Movie CCR

I had a fun time recording and making the CCR for my movie. For the CCR I decided to be creative and have the movie running in the background. I did this so I could point things out along the way of the CCR. It also gives you something to look at. I had it in the style of a Q and A interview. The way I recorded the CCR was from zoom. Zoom has a built in recording system which made it easy to get the mp4 file to start editing. I didn't change too much while editing though. I just added the song from the movie, a few fades, and put all the clips in order. I also cut out parts with long pauses. Overall, it came out to be 11 minutes and 20 seconds. I feel like this was a good length as any longer would have been me repeating myself. I hope this CCR explained what happened in my brain when making the movie. This project was a really useful experience and I try to convey that in my CCR. I am excited to see what my group mates put for their CCR's. I hope that we do good as this is part of our final. I did repeat myself a few times but that because some parts of the questions overlapped. The hardest part of this CCR was writing the script which was over 3 pages long. I also had to chroma-key the backgrounds in which took some effort. I am sad that this is the last assignment for our class. But I understand that we can't do things like the final exam because of the virus.

Original Movie

I am extremely proud of our group for what we came up with for our final project. After struggling with being separated because of Corona-virus we all came together to make sure we had a well-edited video. As we worked together we learned a ton of new things! It went really well and recordings were a blast. This video let us explore our taste in movies and really make something that could make someone impressed. I think our movie may have been too fast paced, but otherwise I like it a lot. Due to the virus, we did not have extra time to talk together, and be in the same room planning so we improvised. By talking online, we were able to come up with something we all liked and could call our own. I did the editing and I like the way it turned out, especially my titles. I put effort into making it look sleek, and like it was professional. I also learned a lot of techniques to make things more interesting, and focused on getting close ups of objects to put the titles over. My favorite part of the movie is the ending, I think it is a great cliffhanger that makes someone want to watch more of the movie to find out what is going to happen next. The music is also a perfect fit as it matches with multiple scene changes. It especially matches well with the end of the movie which is why I decided to use it. I think we did a good job on this movie and I hope I can watch some of my other peers movies. This project may have taken a long time, but with the virus it felt short. I think if I did it again I would have chosen a more simple plot though. We did have to change the storyboard, which felt unfair to do. I even edited a different version of the movie to see which one was better! These options let us choose the best movie we could have made. and I can speak for our group when I say we are all happy with the result.

Music Video

This is the Music Video we did at the middle of the year in my sophomore class. I think this was my favorite of the films to create because  we had a blast every step of the way. It was fun to share our project with other people in our class. We encountered a lot of problems through coming up with a storyboard and filming, but past these hurdles lies greatness. We managed to work as a team and publish a great Music Video. The song we used was from extensive research and worked well with our cast of characters. One thing I could have thought we could have done differently is make a longer video. Our music video was sadly pretty short and I would have preferred to make a longer one. I also would have liked us to include more editing, the time frame for this project was pretty short though. I think that everyone had an equal part in making this assignment.
           The theme of a music video differed greatly between groups. Our group did a dramatic video with depressing lyrics. This worked well because having one emotion to work towards too helps viewer understand what to feel. It also made a steady video with an overall purpose to it. Our story shows that our group was able to work cohesively and put out a product we all liked. By adding a story to our music video, it was able to make our viewers really think, rather then enjoying the song. These music videos are our groups favorite, hence why we chose it. Overall, I had a really fun time on this project and would like to do another one. I hope in the future I will have an opportunity like this again.

Commercial

This is the Commercial which was the first big project my group worked on in my sophomore class. This was my least favorite film to make, as it was really stressful. This was because we were only allowed one day to film and 45 minutes in that span of time. This caused us to rush and not make the dream commercial we were all anticipating. However, I am proud that we finished this commercial with so many roadblocks ahead of us. Another roadblock for example, was when editing on the school computers, the editing software would not let us add any effects or it would not export. This greatly put us at a disadvantage. This is something we had to learn from experience though, any other way wouldn't have been as good. Although the editing is choppy, and the story may not be cohesive I am proud to look back on it as a start to an era of learning the subject. My group and I were fresh into this kind of thing, and looking back we were total newbies.
       Our commercial had a great storyboard, and we put a lot of effort into it. However, our dreams did not turn into the final project with such little time. This opened my eyes to real life media and how they can relate. If they have issues with time they have to change a story and can also not have a dream result. I think that why it is most important overall, to have something that makes sense. Which I think we did. This project was tough, no doubt about it. It's also the one I learned the most from, so it means a lot to our group. Projects like this really toughened us up and taught us how to manage our time which helped with our final project.

Peer Review Blog

      This Tuesday we did peer reviews of our movies to this date. While we were able to put together a 1:39 video, we did not have time to add the titles. So we are confident we can be at around the correct time with the title scenes added. We graded a group who did their project on cannibal couple. The couple doesn’t get along well, other than when they’re eating. Overall their video was good. They had good titles, and good shots.          There were some issues where some scenes needed to be shorter. The lighting also wasn’t great at times, because some titles blended into the background. Also, my group had trouble finding the exact story while watching, and were confused. However we were able to eventually figure it out. While we were doing that our’s was getting reviewed. One of our peers watched our video, and liked it. His main criticisms were that we didn’t have titles, the story was a little hard to follow, and the camera was a little shaky at times.

     

 We are going to take these criticisms to make our final video as good as it can be. We are going to reshoot soon. I definitely agree with those issues he had as well. Another thing we need to make sure we do while reshooting is making sure we have a greater variety of camera angles. In the video we have now we only incorporate a few editing techniques and angles, and we need more. I think with these criticisms we have what we need to make a great final project.

Editing the Final Project

     This week, we had another recording session for our film. After this we were much happier with our ability to make a final product. For example, we got an actual adult to act as the parent in our film. I also got clips around the house so I could use it to set the tone in our film. When I sifted through the clips I noticed that we had to scrap alot of them. Jake helped out with this but we had enough to stretch our movie to 2 minutes. 

      The first thing I did when editing was put everything in order and delete the clips I wouldn't use. I then begin adding effects like color correction to set the mood. I then cut clips and made them chronological to the movie idea. After that I added opaque clips on top of others for effect, made pans, and other small things to make it look better as a whole.

      This first editing session took me about 4 hours total. However there is much more to do. A list of things I need to do are: add and design titles, find good sound effects, make final desicion on music, add a little bit of voice acting, and finally revise edits and make them look better. After I do that I will show it to other people. I will do this so I can ask for their opinion on what trey think the movie would be about. We need to make that as obvious as possible. I am very motivated to finish this editing and make the best movie possible. My teammates have been very cooperative and I am excited for their opinions on it. Hopefully we can make a really good final project that blows everyone away. 

Filming Introspective

Looking back at the filming experience from this past weekend, I think it could’ve gone smoother. For one thing, our group mate Tim was not able to make it. This is because he had a sudden change of plan. Another issue was we had a time frame and not a clear view on the films idea. Because we were only able to film for one weekend it didn't turn out as well as I hoped it would. We also had some really bad scenes, and now looking at it we will have to reshoot.

     For example, in the picture below we have our group mate Carter who was acting as a police officer. This was supposed to be a big plot point. However, we cut out the trial scenes from our storyboard as we had nowhere to film. So the police character didn't really make sense for the movie. This phenomenon happened alot of times because of the scenes we changed from the storyboard. That is something to learn; to stick to the original plan. 

   This weekend I think we can bounce back on path. We plan to film on Saturday, and me edit on Sunday. This will work but it may be rushed. However, nobody is to blame but our poor planning. I think we all know what we have to change. I hope that we can change it for the better. While we may change our storyboard, after filming again we will be able to finally make a good film.