed the roles of each person in our group and what exactly they will be placed as for credits. Obviously I have already stated many times before that my group member Sabrina will be acting as our main character Aria, but for the rest of my group we decided that since our group member Kim is currently in Orlando until April and can not film, that she will take on more of a role during the post-production process. As for myself and Isa, we will both have cameras and we plan on combining both of our knowledge to get the best shots possible. To put a label on it for the credits, however, I will most likely be directing as I want Isa to be the main camera/videographer as I feel she has the best cinematography out of any one in our group. Also I have been in director roles before on other projects and I tend to take on a more leadership role during projects so I feel as though I can help best direct when it comes toward both camera and acting.

Lastly, today in class we went over the creative critical reflection and reviewed exactly how we should approach it and make sure we effectively answer each question and in a creative manner. I found it very helpful as we saw some examples and I also took a good amount of notes to make sure I am prepared. Some useful things I noted from class today are that in order to make an effective CCR, I should write a script so that I am not stumbling over my words and I sound more formal, also part of the CCR is creativity so it was stressed to not just be a talking head but instead include graphics and other forms of stats to help keep the reflection entertaining, and last but not least, the main thing I took from class is to take background photos so that I actually have graphics to put in my CCR.

Story board!

 Today was a huge breath of relief for me as I have been very anxious with our progress due to the various scheduling and communication issues we have been having. Originally we were planning to visit the location of filming and scout it out and take pictures for our story board, however, like always things fall through and we were unable to go that day. This did not stop us through! We put our heads together and got our story board done, real pictures or not. We thought even if the story board does not match one to one of what we see when we get there, it will still be a useful guide and I really really wanted my group to get a little bit of actual scheduling and story boarding done. Also we managed to reschedule to actually film next Saturday and this time we have permission, so hopefully we do not run in to any other issues. With that said here is our storyboard!

Whos Watching?

 Every film has their own target audience which they are trying to reach and specifically shape their films to fit towards. The post-apocalyptic film genre is usually targeted toward older teens or adults (18-44) as the genre features themes and tropes that a more mature audience would be more inclined to. Also this genres specific style of violence and more rough circumstances is usually targeted toward a more male demographic. Due to the frequent scenes of violence often portrayed in these films, the genre is not intended for a younger demographic as it may be seen as scary or difficult to watch for younger viewers.

The target audience for our film specifically, however, will be more aimed toward teens and young adults around the 16 to 24 year old range as the main character of our film is a teen. Also the protagonist of our film is a teen girl, we hope this will help to interest a more female audience, as the story follows her solely. We still stay true to the tropes of post-apocalyptic genre, however, so the film will still attract the 18 to 44 and male demographic.

Getting A Feel

 Today in class my group was right back on track, picking up our brainstorming and ideas right where we left off. we wanted to create a shot list and potentially a story board, so we began to start building a more concrete foundation and started on our shot list. As we began writing our shot list, we realized that it is a very difficult task to to accurately and effectively plan your shots when you have not actually gone to the location in which you plan to film. We did not let this stop our flow though, as we came up with a plan of action to still accomplish some work. What we decided to do is have Sabrina use Photoshop to draw us a layout of the office building and give us a virtual tour before we visit on our decided upon date on Saturday. The walk through allowed us to better visualize the location and also allowed us to gain new ideas for our film, for example as Sabrina was explain each room in the building, she mentioned how within the dining area there was still birthday decorations when she last went, now these may have already been cleaned up, but if they remain they would be great at creating the atmosphere that an apocalypse happened but people used to be here. It would be another reminding factor to the audience that people did exist but are now scarce. Also as we were further brainstorming ideas we realized that an office space would most likely have office chairs, we hope to utilize these to try and get a dolly shot, one person would sit on the chair while another pulls them back and the character walks toward the camera, creating a very cool dolly effect. We ended up deciding we could not effectively create the shot list until we visit the location and actually see where we will be filming, so we decided that on Saturday we will go as a group to scout out our location and while we are there we can take pictures of shots we want to do and effectively create our storyboard there. Also before we ended our meeting today we finally decided on our title and a font!

We decided to go with the title Losing Track, as the main plot device in the opening is going to be the mystery behind the train at the end. Also the rest of the plot of the film would revolve around the train and its cause. The title also helps to add depth to our characters inner thoughts and goals as she is alone in a post-apocalyptic world and one could only imagine how long they could last before they started to lose track themself.