Preparing for my CCR

 Soooo now it's time to get ready to film my CCR. This is definitely the project I was the most worried about doing. Although I'm not going to be presenting this to a full class watching me I'm still going to be recording myself talking for at least 7 minutes which already has me a little bit nervous. I plan on writing my script today and tomorrow and filming over the weekend. I already know a little bit of my answers for each question but I still need to write the script and really perfect it.

This blog post is mostly dedicated to how I actually plan on filming and editing my CCR...

I want to make my video very conversational and not like i am reading off a screen. I play on incorporating a few scenes in and comparing it to other films.

For example, a scene I want to make sure I talk about would be the scene where Serena is sitting on the floor, looking around her room, contemplating what to do and tie it back to the question about how this represents social groups. Teenagers now are under a lot of pressure and get stressed easily. We put things off to the side and get easily overwhelmed. This scene of Serena perfectly represented that and the confusion teenagers can feel at times.

Another scene I want to talk about is the scene where Serena is upstairs laying on the bed while her mother is just getting home from work. This scene will tie back to the question of how we integrated technology through editing. We worked on parallel editing to show these two things happening at the same time, in the same house. Which will also make its way back to the question of how it represents social groups because some families can be so clueless on what's happening in eachothers lives and this represents it. 

 

Reflection

Finally finished with the film opening, all I have left is my CCR. 

Creating this film opening has taught me a lot, not just about media. I learned how to better my time management skills and how to work and communicate with other people. To be honest, in the beginning we were kind of in a slump and it was noticeable. We managed get ourselves out of it and realize this is a real project that we need to do and if we have this much time to do it, its for a reason. Most projects will be short and the "long- lasting" ones im used to would usually be a 2 week long assignment. Having this much time helped us create a story and then realize it wasn't what we wanted and we still had more than enough time to make it the way we wanted.

My partner and I were already close friends so we didn't struggle with communicating our ideas but in previous projects that I have worked in groups on I was more quiet and didn't feel as comfortable communicating my ideas as I do now. I think this project has really helped me be more open to new ideas too and listening to other people's perspectives.

The project overall was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. We got to create our own storylines, characters, their backstories and then actually filming it and bringing our vision to life. I did a lot of the editing and I have to say that by far that was my favorite part of the whole project. At first I was nervous but when I opened adobe and realized I actually knew what I was doing I caught myself adding so many touches and not even minding. I can't say I want to pursue a future with my editing skills but it was definitely something I liked doing.

Sounds

As small as it seems, sounds were definitely the hardest part of the project for us, or at least in my opinion.

First off, we couldn't find the right site to use. Over and over we searched "Copyright free sounds" and we couldn't find a website that would allow us to download the sounds for free. Everytime we thought we found a sound we liked we had to make an account. We made the account and it then would give us payment options and none were there for free.So we would constantly get excited about a sound and then find out we couldn't use it..

 

Finally we find a website that's free and available to use, now we just need to find the perfect sound.

While filming and putting everything together we realized that the film may not be representing the thriller genre the way we envisioned it. The film seemed a little bit more like a drama rather than a thriller. So we searched through sounds which took forever. We searched up key words to help the search and we were down to a few options. We played them all through and by the time we found the perfect sound we were so thankful after watching the film so many times. The music played in the background really helped put it together and show viewers, this is a thriller. The music creates suspense throughout the video. Along with that, the music ends at the perfect time and has its last major beat the second we put the movie title.

Here is the website we decided to go with:

Editing process

So now that we are finally ready to edit, the big question is what program we are going to use.

For all the other projects we have done this year that required that form of editing we normally would use Imovie. Imovie was good for those projects but looking at this project and the more precise details we need to include we thought it would be a better idea to move onto a more efficient editing system.

Federica and I both took Film 1 and Film 2 in middle school and used adobe premiere pro.Middle school was a long time ago but this was what we had the most experience in. The second we opened it up we were pretty much able to navigate through everything. We were actually pretty shocked by how much we remembered about adobe.

Just because we knew most if it doesn't mean we perfected it. We actually ran into some huge problems. At one point I accidentally deleted the whole projected when we were almost done. Luckily I was able to get it back and I still have no idea how I managed to do that.

It's almost finished, we put all the clips in order and they we want them, we just have a few touch ups left.....

Filming problems

 As expected we ran into some issues but we were able to overcome most!!!
 Our biggest problem was the mirrors and glares. The room we used has two big mirrors in them so filming was a little bit of an issue. But we knew that from when we first started filming so while filming we were constantly ducking and moving around. 

Later the next day when we started watching the shots and started getting them ready to start editing we realized our reflections were also in the window. Because it was late at night we really stood out in the window which we didn't realize on day one of filming. So we filmed again two days later and had redo a lot of the shots we took one the first day.As well as our fingers getting into the shots that we didn't realize.

Another issue we ran into that was super random was the spiral shot we had planned. We planned to tie something to the fan and put it on the lowest volume or even move the fan with our hands ourselves with the phone attached so it could spin around her. Super random story, but my fan actually doesnt turn off because a few weeks ago I pulled the string too hard so now it's on pretty much all the time so we weren't able to get the fan to stop to tie it on. So instead we just tried to go half around her with a more slowed down shot.

Here's an example of some shots we had to redo:

First day of filming

Finally we started filming!!

Filming process went pretty much smoothly but we did run into a few problems while filming. Our actor, Sara Montenegro listened to all our directions and did everything the way we visioned it. While filming we decided to make even more changes to our video/ add little things to improve the scene. For example, throughout the duration of the whole project we always planned to start the film off with an establishing shot of the house itself rather than jumping straight to her running away. While we were outside we had the idea to add a small touch to the house to make it stand out more. It's very subtle and could easily go unnoticed but, we had Sara go upstairs and open the blinds of my room and turn on the lights, leaving all the other rooms in the house dark. Then she went and was pacing back and forth looking stressed/ confused. 

It is a very small detailed but it really helped us get more excited about filming and helped us create a vision for the rest of the projected. When we came up with the idea we both got super excited and got way more into the filming process than we had anticipated.Another idea we had while filming was tracking shots. We added quite a few throughout the film.We didn't go into this thinking everything would work our perfectly and we did run into some issues i'll address is future posts.

Here's our shot:

Film Changes

     After our group meetings and discussing our feedback with my partner we decided to change up our story. So overall we still have the idea of a girl running away but we are taking out the part that she is making it look like she got kidnapped. We aren't really sure how we would be able to bring that vision to life in our opening scene and it might just look a little tacky.There would be no way to ensure the audience that that is what she's doing and could leave watchers with questions the film might not be prepared to answer. So we decided to just switch it to Serena having a mental breakdown while she is home alone rather then her mom being home the whole time. We will have the mother get home from work at the very end rather then having her home at the same time. 

    Because our film is called "Spiraling" they gave us the suggestion to have the camera spinning. So we think we are going to film in my room and hang the phone from the fan and have the fan on a low setting or off and just push the fan around the subject with our hands to show the room spinning. This will create the image of Serena's mental breakdown that will lead her into running away. Another method we could use is putting ceiling tape on certain areas of the fan. Doing this can create a real life spiral effect that we could possibly use while cutting back to scenes of Serena's P.O.V.

    Now that we have made these changes we are getting even closer to our production days!!