CCR Research #1

It's time to talk about the Creative Critical Reflections (CCR). 

The first question I am going to be researching, is:

"How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?"

To break down this question, I need to talk about which genre conventions I chose to include in my film opening, as well as which ones I did not. I also need to discuss representation.

I took some notes in class because we went over the "dos" and "don'ts" for our CCRs and the specific questions that we need to answer. 

As you can see, I need to integrate all of that into a media product, as well as question number two, which I will discuss in next week's blog post, so stay tuned!!

Here are some more notes that I took when we were discussing the creative critical reflections:

Post Production #2

 The coloring used in a film can depict a specific emotion or mood for the audience. For example, if a character's house is filled with multiple red items, they can come to the conclusion that danger is near. 

The lighting can also suggest the mood in a film. For example, a bright (high key) lighting can either symbolize a ethereal, or happy mood. On the other hand, a dark (low key) lighting can symbolize a mysterious, or frightening mood. For my film opening, my group and I wanted to achieve more of a low-key lighting rather than high key, because of our genre being, mystery/crime. 

Because my group and I filmed in three different locations,

-House: Ben writing letter 

-Park: crime scene

-School: Ms. Travers office

the lighting was different for all three scenes. This made it a little tricky in the editing process, because if I want all three scenes to have similar lighting, I am going to have to edit each clip, on by one. This process may take a good portion of time, but I think it will all be worth it in the long run.

I screenshotted a part from a specific clip, and I only edited one to fit the "vibe" of the mystery genre. (The actual picture itself is a little different, because I could not screenshot the same part of the video twice... sorry!!)

Before:

As you can see, this photo appears darker and has a little bit of a more mysterious feeling to it. 

All I did was change:

-"exposure" to -98

-"highlights" to -74

-"shadows" to -7

 -"brightness" to 2

-"black point" to 3

Post Production #1

 Now that filming has concluded, it's time to start the editing process. I am not a good editor, so this part is going to be a little challenging. I have tried using Adobe Premiere in the past to edit, but honestly, there were so many things on the screen that I was just filled with confusion. I tried to use it again for this project but after adding in all of the footage, I didn't know what to do from there. I watched tutorials on You-Tube which did not seem to help, and I asked one of my group members, Omer if she could help me, but she was also having trouble with it.

I think to edit, I am going to use either CapCut, or I-Movie, because I have used those platforms many times before, so I am already used to them. I do hope that I can eventually learn how to use Adobe Premiere in the future, so that I can use it to edit my projects later on.

CapCut:

I-Movie:

Filming the final scene

So... I have something special for today's blog post. Because this is our last blog post discussing the production of our film opening, my group and I recorded behind the scenes footage of the Ms. Traver's office scene, so we could put all of the clips together and create one video to upload! 

Take a look:

We decided to make this video to illustrate the production process for this specific scene. I think that it was so much fun to film and edit this video so it gets me excited for the rest of the portfolio project, as well as future projects. Now that we are done filming, the rest of my blog posts are going to be about either post-production, or creative critical reflections.

What went wrong?

 Unfortunately, when working on the film opening, my group and I stumbled across many problems. Although they were annoying and set us back, it seems to be working out alright. Here are a few of the problems that we encountered:

Sickness:

A few days before we planned on filming the crime scene and Ben writing the letter, one of my group members, Camilia unfortunately got sick. Even though we really needed to get the project done, we weren't going to put Camilia through a bunch of work when it is even hard for her to stand up. For most of the parts that we filmed, we managed to get the correct footage except for one part in particular.

The dead body:

So... before we knew that Camila was going to be sick, we had planned on me being the dead body while Camila being the crime scene investigator. Once we were minus one person, we had to come up with another plan because we needed to have Omer film. The only option was to have my ten-year-old little sister, Noah be Mavrick, the dead body. I know that my legs wouldn't look anything like a 20–40-year-old man's legs but just imagine a ten-year old's... yeah... not so good. I hope that it looks alright when we put all of the footage together.

Mr. Travers:

A current situation that my group and I are facing is finding a Mr. Travers. Originally, it was supposed to be Omer's dad, but he is currently in another country and most likely won't be back for another week. Our second option was my dad, but he already played Ben, so we didn't want to use the same "actor." I think our only option is to change Mr. Travers to a Ms. Travers, and she will be played by Omer's mom.

Set Design #2

After talking about the "Ben writing the letter" scene, I decided that I want to discuss the "crime scene" scene. Wow... that sounds weird. "Crime scene scene." Anyway... like I said in my previous blog post about choosing a location, my group and I decided to film this scene at our local park. We chose this because we thought that at night, it gives a creepy, eerie feeling. 

We found a spot in the park next to a lake. Throughout the whole time we were filming, I was a little nervous considering we were next to a lake at nighttime. I was really hoping this wouldn't turn into a real crime scene. During one of the clips we had to film, I practically had one foot ready for an alligator to eat. 

As you can we had to be creative when filming certain scenes!! Anyway, once we found our spot, we made it look more like a crime scene by putting caution tape, evidence markers, and tracing a "dead" body. I will talk more about this in my next blog post, but let's just say it was a struggle...

Before:

After:

Set Design #1

 In order to make my visions come to life, I had to create/design the set for a specific part of the film. The part I am talking about is the scene where Ben is writing the letter to Mr. Travers. My group and I wanted to create a set that looked like it could occur in a house, but still giving that "office vibe." 

We decided to film this scene at my house because the kitchen table I have is white and it kind of looks like it could be a desk. My mom is actually the one that gave us almost all of the props... thanks mom!! She found a bunch of empty files, pencils, headphones, a mug, a stapler, hole puncher, and paper. Omer and I then scattered all of the props throughout the table so that it could make it look more like Ben was in a rush and it caused chaos. 

Before:

  

After:

With set design being an important factor in films, my group and I really wanted to create the set that matched our visions. I think that we successfully completed that task. Especially because we did not purchase any props for this scene, and we just used what we already had. This definitely saved time and money!!