Final Portfolio Project: Step By Step

Click the link below to watch my Aice Media Studies AS film opening: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pDntRnEdaMU4RrT0csiQu7jy7NLLeC4Q/view?usp=sharing

Enjoy the show!

Creative Critical Reflection

Click this link to watch my Creative Critical Reflection !

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iyKzHDx2HHW3PPePCUFmbkkaiNCW5UTj/view?usp=sharing

Enjoy!

Bitter Sweet Goodbye

It is bitter sweet to say that it is my final blog post. These past 7 weeks have been extremely stressful and full of new lessons. I learned alot about how important it is to have good time management skills. We are glad that the beginning of the 7 weeks we decided to make a set schedule to tackle each task in a timely fashion. This allowed us not to feel overwhelmed and to have time at the end to workout the monir details which took our projects quality to the next level. I was able to further develop my editing skills since i was able to work with the new iMovie software on my MacBook Pro. 

Throughout our project there was one major turning point which stuck out to me. Our first time filming, we thought we had everything perfect. However when we edited together the footage, we realized that what we had was a big fat mess. We didn’t pay close attention to the detail of each shot, which was a huge mistake because a vital part of the conversation was not usable. I also realized that our script needed some work because the conversation felt unnatural and just awkward. Through this mistake we learned a lot, which overall made our project better. We were able to be more focused on detail and came up with new clips to make our storyline make more sense.

Overall, this experience has been rewarding. I am so lucky to have been able to work with such flexible and professional actors. They went above and beyond to bring Sofia and I’s vision to life. I am also so grateful to have worked with Sofi as my partner. She was so dedicated and gave such a unique creative perspective to our project. 

I loved every minute of this project and I am sad to say goodby. Thank you guys for staying tuned!

Foley, Foley, Foley

Throughout the process of editing, Sofi and I have noticed that most of the sounds we need are in the natural environment of our shots. Lucky for us most of these sounds were caught in our shots. Though, after watching the edited 2 minute film, we have found that some sound effects are not as prominent as we need them to be. So, we decided to create foleys for them so we can manipulate and control the volume of that specific sound. 

To record foley's it is important that the environment you are filming in is quiet, so no background noise is picked up. We chose to create the foleys in my bathroom. This bathroom has no windows which helps with avoiding background noise. We chose to keep the lights off in the bathroom while filming because the light in my bathroom is accompanied by a loud humming noise of the vent. We chose to record the sound with the IPhone’s voice record feature. This would make it easy to up load the sound because I can just air drop it onto my MacBook Pro. 

One sound we chose to do was the pen scratching through a paper. This is seen quite a lot in the beginning of the film to symbolize the kidnapper following Veronicas schedule. This action is seen often in the story line so it is important to emphasize the sound with this foley.

Another Sound we chose to do was Sofi’s Angry crumbling the notebook. The sound should be louder top represent the anger she feels.

We have to take another look to see which foley’s we are missing but overall we are on track for the final week of the project! Stay tuned!

Music Overdose

I never thought I would say this but…. I have listen to TOO MUCH MUSIC!! Today I have spent my day listening to dozens of sounds trying to find the ones that match with the film. My goal with the background music is for assist the actual film in building up emotion. In this film we cover several different emotions, including anxiety provoking, fear, and creeped. These are a lot of emotions to find a song that compliments the situation perfectly. What makes the job more challenging is that we must use royalty free music. Luckily there are two websites that have assisted me in finding my perfect tunes. 

For starters, the first website I used was Youtube's royalty free music library, called “Music For Creators.” This music library has an a location to look at all their sounds listed by playlist. The labeling of the playlist made it easy to sort through the sounds as I focused on the sound types that pertain to my story line. For instance, in “sorted by mood” I knew not to look at happy or inspirational because those are not moods in my film. However, one down fall of the website is that a lot of the sounds are electro/ techno which is not the sound that I envisioned for my film.

Since the first source didn't cut it for me, I decided to check out “Purple Planet.” This website was my jackpot. The website classifies their sounds by moods which makes the sound hunt 100 times easier. On this website I decided to stay with in: Emotional, Creepy, and Tense. These are moods that are prominent in my film, so finding a list of sounds full of these moods was truly awesome.

Since I listened to so many sounds, To keep track of which sounds I wanted to use, I kept a list on my phone. For the purple planet website, I wrote down the name of the sound and then which part of the film I would want to use it in.

For the Youtube music library, I chose to just simply email them to myself with the scene i would use them in the Subject line.

Overall, I am very excited about the sounds I have found and cannot wait to put them together. Stay tuned!

The Title Search

Now that my partner and I have the overcame creating the storyline and bringing it to life, so now the time has come to create a title for out film. I decided to do some research on my genre conventions once again, except this time in regards to titles. 

The first thing I noticed when conducting my research is that the titles for Crime thrillers usually are made up of only one to two words. It is usually very simple and straightforward names. The titles usually describe what the movie will end up being about. For instance, movies such as the movies Taken and Kidnap. 

These findings have lead my partner and I to steer our title choices to one to two words. We took into account what our film was about. The main points are that the kidnapper is watching Veronicas every move. So that's where we came up with the name Obsession, because the kidnapper is obsessed with Veronica and her life. Another name that we came up with was “Step by step.” We believe this would be a good title because the Kidnapper follows veronicas day step by step meticulously. Also this title could be relevant to the story because it goes with the mom's journey as she goes step by step to find her daughter.

There is a lot to think about, we are still unsure about the title names. We got to reflect a little and the title will find its way to us… Stay tuned!

Editing

Yesterday Sofi and I got together and edited the footage together that we filmed on Sunday. At first it felt a bit overwhelming because we had about 72 clips to choose from. However we took it one step a time. We set up our shots list right next to my computer and we started of with the first location. As we combed through the shots we looked at 3 things to distinguish what shots were better than the other. The first thing was how natural was the line delivery from the characters. Second, we looked at the quality of the lighting and colors of the shot. Lastly, we listened for which clip had the best sound quality. 

As we put the film together we came across some challenges. For instance, the speed of a scene. In the school scene, there is a shot of a car backing out and driving away. This shot was way to slow, as the car’s driver did it that way to ensure we got the proper shot. However, while I was editing I found a cool editing technique which allows for the shot to be sped up and slowed down.

Another trouble that we went through was the differentiation in the lighting of the shots side by side. This made the film seem unprofessional, and that is not the vibe that we are going for. During our editing journey we found a setting called color match, which allows the editor to edit the shot to have the same colors as another shot.

Our last challenge that we have yet to overcome is that our film is over by 20 seconds. We have to figure out which scenes are not essential to our story line which is going to be really hard. 

After we were done editing we made a to do list. includes : adding titles, music, and making the foleys necessary. That is what the rest of my week will be consumed of. Stay tuned!