Final Project Week 9: CCRs

 03/29/2024

    Alright here is the last of my blog for the finishing touch I present to you my CCRs. For question one I decided to do a podcast. This podcast is set up to be an entertainment news podcast that invited me on as a director of "Miss Sarasota" for an interview and to answer some questions. For question two I decided to do a news broadcast covering a local film festival and I made an appearance as the creator of the headlining film, "Miss Sarasota," to answer a few questions for the segment. For question three my group and I decided to do a director's cut that would appear on the bonus content of a DVD copy of "Miss Sarasota." There we each answered some questions that fans would have asked us. And finally, for question four, I did a slide show presentation as the director and editor of "Miss Sarasota". I framed it as something I would have posted on my blog for my followers who were interested in the film if I were actually making a film. All of the CCRs are linked at the bottom of this post. Overall, this was a fun project and while there were some ups and downs I am so glad I took this class and was able to learn and improve my skills in a subject I am interested in. Until next time, have a great day!

CCR Question 1

CCR Question 2

CCR Question 3

CCR Question 4

Final Project Week 9: Miss Sarasota

 03/29/2024

     I am so excited to finally share the final product of my film opening titled "Miss Sarasota!" Follow Harper and Nia, two best friends, as they navigate the hardships of life, senior year, and wanting to get out of their boring town of Sarasota. I hope you enjoy it!

Final Project Week 9: Bloopers

 03/18/2024

    So I finally finished editing. Despite popular belief the longest part and hardest part of editing are not the same thing. I would say the longest part was shorting through all the film and decided on which shots to use and where to cut them but the hardest part was most definitely the sound. Being able to muffle the background noise just enough so the audio sounds clear but not to the point of it sounding muffle or underwater. Another factor that I don't think a lot of people realize when it comes to sound is making sure it all sounds cohesive. For example, some clips were very quite or very loud for some reason so I had to go in and make it the same volume which is a little hard to tell and you have to make sure you cut it off at the right point so it does not sound like the dialogue is being cut off, every second counts. However, after sorting out what footage was usable and what was not Hannah took all of the bloopers and made a blooper reel with it. I pushed for a blooper reel since one of the CCRs we are all doing is a director cut segment something you would find on a DVD copy of a film under the extra content and I brought up how a lot of the time the bonus content also has some behind the scenes footage. I thought it would also be fun to show everything that went into the process on this blog not just the final project so it is my pleasure to show you the Miss Sarasota Blooper Reel.

Blooper Reel

Final Project Week 9: Editing

 03/27/2024

    So I finally cut everything down to as close as it can be. I am a little upset since a lot of the scenes feel a bit rushed but there is very little I can do without taking more away from the story. We started off our plans by wanting longer and drawn-out shots to help set the atmosphere and mood. I wish we had a little more run time to work with but I digress. Anyway, moving forward, I moved on to sound now that everything is cut together. All of the clips have a slight buzzing sound but with a denoise effect and a parametric equalizer effect but when it came to the mall scenes I wanted to keep a bit of the echo and background noise as I think it fits with the mise-en-scene of the scene but I had to toe the line between that and having too much noise were it sound unprofessional. On the other side of that line is having the sound be too muffled where the dialogue cannot be heard. After I finished up with sound I noticed some of the video was lagging a lot especially where I had a lot of graphics back to back for the title card. I of course went to my best friend at this time, Google, and looked into what could fix this. This is how I learned about the magic of rendering. After two minutes of struggling, I finally found the button and everything ran a lot smoother but I had to re-render everything every time I edited the footage and I still did not figure out how to get around that. Overall, everything is coming together and I really do believe I will get this done on time!

Final Project Week 9: Final Steps

 03/26/2024

    The task of the day is to cut done our project as much as possible. I went into class today to sit down with my group and I played what I had to them and asked for their opinions on what to cut. I then sat through the project about 15 times and continued to find parts to cut. I am nervous that we will still be a little over but it's better in my opinion to be a little over and still have a quality project I do not want our project to suffer from the amount of cuts being made. In the meantime, I am continuing to work out the scripts for my CCRs and I will link my Word doc that I'm using to plan out everything. So far I recorded my podcast and director's cut with Paris and Hannah. Slowly everything is coming together!

CCR Planning

Final Project Week 8: Editing and CCRs

 3/24/2024

    The end of high school senior year is stressful let me tell you. Balancing this class's final project along with my other classes, and work, and still finding the time to prom dress shop is exhausting, but we trek on. This past weekend I finished cutting all of the footage together and was planning to ask the rest of my group for their opinion and help with editing the sound. However, the runtime of our film opening right now is over a minute over the time limit so I was also going to ask my group what they think we should cut. In the meantime, I started to work on my CCR responses and started to write the script for my podcast response to hopefully record tomorrow. I am a little stressed about finishing everything on time but the more I work on it the more it settles my anxiety. I also got an extra day off work to finish up this project so hopefully my group and I finish strong.

Final Project Week 8: Music Permissions

 03/19/2024

    Currently, our group struggling with technical difficulties, so we decided to take care of our music and ask for permission to use the songs we are using. We ended up using about four songs though many of them were only used for a couple of seconds in the car as a song the characters skip but we still wanted to ask for permission. 

Songs we used include:

- "De Selby pt 1" by Hozier

- "Say It Ain't So" by Weezer

- "House of Gold" by Twenty One Pilots

- "My Immortal" by Evanescence

    However, we were only able to find the email for two of the artists' teams (Hozier and Weezer), and for the other two we had to resort to contacting them through social media (we used Instagram) since nowhere on their websites or social media pages was an email listed. I will attach the photos of our messages at the end of this post!

    Additionally, I decided to start to plan out my CCRs since Mr. Z went over the rubric today in class. I decided to try to do 4 responses and maybe three if my time is cut short. For the types of media I definitely was to do a podcast for question one (maybe question two), a director commentary style video for question three, and I wanted to make a magazine-style article for one of my responses and potentially a movie poster for our short film. I am going to start off by writing out scripts for the podcast and video so I can record those as soon as possible.

Week 6 Final Project: Last Day of filming

 03/08/2024

    Today we finished up filming the mall scene (finally). Overall, everything went really smoothly film-wise, our camera had battery and was working, our mic was working, and we were still able to film in the mall. The only thing I am worried about again is the audio since the mall had background music and people were walking back and forth between shots but I am hoping that it will add to the scenes to have a bit of noise since it is taking place at a mall. However, worse comes to worse I can try and lower the volume of any background noise in post or we can dub over the clips if needed. Since next week is spring break for us I am hoping to get some editing done so at school I can focus on the CCRs. Hannah has all the footage so after she uploads it to a thumb drive I was planning to pick it up so I can start to work on it. We also agreed that while I will start on the main project Hannah will work on the blooper reel since that is something we all really wanted to do and it would be too much for one person to do both. The only concern I had while filming was some of the patrons at the mall who would just stare at us. While yes you do not see a clan of teenagers (Josie and Kai were also there for cameos and moral support) with filming equipment on the regular at this mall no one said anything to us so I assume it was fine for us to film. Now we can move into the post-production stage of our project and as always I will keep updating to my blog on how it goes!

Finale Project Week 6: Filming Problem

 03/07/2024

    So today we dealt with something unexpected, to say the least. Today in class Hannah walked in and she had dyed her hair from purple to red. At first I did not piece together what this meant for our project till Hannah told me. She had this realization after washing out her impromptu hair dye, we had not finished filming and now her character's hair color would have changed suddenly from one scene to another. We started to brainstorm, we talked about putting her in a hat but that would not match up with the scenes we already had filmed, we tossed around the idea of trying to fix it in post but we are not confident in our abilities to make that look professional, we even brought up a wig or using hair chalk but quickly decided against it as it would not look the same. After all of this Hannah came up with an idea that might just work, we wrote in an explanation. We decided to instead of cutting straight to the empty mall we would cut to the mall bathroom and have a scene where Hannah's character dyes her. We decided to go with this as it would make the most sense continuity-wise since our opening takes place in one day and it would add a bit of humor to it, it's almost absurd to dye your hair in a mall bathroom. It also plays into the rebellious teenager stereotype that we are trying to convey through Harper, she is someone who makes rash decisions and rarely thinks before she acts. I also started to edit a bit of the opening with some of the opening credits. I also wanted to post some photos of Hannah's hair color to show how trying to redye it in a short time would not match how it used to be.

Before

After

Final Project Week 6: Representation

 03/04/2024

    To help us catch up in our textbook, Mr. Z assigned us some assignments focusing on representation in media. This not only gives us a break from our final project but allows us to conduct more research to help us get a better grasp and understanding of media representation and how we want to represent the characters in our film project. We were assigned activities 3.14 and 3.16 which took a look at how marginalized communities are represented and how specific topics are represented. For activity 3.14 I worked with Hannah and when we picked out what groups we wanted to take a look at we picked groups either we ourselves could relate to or groups we found interesting, especially in their portrayal in media. Picking groups we also identify with allows for a greater level of insight into their portrayal since we see ourselves in them and it makes negative portrayals all the more impactful since it directly harms the views others have on us. For activity 3.16 I worked alone and researched some films to see how they either reinforced or countered the list of topics that were provided. It was really interesting to see the effect some films' messages are even if they were unintentional. Media really does shape the view of the audiences and I think media companies have a responsibility to make sure the media they produce is not contributing to harmful stereotypes as it could harm whole communities of people. I attached both of my assignments if you would like to take a look at exactly what I researched this week.

Activity 3.14

Activity 3.16

Final Project Week 5: Filming Problem

 02/28/2024

    Yesterday was supposed to be our final day of filming but an issue came up. Hannah's work schedule changed at the last minute and she was called into work and was unable to get her shift covered. Unfortunately, since Hannah plays our main character we could not get around her not being there for filming. Today we got together in class to reschedule a day to film this however, was a little difficult since I do not have my work schedule for this upcoming month yet. After talking we decided on potentially filming March 3rd and/or March 8th especially because the 8th is the start of our spring break and we would have more time before work to film. In the meantime, we agreed to try and start the editing process so we do not fall far behind. I am a little worried about falling behind but we have the first half of the opening filmed so hopefully, we can start the post-production process this week but since I do not have the camera I have to wait for Hannah to upload the footage. I am a little worried that the editing process will not turn out how I expect, but I am sure that it will come together well with the help of Hannah and Paris,. 

Final Project Week 5: Filming

 02/25/2024

    Today was day two of filming and we did all of our house scenes. Our biggest obstacle today was time since Hannah had work at three and Paris could not be at my house till around 11:30ish. Once everyone was at my house we went out to find a poster of a map for one of our scenes and what we thought would be an easy find proved to be much much harder. I think we went to about four stores before we found a map that would work. This of course ate away at more of our time and by the time we got back to my house we had about two and a half hours to film. 

    Once we got home we started to set up and decided to film each scene in order of how they appear. We started with the waking-up scenes and any B-roll footage we might use. Then we moved on to the bathroom scenes. We sat and planned out these scenes since we only had one chance today to get it done since Hannah would get wet and we did not have time for her to dry off to reshoot. Furthermore, my bathroom is very small so we decided to go with the pan back and forth between Harper and the door instead of setting up no shots since it happens all very quickly and there was not much room to set up different shots. We also realized that the RODE mic was dead and we forgot to grab the battery from Mr. Z so we continued to film with the mic that came with the camera. If the audio quality is affected we agreed to record any audio needed later once we begin post-production. 

    The last thing we needed was the scenes of Harper leaving the house and unfortunately time did not allow us to finish the last couple of scenes of Harper walking outside but we decided to get those shots on Tuesday when we finished filming. Overall, we got the majority of the shots needed but I am mostly worried about the audio quality hopefully most of it can be fixed in post

Final Project Week 4: Further Research

02/22/2024

    This week has been uneventful for our project since Hannah's work schedule changed because we had to move our film date from this week to next week. Our next film date is this Sunday and we will be filming the house scenes. However, as we wait for that day to come I asked Mr. Z what I should do while we wait and he said I should conduct some more research and analyze another film opening. Since we are looking to add a bit of comedy in our coming-of-age opening I decided to look at a more comedic film when compared to the last film I looked at (Lady Bird). So, I decided to look at one of my and my sister's favorite movies growing up, "Clueless." 

    "Clueless" follows the main character of a teenage girl named Cher as she navigates high school with her friends. Unlike many high school movies, the main character is not the underdog or "loser" of the school rather Cher is a popular "girly girl" with lots of friends. Cher's development is her realizing how easy it is to get lost in your own world and by the end of the film she focuses on helping others not for herself but to genuinely help others.

    The film's opening follows Cher getting ready for the day as a voiceover of her plays in the background. This helps the audience get to know the character as they see her day-to-day routine and it gives an overall idea of how the character lives her life. The voiceover also provides extra information on Cher, her life, family, and situation, and allows the audience to further learn about her and form an early opinion of the character. It also provides a bit of a comedic aspect to the film by having the character break the fourth wall and share her thoughts that show how she fits the title of "Clueless" but it also helps show how Cher is truly a sweet girl who has room to grow and this helps set up the plot. We want to mimic some aspects of this opening in ours specifically showing our main character getting ready and using a voiceover to reveal more information and for comedic effects to deliver punchlines; however, our opening will be less bright with a more somber mood to help reflect the mental state of our character.

    In the next half of the opening, the audience is introduced to Cher's best friend as they are on their way to high school. Their conversation and how they interact with their environment are very telling on both of their characters and their relationship with each other. Furthermore, this is also another way to introduce conflicts and plot points as Cher gives the audience input on her thoughts of her friend, her friend's boyfriend, and her thoughts on school in general. Again, this is another convention seen in coming-of-age films we want to mimic in our film opening. Meeting our main character's best friend helps show Harper's relationships and who she is as a person. The voiceover also allows in both situations for the characters' to show their true emotions no matter what they say to other characters. 

Final Project Week 3: First Day of Filming

 02/15/2024

    We conducted our first day of filming. Today's agenda covered all of the car scenes. After school, we got in my car and stopped by my house so I could get changed and grab my make-up. Then Hannah and I picked up Paris and headed back to my house to film. We decided to film in my neighborhood since I live on a dead-end street next to other dead-end streets so we would be able to drive around a non-busy area and still be able to film safely. One of the problems we faced was that my car was just very cramped and it was hard to set up camera angles. Since Hannah and I were in the scene together, Paris did most of the filming and was able to get some good angles. To help accommodate the space situation we decided to do a lot of perspective shots of the characters talking to each other so Hannah and I filmed one another since we had more space upfront. Another issue we ran into was timing out the music so it fits with our shots. We had the music turned down low so hopefully it is not too noticeable but hopefully any errors can be fixed in post. The camera also died so we did take a few shots on Hannah's phone since it has a cinematic mode but overall, even though I just mentioned a bunch of issues, filming went really well and we got everything done for today. Our next filming day has been moved to the 25th since Hannah's work schedule recently changed. I will update you on filming then!

Final Project Week 3: Equipment

 02/13/2024

    In our class when it comes to borrowing equipment from Mr. Z it is a first come first serve system so we wanted to sign out the equipment we needed as soon as possible. Since most people are filming with their phones and we are filming with a DSLR camera, the equipment we need is rarely signed out already but we still wanted to sign it out a little early since Mr. Z is leaving soon for a vacation. We are filming this Thursday but since we are only planning to do the car scene we only need the shoulder mount and RODE mic, since we will be in a small space, and we were able to secure it today. Since Mr. Z will be out till next Wednesday we have to hold on to the equipment till then unfortunately my group and I are only able to film together on Thursday but Mr. Z told us the only other group that is using a DSLR camera and said we can let the use it between now and next Wednesday so I will probably try to contact them and offer them the equipment if they need it in the next week. When it comes to filming, we will have to conduct some test and sound checks to ensure everything works correctly but we used this same equipment for our mid-term, so I am confident the footage will be good and usable. 

Final Project Week 3: Final Costume and Make-up

 02/12/2024

    Today we finalized our costumes and make-up looks since we start to officially film this Thursday. We are sticking with the style we decided on in my last post about costume design. For Harper, we decided on baggy shorts with a baggy t-shirt that sticks to a darker color palette while Nia has a flowy long skirt and tank top that are more Earth tones. For make-up, Harper just needs black mascara and eyeliner that is smudged and Nia will use shades of brown for mascara, eyeliner, and eyeshadow with some gold in her eyeshadow and potentially a berry color lip tint. After going through our closets here is what we decided on.

Outfit for Nia

Outfit for Harper 

Final Week 2: Screen Test

 02/09/2024

    Today is the day we are running our screen test. We did run into one hiccup already and that is our location. We were originally planning to film in an abandoned mall and yesterday I went over to scout out the mall to see if what we were planning would work but it turns out that about a month or two ago the mall sectioned off all the closed areas and we can no longer go in. I dug into this a little and found out that a new company bought the property and they are working on renovations so there was no way we were making it inside the area we wanted to film in. So we went onto plan b, using the other mall (who knew there are two abandoned malls in this town); however, this mall does not have the mural we were planning to use as our title card so instead we might use a "welcome to Sarasota" street sign. This mall is a little less abandoned than the other one so we had to find a mostly empty area and luckily there was one so we could film without disturbing anyone. After running through the script for the first time we decided that Hannah would be Harper and Paris would voice the mom and film most of the shot especially when both Hannah and I are in a scene. One problem that we are a little worried about is the music that is playing in the mall since when we filmed with our phones the camera picked up on it and it is very noticeable. We are hoping that when we use the rode mic will mostly just pick up our voices or we might try out the little mics that we can attach to our shirts but we have not used them before so we are unsure how they work. We are definitely going to consult with Mr. Z about this issue and hopefully find a solution next week. We took some pictures inside the mall to hopefully showcase an idea of how the film will look (thank you Josie for tagging along and taking our picture)! Alright, that is it for today, I will see you next week!

Final Project Week 2: Supply List

 02/07/2024

    While we prepare to film we decided to come up with a supply and props list just to make sure we do not forget anything. We do not have many props but most of them are used to enhance the mise-en-scene of our film. We want to make sure everything is believable and that our main character and her room look and act like a real teenager (which should be easy since Hannah, Paris, and I are all teenagers with rooms). We also need to sign out equipment from Mr. Z to use during our filming such as mics, tripods, and a shoulder mount to make sure our film is as professional as it can be. Here is the list of everything we plan on needing. 

Materials and Mise-en-Scene

Filming Equipment

• Tripod
• Wheel Mount
• Rode Mic
• Shoulder Mount
• Canon Rebel 17
• Lenses
• Dead Cat

Mise-en-Scene Materials

• Map
• "Edgy" Teen Decor
• Polaroid Photos
• Sushi
• Jeep
• Costume
• Phone
• Shampoo/ Soaps/ Toiletries (Bathroom Items)

Final Project Week 2: Scheduling

 02/06/2024

    For the start of this week, we decided to work out a film schedule so we can start filming as soon as possible. We already planned to do a screen test this Friday but still needed to plan our other film dates. We planned out three dates to match up with our three locations: the house, the car, and the mall. Since Hannah and I both work part-time jobs, scheduling ahead is very important so we do not take any shifts on our filming days. Conveniently, Hannah and I already have a shared calendar with some friends where we put in all of our workdays to see when we can hang out with each other but now we are also using it to plan out filming dates! Below is a screenshot of our calendar, we have filming planned on the 15th, 20th, and 25th with any reshoots being done on the 27th. This will allow us to finish shooting by the end of the month and give us a month to edit the film which should be plenty of time. 

Final Project Week 2: Character Design

 02/06/2024

    The last task of this week is character design. This task fell onto Paris because she was the one who took on costume and make-up design but we all agreed on what style we wanted for each character. For Harper we wanted her to have a more grunge style that has that"no effort" look to highlight her mental state and how she does not have the energy for anything more. Nia, on the other hand, has a more "put together" look and wears brighter colors to showcase her personality so we went for a more hippy look. We picked these almost over-the-top loos to help signal to the audience the kind of dynamic these two characters have without the need for dialogue. To show the characters' design in one place we decided to use Pinterest to help collect photos to get our vision across. Paris did most of it but Hannah and I also added to it some. I added the screenshots to the end of this post if you are interested in a sneak peek at what the characters will somewhat look like.

Harper's Design

 

Nia's Design