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. :)