Film Opening and CCR Links

Here are the link to my film opening and CCRs. Hope you guys enjoy them!

Film Opening and CCRs

Its Finally Over!

It’s finally over. I finally finished this long project. This project started around January 29 and has now been finished on March 22. This project was an experience that’s for sure.

(Me at times during this project)

In the beginning, when I was planning out what I was going to do for the project it was pretty difficult to decide on what I was going to do for the film opening. I remember that it took me a long time to decide what genre I was going to do but after some time of deciding and some third-party insight, I am deciding on the genre that you see now. Around this time I was deciding on what I was going to do, I didn’t really think that this project would be so difficult or it would be such a long process. But I soon realized that it wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought and that this was gonna take up much time. There were many difficulties between working on the project and balancing school work, but the good thing is that I was able to work through it. One of the biggest challenges was posting the blogs at certain times and making sure that they were spaced out.

(Me at the beginning)

When it came to the time for production, this was also a big challenge, and I wish that it would’ve gone a little bit smoother, but in the end, it turned out pretty well. I planned my project to be very good and I also planned it perfectly in my head but of course, things do not always go as we think they will. I have course was not able to get the actors in the people that I wanted originally even though I said many backups, so that is one thing that was a bit upsetting at the time, but the good thing was that with the power of Latinos in action and my officer position, I was able to get some people to help me and also with the help of a close friend. In the end, the project turned out good it is not as good as I wanted it to be, but I am happy with how it turned out. Even though it was a bit of a struggle shooting and it was a bit of a time crunch when we were shooting the shots turned out pretty well just editing was the part where they got harder.

(Me enjoying time before editing)

When it came to the editing, I knew that it was gonna be a long process because I’ve had it many times in the past, and I know that it takes a long time to do it and to make it look perfect. But for some of the Parts of the project, I didn’t know that it was gonna take as long as it did, but Push through it and was able to make the videos look good. Especially editing for the CCR was very long and I needed an entire day just to edit both CCRs, but it was worth it because I made them look good for the project and if I had spent a few days, it probably wouldn’t have looked as good and I probably would have not been able to finish it on time. Color grading was of course a big issue that I explained a lot in my blog post as well as my CCR. Even though it was so difficult at times, I was able to learn some new tricks to help me out with it, and I pushed through that as well.

For the CCR I expected it to be very simple at first, but once I knew that we had to create videos and two separate parts for those videos, I knew that it was going to be more difficult than it seemed. To be honest, the CCR editing was much harder than it was for the film opening and the filming for the first part of the CCR was almost as stressful as shooting for the film opening. I was also able to learn lots of new tricks, and do things that I’ve never done before while shooting the CCR so That is a plus side to the negative that I just explained.

(Me after editing my film opening and in the middle of editing my CCRs)

Overall, this was An experience that I can’t even explain with words. I will say though that it was long and excruciating at times but in the end, I know that it was a good experience to go through because I was able to learn and master many skills. Now that it’s over, I can finally relax a bit especially now that I only have two months left of school, my birthday is coming up, and My adult life is coming up. I definitely will enjoy not posting blogs constantly like this, but I will miss it as well because it is a good place for me to display my thoughts and to speak open-mindedly. The shooting was also of course Pretty fun, but that’s something that won’t stop because like I said in my CCR, I am in CBTV So shooting like this won’t stop for me for a little bit longer. Thank you for reading These blogs and I hope that you enjoy both my CCR and my film opening.

(Me now that its all done)

CCR Post Production: Editing Hell

After filming, both my CCR’s, which were both filmed on two separate days it was time to edit. Editing the CCR’s was hell. I was able to pretty much fully edit both CCR’s but it took me the entire day.

For the first PCR, it took me 3 to 4 hours to complete the edit, but even then it was not fully completed so I will have to work on it more the next day. There were many issues when doing the editing for example, the color grading again. Good thing I was able to copy and paste the present of another clip to the clip I was working on so that all of the clips look the same color-wise. Another problem that came with this editing was that the video where I talk, it is a long video of 30 minutes. So I had to cut all the perfect takes which took me a long time because of how long the video was. I also had to cut all the perfect take out of the eight-minute video for my mom’s talking parts. Another problem was that I had to try to fix the background noise a bit, and that is one of the main things that is not fully finished with the CCR. I also added pictures and videos within the CCR so that was another thing that I had to focus on.

For the second CCR it was a much easier process because Instead of making one long video like I did last time, I cut up all of the takes into small videos, so it was much easier for me to extract. The perfect takes to put into the edits. The only thing that I had to do for the second part was to color-grade it again and work on the audio as well. Unlike the first CCR, I did not have to add pictures and videos, because this CCR was designed to have just video clips.

Besides, the CCR, other problems happened between editing, one of which was a problem with Premier Pro. My PC seems to be having difficulty when switching between different projects and it ended up freezing and crashing at one point. Premiere Pro shut down As well, and when I tried to close out other projects to focus on one It ended up deleting my Progress on other projects that I had luckily, since I saved them before, I was able to re-open them, even though I thought that they had all been erased.

Overall, the process of editing was a bit challenging, and it was very time-consuming. I started editing, I think around 2:30 and I finished editing around 9:00. So, as you guys can see, this is why I chose the title editing hell because there were many problems and setbacks within my process of editing, and I spent my entire day editing these videos.

CCR Production: Shooting Day #2

Today was the second day of shooting for my CCR. This CCR was a much shorter process than before because it was just me acting this time instead of me and my mom. I have the assistance of my sister for this filming though.

The filming for this day was also easier because my script was not as long as the one for part one. So for most of my shots, I was able to memorize the script easier and I was able to put each attempt in two separate videos, rather than one long video like I did for my last CCR. Overall, the shooting for this video was also a bit smoother because it was earlier in the day and we had no school rather than it being at night and having school the next morning. Also, there was no background noise at this time because like the last CCR, there was a lot of background noise due to my parents, making dinner, and doing other things.

The only thing about the CCR was that it was shot in multiple locations throughout my house so me and my sister had to move around constantly. I also came up with new shots as well as my sister gave me ideas for certain shots that weren’t initially planned. There is one shot where I am on the toilet which was my sister‘s idea but the idea turned out really well and it was pretty funny. For that shot, it even took me multiple attempts to say the part of the script correctly because I kept laughing. My sister also came up with two of the shots which were the one shot where I was on the swing and a shot where I’m looking out of the window.

Overall, the CCR shooting was pretty stressful on the first day, and for the second day, it was a bit better and actually, it was pretty fun. Hopefully, the editing won’t be too bad and the process will turn out well.

CCR Production: Shooting Day #1

I could now come up with the idea for both my CCR parts. In class, I started the script for the first part of my CCR. Then once I got home, I finished it and had it ready for today. My idea for the first part which answers questions one and two is a video of me getting interviewed as if I were a director of the film I did get popular. I also will add photos and videos within my video so that it is easier for the audience to understand what I am explaining. The second part of my CCR, which I have yet to film is a video where I will be answering the question while filming in each of the spots where the scene of my film opening was shot. This will give insight into the questions as well as show the audience the set of the film opening.

Today I shot the first part of the CCR. I was looking for people to be in it because I needed an interviewer to be played. So I asked my friends to see if they could help and act as the interviewer but all of my friends were busy and we were not able to help. Instead, I asked my family members if they could help my sister was not able to be on camera, but she helped assist me with the shooting and with the script memorization and wordplay. My mom played as the interviewer for the first part. I played Mr. Lepage a.k.a. me. Shooting this was a bit challenging because I had to use that tripod that I used for the film opening again which is a little bit unstable and I used my phone as well. There was a bit of background noise so in editing, I will have to try to take that out or use the studio audio feature on my phone. Another difficult situation was that while I made the script I did not realize how long some of the parts where I talked were so there was a lot for me to memorize or for me to read off of. So it took me a few takes to make it look good. Same with my mom because she is not used to reading lines like this and she has a bit of an accent when she talks. But for the most part, I feel that it turned out pretty good.

I feel that I put the shots in a good position and that I use the 180 rule correctly. The only thing that I wish that I could have done better was lighting, but I did not have much to work with. The only type of lighting that I had was the lighting from the room and other lights like the lamp in the background of my shot and a little ring light that my sister bought from her room to use as a front light.

I will be shooting the second part of the CCR on Thursday most likely because that will be a day where I am most free. I will also make the script for the second part tomorrow in class and finish it later in the day. I will also start to edit the first part of the CCR. The only challenge that comes with editing this is that I filmed my take of each piece of dialogue on one video and in total the video came out as 30 minutes so I will have to go through that 30-minute video and find all of the perfect shots. For my mom, though her shots were only at a total of eight minutes. Hopefully all of this will be able to get cut down so that I can make it in 5 to 6 minutes. If not, I will make it six minutes and my second part will be five minutes so that I can get a total of 11 minutes, which is the maximum for the CCR. Hopefully I can get out a good point of editing tomorrow even though I work. But if anything, I will also have time after I shoot my second part and the day after because of no school and the start of spring break. Hopefully, all goes well, and I can finish it and make it look good.

(Me after all this is over)

CCR Question 4

It is now the last and final question of the CCR. Like I did with the previous questions, I will be breaking them down so that they are easier to understand and that I will be able to answer them while I film my CCR more easily. The question for number four is how did you integrate tech technologies- software, hardware and online- in this project?

First I can establish which software tools I used, obviously for editing as you can see in my blogs in the past, I used Adobe Premiere Pro. This was used to edit in the line my clips, add titles, music and more. Another software that I used, but I used it for visual effects and graphics was Canva. This was used to create my titles and create my ideas for my credits. For writing and preproduction, I used the software Celitx. This was used so that I could write my script for my film and so that the actors had a script to read the dialogue.

Next is hardware. There was a lot of hardware that I used first for cameras I used my iPhone camera and that’s it and for audio. I used my iPhone audio as well as iPhone audio from Voice Memo. I used my sister’s iPhone tripod to stabilize my shots and I used my friend’s light kit to shoot certain shots with the blue LED lights. Lastly, I used my PC in my room which holds all the software that I used, and extracted all of the videos from the hardware that I used.

Lastly, are the online tools that I used. One of the most important online tools I use is Google Drive. I use this to store my clips and to store my final video or draft video. This made it easier to grab clips if I needed them rather than having to save them on a flash drive or somewhere else. I also used YouTube tutorials to help me do certain tricks and features on Premiere Pro. I also used YouTube to watch certain videos so that I could get inspiration for my film or use it within my film. When I finally finish everything, I will be using Google Drive to display my project. I luckily have the monthly payments for Google Drive so I have more storage and access to more things. It is reliable and also I feel it is easier to do and more private. While I would put it on YouTube as unlisted for now, I will put it on Google Drive.

I have answered all the questions of the CCR. Now it is time for me to come up with more ideas and decide how I will do my CCR. Once I decide which will probably be on Monday or hopefully by Tuesday I can start shooting for my CCR.

(Me thinking about what to do for my CCR)

CCR Question 2 & 3

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 and 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.

The iPhone 16 Pro

For my original plan, I was thinking of using my Sony a7 III, but certain circumstances did not go to plan, so I ended up using my iPhone 16 Pro. As much as I wished that I could use the Sony camera because the quality is very good and it has good depth of focus, I had to use my iPhone, which was still as good as using my camera, just with a little less internal accessories.

The iPhone 16 Pro has a really good camera and to be honest looks so good that it could work better than most cameras. A music video director and producer once told me that the best camera that you can use is the device on you currently a.k.a. your phone. Obviously, not all models of the iPhone have really really good quality camera cameras, but most of the new ones do. Since I have the newest iPhone and one of the best, I have a great camera built-in. Since I have that not using the camera was not a problem since I have a camera that is pretty much the same.

The iPhone 16 Pro has many camera aspects. The phone has many specs. One special spec is the Zoom, which has a range of 5X optical zoom in, 2X optical zoom out, 10X optical zoom range, and digital zoom up to 25X. Then the new iPhone 16s also have a camera control button that allows you to switch between different options like zoom, exposure, depth, tint, and more. The iPhone 16 as well as other iPhones also has smart HDR, which makes the video quality look 10 times better. The only downside to HDR is that it makes it hard to color grade when editing on Premier Pro. The camera also has night mode which enables you to film at night while still being able to film without the video looking too dark. For videos, it can be changed from 4K to HD and from 24 FPS, 25 FPS, 30 FPS, 60 FPS, 100 FPS, or 120 FPS. And with all of this, it is mixed in with Dolby Vision. My videos were shot with 4K 120 FPS. For video, the digital Zoom is up to 15X.

Some other cool aspects of using the phone are that in settings I was able to turn on the grid which allowed me to put the shots in the correct areas of the rule of thirds. I was also able to turn on leveling so that I could level the shots correctly. A feature that I have not used yet, but I will most likely use for this film opening is that the iPhone 16 allows you to make the audio better on videos that you have taken. For example, you can turn on a feature called studio, which blocks out the sound behind so that I can focus on the dialogue. That is a cool feature, but I can also do it on Premiere Pro I am going to test it out on the phone just to see how it is. The iPhone 16 also has 4K video at 30 FPS in Dolby Vision for cinematic mode on the camera. I did not use cinematic mode for my video but now that I have thought about it maybe I should have the only problem with cinematic mode though is that it does not allow you to do certain aspects that regular recording does.

Overall, using my iPhone is not something I regularly do, but I have done it in the past. It was not hard to do and I was not required to check out lots of equipment, which was an upside to it unlike when using a camera you may need to check out lots of equipment if you want it to be better. I would have liked to use my camera, but I did not have the equipment necessary to make it as best as possible while using the camera. The iPhone 16 Pro quality though looks amazing and shooting was not too hard to do. Looking back at the videos, I am proud of how it looks, and I do not regret using my iPhone, but I wish I had more time to shoot and tried to use more features that the iPhone provides.