Creative Critical Reflection

    Hello everyone! This will be my final blog post I ever make and I just want to say thank you to all that have read and enjoyed my posts. It was a very interesting and fun experience for someone who just started to blog for a couple months. Thank you all again and before I leave, I wanted to create some small projects to answer these big questions.

Question 1. "How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?": Director's Commentary and screencast with voiceover

Question 2. "How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?": Q&A

Question 3. "How did your production skills develop throughout this project?": PowerPoint with voiceover

Question 4. "How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware and online - in this project?": Interview

Film Opening Brief

Group members: Nikolas Velez and Samuel Duque

Film Opening Title: The Impersonator

Production - Using Other Film Openings to Compare with Ours

     Hello everyone, welcome back to another post from yours truly. Today, I wanted to give some background info. on what gave me and my partner Samuel ideas on creating our film.

    When we first started creating our film, I thought to myself about looking at examples of other film openings to give the inspiration for ours. My first thought was to look on YouTube for any examples of film openings. Most of the videos seemed very off and kind of off budget; making it difficult to use them as a reference for our film opening. However, there was one that caught my attention; it was called DISILLUSIONED. In this film opening, the people who created it were very detailed by including fake blood in their scenes, on top of the first scene showcasing the title of the film with credits slowing popping up. They also had a flash in the mirror when the main character was in the bathroom brushing their teeth.

This would give me and my partner the best inspiration and motivation to use some of these similar elements in our film opening to give a similar effect on the audience. At first, it was kind of corny and goofy when we did it, but we got used to it after reviewing it multiple times. Overall, I think this was the best way to figure out how to make a film opening and I would encourage you all to look at it over on YouTube.

Production - Editing Progress

    Hey everyone, just wanna give another quick update on the music situation that I was talking about in the last blog post. 

    I was able to find another background music choice for the last scene in my film opening. This time, I wanted it to be a more suspenseful sound to make the scene more scarier to the audience. At first, I wanted the music to slowly build up at the beginning of the scene to later be cut immediately at the end. This however, would not be the case, due to the cutting of the sound being to quick and I wasn't able to make it a slower cut. So I ultimately gave up on the idea and just used a fade away effect so it could then roll to the final thing, which is the title of the film.

    I'm still in consideration of changing the music most likely last second since I don't know if it's allowed to be used for my final submission. All in all, I'm gonna stay optimistic and hope for the best on if I can use this for my film opening.

Production - Editing Progress

     Hey everyone, on here again for the usual quick 'yap' session. Today, I was able to finish the credits scene, specifically the title of the film, at the end of my film opening.

    This was fairly simple to do since I had already figured out on how to add effects to specific clips of the film, so I had no troubles there. Now, I also did just figured out on how to put music into my clips to make the scenes a bit more dramatic. The only thing I will say that was difficult about doing this, was figuring out what music was best to use in the first scene in particular. I didn't want the music to be too loud since it was supposed to be in a dream and the music could counteract with the purpose of the scene. In the end, I was able to find the perfect sound that could incapsulate the mood of the scene with it not being too loud nor quiet.

    I do want to point out that I might change it last second since I'm not entirely sure if this is okay to use for my film opening. I might ask for conformation when I return from spring break right before I submit the file of my film opening.

Production - Editing Progress

     Hello everyone, welcome back to another blog post. As usual, I'm here to give another quick update on what is going on with my editing on the film opening me and my partner have made.

    Great news! I'm made a lot more progress on the credits for the film opening and I was able to add effects to them. Originally, when I first put the text bubbles for the credits of the film, they were very stiff and didn't leave. This made me frustrated since I didn't know how to make it so they would fade away for the other credits to appear. I then decided to look up on YouTube for ways on how to add these effects; making the process much more easier and quicker.

    This part of the editing process was a bit challenging at first, but would later become quick and easy when I realize that I can look up guides on how to improve. Also, for using Premiere Pro for the first time and still learning and understanding it, I would say I did a pretty good job at implementing the elements of what I wanted into my film opening.

Production - Editing Progress

     Hello everyone, I'm back at it with another quick blog for updates on the film opening. As of now, I reached the final stage of my film opening production; which is the editing portion. Since the hardest part of the production was the actual filming, doing the editing would take much less time to do since I can do it in one to two days.

    For right now, I have done a good amount of progress with having the clips of the videos we took being in order and knowing the run-time of the film opening. This has helped me significantly with how much effects I can add or any other clips such as the credits.

    In this photo, I was trying to in capsulate the idea of being the in first person. So what I mean by this, is that there were many clips where the camera was held in front of the person to show the illusion of camera being on the main character. By improving the idea, I try to create a blinking effect on the Premiere Pro which did have some challenges that came with creating this. However, in the end, I managed to create a blinking effect that is a bit wonky at best.
Overall though, I believe this is a great learning curve and helps me understand how Premiere Pro works.

Production - Filming is Finished

     Hello everyone, I'm very excited to tell you all that me and my partner have finally finished our filming process for the film opening and can start editing it for the finishing touches. This is has taken way longer than what I was expecting it to be. However, in the end, we were able to finish the filming process with out anymore delay.

    After uploading the videos onto my computer, I downloaded Premier Pro to be able to create the project from there and start my editing. One of the bigger challenges I'm currently facing right now, is procrastination. This usually happens a lot of times with other things I have had to do in the past, but specifically this time, it really needs to stop. I was able to give myself the motivation to actually start the editing process, however, I realize that I don't know what to change or add in the clips to make it look like a film opening.

    All in all, I'm starting to get more excited for the finished product since I can definitely finish the editing in two to three days if I focus on it hard enough. There will be bound to be some challenges, but all I need to do is keep prevailing and working to achieve my goal.

Production - How was the Process of filming our First Scene?

     Hello everyone, welcome back to another blog post. Today, I have some exciting news regarding our filming and specifically our first scene. We were able to fully complete the filming of our first scene!

    Since our first actual scene is supposed to be in a neighborhood, we thought to record the other scenes first due to them being inside my house. This way, when we can actually stay out late at night, it can be easier for the both of us to record quickly. Anyways, yesterday, when we actually started to record our scene, it felt very weird just because for my partner Samuel; he had a hard time having a straight face while being on camera since the scene is supposed to show him waking up from a nightmare. After a couple takes, he was able to keep a straight face and the remainder of the other parts of the scene.

    Within the actual scene, we decided to put some small details such as having the camera change from the third person to the first person to simulate the main characters emotions at the moment he wakes up. We thought this would be perfect to do since it can give different perspective of what is going on in that short amount of time. Also, we thought to do a quick cut from my partner opening the door of the room to him going into the bathroom where he would brush his teeth and show the credits through he mirror while he brushes. Overall, I think this is great progress and I just asked Samuel if we could record the first scene on Saturday; to which his response was yes. Therefore; making the whole timeline easier to then allow me to have plenty of time to edit the videos before I leave during spring break.

Production - Update on the Camera Situation & Place We decided to Film

    Hello everyone, coming back to give a small update on what I was talking about earlier with the camera situation and where we actually want to film our first scene of the film opening.

    To start off, I ended up asking my friend if he could let me borrow his camera, but unfortunately said no. But on the bright side, we can still use our phones; we just need to edit the quality of them when we finish the whole filming process. As for what neighborhood we chose, we ultimately decided that Samuel's was the best, since has much longer streets; making it perfect to film our first scene of main character walking on the pavement. On top of this, we wanted for our second and third scene to be filmed in my house since we already are filming in my room for the second scene.

    Overall, I strongly believe that we can get this finished with little to no problems in the near future after having these drawbacks. I feel that experiencing these kinds of problems is really good since I can learn from them and be able to not make the same mistakes again in the future. Also, it can really help me better understand how can photography and cinematography work in real life and how people who are in that industry experience things like this.

Production - Finishing the Filming Planning

     Hey everyone, welcome back to another post. Coming back again to provide our progress on the filming of our film opening and what exactly has happened.

    So, change of plans, we have to record our second scene first since we found out that the park is closed at night. This means that we have to reevaluate what to do since our first scene is most likely not going to work out being at the park. I was telling my partner Samuel just a little bit ago about us instead of filming in a park, it could be in one of our neighborhoods. This  way, it could be easier to film without us having to worry about closing issues or being locked out. The only thing left to do is figure out who's neighborhood should we do it in.

    Even though it might not happen, I wanna see if I can ask one of my friends to borrow his camera since he does a lot of shootings at car shows and the quality of the videos and photos are really good. If we can't, then we'll have to stick to using our phones; which even then, they're not that bad in quality. But that's besides the point: we need to focus on securing our dates for the shootings of each scene. I think that we can definitely have this done by the end of the week; therefore, allowing us to do the editing and start our brief over spring break.

Production - Progress on Filming Planning

     Hello everyone, back here again for another quick blog. Me and my partner Samuel finally were able to work out a date for filming the scenes that we decided on! The day that we thought of is the Monday of next week. 

    Like I said before in previous posts, I wanted to have our first scene begin in a dream-like state. So, the place I want it to be is a park; specifically Vista View Park. I believe that this would capture the idea of a dream since I also want us to film at night time to make it more creepy and eerie. On top of the already great news of me and Samuel being able to film after what felt like forever, we have plenty of time to film the rest for the week since of our days off for spring break. Also (trying to be hopeful here), I'm really hoping that right after we film in the park at night, we could come back to my house to go right into our next scene and go from there. That way, we could save ourselves time from having to do separate filming dates and causing potential future problems.

    Thinking about it now, I do see myself having some issues with filming on Monday since I have to study for a test on the following day. But other than that, I don't see there being any problems with filming on weekdays. It would also just depend on him and if Samuel doesn't need to make any last minute changes because of something coming up.