Creative Critical Reflection

A late night talk show delves into the production process of a new film.......

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LsUtrlnZsQn0rf_YLUbCzvJOYCOISPi7/view?usp=sharing

The Premiere!!

Please enjoy our Film Opening

Reflection

When I first started this project I was nervous since it was such a major part of my fourth quarter grade and part of my final AICE exam. I knew from the beginning I wanted to do a drama and that I wanted to work with someone else to do the project so I was extremely grateful that my friend Shreya and I were able to work so well on this project together, I truly think that because of our planning we were able to create a piece that showcases our skills and what we have learned throughout the course.


Originally when we started we struggled with our ideas because we were trying to convey a difficult topic: grief and loss. We knew we wanted our piece to be meaningful and I feel like we used this project as an opportunity to show people one way teens deal with grief. This project was truly a test of my skills as an editor and a test of my procrastination. Since I tend to procrastinate I knew I could not do that with this project, that’s why Shreya and I had filmed 60% of our project before school was forced to close due to coronavirus concerns. I think this project taught me that no feat is unachievable because we definitely accomplished what we set out to do and I’m proud of what we were able to create.


We were definitely prepared well to take on this task, without watching all those different examples in class, I’m not sure we could’ve done what we wanted. This project taught me how to blog, something I'd never really tried before. I found it to be a cathartic process that helped me wrap my head around where we were at with the project week to week. The blogging is basically a step by step manual of how we started, scrapped that idea and restarted our project, it tells our journey and I’m glad I have this documentation of my work on this project.


Finally, I learned about how filming the same scene from different angles is super useful because it gives you so many options during editing. The filming was the hardest part for me because I’m always nervous a shot won’t turn out the way I want it to, but because we were able to practice techniques throughout the year, by the time the project rolled around I was feeling much more confident in my ability as a cinematographer. While coronavirus definitely threw a wrench in our schedule and messed up some technical aspects of what we wanted to accomplish, I believe we overcame these obstacles and prevailed.

The Credits and OUR TITLE

So following my teacher's advice I made the credits much larger so that they can be more easily seen by the viewer. Shreya and I didn't discuss how to divy up the roles so I assigned them randomly, but later Shreya changed them slightly to make us both directors and producers, together. WeVideo can be really difficult sometimes, earlier this week I tried getting on three times but I think because of my network connection it wouldn't stop loading and my browser kept giving me kill/wait for the page options. I let SHreya know because I didn't know if she was planning on working on it anyways but I wanted to make sure something got done even though I wasn't able to do it. Also After much discussion we finally have a title. This is probably the part of the project we struggled with the most because we couldn't find a title that suited our needs without being too cheesy or cliché. Our title is "Stepping Forth" because our character is navigating her new life in the wake of a tragic loss, she has to step forth and progress in her journey to self-healing and happiness.

CCR Progress

I have been very busy this week with all of the assignments my teachers have given in their classes in this new distance learning world and i haven't had time to work as much as I had wanted o the CCR. However I did outline the way I wanted to answer the questions and I've started a script. For the CCR I think I want to do it like a newscast because I think that makes sense for me since I really like journalism and was recently named Editor-in-Chief of my school newspaper so doing something like this is my way of being creative. Something I'm excited about talking about in the CCR is representation because we really wanted to show a positive representation of teens and we also wanted to diversify our cast by making our main character a minority. Even though I'm not finished with my CCR I am posting a reflection on what i've gained from the project as a whole later this week, be sure to look out for it!

The Call

So yesterday Shreya and I had a call with our teacher and she gave us a few critiques on how to make the project flow better and little creative changes to add to the aesthetic of the project.
She said:
-we should make the credits appear larger so viewers can see them
- change the scene with the photo board to show Shreya's hand touching it
-start the music half way through the song to match pace
So we will make those changes and begin working on our CCR shortly. I have a few ideas for the CCR but I'm not sure how well I could execute them. One idea I had is using this giant teddy bear I have as the host of the CCR asking the questions and things like that, but I'm not sure so I will talk to Shreya about it. Until next time =)

Edit! Edit! Edit!

So we have finally completed all of the filming and most of the editing for our project and we've each worked considerably hard to have clean edits that make sense so the piece flows nicely. WeVideo is not always cooperative but that is to be expected after working with it so many times before. We are optimistic about our project and as I said in an earlier posting, Shreya really surprised me by how good her acting was and I'm really thankful it worked out this way. We also chose our music and we sent it to our teacher so she can send us the file to import to WeVideo but because we were looking for something very specific I had no trouble finding the right track. It did take a lot of listening but I am pleased with the music I found and so is Shreya. One thing that we briefly struggled with is the credits. Shreya wanted to put the credits on a black screen at the end but I remembered that our teacher told us to have the credits be rolling instead. Shreya was having technical difficulties at first so watched a few tutorials on how to do credits in WeVideo and I did a sample to show Shreya what it would look like.

Romancing the Stone

        In order for our project to work the way we wanted, we were always going to make a childhood memento that our main character will look at as she leaves to go to her friend's funeral. However now in quarantine we weren't sure if continuing with the idea would add to the piece or not since it would be in a different setting and we wanted to maintain continuity. We decided to go forward with filming the cutaway shot because we believed it was really necessary for our piece. Originally, I was going to make 2 stones, one for each friend, but the stones i had purchased looked really dark and unappealing when they arrived. I wanted color to be noticeable because the stone should be a happy memory and not blend in or reinforce the drabness of the rest of the opening. Also since we were trying to maintain continuity I had to get as close to the stone as possible to film them with minimal background images which would've been harder with two stones so I used an old tile ad made one large one instead. After I finished the stones I let them dry and sent pictures to Shreya to show her my progress, and later I will upload the videos to WeVideo to insert them into the project.

I got a lot of paint on my hands. :)

Technical Difficulties

And so it begins....
It was bound to happen at some point, WeVideo is not our friend.

        So Shreya and I had a little trouble getting started with the editing process because our videos were not uploading correctly. One of the videos we filmed had a different angle just to spice things up a bit and add dynamics, but when I uploaded it to WeVideo it rotated the video and made it vertical. When I tried to rotate it back through WeVideo, it changed the aspect ratio of the clip. I am going to try and rotate it on my phone first to see if that will make it upload correctly. Another problem that occurred was the project media situation. I knew that after uploading in order for both of us to edit the video, the pertinent clips needed to be added to project media to share the videos, Shreya was not aware of this so after she uploaded her half of the videos and I began editing I freaked out because a lot of videos were not there even though Shreya said she was sure she had uploaded them. Then I remembered she had to share the media with me for me to be able to access it. I gave her step by step instructions on how to share all the videos and we figured it out, but this does not bode well for the future. It really is so much harder when you cannot have face to face, in person communication.

Microsoft Teams vs COVID-19

      Today we had another conference, this time using the Microsoft teams platform directly instead of going through Canvas. I believe this conference was necessary because of the Cambridge Coronavirus update that had been released saying exams had been canceled. I am so thankful that Cambridge gave us an extension, even though it is only a week.  It was helpful to see how other groups/classmates are faring during this trying experience and I learned that Shreya and I are probably better off than most since we already started filming and our opening takes place in a house so I think that we will be okay in the end. Shreya and I scheduled a meeting with our teacher to discuss our ideas and our plans to finish the project which is due in about 2 weeks. Another decision Shreya and I have to make is music as we have not picked a track yet so I will post about that next week.

The Decision

       In my previous post I wrote about having to make a decision about how to incorporate an important prop in the film opening. We had to come to a decision because the place we filmed was Shreya's house, but I was the one who had purchased the props so they were at my house. Originally we had planned for me to bring them over to Shreya's and we would finish filming that day, but due to quarantine concerns this plan was no longer a viable option. After communicating with Shreya I decided that I would film a cutaway of the stones at my house, the stones were going to be filmed outdoors anyways, so I will have to find a generic background outside my house to film the stepping stones. I am worried that the cutaway will not look as good as our original plan which was to pan to the stones outside Shreya's house and then do a shot/counter shot between her and the stones to establish communication and a relationship between them.  Hopefully, the same feeling will be established through our revised plan.

Colin's Dilemma

In a previous post I wrote about how we were going to include a scene where our main character looks at some childhood mementos outside near her front door: handprint stones. Well, I got the stones but I'm not allowed to leave my house. I have a couple ideas of what I should do but I'm not completely set on either of them.
1. Rewrite Storyboard
    ---Just get the whole idea out of my head and scrap that train of thought
2. Deliver Discreetly
    --Somehow convince my parents to drop the stones off at Shreya's house, minimal interaction
3. If you want to get something done......
    --Make the stones myself and film them outside my house in a generic outdoor setting and edit it into the opening

I'll speak with Shreya about this and we'll see if we can conjure up a solution!

Our Canvas Corona Conference

           In the midst of all the craziness surrounding us during this time of crisis, Mrs. Stoklosa took the time to communicate some changes to our class through Canvas, which has a conference tool. I learned a lot and the meeting really calmed my nerves because my grade is so dependent on this final project. So, the project due date has been pushed back about a week giving us more time to figure out what to do and how to complete our project without leaving our homes. Thankfully we started filming in Shreya's house, but I'm stuck at home until this all blows over. We covered a lot of project related business and I felt really bad for people who have to essentially start over because of this pandemic. It really meant a lot to have a teacher be so proactive and today many of my other teachers followed suit and contacted me and my classmates about what we should be doing, but I digress. After the conference I had a 2 hour conversation with Shreya about what we should be doing to make our project work. I'm feeling optimistic, wish me luck dear reader!

Calling COVID-19 on set!

        In my previous post I said that we would proceed as planned with our filming since school is out and all of that. However, things have changed as the situation has worsened and what originally seemed to be a temporary move to online schooling could in fact be our new normal as we are moving more and more towards panic. I talked it all over with my parents and they are worried and they want our family to comply with social distancing, for this reason I am unable to go to Shreya's house to complete filming, although I feel we do have a good chunk already done. I had some communication issues with Shreya because she said she texted me but I didn't get her messages, my guess is it has something to do with the wifi since everyone is home and both my parents are doing video conferences which slows down the network. It remains to be seen how this will affect the editing process but I remain optimistic that by that time I will have figured out a better connection and my computer seems fine right now. I tried uploading videos to WeVideo but it was taking a really long time and I'm not sure if that was due to the slow network or WeVideo. Anyways Shreya said she can finish the filming by next week and I created a shared project on WeVideo.

Corona Concerns

           Obviously the coronavirus panic is at full force right now and school is not open for the next 2 weeks. We have decided to continue filming during the week in order to remain on schedule for the due date in April. Since my parents will be working from home next week they want me out of the house so I will be able to film at Shreya's house next week. I am unsure if we should actually meet up just for general health reasons but it remains to be seen how affected our community will be. Our schedule is pretty fluid right now due to the coronavirus but we are confident that we will be to able to remain on schedule. =)

More Filming

We did some more filming so I wanted to show you all what else we have so far. Obviously this is all rough footage. Also, in a previous post when I posted some videos one of them showed the changing of color during the scene due to the natural light from the window changing. We asked our teacher about this and she said that during the editing process we can change the color of the scene to match or we can split the scene so that the color change is not as noticeable or so it is not as awkward as it is now.

The Psychology of Grief

            Since our character is coping with grief and loss we decided to do blog posts about what her mental state would be at this time and how she copes with the loss of her best friend. We want the audience to understand and empathize with what she is going through but we also don't want all of our messages to be metaphorical or have to be interpreted. However, at the same time no one outright says what they are feeling at every given moment. Grief and loss are very hard to watch, mostly because the audience cannot help but feel the sorrow and pain of the character. We want the audience to feel they know this character and what she is really feeling despite what she amy say to the other characters in a scene.
            When people start spiraling after a loss they do not think rationally and often take drastic measures to reflect what is going on in their head. Loss affects everyone differently, but we want this event to have a profound effect on our character. We want to show the audience how she grows and moves past her emotions. Today, there is still stigma about having mental health issues and we want to combat this by having our character be open with her friends and family about what she is feeling and what she needs from them throughout her grieving process.

Target Audience

            After going through the Creative Critical Reflection (CCR) expectations in class, I thought it would be best to make a blog post outlining who we want to reach with our specific message. Every production ever usually has an audience in mind, the piece is made for that specific audience. For example if let's say a college student started watching Doc Mcstuffins on Disney Junior they probably wouldn't like it. Why? Because that content was not made for them. "You" on Netflix was made for them so they will probably like that better.
            We want to appeal to a wide range of people preferably ages 13-50 because the teenage demographic is extremely important when it comes to making commercially successful movies. Drama movies usually attract older audiences, but because our main character is a young teenager, it might help skew the age ratio to be a little more young. MPAA or the Motion Picture Association of America collects annual data on who goes to the movies. In 2018, over half, 51% of moviegoers were women, so it helps that our main character is female because that could drive more turnout. Coincidentally our main character is also Indian which is only because Shreya is the lead actress, but this could also drive turnout among the Indian-American community who might want to see how their culture is displayed on screen. Overall, we think by appealing to a younger audience our film will be commercially successful.

Day 1

Day 1 of of filming is finally here!!!
      I made it to Shreya's house eventually after going to the wrong person's house (oops!) and we got to work filming the first half of our opening in one day.  We also finally figured out who the dead friend will be. That's right dear reader, yours truly is a fictional deceased character. I don't know if that's bad luck or not but I'll let my superstitious friends tell me later. We decided that I should be the dead character because then it would make it easier for us prop wise when it comes to creating the photo board and the funeral flyer. It just works out better this way. I was a little wary not because of any personal issue but because I was afraid the audience might get the wrong idea about the relationship between the two characters, but Shreya assured me it would be fine and that it would work. We created a flyer for the funeral to be included as a prop although we never actually filmed with it because we didn't get to that part of the storyboard.
      We filmed a lot of the same parts of the storyboard at different angles so we have a variety of shots to choose from when it comes to editing. In this post I've included some footage of our first day of filming !

Postponing of Day 1 Filming

Mamma Mia, here we go again
So things did not turn out as planned today as unforeseen transportation issues really threw a wrench into our schedule. Unfortunately I was not able to make it to Shreya's today but even though we were not able to meet in person, I still planned out what I wanted to include in the film opening. I found a bracelet to use as the friendship bracelet. Originally we were going to have our main character throw away the bracelet to show the audience that she is conflicted over whether or not she should move on or try to forget about their relationship. In our group meetings, my group advised me to not throw away the bracelet. They said the audience might get the wrong impression of our main character and they might come away with the message of throwing their friendship away which is not what we want to convey. I explained to them the significance of the bracelet, and while they agreed the bracelet should be included they said instead of having her toss it in the trash bin she should either pick it up and put it down or be wearing the bracelet and take it off before leaving to go to the funeral. I'm really glad we did the group meetings because they really helped me see what I could do better with the project.

Childhood Mementos

    So something new we wanted to add to the set that we didn't have before was this hand print stepping stone that could be placed outside the main character's door in her front garden area so she gets hit with nostalgia right before leaving for the funeral. We won't have this setup for filming tomorrow but the next time we film we'll probably have this ready to finish up the footage that we need. We wanted to play with lighting in the second half of the opening which again is not something we will reach on Saturday, but we definitely want to for our second day of filming. I will include videos of the raw footage of our first day of filming in an upcoming post so be sure to look out for that! Something else to really play up the nostalgia factor in the beginning is a photo board with pictures of the main character and her recently deceased friend. We will have this part of the set ready for tomorrow, Shreya said she has photos and a bulletin board at her house already so we don't need to get anymore materials for this set design prop. We haven't decided yet who her deceased friend should be. Originally we were thinking our mutual friend, Chelsea, could do it but Shreya didn't want Chelsea to be the one who died so we're playing with stock images to see if that works better but we might end up choosing one of our friends to be the dead friend. This post is a little shorter than normal so below I've included a photo of the handprint stone

Final Storyboard

  So after changing our opening concept completely, we had to redo our storyboard. We want to refrain from making implied messages in the opening because we are afraid the audience won't understand what we're trying to accomplish. Our new concept is much more direct and conveys our message in an explicit way. We have come up with a title 'The Memory of Happiness', but because that is a little corny we will probably change it to something else. Our project is moving along nicely, we are planning to start filming this weekend on saturday which will help jumpstart our project. I am a little nervous because Shreya is going to be the main actress, which we weren't planning on doing until recently, so we'll see how it works out. There's a lot of pressure on her to do well because the opening is essentially just her.  She really stepped up and took one for the team by volunteering to act in the opening. Maybe if we're really desperate we'll hold another casting call, but after that last one I'm not sure it's such a good idea. What's even worse is that, according to Shreya, a lot of people showed up after we had already gone inside the auditorium which sucks because it would've been nice to have more options. Anyways, the point of this post is to overall show how we've planned out the opening after having to rework our original idea. Below is our new storyboard, again as I said in a previous post, dear reader don't criticize my drawing skills because I'm proud of these drawings (Van Gogh is still weeping, though).


 

Production Progress

   On Friday, while in class, Shreya and I devised a more specific plan of how to take on our difficult opening. We decided that certain memories/objects should be used to establish normalcy while our character's behavior will establish the "something is right here" feeling that we are going for. We mostly brainstormed production design elements to include in the opening and we worked on a storyboard of our revised plot outline. Have you ever made a friendship bracelet? Well dear reader you're going to see a time lapse video of me making one in an upcoming post! It was apparent to us that our main character have daily reminders of the friend that she lost. One way we want to do this is have her interact with a friendship bracelet her friend made for her. We want it to be made of the colors that represent friendship (white, yellow, purple). The girl will put on the bracelet, freeze, and then throw the bracelet in the basket as she continues getting ready for the funeral, just as she is leaving, she reaches into the trash bin to retrieve her bracelet to wear to the event.  Another element we want to create, is to have the lock screen of the girl's phone be of her and her friend.
     We have come up with a title for our opening, "The Memory of Happiness" which really represents what we want our opening to emulate. That feeling of anger of despair over remembering those memories of happiness that can no longer be recalled without renewing the pain along with it. We plan to start filming next weekend as we will both have free time then to really start our filming.

Casting Call Catastrophe

As the title of this post suggests, our casting call did not go as planned and was nowhere near what we thought it was going to be. Only 2, two, TWO people showed up and neither of them were exactly Saoirse Ronan if you catch my drift. The lack of turnout was a miscalculation on our part though. I think we underestimated the teenage need for relaxation and the power Friday has on the motivation of students. If we held the casting call on any other weekday, turnout might’ve been better.  Both of the girls who auditioned were very polite and listened to our directions, but they didn’t grasp the emotions in the way we wanted. You know what they say, if you want to get something done, you gotta do it yourself. My partner Shreya will assume the lead role as she will be able to visualize what we want in the project better than the actresses who auditioned for the part. We briefly considered holding a second casting call, but with the SAT coming up as well as important field trips, we decided it was better to just leave everything as is.

One of the girls who auditioned asked if I could pretend to be a dead person to help them formulate a monologue. While she was performing I was trying so hard not to laugh, acting is tough man. The other girl who auditioned had an accent that was a little hard to understand, this is not important because we would not have a lot of dialogue, but she seemed to need to rely on dialogue in order to emote well which was somewhat problematic. Blogger won't let me post the second video, so I'll try to include it in the next post,

Scratch That, Strike It From the Records

So we’re basically starting over. We are keeping the same theme but we are changing the plot of our opening a bit to better fit our skill set and convey our chosen message better.

So earlier I had said we were going to start the film with a series of flashbacks triggered by our main character walking through the bedroom of her friend who passed. I also proposed the idea of having her be at the beach or their favorite spot but we are not doing any of that! Now, we are going to have her express emotions of sadness and depression as she gets ready to go to her friend’s funeral in her room. After consulting our teacher, we realized that our idea was unrealistic as we only have 2 minutes to accomplish this project.

We are currently revising our plot and have come up with a pretty basic outline. Since our opening will basically be focused on one person we needed an amazing actress who would be able to emote without using too much dialogue. In order to achieve this quality we asked Ms. Lutwin, the drama teacher, if she would be alright with helping us hold a casting call. I didn’t expect it to be so easy and she was so kind and considerate while we were asking about our casting call. The whole process was a great experience. Lutwin said she had about 3 or 4 girls in mind already who fit the description of who our character is. She said she’ll let them know about the casting call. Fingers crossed!

Our casting call will be held on Friday afterschool in front of the Drama Room, and the people who audition will have to improvise a brief monologue about grief and the loss of a friend. We decided to use this method of testing because we wanted to see who could get into this grief/depressed mindset the fastest and who emoted the best.