Final Results

 The Dark Gift

    Well guys it finally happened, these past eight weeks, or you can say two months, have been hectic. I’m so proud to announce and show you guys my film opening, The Dark Gift. I hope you enjoy, and feel free to watch my other videos, they answer questions about my opening! It’s not a goodbye it’s a see you later!

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGiseBz5S8/W2zOq_dUrrdoVx00j7hRrw/view?utm_content=DAGiseBz5S8&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h08a9e9acfa

One last time

 Final reflection

Hey everyone, I can’t believe it’s finally come. This is going to be my last conversation with you guys, I mean not last, LAST but about this two month long project.

Let’s starts from the beginning, I want to talk about the class actually. Before coming into aice media I was fully convinced this was just going to be about social media and in some way, sort of similar to a marketing class. Don’t get me wrong, this is integrated in the class, just in a bigger way. Aice media dwells into ALL media, I did not media had more than one form. In all seriousness, Aice media was much more better than what I expected.  

When we got introduced to the project, this was rather early in the year, before we actually began. We started our research on different movie themes and genres. I full on fell inlove with coming to age and comedy movies. I knew though that the biggest hurdle would be definitely the dialogue and script. In turn, we would need actors if I continued with these genres. Luckily I decided to work with someone else, Victoria. She was a massive help with well just about everything. Having an extra hand was so much better then doing eveything myself. In a past post I described how I have been so used to working by myself since I’m a perfectionist, and tend to try to get things done the best way possible. This can conflict a lot with other people, since my ideas wouldn’t match up with theirs or vice versa. But with Victoria things flowed much more smoothly than expected, yes at first we didn’t know what we wanted to film since she was leaning more to a horror/drama  and I was more towards a comedy/coming to age film. Two opposites. However we retraced our steps, talked a bit more and found our mutual love for dystopian based films. And that’s when the project really started. 

After discovering our shared interests in dystopian films we decided to base our off that. Now the hardest part, the plot. Just in every movie basically, our story needed a conflict. However something much more political and government based would be beneficial for our story. Luckily, after researching a bit more we discovered that we should be our characters and not have to worry about finding other actors to help us film. No offense, I really don’t mind working with others, nothing against that, but with a big project like this one, our schedule has to be flexible enough to squeeze in any extra days if needed for filming. Having extra people in our team could cause much more problems for filming dates, time we cannot bother to waste at all.

In the end we developed our plot and began brainstorming ideas for our storyboard. We knew that in our opening we had to find a way to introduce our characters and their personalities so dialogue was needed. Another detail was that we needed a location for the “selection” we felt that the selection should be introduced right away to spark a conversation and excitement for the film. We can’t spoil too much of the film or else it wouldn’t be an opening. There was just so much to consider at this point. We immediately starts story boarding our ideas and combined them together, lastly we created a script for the small dialogues our opening had.

Then came production. Here is where most problems lied. You see first was that we what wanted this opening to be taken place during the evening, the lighting help spark a much more darker atmosphere and something amidst, you know? We had to film during the weekend to get these shots, however with daylight savings the sun set much later causing us to stay up late filming. This really messed up my sleeping schedule, cause the only days we could film was on a Sunday. We tried Saturday but Victoria had to leave earlier. In the end filming was just all over the place and being on a tight schedule wasn’t helping. Luckily, having eveything all done and written out, both our shots and dialogue. We were able to finish filming in the span of three days.

Lastly it was editing. Oh the horror. I’ve never in my life edited a video, well I have. In my pasts projects I’ve edited shots and angles and audios. SEPARATELY. I’ve never edited BOTH of them together. Not only did we had to add extra audio to emphasize certain a scenes we also had to decrease some audios to make the dialogue much more louder and clearer. Furthermore, who was going to tell me transitions were hard? I simply thought that just putting videos together can create a seamless transition. Boy was I wrong, I had to find transition and certain points in videos to create those transitions. Luckily, it was just a two minute video and editing also took around 2-3 days   to fully be completed.

This project was hectic but I learned so many valuable lessons, in teamwork, organization, editing, filming and patience. All these obstacles I feel have certainly made me not just a better filmmaker, but a better person. I’m so grateful to be given this opportunity, and I can’t wait for the next!

After Everything…

 Post production

Hey there! With just a few days left from my project deadline I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’ve finally done. After eight long weeks I’ve finished filming and editing my CCR’s.

I took a different approach for my other CCR , don’t worry I still did my cooking show snippet, however I also did a Canva presentation for my second CCR.

I’m so excited to share it with you, I feel like this could be one of my best projects this whole year. I’ve never been a huge fan of filming or being on camera, this project forced me to come out of my comfort zone and record myself speaking. 

I struggled a lot with pronunciation ever since I was little, while recording my first CCR, having a script was crucial but having someone you trust recording you was more important. Victoria is one my closest a friends, and having her record me helped me more than I could imagine. You see, I’m not the best public speaker, don’t get me wrong, I’m a well spoken person when it comes to socializing. In presentations or in this case roleplaying, where one has to memorize a script, I tend to stutter my words. I lose confidence , but Victoria always helped me by reminding me what I needed to talk about through the production. She helped me so much, and I’m forever grateful.

Lastly, when it came to the editing portion of my CCR, what I had a little problem was with creating an intro for the “channel”. This introduction was kinda hard because I’m not that familiar with animations or anything, but for this project I had to develop these skills. These newly found skills and techniques helped me create my intro, I called it “flavor and fame”. The title sums up the channel completely, and it really represents what we are trying to show. Furthermore, I’m extremely happy with the results, above you’ll find a small snippet of the introduction.

It’s time for..

 Production time!

Hey guys, welcome back to my portfolio! Today I was able to continue working on my CCR. There isn’t much to talk about other than the ideas I had to undergo.

Personally, I struggled a lot with finding time to record since I was having to replace my editing time as well. I have a huge spring break trip coming up, and soon. With this in mind my schedule has been all over the place and all jumble up to try and stay on schedule. 

You see not just that but the third quarter is ending, meaning most of my classes are having their final tests done the last week before break. Luckily, I have been managing time to record during last weekend, and was able to finish my production for the CCR. 

There was so much trial and error with this one, I had immense help from my partner, Victoria, and she was a huge part of my work. She helped me record and ask questions to create the setting and tone in my production. 

She has a tripod, and the perfect location to film my “cook show”. I believe there couldn’t have been any other way to execute this and I’m extremely happy with the shots we’ve taken.

I can’t wait to show you guys the final results, stay tune!!! 

Group meeting timee!!

My second meeting! 

Hey guys, welcome back to my blog. I was given opportunity this week and had a good meeting with other upcoming film makers in my class. They are also doing the same project as me and we're just coming up with ideas about how we're planning to respond and record our CCR's. 

I got the pleasure with meeting with five different people Emi, Jano, Mariana, Isabelle, and Ale.  By having these meetings, not only was I able to help others, but I also got referenced some other ideas for my CCR’s 

You see, in my past posts I went into how I'm going to answer the questions. The thing is, how am I going to create a video of me answering the questions? Luckily that's what the group today's group meeting was about. 

Fellow film makers!

First up, we have Emi, her idea was honestly amazing, but she had some struggles for her other video that she needs to incorporate. She was planning on doing her first video talking about the first two questions and posing as a famous actress unboxing her own fan mail, and later she will answer the following questions that we were given. However, we can only answer 2 questions in each video. Meaning she needs another video to answer the next two. She was planning on either doing a podcast or an interview and we tried giving her suggestions of maybe doing sort of a blog. But she wasn't really entirely sure. Hopefully she was able to figure out by taking in our suggestions, but I haven't heard from her since.

 

Next up we have Jano, He took inspiration for his first video from a TikTok trend. He’s planning to answer the first two question in a street interview way. The trend is asking a person “What do you do for a living” and he plans to answer that question by saying a famous actress and then slowly answer the questions about his upcoming movie. The next video he was planning to do is that he’s getting interviewed while he’s on set shooting for the movie and he plans to introduce the next questions. The whole point of this is being creative, and I think he excels in it. I love how he took in inspiration and was able to make it his own.

 

Now we have Marianna, she also took inspiration from social media but honed it to make it her own. Just like Jano. She is doing “What's in your purse” interview but instead its props from her film and that's how she’ll slowly develop the first two questions. I think that was a very smart technique, it was really clever, and I liked it a lot. However, she didn’t know what to do for her second one. We gave her ideas, and she just landed on developing a podcast, but we told her that visual aspects need to be included and gave her some advice on what she should do. 

Then there’s Isabelle, at first, she was going to record a day in her life and answering questions, we all concluded that it wasn’t original enough for her to use and that she should pick something else. We rumble up some suggestions again, and she pitched in as well. Ultimately, she wants to create a persona of her “second life” of being a huge fan or coach of football, and post-game she will get interviewed about her upcoming movie and slowly answer the first questions. Then she told us she wanted to do a mock trial and act as the witness because she’s being interviewed again. Once again clever, however the mock trial may be difficult to record but not entirely impossible. I advised her to use green screen to make it seem more realistic. In the end, that was her ideas. 

Lastly, there was Ale, Ale had so many ideas. She was the one contributing the most and she kept coming up with ideas, and it's insane cause I struggled a lot coming up with just TWO. At first, she was in between doing an apology video about why her movie went bad, but we felt it wasn’t a great way to convey the message and answering the questions since it was a negative energy. Still pretty incredible. Then she was like what if she’s amid getting surgery and starts to get questioned mid-way, kind of like a comedy skit and I think it was smart. Then inspired by her first suggestion, she wants to compare two movies, Her's and another one and dwell into the other set of questions in that review.

 My turn!

When it came to me though, everyone liked my ideas and didn’t comment on much anything. They believed that my news channel interview and my cooking show skit was on point and creative. They appreciated the thought i put into it and liked my ideas. I was very pleased with their reactions as it gave me more motivation to do better on this part of the project. 

In the end, I had a lot of fun collaborating and talking about ideas with other fellow filmmakers, it not only reminded me about taking in suggestions but also helping others to do their best!