CCR Question 3 & 4

Since my last blog post was about my group meeting, I will be mixing this blog up. Instead of talking about question two I will be talking about questions two and three so that I can talk about the other questions throughout this week. Also a little update on my project is that throughout this week? I will be working on making the title a bit more readable and better looking and I will be adding the credits and music. Overall, I will also be trying to make it to two minutes.

Just like I did in the last blog about question one I will be breaking down each question first is question two. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text? To break down this question I first have to know what my target audience is. Who is this project meant for? This project is for all types of people, but I want this project to be more targeted towards younger people like teenagers or young adults. I also want this project to be targeted toward Latinos and other races related to Hispanic culture. Even though my film does not seem to be relating to that type of audience, later on if I were to continue the film, I would want to integrate something like that. But obviously, my actors are Hispanic so I feel like that will appeal more to other Hispanic people. Now I must figure out my engagement techniques. How do you emotionally or intellectually connect with the audience? In my project, I feel that I am emotionally connected with the audience by showing a young couple in a rough part of their relationship. The emotions and the actions of the people in the relationship, emotionally connect with people, especially those who have gone through similar experiences or are getting to the point in their life where this could happen. I feel that the characters and the setting are relatable to a few people. The visuals also could get audiences connected to the real feelings of the scenes. Lastly, I must see if my film opening has a message and impact. What do you want the audience to take away from it? Does it inspire, inform, or entertain? I want my audience to understand that life can be hard, but it can be mended back to how it was before. I also know that being in a relationship can be difficult at times and things like this will happen but fixing things like using communication can help. I feel that this film opening could inspire others to take action in their relationship if it is getting to this point but of course, the film opening is to entertain people as well. The story and the script were formed to entertain others. Now the second part of the second question has to do with distribution. How would it be distributed as a real media text? My project would be accessed through Google Drive through the public view setting, but I would also like to put it on YouTube if I deem it good enough or I may unlist and share the link. If it were a real film, I would have imagined it to be shown probably on HBO Max, or shown in a film festival that possibly focuses more on Latino culture like the Latino International Film Festival. If I felt like it was good enough I could’ve also submitted it to go on the lightning film festival at Cypress Bay.

Now it’s time to talk about the third question. How did your production skills develop through the project? I feel that my production skills did improve slightly. I am always producing films/media for CBTV but when I produce things, they are not short films like these they are more like news segments. I miss doing short films like these, but I of course forgot lots of ways to do certain things so I feel that I improved and relearned lots of things that I’ve done in the past. First reproduction, I feel that for my script thing, I got it back to how it was because for CBTV the scripts they make me don’t have to be as professional as the ones that I made for the film opening so I had to relearn how to do a script like that since I have not done it in a while. I did learn more about how to do a more dialogue-focused script because the ones that I’ve done in the past are more focused on scenery and shots. For production, I feel that I improved on shots with lighting because usually I feel that I struggle with that but luckily, I had a light kit and natural lighting that helped make the lighting within my film much better than it would without those things. I also feel that I improved my cinematography because I had to learn to use my phone to film, which is something that I usually don’t do. My directing also improved because usually on CBTV films, I get actors who are in CBTV so they know what they are doing or I am the actor, but this time I had rookie actors who did not know what to do or struggled. I was able to help direct them towards the way I wanted to film the goal and how they should act within it. For post-production, I feel that I did not really improve because I used lots of the skills that I already knew about editing for editing my project. The only thing that I did improve on was that I learned how to do sound muffling. I searched for how to do it on YouTube and I was able to learn how to do it and was able to put it on my first clips of the film. The color grading was also a bit challenging, but it is something I’ve done before, but this time it was a bit more intense. I also feel that I improved my problem-solving skills because there were a lot of difficulties throughout this project and luckily through hard work and determination I was able to pull off what I wanted. This project was a bit more difficult to manage than others that I’ve worked on in the past, but luckily I was able to work through the stuff and I’m currently still working through it.

Breaking down, these questions will help me create my final script for my CCR once I figure out what I will be doing for it. I hope that I come up with an idea soon, but to be honest, I am really not sure what I’m going to do yet. And for my film opening, I am going to improve on it more and add more key details.

Group Meeting #2 Reflection

Today, I had another group meeting with a completely different group. The group members were Julian, Adriana, Fabi, and Gabriel. Each of them had great insight and some interesting film openings.

First is Julian who is in a duo and has a film opening that is going to be based off of the video game Hello Neighbor. For those who do not know what Hello Neighbor is it is a video game where you must go into your neighbor's house and take things without the neighbor touching you and if he does you die. He said that he has filmed most of it, but still has one more scene left and has also started editing. However, he does not have a title for the film opening yet. Since he does not have a title, we started to come up with ideas. First, we thought of going simple and calling it Escape or the Maze, but we scratched off the maze since that’s not what the movies are about. Then Fabi suggested that he call it game over since it is related to video games. Julian appreciated the ideas, but I’m not sure if he ended up using one of the titles that we gave him.

Next is Gabriel who is in a group of people who are doing a film opening about a kid who is really bad at basketball, but he wants to be as great as his brother is. Their film is more of a comedy/satire film. I think I know where they came up with the idea of the project, especially because they named it after a type of basketball shot that is achieved when failing. He said that his film opening is called Airball. He did not explain much about his project, but he did explain that he would be using CapCut to edit his project. When he said this, I brought up the fact that I used Premiere Pro and that I feel that CapCut is a bit hard to use on the computer. I suggested for them to use Premier Pro but they said that they are not experienced with it so they want to try to use something that they have used in the past.

Fabi is in a group and is doing a film opening named Dear Diary, which is about a girl who has suicidal thoughts. She said that she wants to focus mainly on how depressed the character is. There are editing techniques that she wants to implement to make it look like that. She has found most of her project, but she had a few setbacks since she filmed all of her project, but had to redo it since a lot of the shots looked rushed. She also said that she will be using CapCut for her editing.

Lastly, is Adriana who is a duo and has a film opening named Turbulence about a girl who is in an abusive relationship. She has not started to film yet, but she has talked about how her film is going to be and that she has tried to film a few times before now. She has not gotten to film yet, but she already knows how she is going to do her CCR. She wants to do an interview with a teacher as the CCR.

Overall, each one of my hours has very interesting and very promising ideas for film openings and I cannot wait to see them. But one of the many good things that this group meeting brought was that they reminded me about the film's opening credits and the length of the video. I forgot that I had to have credit in my film opening and that the video how to be two minutes exactly. Once I found this out, I had to start coming up with ideas on how I would put my credits. My group members suggested that I put it at the beginning and that I put it during important clips or on a clip before the action starts. From those suggestions, I came up with the credit sequence that I can do which is to put it after my production title and have either photos relating to the film or a visualizer in the background and the text of the credits up front.

CCR Question 1

Now that I have edited my project and am pretty much finished, it is time for the CCR. I’m still not fully sure what I will be doing for the CCR. Possibly, I will be doing a short film, news segment, or informational segment for the CCR. But before I decide all that, I must first come up with a script and answer the CCR's questions.

The first question in the CCR is, how does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? To answer this question I have to know how my video uses or challenges, conventions, and how it represents social groups or issues. I feel that this is the best way for me to answer. This question is to break it down into certain parts.

First, I have to identify my project, so what type of product is it? My project is a film opening/short film. Next, I must know what genre or style it follows. My film opening is in the genre of romance drama. The style of the film is very dramatic with the feeling of a typical struggling relationship.

Now that I have identified it, I must discuss its conventions. Does your project follow conventions? My film opening follows the traditional sense of romantic dramas due to the craziness of relationships, and the fact that drama always happens. It follows the style that most relationships are of two people, and that a relationship isn’t always perfect. Also, the film's opening creates a story of suspense while also wanting to understand the characters just like in most romance, dramas, like Love Ana Other Drugs, Waves, and more. Now I must answer, does it challenge conventions? The film's opening has a different feel to it than most romantic dramas. Instead of starting out with learning about a certain character or showing off the relationship in a good state. My phone starts straight in the action of their problems rather than in their prime. I also made the film focus on both characters rather than on just one usually on most romantic dramas. It focuses on one character rather than both. Though in most films it shows the couple and highlights one character mine focuses on both and later highlights both characters. My characters are also younger, and in most romantic dramas the characters are more towards their 20s and 30s while my characters are in the range of 19 to 21.

Representation of social groups or issues is the next topic. Now I must figure out which social groups are depicted in my film. The film's opening has two males and one female. The main couple of the film are both white and Hispanic. The character at the end is a white American. The couple in the film are both in the same economic status as they are both college students and live together in the same house. This means that they both work and provide for each other like paying rent and paying for other needs and wants. How are they represented? These characters are represented as a young couple who are starting their adult lives. The fighting that they are doing is a typical stereotype of most younger people type of fighting. They also reinforce the stereotype of the toxic/toxic relationships of most younger couples and Hispanic couples. What social issues are tackled? In the film's opening, we seem to get introduced to some social issues like mental health, which in the film is shown by the reflection of the argument and the argument itself. Also, the hint towards the girl in the relationship crying. There are also hints of possible domestic violence, violation of privacy, exploitation, and social isolation. Why was this representation important? I feel that I wanted to use Hispanic actors and characters because of my connection to the Hispanic community and because of my lineage. I also feel that there’s not much representation of Hispanic people in film, but it is growing ever so slightly every day. I also feel that most of the time when talking about romance, they focus on couples that are older and a bit more towards the side of marriage, but they never really focus on younger relationships, especially ones that come out of high school. Most people feel that those types of relationships aren’t real or are not as important as ones that are when you are older. But that is not the case because lots of relationships start at high school and then flourish to what they are now so I feel that highlighting what happens before the flourishing.

Lastly, is the impact on the audience. How do you want your audience to react? I wanted my audience to feel the pressure of the arguments and the struggle in the relationship. I wanted people to notice the struggle in the mental health of certain characters as well as the possible issues in the relationship, like exploitation, violence, and violation of privacy. I wanted my younger audiences to understand the stuff that was going on since most of what is happening is things that younger audiences would understand than older or that older audiences could reflect on what happened when they were younger. I also wanted people to notice the actors that I chose and how they represent where they are from. I wanted people to easily tell what race or ethnicity the actors were. Overall, I wanted this film to be clearly different than most romance dramas. Does it raise awareness or challenge perceptions? I feel that my film does raise awareness about problems in relationships. People should look at this relationship and reflect. Especially those who are in relationships, should look at this and feel that they don’t want to get to this point or realize that this point in the relationship could be coming soon. I also feel that this film shows a different perception that most of the time most films show the man overpowering the woman in arguments or fights, but in this film, they both seem to be at a balance of power. The film also shows a person who seems to be pretty happy and has good habits, but as it is revealed, she isn’t as perfect as it seems and has a few issues.

After answering all these questions and breaking down the main question, I feel that I can answer the question better and be able to write it down more easily so that I can put it into my script. I can probably answer the question similarly to how I did in this blog, but of course, I will make it shorter and when doing the CCR I will make it look more presentable.

Editing Part 2

I’ve been editing for the past few days and the process has been a bit difficult. The main problems with the editing are the color grading and some of the effects that I tried to put in the opening.

First off at the beginning of the film, I implemented the production title video that I made from Canva and I also put in a fade from black for the beginning of the arguing scenes. I also used cross dissolves on two different fighting scenes so that looks like they’ve been fighting for a while. I also added Some effects called graphic equalizer, parametric, equalizer, and denoise. These effects help me create the help of out-of-room effect on essential sounds a distorted/muffled sound of the fighting. I wanted the audience to not be able to hear the fighting as much as they should so rather like if they heard it from another room. The result of these effects turned out pretty well. I am still deciding if I want to put music at the beginning where the production title is and at the beginning fighting across as of on the main fight but if I decide to do it I will probably implement it later. At first, I wanted to but I decided to put a jump cut instead. I also ended up using a jump cut again for the ending of the main argument to cut back to another muffled argument. Which then jump cuts again to a later time.

At that later time is the scene where they finish their argument. Around this time, I decided to put the title after the scene, but I needed a decide to put the title on the second scene of the after-argument. I put the title screen that I made on Canva over the scene. Since I had a color on the title, it gave it a nice shade of blue that I feel made the scene. Look a bit better the title then appears and makes it look 10 times better. Then the scene cuts into the dark blue color of the title card to fade out the letters.

For the ending scenes, a lot of color grading was used, and it was a bit hard to make it look as perfect as it did when I filmed it on my phone. But due to a stroke of luck and skill, I was able to make it look pretty much as good. For these scenes no effects were used except for the color grading so it was straight shots and sequence of events.

The color grading issue was a bit difficult to handle, but I was able to deal with it for the most part. The hardest problem in the color grading was that whenever I color graded on a scene it looked fine until I went to the exporting screen, and it looked overly exposed and bright. So when I color graded, I had to constantly go back and forth to make sure that the video looked better on the exporting side. Consequently, the scenes on the editing side looked not as good or a bit dim, but on the exporting side, it looked perfect.

Another thing that I must do that I have not done, but I will add later for sure is my Foley sounds and music. It took me a while to edit all this and I’m not fully done so if anything, I will post an extra blog next week showing my final progress on editing.

Editing Part 1

Today was my first day editing. It took me a while to align the clips. But I was able to put them in the best order and feeling that I could.

First off in the beginning scenes took me most of my time because there were so many scenes that had bloopers or that I felt weren’t as good as another version of the same clip. A problem I ran into that I remember happening before was that I noticed my clips did not have the same coloring as the clips on my phone. This is due to the HDR on iPhone and I guess Premier Pro does not enable HDR and doesn’t allow the clips to look the same. Since this happened again. I will have to find a way to allow it to be on premier or I will have to try my best to color grade the shots. I have already tested it on Premier and I think that I will be able to make it look good. When it comes to audio, I have not tested if I can use Premiere Pro's essential sound on my clips, but it probably will be able to work. I’m not sure if I will use the essential sound though because the sound for the arguing clips sounds pretty good.

Later into the scenes after the arguments, I noticed that some clips were a bit too quick or did not look as good so I had to look through them and make sure to pick the best one. Another thing that I implemented into the alignment was spaces between certain clips. In the photos, you will see spaces between certain areas and the reason for that is because, in the beginning, the reason for the space accounts for the production titles. For the other spaces, it is for a cut between different times in the film and I will possibly put the title of the film in between one of these spaces.

For the last scenes which are of the next day, a lot of the scenes are very light. The exposure and saturation may have to be turned down so that it does not look so bright. But for the most part, every shot looks pretty good. There was a scene that I was using Where I shot two different angles for the same shot, and I thought that I would use either but I was able to use both to make it look better and natural. Since this is the ending scene, I also noticed that I did not reach two minutes. I honestly thought that I was going to reach two minutes that even in my storyboard I ended at two minutes. But I guess through editing and I guess from me trying to cut down clips all the time from TV production projects my film reaches around a minute 30. It’s still possible that it could be longer, but I will have to see.

For the rest of the editing, I will be focusing on making the film look better like color, grading, and implementing titles/production titles. I will tidy up the video in general.

Issues/Obstacles in My Film Opening Process

Throughout my project, I faced many obstacles, so in this blog post, I will explain each one in order.

(Me during these issues)

One of the first obstacles that I faced was deciding which genre I was going to do for about a week or two I was not sure whether I was going to do a romantic, Dracula, or gangster film. As I was deciding, I narrowed it down to either a romantic movie, which would be a romantic drama, or a gangster film which would be an Italian mafia film. After some close consideration, and after meeting with a few people from my class, I was able to decide on doing the romantic drama film. This decision ended up being the best choice because the shots and the possibility of making the film look good was greater than if I did a gangster film. Now more than I thought about it, and after my teacher explained about the project, I realized that doing a gangster film would have been very hard or impossible to achieve at the level that I am currently at. This doesn’t mean that I won’t try to do this type of film one day, but currently, my best option is to not do it.

(Romance film I watched recently) (One of the best movies I've ever watched tbh)

My next obstacle was deciding whether to use my camera or my iPhone camera. I first wanted to use my camera and check out equipment from the TV room or from Beacon. The main deciding factor on which camera I would use was because of the fact that CBTV would be at STN so most of the equipment that I needed would be taken and Beacon would have not been able to answer on time because Jim would have been at STN as well. So at this time, my best option was to use my phone, but later I realized that using my phone would have been a little bit more practical than using my camera because it is a bit easier to use than the camera without much equipment. I also got third-party advice from people who are also doing the film opening and people who have already done it. These people told me that they all shot it or going to shoot it with their iPhones. Filming with my phone was a good idea because I did not have to use much equipment and the video and quality turned out very nice. The only issue that may come later will be the HDR from the phone video. Edit editing with HDR, especially for color grading is a bit hard but I’ve done it in the past so hopefully, I can move past this issue.

(Camera I ended up using)

The next issue also is related to equipment. After deciding on what camera I would use I was also deciding on what equipment I was going to use for the video. At first, I was thinking about audio, but while filling in the phone, there were not many options for audio. If I were to use a camera, I would have most likely used a Rode Mic since it can capture whatever is in front of it. But since I don’t have a type of Rode Mic that is compatible with the phone and my teacher doesn’t either my only other option was to use phone LAUVS, but while thinking, I realized that the use of those types of mics would not really work well for the scenes that I am shooting so instead, I decided to use the audio that comes from taking the video on the iPhone. The last piece of equipment that I was debating on was getting a tripod or a stabilizer. I did not know that I was only able to check out one piece of equipment from my teacher so I had to decide on whether to get a stabilizer or a tripod. I knew that my sister had a tripod for an iPhone, but it wasn’t that stable and I knew that my teacher had tripods that were stable and good quality. I also felt like a stabilizer would be good, especially for the shots where my character is running. But I ended up, deciding on getting a tripod which later I realized was a mistake because the tripod that I was given was not able to even reach the level of my actors. Since the tripod was not able to reach the high level I did not use my teacher's tripod and I ended up using my sisters for most of the shots I had to hold the tripod or put it in a certain position so that it was stable. Using my sister‘s tripod was a good idea in the end and I ended up not using my teacher's tripod. Now that I think about it, I should’ve got the stabilizer so that I could’ve had a different variety of shots and had another piece of equipment that could’ve been useful for other things. Even though I did not get the stabilizer and I had to use an unstable tripod it still worked out pretty well.

(Type of tripod I wish I had and used)

Now comes the last issue, which is time management and editing. Editing takes up a lot of time and is something that you have to sit down and pay a lot of attention to. This week is going to be a bit hard to edit because I have lots of tests, events, and other life-related things that I have to do so managing my time will be a bit difficult since I have to take up some of it to edit. Another struggle is that I am currently going through sickness/allergies and I’ve been going like this for two or three weeks. These things are hindrances to my progress and starting the editing process hopefully, I will have some time to start it or at least get most of it done before the weekend starts if anything on Sunday, I will most likely be able to finish it. Let’s hope that I will not run into any more problems and that it is smooth sailing from here.

(Praying for the issues to pass)

Light Kit and the Use of Color

This was an aspect of the film opening that I added a few days before I started to film. I am kind of glad that I decided to use this piece of equipment because it turned out to make some shots look better and I feel that it will make emotions seem more clear.

A light kit is a piece of equipment That I suggest a lot of people use. Not only is it good for three-point lighting, but if it brings the ability to use LED or color, it will help as well. The use of color and shots will make the emotions and feelings of the characters or situation come more alive. For example, in my film, I used blue light to represent the mellow and sad feeling that the characters felt after their argument. Other colors may also help for other situations if you want to make a character look ominous or you want to make a scene look romantic you can use red lighting. Many colors can be used for many different situations.

As many of you know, colors represent different emotions and feelings. The use of color in films is very necessary. Without color in many films, those feelings and emotions would not be able to be conveyed as well. In the type of film that I did, which is romance, the use of color is very important because the characters feel also emotions throughout the film. Since they feel so many emotions, sometimes it is a bit hard to understand which emotion is being felt. So instead of trying to use camera work or composition to convey those feelings or emotions the use of color can replace those techniques. Not only does it replace having to do good camera work and good composition, but it also makes the scene look more pleasing/aesthetic. For example, in my original plan of my storyboard, I did not think about using the color blue for two of the scenes I was just going to use dim lighting so that it looks dark and shows that the characters are upset but instead I used blue light. The blue light made the shots look better and it also will help the audience feel the emotions that the characters are feeling. If I had more shots within my house or in places where I could use the light kit, I would have used it but in the only other scene within my house, I used the natural lighting within the bathroom because I felt that the shot needed to look more natural.

Overall, my experience with the light kit Was as good as it always is. I have used a light kit a few times and every time that I use it, it goes well. The only difference between the light kit that I use now rather than the ones that I’ve used before is that the ones I’ve used before have LED built in them and it also bigger. The light kid that I used for this project, though was smaller, but to be honest, it was a bit better than the one that I’ve used in the past. Even though this one was smaller, the light felt stronger and also it seemed to have more potential, but I was not able to use it to its full extent. If it weren’t for my friend, I wouldn’t have been able to use this light kit so thank you friend for letting me use it even though she said that it was very new and she wanted me to be careful with it. I, of course, was careful with it and I used it as best that I could.

Now it is time for me to start editing and doing all sorts of post-production and also getting ready for the CCR.