Extra Filming Blog

     This blog will be a general summary of all of the filming that my group member and I worked on together. I strongly believe my partner and I have worked extremely hard on our filming process even under the difficult circumstances. To start, we had to look for locations. Before this corona out break when we were allowed to go outside and film; we went to two different parks. The first one, there was too many people and we did not want there to be an issue with people being on camera. We arrived to a next park which was in front a church so we had to ask for permission from a worker if we can film. They allowed us, so we began with our journey. My partner and I spoke to our actors to explain to them what they will do and how they will be in our film. We stayed for a while, until it got almost dark. Since we are teenagers it took us longer than expected to film because a few of the actors got distracted and started messing around. We soon got back on track and continued. Right when it got dark it started drizzling. We thought it was luck because right before that we finished filming for the day. The next day of our filming took place in a plaza. We decided to go somewhere nice, yet quiet with not much people around. We also tried to find the best location with the best lighting. Thankfully our friend came along to help us film. He was a really big help because without him we would have struggled big time. We continued filming there for about 2-3 hours. In the beginning it was kind of stressing since we did not have a camera man in that moment but soon enough we figured it out. We could not re-shoot a lot of our scenes due to the pandemic that is why there was not a variety of angles, we did not get a chance to contain as much as we wanted

. To conclude, I am extremely proud of our hard work and I do think it all paid off in the end because my partner and I are both very happy with the end results.

Re-Edit Blog

     For the past few days my group member and I have been working on mostly the editing portion of our final project. We focused mainly on the title sequence and timings per scene. It was minor errors but we still wanted to perfect it. Again it has been difficult for me and my partner to physically work together on one computer. COVID-19 has made our project much more difficult. Facetime has been very helpful to talk over what we need to fix. Since our re-shoots were a fail due to the president saying we should stay inside we have to edit to the best of our abilities. We planned on re-shooting for certain types of lighting but thankfully, iMovie has a feature to change certain lighting and colors. We also wanted to re-shoot for the sound to make the noises louder and more suspenseful. We decided to add sound affects for the scenes such as car slamming, the trunk slamming, and the boy getting hit in the head. We have also had to work on the camera angles and movements. After we did an activity where another student checked our film we realized we have a couple movements we didn’t include. Me and partner went back in and tried to use iMove and other editing softwares to try to add more angles and movements. As for titles we have included everything that is required. We have also been able to search for and include incidental music to change the mood in our film. For the beginning we used a soft song to represent a light mood when everything is okay. Then a hardcore song once the villains get to the couple. We want the audience to feel different emotions when watching this, so the music is very helpful when it comes to this. We will continue to add more features to make our video greater with the power of editing. My partner and I are so far proud of our work for all we have put into it.

Re-Shoot Blog

     My partner and I have been planning to do re-shoots for our film for about two weeks now. We wanted to focus on fixing up our lighting, camera angles and sound. For the lighting we wanted to go earlier in the day to get our scenes to become brighter than the old clips we have before. For the camera angles, we still needed to perfect certain clips in our film to contain as many angles as we can for Cambridge. Lastly, for sound, we noticed after looking back at the footage that with the voices used in the park scenes did not sound as good. We planned to use better microphone quality to fully hear the actors voices in the film. Unfortunately, due to the recent Corona Virus none of this has happened yet. We wanted to re-shoot to get this finished as soon as possible but this terrifying pandemic had other plans. The government and even president doesn't even recommend us to go outside. This affects our re-shoot truly in a negative way. It has been difficult trying to see my partner and the rest of the actors because of social distancing suggestion made by the government. I feel that with this virus it has become very difficult for my group mate and I to fully finish our project. Earlier in this project we created a few slides to help us plan for certain things like location, health, and schedule. Going back to that, our days of filming and editing were not as precise. We still need to re-shoot and at this point in time we are not sure if we can anymore. We might just have to edit the film as much as we can till everything becomes right. My group mate and I are trying our best not to worry, since we don't have much time. This is a stressful process especially with this dangerous virus. Of course my group mate, other students, and I have been trying to keep positive during this world-wide crisis. Thankfully we still have communication with our teaches to help us along the way.

   

Editing Blog: Last Few Days

     We are finally about done without our editing process. We have been working on this for several days now to perfect it to the best of our abilities. The last few things we were focusing on is sound and timing. Thankfully we have enough footage so we can cover it all with sound. We were planning on using a light calm sound in beginning of the film. Further on we planned on using a suspenseful sound to set the tone. We had search on iTunes for different soundtracks. We did not have another software for music so we just resulted in apple. We had some difficulties trying to set all of this because of the recent pandemic of the Corona Virus. It was hard to see and communicate with my partner because of family issues and wifi issues. We recently can't leave our houses so it is a problem when it comes to reshooting. We used to physically work together hands on with the editing and filming portion but since this outbreak it has been extremely difficult. However we are trying our best to continue working hard to completely finish our film. We still are adding and changing a few more transitions to make our stuff extra smooth. What we have also included is sound affects. The sound affects will help the movie really come to life. Especially with the scene of the boy getting hit in the face. The sounds will help us bring everything together to make our film make sense. We are proud of all the work we have so far. I truly cannot wait to upload our work to Cambridge to see what final grade I can get.

Editing Blog: Second Day

      For the next few days of us working this long film we have eventually finished the editing scene over the past days. We have been working hard together to get it finished and we are proud it is soon to be done. We have been working on this for a while and it will soon be a great relief to finish this film at the best of our ability. We are aiming for a high score so we will continue working hard. What we have done is our transitions and title sequence. We were able to add it in but we had to do a lot of changing around with font and color. This was a little complicated because of the lighting changes and movement of the scenes. We have most of the transitions done but not fully complete since there are some technical difficulties with how we set it up. I feel that my group member and I are doing well with the editing process even though it can be difficult at times. My job is to point out minor flaws in our film so there isn't any mistakes. My group mates job is to keep the videos in a safe folder on his phone so we don't lose any of our footage. We are glad we are being allowed to have this much time to perfect our video. What we also need to include into our video is sound and music to fit our film. We are having trouble finding a suspenseful sound to fit our film because we want it to correlate perfectly with the scenes. We are also learning how to add sound affects into our film because there are scenes of the mobs walking in the grass so we want to add a more intense sound, maybe record crunching and add it into the film. There are also scenes of car/truck slamming. Most importantly the scene of one of the mobs hitting the main guy with a gun across the head. With that we want to add a sound affect to make it seem louder as if it really hurt when in reality no one was harmed within the film. We will continue improving till finished. Hopefully it will become easier the more we edit and finish our film.

Editing Blog: First Days

     After our peer review me and my group mate thought it was best to begin with the editing process. Since we went over about what we must contain in our film we discussed how we will start. However, it is difficult for us to both work on it together since we are always so busy. We begin to plan and make notes of what we should include. For example; sounds, common cuts, and most importantly our titles. Finally my group mate and I were prepared to work on the editing portion of our final project. We decided to watch some short films and trailers to help us create a unique video. We knew this might be a difficult task so of course we watched many things like movies and shows to help us. We soon got the hang of it and then we began. We are editing our film on an iPhone 10. My group mate has the iMovie software and ready to use. We chose our phones instead of the school computers because our first project took us longer because of the complications that came with Pinnacle Studios. We were ready, we began to choose our clips carefully. Once we have decided on the scenes and clips to use we put them in a folder so they wouldn't get lost. We downloaded every thing so we don't have to start over the next time we edit again. We began playing with types of transitions in our editing. What we will mostly want to use is jump cuts or dissolving affect to show one scene (location) to another. I am still not a pro at using iMovie but I know soon I will get the hang of it. We also discussed how and where our titles should appear. We still have long ways to go so we will continue to edit.

Peer Review Blog

     Today was the first time we did a Peer edit in our AICE Media class. It's a great way to learn from other students and get feedback to improve our film. We were asked on things like: how long was the film, what is the story, are there smooth transitions? and many more. We were told to Peer review a group and judge them based off of what they have to far. In my opinion so far, I really think there film is very interesting and suspenseful. Although they did not have everything that was included in our Peer review worksheet, they still have time to re-film and re-edit. We judged there camera movements, angles, lightings, and sounds. Watching another students film gives me and my group mate inspiration to create a film which contains all it needs to get a perfect score. I also liked this process because we can connect with others. Seeing other peoples ideas just shows how unique teenagers can be. At the end of our worksheet we had two important questions. One was, what was one thing you really liked about the film. The one thing that really stood out to me and my group mate was the suspense of the film. The plot is confusing which makes you wanna know more. For example the main girl had a red blood like dot on her hand and even she was confused about it. At the end it shows her hearing a noise out of her room, the cliffhanger is she opens the door and thats when the film stops. There is not much context to even assume anything which is interesting to us. The final question is what is one suggestion I would make to the film. One suggestion would be to show more of the strange marking on her hand. It shows the red in her palm but not so much to the point where you can understand what it is. It is a little complicated to think about but overall I really enjoyed their film.