creative critical reflection

My Creative Critical Reflection!! 

I had so much fun creating this project and I also loved reflecting on it too. This was truly an experience I'll remember for a very long time :D

My Film Opening *Nail Biting*

    And finally, my film opening, It's sad that all good things must come to an end but at least I'll always have the great memory that is the creation of this film opening. I am truly so glad that I was able to participate in this project and that I had so much creative freedom. It is truly an experience I'll treasure for a long long time :D

Anyway, without further ado.....

MY FILM OPENING 

:O

I CANT BELIEVE I ALMOST MISSED THIS

HALO BLOG!!

I CANNOT BELIEVE IT. So I was looking back at my blog as one does and I realized that I have yet to talk about my title which is... crazy to say the least. So after planning my film opening I decided that I wanted to wait until the final project until I decided on a title. Finally, after looking at my film opening over and over again, I decided that I wanted to title it "Stay". Why Sab? Oooooo great question. So I liked the title stay because to me it's like Nick is telling Paola to stay and keep in contact with her artistic side, he wants to keep her consistent with her singing but Paola rejects it. 

Yessir. #DoubleMeaning

Simultaneously, the title works from Paola's perspective as her character wants Nick to STAY (wink wink) away from her singing side. Paola feels so much vulnerability when she's singing to the point that it's something she can only give her all to when she's alone and she KNOWS that she's alone. 

Anyway, I think this was the best title out of my other options. And if you were wondering what the other options were...Good question. This one took the cake so I kind of forgot about the other ones. I'm almost certain that one of the other choices was like "Forget it" because Paola wants to "forget" about singing with her father and Nick wants to forget his daughter's singing and move on to another person's talent BUTTTT I think "Stay" just fits better.  

STAY

...but imagine it in big lights.

EDITING REFLECTION YAS

 HALO BLOG!

My cousin from Germany came to visit and now I can't stop saying "Halo!" 

Anyway, editing is going good so I just wanted to do a little check-in and show you guys what we're coming up with.

So the purple is all of my text AKA all of my credits which was actually a little confusing but I played around with Premiere and eventually figured out which controls I needed to activate to move around the text and all that good stuff.

This was when I figured it out. I was happy LOL 

Then on this here side, we have the effect control panel that I used to create a fade to black. This was actually kind of funny because the panel has a search bar and when I looked up fade to black it did not exist. So if you are new to Premiere and just so happen to be looking for the fade to black it's actually called "DIP to black" why? I don't know but at least now you know.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SoUnD

 WHADDUP BLAWWWWGG

    I forgot to mention a mighty detail from when I was filming and I just wanted to make sure I brought it up on here because it was honestly a blessing. Having a music producer as a dad has been such an advantage in this creative process because it has allowed me to gain access to resources that not everyone else has and so I'm thankful :D

During filming, I realized that I would need to mix the song along with the dialogue. I had hoped to connect a microphone directly to my camera so that the sound would record directly with the video but, I wasn't able to get it in time. Luckily, I consulted with my dad and what he was able to do for me was simply, turn on a microphone that picked up the audio and recorded it directly on ProTools. How amazing is that? Now all I need to do is sync the audio to my video when editing my film opening on Premiere. 

ProTools^^

This wasn't the exact microphone that we used but it resembled this one :D

Fonts

               So for my font, I wanted to implement some elegance amidst the chaos I  came across this one first which I really liked but it was giving me wedding vibes. I think it's really elegant, but, the long tails look really dramatic and that's just not really what I was looking for. Nevertheless, I left it as an option.

                 ABCDEFGHIJKLM

               NOPQRSTUVWXYZ

This was my final choice, which I thought was the most fitting. It's simple yet elegant, and I think it fits the overall aesthetic of my opening better

ABCDEFGHIJKLM

NOPQRSTUVWXYZ

 I mean come onnnnnnnnn

It's great minimalistic yet elegant and honestly just right.

Importing

 WHADUPP BLAAWGGG

Well, they say you learn something new every day and they are completely correct. I was planning on editing on my MacBook Pro which IS a laptop. Normally there wouldn't be a problem BUT there is no way for me to connect my SD card to my laptop because I just don't have the SD port. I quite literally just have two USB-C ports and a headphone jack. The clear solution would be to just get an adapter like the one below, but time is a little tight and I honestly just don't want to risk it. 

Thankfully I have a tech-savvy dad that was able to help me. My father has an iMac that DOES have an SD port so what we did was we connected the SD card into that computer and then he connected both the computer and my laptop to the same hard drive and I was able to download the videos on to my computer. Then I just simply dragged and dropped into Premiere. AND BOOOM problem solved :D

Noob Problems

So I was trying to insert the font I chose into Premiere and then I realized I just have no idea how to do that. I decided to play around with it and then I realized that I also just have no idea how to put text on the screen which, honestly, was a little embarrassing. Anyway, I did what any sane person would do and looked up a tutorial on YouTube and thankfully I found this 2 minute video that helped me do just that and by that I mean add text to the screen.

As for inserting my specific font I still felt confused. Luckily, I have a variety of friends that are very familiar with Premiere. So, I contacted my great friend Mia ( the same one that helped me on filming day, she's the best ) and asked her how to add the font that I wanted. She walked me through it step by step during class andddd GOT IT :D. So everyone say thank you Mia!!!!

First Half

 WHADUPPP BLAWWG

Since we finished filming and I am about to start editing I wanted to give some background information on the first half of my opening which is the pre-recorded video. The first half of this video, when the little girl is shown, was a brief video that my dad created when I was around 9 years old. The video was short but, last year my father decided to record the entire song. His main concern, or should I say excitement, was to also have the sound/ video transition from little me to big me. So that is what we did :D 

The recording process took about a week. We had a microphone in the closet so that external sounds were minimized. My dad is a music producer so we had all the necessary equipment to tune out any extra sounds. As for the filming process, we bought black tablecloths which we taped on our walls to create an elegant black background, we also had two bright white lights and a singular yellow-ish orang-ish light behind the two main subjects that added a nice orange detail as shown below. 

For the camera, we used a canon EOS 1200D on a tripod which we had available. Using this camera was a privilege since it is allowed us to zoom focus with ease.

The filming process took about 2 hours

That's about it! Those were the technical aspects of the filming process for the first half of the opening. Luckily we didn’t need to reshoot as we had enough time to look back at the shots and decide what we wanted to change, between takes.

FILMING DAYYY

WHADUP GUYS

I thought I would check-in and tell you all about how filming went. We mainly needed to continuously shoot the one panning shot the most so allow me to go into detail about that. 

So at first, I was a little nervous because the tripod I have doesn't have a dolly. Therefore, we had to sort of kinda maybe do it manually. It allows me to pan from left to right and vice versa but I can't follow the actors per se. This is why my main concern for filming was to find the right person to help me, because as I had said before, I would have easily done it myself but I had to be in the film... Thank gosh a little angel came and saved me from the choppy shots.  My great friend Mia Batista <3 was the camera operator for my opening. Also, I had to change Raymond to Ramona because I wasn't able to find a reliable male actor. Luckily my other great friend Isabella was able to help me. Which, in the long run, is better for me in case I need to reshoot something because she also happens to be my neighbor!!

My great friend Isa

My great friend Mia

Filming the main shot took about an hour since, of course, we wanted to get it just right. As I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I didn't really love the idea of creating a script, and honestly, I'm so glad I did it this way. Since this is based on true events, I wanted the scene to feel as authentic as possible. Right away I told my actors that this would be improvised and I let them do their thing. AND THEY DID AMAZINGGG. I feel like when actors have scripts, they sometimes focus way too much on remembering their lines and interpreting their lines and they forget that acting is reacting. So doing improv for my opening was definitely an amazing decision that I'm really glad worked out.

Here's a nice little BTS pic :D

Media Congregation March Fourteenth Two Thousand Twenty Two

 WHAADDDUPPPP BLAWWGGGG

I just had a meeting aka congregation with the coolest, swaggiest, intellectual people I have ever met. We all came together to dissect any problems we had with our projects thus far. For example, I was able to help my good friend Joel find some music for his opening scene by doing some research and finding some websites with copyright-free music. Eventually, we got around to my opening and I was able to share my ideas with them. 

and guess what guys.....

THEY LIKED IT! AND SOME EVEN LOVED IT!

Which honestly is great for me because I mean, I obviously had some nerves regarding my story. Not only that but their feedback has made me so excited for filming. 

They even helped me with one of my slight worries which was refreshing, to say the least. Since I want to do a pan I asked my group what they think would be the best way to create a smooth tracking shot without a dolly. I got a variety of different answers including, using an office chair, which honestly, I think I might end up doing! :D In conclusion, this was a very successful little congregation!!