CCR #1 EDITING PART 1

 Hey Blog! Today it's time to edit and there's no time to waste so let's cut to the chase! (that rhymed)

Typically on Zoom meetings I've seen on YouTube or Instagram Reels, there are lots of cuts focused directly on the speaker's face so that it doesn't become plain and boring. That's exactly what I'm doing right now. I tried keyframing and zooming into the speaker's face but it kept looking really bad or not working so I thought to copy and paste 3 identical videos and have one video being the whole Zoom meeting, one video focused on my face, and another on Selene's here what that looks like:

Right now I'm about 20 minutes into editing and I'll add more stuff a little bit later.

Ok, guys update it's been about an hour and a half and I've only been able to edit for about 1 minute and 30 seconds. Tomorrow I will for sure finish editing and post a part 2 blog going more in depth about the editing process. I'll see you guys tomorrow!

CCR #1 DONE FILMING

 BLOG! I am officially done filming the first CCR and overall I am very content. The time elapsed to 3 minutes and 1 second but I think with the videos and pictures I'm going to add to it, it could stretch the time a little bit more.

The process was simple and it didn't take many tries :) First I called my girlfriend Selene and told her I was ready to film. We both got dressed appropriately for an interview and hopped on a Zoom call together. I told Selene that it would be a good idea to make a little script for herself as I did. She wrote the script on her notes and placed it near the camera of her computer so it wouldn't seem like she was reading off of it. I did the same with my script. We filmed about 5 times because I kept on stuttering with my words but we finally got a good video on the last try.

I will begin editing tomorrow and post a blog on the whole process! Below is a link to a couple of pictures and funny clips of today's filming since they didn't wanna upload properly

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lm-u1kGitnvCRrQ0lE1abZD-F5Xx0Fqj/view?usp=drive_link

CCR Numero Uno!

Hi Guys! I haven't posted in a couple of days because I had really bad wifi and I've been on the move quite a bit. Anyway, I wanted to tell you guys my idea for my first CCR. So I'm planning for both CCRs to be around 4 minutes long but I'm going to make sure to include lots of cuts, demonstrations, and detailed explanations.  I'm going to be answering the first two questions which are the following:

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues.

2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

Before I tell you guys how I'm going to tackle these questions, I want to introduce my idea for the CCR! My first CCR is going to be a Zoom meeting where I will be interviewed by my girlfriend Selene who is pretending to be a famous journalist. Originally I was going to do a PowerPoint presentation but I thought it would turn out kind of bland so I asked Selene if she could help me out and she said she could!

Now back to the questions! Below are the responses I came up with (Mind you this is just a sort of script for my overall answer, some things might not be mentioned due to time or I will add on to certain things.)

1. "Our movie opening not only challenges conventions, but also presents a refreshing portrayal of a protagonist who defies stereotypical expectations. In our narrative, we introduce a 15-year-old Hispanic boy from a high-middle-class background who dreams of becoming a professional soccer player. This deliberate choice challenges the common depiction of Hispanic characters primarily associated with poverty or urban struggles. By showcasing a protagonist from a comfortable economic background, we aim to represent the diversity and complexity within the Hispanic community. Importantly, our intention is not to perpetuate the zero-to-hero narrative often seen in sports movies. Instead, we delve into the protagonist's journey of dedication and commitment to achieving his goals, regardless of his economic status. This resonates deeply with young viewers from similar backgrounds who are striving to excel in their own pursuits despite facing challenges. Our product thus addresses socioeconomic diversity within Hispanic communities while emphasizing the universal themes of perseverance and determination."

2. "Our movie opening not only captivates audiences through its compelling narrative but also resonates deeply with viewers by exploring themes of dedication and perseverance. By choosing YouTube and film festivals as our primary distribution channels, we can engage with audiences in meaningful ways while also maximizing our exposure as a new and small production company. YouTube serves as a great distribution method as our target audience of both males and females ages 10-18 are commonly using it. Also, YouTube's interactive features allow our audience to share their thoughts, experiences, or even just feedback in general in the comment section. At film festivals, our movie opening has the opportunity to shine on the big screen, captivating audiences and industry professionals alike. By showcasing our work alongside other talented filmmakers, we position ourselves to garner attention and recognition for our unique storytelling approach and also gain some quality feedback from experts in the area of cinema.

Overall, I'm happy with my responses and I just hope that I am able to make all this work within the time frame. I'm going to record the CCR tomorrow and edit it on Friday. I will be sure to blog right after!

Editing Day Two

 What's up blog? Today is day 2 of editing. Here in Italy, we were out pretty much all day but I finally got some time to sneak in some editing. If you guys got to catch my last blog, you saw that I pretty much finished the first part of the movie opening and my goal for tonight is to finish the whole entire thing. I pretty much have to since I have to get started right away on my CCRs. So let's get on with it then!

Ok, I'm back literally 5 hours later. I did not think it was gonna take this long but I finally finally finished I cannot believe it. It's 5 am right now in Italy and I'm nearly dead so I'll show you guys a bit of the process.

So above is pretty much the whole editing process. I also had to film some scenes during the day because my dad was on a trip pretty much these past 2 weeks and so the dinner scene was filmed the day he came back. I added this filter called Warlock to kind of hide the blue in the background for one of the shots(obviously If I was going to add it to one I had to add it to all or it would look weird, but it turned out pretty good). The yellow thing you guys see is a little balancing I did between the whites and blacks so the scene would not look too dark and poor.

For the subtitles, I made a custom preset that now that I look back at it looks very similar to the Netflix subtitles which I think is kind of neat :)) It also came in handy cause all I had to do was copy and paste and change the words.

I'm beyond happy I edited with CapCut. The whole experience was super super long but I feel like it would taken much more time and would have been more stressful with Adobe since the playback screen always lags and makes my computer break down and shed tears.

CCRs. here I come!

 

Editing Day One

BlOGG! WHAT'S UP?? We are currently in Bari, Italy but of course, we are still working on the Portfolio Project. You guys might be wondering what I've been working on the last couple of days. Well, I finished filming about 6 days ago and I've been editing a little bit since. The reason I couldn't finish editing yet is that I had homework for other classes and tests I had to complete beforehand since I was traveling before spring break ended. But anyway guys, today I'm glad to say I did a lot. I edited almost the whole first part of my movie opening entirely and pretty much all that's left to edit is the dinner scene which is going to be tragic since I have to put together all the sounds recorded on my mom's phone with the videos and match them perfectly. But anyway let me show you guys a sneak peek of the editing process:

So as I said in the last blog post, I am using CapCut to edit my piece and it's been super easy and reliable to use. I've also been housing Pixabay for some sounds including the alarm, shower, and nature sounds. For the music for the opening, I wanted a Cumbia song to match the Argentinian vibe and I just couldn't get a good one on Pixabay. What I did was I went on YouTube and searched up "royalty-free cumbia music" and I found something pretty nice! I then copied the link for the video and used a free online converter to convert the video into an mp3 file.

Link to the song used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFtEv20b0m4&list=LL&index=26

Link to mp3 converter used: https://y2mate.nu/KsDg/

Also as you guys can see in the picture above, there's a moment where Felipe stops running because his alarm sounds so I thought it would be cool to also add a sound effect where it sounded like the music was coming from his headphones. All I did was apply the vinyl effect, lower the strength and noise, and boom! Overall today was a success in my book and I believe tomorrow I will be able to finish the whole thing or at least as soon as possible!

Uh oh! CCR's?

Yes, as you guys can se by the title, its time to start the CCR. Now mind you, I still am in the process of editing my movie opening. Yesterday I was actually editing and my Premiere started going crazy. It kept on turning off my monitor. I tried turning off the GPU accelerator but the problem still occurred. I was thinking of using CapCut since I'm also really comfortable with it and it's nowhere near as demanding as Adobe Premiere.

Anyways back to the CCR's; Since I'm going to travel to Italy, I'm going to ask my sister to record me walking down the street and walk up to me as if I'm famous and ask me questions about the film. I got this idea from a popular TikTok trend where someone walks up to someone famous and asks to tour their home. Obviously instead of the home we would just be walking as I'm answering the questions and I would edit in clips from my blogposts and movie opening.

I might film the other CCR either today, tomorrow, or Wednesday. For that one, it might not be as entertaining. I might do a PowerPoint presentation or I could do a call show where people call in and I ask me questions. I might do the second one and again I would edit pictures and videos in to show what I'm talking about.

I will be keeping you guys updated on both CCR's and my movie opening editing process which I'm going to continue today.

Filming Day 2

 BLOG!! HUGE NEWS!!

So, I finally finished filming my movie opening. I cannot tell you guys the struggle my family and I went through in making this:00 It took about 3-4 hours because we either kept on forgetting our lines, laughing, or something happened with the audio recording. Speaking about the audio recording, I realized I made a huge mistake. See I thought I was going to be able to use my microphone and a mic arm as sort of a shotgun microphone like the ones almost every filmmaker uses to record dialogue. I have a little adapter so that I can plug the microphone and a headset into my phone. 

I loaded up Bandlab which is actually a music software I used to use but it comes with a ton of effects and noise cancellation settings. I thought it would come in handy to get a nice voice recording. I plugged everything into my mom's phone and it worked perfectly until.. disaster arose. Of course, something went wrong and the mic stopped working. Now, maybe I should've had a backup in case this happened. Before production, I was thinking of purchasing wireless Lavalier mics but I thought they were too expensive and never ended up doing so. However, before going absolutely crazy, I thought we could record the dialogue with another iPhone and place it on everyone's chest behind their shirts or hidden in other places. As you guys might expect, the process was very frustrating and time-consuming but everyone was able to pull through. 

So in the image above you guys can see my mom, dad, and girlfriend Selene. Originally, Selene was to be the cameraman/ prod. sound mixer, so since the microphone stopped working, she was just the cameraman. My parents and I were the actors. Also If you guys look to the right, yes that's right, we filmed at 12 pm yesterday. We all planned to film the day before at night since obviously it made more sense but we had a last-minute emergency family meeting.

For the things on the table, we grabbed a bunch of leftovers from the fridge and made a sort of pseudo-dinner because again, it was 12 PM!!! We are Argentinian so we eat lunch at 2 pm and my mom didn't feel like cooking and eating so early. I sent both my parents the movie script and they studied it in their own time but I printed one just in case to use the day of the shoot. I set up a little table and my tripod the day before to have everything ready so we wouldn't waste any time. I'm very glad I did.

But yeah guys that's pretty much it and don't worry, I'll leave you with some funny bloopers.

If you guys can't access the videos, click this link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1P_UiNi7hsVivaykgiULBBjPCnc_KpNxD?usp=drive_link

Choosing the opening music

 Hey blog! Today I went on YouTube to choose a song for the opening scene. Since the main character is Argentinian I thought it would be suitable for the song to be Cumbia which is a really popular music genre in Argentina right now. I looked at a couple other sound websites like Pixabay and Bensound but I didn't really find what I was looking for. On Youtube I found this one copyright free sound which has lyrics and sounds pretty good. Below is the link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFtEv20b0m4&list=LL&index=1

I think the music genre just adds a little something extra to the character's personality and what I'm going to do is fade in the song during the company logo is introduced and try to edit the sound so that it seems like its coming from the characters headphones when he finishes running. 

Creative Critical Reflection Lesson

Hey blog! Today in class, Ms. Stocklosa introduced the creative critical reflection (CCR). She went over what it’s about, how to answer the 4 questions we’re given to answer in the CCR, and we went over some examples from previous students. I love when we do this because we kind of get some ideas of what we can do and we discuss what the students did good and what they did not so we can have them in mind for when we do our CCR’s. What sucks is that this year we have to do 2 CCR’s. We’re given a time limit of max 10 minutes in total for both CCR’s so I’m planning for each of them to be around 4.

My idea right now is for one to be kind of a voice over presentation or podcast for one of the CCR’s. For the other one I might do like sort of a class presentation and then I’ll ask them to ask me questions and I’ll answer them. That’s my idea for right now but I’m going to see later on what I’m gonna do for sure. This CCR thing thought kind of forces me to hurry up with the production and editing of my movie opening because if not I won’t finish my project on time. Hopefully everything turns out well.

Film Disclaimer!

 GUYS! I just quickly wanted to let you guys know that I'm going to be working on the second scene of this film all throughout this week and I will keep you guys updated for any news. Unfortunately, I couldn't film the dinner scene this weekend because my parents were super busy this weekend and weren't at home much. Next week/weekend is basically the last time I can film because I'm leaving for spring break. But yea I'll see you guys in the next blog post.

Filming Day One

 Hey Blog! The filming of my opening scene has finally begun. 

I waited until around 7:40 PM to start so that I could get the perfect background for my shots. To get the tracking shots of me running, I got help from my girlfriend, Selene, and her friend Jack. Jack has a car so Selene rode in the back and they followed me as she filmed and Jack drove. We had a lot of trouble getting good shots because it got too dark and my phone wasn't focusing properly. After so much trial and error, we thankfully got through it :))

Originally I thought of having someone stand on a skateboard and record as someone pulled it. I then thought about it and figured that it would be easier to film from a car, it would also look smoother. Another problem we had with the shots was the exposure, but after playing around a little bit with the editing I found that I could fix it from my phone. It made my life a lot easier

Below are some of the shots we took today:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Ghmsrn29qoaYpZSU8QgargpKYoOmr6Um?usp=sharing

P.S: The videos weren't uploading so here's the link to them :)

Beginning of Production

 Hey blog! So far we have pretty much planned out everything for the production process of our movie opening. We've storyboarded, we have researched movie openings, we developed our story, made a shot list. I think we're pretty much ready to go. Now, for these past couple weeks I have been trying to get my hands on a professional filming camera. Ms. Stoklosa recommended I check out this place called BECON which is in Davie, Florida near Nova Southeastern University. The problem is, I don't know if I'm going to have time to go or a ride. I have a couple friends that said they would let me borrow their camera but if that doesn't work out, I might just shoot on my phone.

I've recently been watching this YouTube video on making I-Phone footage look cinematic and I have to say it's making me think twice about using a professional camera. Here's the link to watch the whole video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf5SSJw3HGQ&t=281

The good news is I also have adobe so everything the guy is doing in the video, I can do (because I also know how to edit :))

I'm going to start filming this week most likely. I might film the dinner scene first since its the longest and it will help me dictate how much time I have for the beginning scene. I WON'T make the same mistake as last time. THIS TIME, I will save absolutely EVERYTHING I film so I don't lose it.

Hopefully the result is as good or close to as good as I envision it.

Film Opening Shot List/Storyboard

 Hey, blog! I just finished my storyboard and I have to say it took a really long time. Below are all the images for the storyboard including the shots but I will make a list of all the shots in case you guys can't read them!

Here is the shot list:

1. Cretaceous Cinematic Films

2. Full Shot (Tracking, facing back)

3. Full Shot (Tracking, facing front)

4. Long Shot

5. Close Up

6. High Angle Medium Shot

7. Long Shot

8. Establishing Shot

9. Medium Shot

10. High Angle Long Shot

11. Medium Shot

12. Long Shot

13-16 Medium Shot

17. Over the Shoulder

18. Medium Shot

Over the Shoulder

19. Over the Shoulder

20. Medium Shot

21. Over Shoulder    

22. Medium Shot

23. Over the Shoulder

24. Medium Shot

25. Medium Shot

26. Movie Title (GOL)

27. Medium Shot

28. Over the Shoulder

Filming Locations

 Hye Blog! So as you guys can see from the title, I will go over my filming locations. I only have 2 in the movie opening so this is going to be a short blog post.

FILMING LOCATION #1: SADDLE CLUB ROAD SIDEWALK

This is where the first scene or the running scene is going to be shot. I'm planning on filming during sundown because that is when there is the most traffic and it fits best with the story. I chose this location because it is very close to my house.

FILMING LOCATION #2: MY KITCHEN

This is where the dinner scene is going to be shot. Nothing special about this location but there's a lot of room in my kitchen to set up a tripod and camera.