CCR

Here is my long awaited CCR! Thanks for coming along on my journey!

My Reflection

As Amani and I's time comes to an end, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on all that we have done. In the beginning, we were confused and conflicted about what our plot would consist of. We began jotting down any ideas we had and created a list. After carefully dissecting each idea, we decided to go with a teenage girl battling depression while figuring out the meaning to her life. We had to make sure our idea fit our coming-of-age genre in order to display a well developed scene. Creating the storyboard came next. Amani and I created a seventeen frame storyboard that captured all the shots and angles we wanted to implement into our film opening. After this was completed, we were ready to start filming. That was where we came upon a few issues.

Even though Amani and I had to overcome some production challenges, we were able to learn from these mistakes and create a more concise piece. Fortunately, we began our filming process early so we had time to alter anything we needed to. For example, we completely got rid of the phone scene with Jess's mother. We believed these shots were useless and did not add anything vital to the scene nor our theme. This was our best choice, since we wanted to be direct with our scene. We also modified our voiceover scenes to become longer. While we were filming the voiceovers, we realized that we needed it to be long enough to fit our preferred time slot. After we added the extra sentences, we made perfect timing. We also took two voiceovers out towards the middle of our scene because they were too sporadic, and would not have made any sense. 

The obstacles we faced such as the rain, no memory card, and the sun, were all challenges we conquered by being prepared and working as a team. Being able to work on this scene with Amani opened me up to new ideas I never would have thought of if I were all by myself. I would say that we both benefitted from each other's skills, which led us to develop a great video. We were able to have a better understanding of how to film and edit using the technology given to us, such as the professional camera and Adobe Premiere. Overall, this project taught me how to problem solve quickly, and utilize my creativity to my advantage. 

What’s so funny?

Here is our bloopers video :)

Day 5: Wrapping things Up

Today, Amani and I finished editing our entire film opening! I can't believe we have finally finished! Since I wasn't feeling too well, Amani and I had to have a Zoom call in order to finish editing. This virtual communication program allowed Amani to share her screen, so both of us could see what she was working on in Adobe. We finished putting in the credits, and fixed any other issues we may have had like the voiceover, time-lapse, etc. After reviewing the entire video, we found our video to be complete. I believe this turned out just how we envisioned it to be and maybe even better! I think our opening scene directly portrays a coming-of-age film, and captures the deep meanings.

A few pictures of our credit scenes:

Even though our project has come to an end, I am beyond grateful to have worked on this project with such an awesome partner! I think we worked really well together, and I would definitely do more projects with Amani in the future. That being said, enjoy our last vlog!

 

Importing the Font into Adobe

In a previous post I talked about the issue of importing the Authentic Signature font from dafont.com into Adobe. After we had our class collaborations, I was able receive an article that explained step by step what to do followed by a YouTube video. This is the article Amani and I utilized to be able to add our specific font. Amani and I chose Authentic Signature as our font design out of the three other ideas because it was the easiest to read, and went with the theme we want to portray. We wanted to make sure our viewers were able to clearly see the font without having to squint or infer. 

It took Amani and I a bit of time to input the title at the end of the scene like we discussed in our outline, but we eventually figured it out. The ending scene looks perfect with the font we chose to display and truly captures our overall aesthetic. All we have left is to input the credits into the beginning scenes and review it the next time we meet. 

Here is a sneak peak of our title scene!

Day 4: Editing

Today was the first day we started editing our film opening. This was definitely a long and strenuous process. Amani came over around 12pm and left at 3pm. Three hours of staring at a screen made us exhausted. Luckily, we were able to get a lot done. Since Amani and I are not pros at navigating Adobe Premiere, we had to look up tutorials on YouTube. This was extremely helpful and provided us with new editing skills. We had a few issues regarding the voiceover scenes. Because the sounds we recorded were too short, we had to add a few more sentences to make it fit the time frame. This was honestly a lot of fun to do, and I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Here is vlog #4!

The Voiceover Plan

In our film opening, Amani and I decided it would be best to include voiceover scenes. These clips will allow audience members to understand Jess’s thoughts and feelings. We collaborated together to create a solid proposal of what Jess will be saying. We broke it up into four scenes in order to keep it short and sweet. We had to make sure to carefully execute our script in order to get all of Jess’s necessary thoughts portrayed. Here is our final outline for our voiceover scenes. 

Start at the butterfly clip:
“I always loved my conversations with my grandma. She’s the only one that ever had anything meaningful to say to me. She told me that one day she’ll tell me the meaning of life but now she’s dead and all she left me with is this letter that I don’t even understand.”

Lake scene:
“I come to this lake pretty much everyday to escape from reality. My parents don’t let me live because I am just a “kid.” That’s why I began making origami to take my mind off of things.”

Reading letter:

“What does this even mean?”

Stepping on butterfly:

“That’s my life”

Collaborating in Groups

During class our teacher put us in different groups to share out our projects. This offered me a way to get helpful feedback and listen to my peers' ideas. This was a great learning opportunity since I was able to ask questions about some concerns Amani and I had. First, I asked about importing a certain font from dafont.com into Adobe Premiere. In a previous blog post, I mentioned how Amani and I were struggling with how to get the font we wanted to use into our editing software. Thanks to a classmate, I was given an article showing step by step instructions which will be very useful. The second question I asked about was the time-lapse scene. I wanted to know any tricks or tips I could use to make the scene more creative and real. Another peer offered me an editing technique that can be found within Adobe to make that scene the best it could be. This time provided me with beneficial information which Amani and I will utilize in our editing process. 

Day 3: Reshooting

After Amani put together our clips from my phone and her camera, she noticed a problem with the format. Since the scenes were filmed on two different devices, they were not the same size. This put a pause in our editing plans, because we had to re-film all of our scenes. Thankfully, we were able to meet up today after school and film. This allowed us to resolve our issue, and permitted us to stay on track. 

The downfall for today was the Sun. Due to Daylight Savings Time, the Sun was out and beating down on us. This was a conflict to our shots since shadows were cast, not to mention it was super hot and humid! Hopefully we were able to avoid this problem and capture the remaining shots. If anything doesn't look right we can use editing techniques to fix this, but if we have to we can reshoot the most vital scenes. 

Here is our third vlog, which is definitely my favorite so far!

Our Music Plan

Amani and I originally wanted to use Lana Del Rey’s song, “Happiness is a butterfly” in the background of our film opening, but unfortunately we don’t think we will be hearing back from Interscope anytime soon. With our editing process approaching quickly, we decided to go with a song that is just instrumental. We believe this song will be better for our scene since it is not too wordy, which could possibly distract viewers from the main message. 

Amani was able to contact an artist through Instagram to ask for permission to use his song. She really likes the music he produces and thought one song in particular would fit perfectly. We are planning on using the song, “we loved when we were strangers.” This instrumental piece had a chill beat that embodied our character Jess.

We are deciding to use this sound during the scene where she puts her headphones on. This will allow us to create a synchronized sound. For the first thirty seconds of our opening scene we will have Jess do a voice-over, explaining a bit about her life. This will give audiences a chance to understand Jess’s thoughts and feelings. 

Day 2: Filming at the Lake

Yesterday, Amani and I got together to shoot the lake scenes, and thankfully it was bright and sunny. The only downfall was that Amani forgot to put the battery in her camera so we had to resort to using my phone. The shots ended up turning out great and we were able to shoot all the scenes we needed to. The phone I have is the Iphone 12 Pro Max. The camera quality is extremely precise and worked well with our camera shots. This device contains a telephoto zoom lens and an 87% improvement in low light imagery. I never knew my phone could take such clear and crisp videos, so I was really impressed. 

During class that day, we sorted through our shots and assessed them all. We found a few clips that needed to be taken again, but overall we are finished with filming the major parts. Shooting these scenes was a lot of fun and I was able to learn new things throughout the process. This process allowed me to strengthen my communication and filming skills since I had to shoot these scenes with my partner. We were able to bounce ideas off of each other and create quality videos. I am extremely excited to begin editing so I can see the final product!

Enjoy our second vlog!

Picking the Perfect Font

Amani and I wanted to make sure we picked the best font for our film opening title. In order to get to this point, we researched multiple options on dafont.com. This website was filled with fonts for every occasion, but we needed to find one that matched our theme. Since our opening scene will entail of Jess finding herself through her grandmother's treasured letter, we decided to go with script as our font. After scrolling through many different versions of script, we found two choices which we are debating on. The first is called 'Authentic signature' and the second is called 'Photograph signature.' This font will resemble Jess's grandmother's handwriting used in the letter. Both are very similar, yet Authentic signature stood out to us the most. We will most likely lean towards utilizing Authentic signature, but for now we will keep the other just in case. We are a bit unsure on how to download this font to use it in our editing software system, but we will keep testing it out.

Possible choices:

Behind the scenes: Vlog #1

Here is our first vlog of many, Enjoy!!