Sunday, April 10, 2016
Saturday, April 9, 2016
4/9/16 - Sad farewells
Before bidding adieu to this project and uploading my CCR and film opening, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the past 6 weeks.
In all honesty, its been one of the biggest challenges I've faced my whole life. Not so much for its rigor, but for the many lessons I learned coming out of it. Knowing myself, I've never been very fond of group work because I'm very independent and headstrong when it comes to brainstorming ideas and putting them into effect (So you could see how going into a totally never-been-dealt-with-before project with two of my friends could be quite problematic for myself). But, something good must come out of everything! And much to my surprise it did. Through perseverance and me pushing, or you could say 'nagging' for more advantageous time management, we were able to finish the project in ways that we had all imagined, and that to me is essential for believing you've accomplished a goal. So not only have I learned the advantages, yet at the sam time annoyances, of time management (Which, I'd like to put out there, has never been my forte) but I have also helped myself become more patient and open minded when it comes to working with others.
This project has also helped direct me towards which paths I want to take in life. I've always been very artistic and imaginative but have never considered film and media studies as a possible passion or future in my life. This class and project has helped give me an idea as to what I may like to pursue, and while I am aware that our production did not live up to all the aspects I had envisioned and that I would've liked to achieve, we were still able to create a concise plot line and an amazing opening. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect! Thanks to this opportunity I was able to see where my better skills lie and what improvements I need to make, especially since I will be taking the A level of Media Studies next year, which I am just as excited to start as I was in the beginning of this project, if not more!
But alas, all good things must come to an end, and it feels scary yet so exciting to finally be able to share this project, who I have nurtured and looked out for for the past 6 weeks ( I feel like a mother who's watching their child go away to college). I'd like to thank everyone who has helped my group and I create our final project and I'd also like to thank my group because even if we did have our differences at times we always stuck together and were able to create an amazing project :)
In all honesty, its been one of the biggest challenges I've faced my whole life. Not so much for its rigor, but for the many lessons I learned coming out of it. Knowing myself, I've never been very fond of group work because I'm very independent and headstrong when it comes to brainstorming ideas and putting them into effect (So you could see how going into a totally never-been-dealt-with-before project with two of my friends could be quite problematic for myself). But, something good must come out of everything! And much to my surprise it did. Through perseverance and me pushing, or you could say 'nagging' for more advantageous time management, we were able to finish the project in ways that we had all imagined, and that to me is essential for believing you've accomplished a goal. So not only have I learned the advantages, yet at the sam time annoyances, of time management (Which, I'd like to put out there, has never been my forte) but I have also helped myself become more patient and open minded when it comes to working with others.
This project has also helped direct me towards which paths I want to take in life. I've always been very artistic and imaginative but have never considered film and media studies as a possible passion or future in my life. This class and project has helped give me an idea as to what I may like to pursue, and while I am aware that our production did not live up to all the aspects I had envisioned and that I would've liked to achieve, we were still able to create a concise plot line and an amazing opening. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect! Thanks to this opportunity I was able to see where my better skills lie and what improvements I need to make, especially since I will be taking the A level of Media Studies next year, which I am just as excited to start as I was in the beginning of this project, if not more!
But alas, all good things must come to an end, and it feels scary yet so exciting to finally be able to share this project, who I have nurtured and looked out for for the past 6 weeks ( I feel like a mother who's watching their child go away to college). I'd like to thank everyone who has helped my group and I create our final project and I'd also like to thank my group because even if we did have our differences at times we always stuck together and were able to create an amazing project :)
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
4/6/16 - Last segment
We are now just a few days away from the deadline!! It seems like it was just last week that my group and I were debating which genre we wanted to focus on or what we wanted our plot line to be. Time sure flies when you stress a lot! (I wish I was joking at that last one). With just a few days left I want to give my group and myself enough time to focus on our creative critical reflection so I'm hoping to finish all editing tonight. Over the past couple of days, I've been cutting, editing, fixing, stabilizing, regulating and basically any other task that comes with editing. The main problem I've been seeing throughout our shots was that we didnt leave enough time for each shot, since many of the shots seem rushed, as if they are burning through dialogue too quickly. I tried fixing this by incorporating multiple takes of the same shot and sort of cutting it up so that there is a sort of dimension in the way the angles and shots are compiled. Maybe this could work for us, since we are focusing on a protagonist who is unsteady, disoriented, and in ultimate confusion. However I really want to bring to light the efforts we made at keeping the colorful aesthetic throughout the scenes, from set production to costume design we really tried to follow the brick, crimson, beige and faded looks we wanted to incorporate which all l had an ultimate meaning (I discussed in an earlier post) and to say the least I am in love with the look, I am so proud!
Two nights ago, Guste came over and helped research potential sounds and opening songs that we could include. After extensive listening of some good (And, to our discontent, some not so good...) songs, we ended up finding one that we believed matched the suspenseful yet lighthearted theme we wanted to go for. We decided to use the songs Anamalie, for our opening song, and Ossuary 6 - Air, for an underlying hum throughout certain parts of the film, from this royalty free music website. Recently a classmate of mine brought to my attention what our theme and conflict would be portrayed in our film and it got me thinking because I realized that we had never really discussed our theme, which I discussed in my last blog.
Danny and I just came back from filming the last segment of our film, a flashback scene. I wanted to capture a light contrast with the sun/sunset to create a silhouetted outline of the individuals who are trapping the protagonist in the trunk. Heres one of the shots we were able to get. Im uploading them to my computer right now to insert them into the movie. after some tweaking and adjusting we'll be done with the movie!
"Incompetech Music Search." Incompetech. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2016. <http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html>.
Two nights ago, Guste came over and helped research potential sounds and opening songs that we could include. After extensive listening of some good (And, to our discontent, some not so good...) songs, we ended up finding one that we believed matched the suspenseful yet lighthearted theme we wanted to go for. We decided to use the songs Anamalie, for our opening song, and Ossuary 6 - Air, for an underlying hum throughout certain parts of the film, from this royalty free music website. Recently a classmate of mine brought to my attention what our theme and conflict would be portrayed in our film and it got me thinking because I realized that we had never really discussed our theme, which I discussed in my last blog.
Danny and I just came back from filming the last segment of our film, a flashback scene. I wanted to capture a light contrast with the sun/sunset to create a silhouetted outline of the individuals who are trapping the protagonist in the trunk. Heres one of the shots we were able to get. Im uploading them to my computer right now to insert them into the movie. after some tweaking and adjusting we'll be done with the movie!
"Incompetech Music Search." Incompetech. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2016. <http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html>.
4/6/16 - Morals and Issues
We've been brainstorming possible film titles for quite a while now and I wan to give a little background information before I delve into it. So, in this blog, I'll be focusing more on the subliminal issue and morals that we are trying to reach forth in this intro.
A quote from a medical website states that "people with amnesia — also called amnestic syndrome — are usually lucid and know who they are, but may have trouble learning new information and forming new memories". This really relates back to when I discussed inspirations that we had in making the plot line, in which I had mentioned the movies involving Jason Bourne, who, he himself, was an amnesiac who could not remember anything from his former assassin past.
The basic plot line of our film wanted to emphasize that our protagonist had been implanted with a chip, which I persistently tried to create when making Danny's scar on our day of filming, and that the homeless man that he meets has something to do with it upon revealing that he knows the characters name. By doing this and stopping our opening at that moment, we are emphasizing that there is more than just the protagonist in conflict with himself but there is also an unknown conflict that is soon to be revealed. We emphasize this our use of questions left unanswered or practically unanswered throughout the duration of our opening.
Therefore, when discussing our film titles we really wanted to be able to portray the essence of our film. Possible titles included The Chip, Delirium, and Patient 101. However, we wanted to offer a double-meaning, significant title and while Patient 101 was a play on the book 1984 and mind corruption, we wanted to focus more on the manipulation and experimental part of the plot, since the protagonist is being manipulated and blackmailed by this implanted chip. Therefore, we chose "SUBJECTED" as our film title. It was both a play on the word 'subject' because he is a subject in an experiment and a play on 'subjected' which entails that he is being forced to undergo something. We are all very content with the title:)
"Amnesia." - Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic, 4 Sept. 2014. Web. 06 Apr. 2016. <http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/amnesia/basics/definition/con-20033182>.
"Amnesia, Confusion, Memory Loss, and Altered Alertness." WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2016. <http://www.webmd.com/brain/tc/confusion-memory-loss-and-altered-alertness-topic-overview>
N.d. List Verse. Web. 3 Apr. 2016. <http://listverse.com/2013/10/13/10-bizarre-cases-of-amnesia/>.
So for several weeks now, our basis for our story line was that we wanted our main character to wake up in an unknown location, having no recollection of where he is or what happened to him in the last 24 hours. Now, we knew this was a common opening used in many films so we wanted to take that and intertwine it with a moral, or a sort of lesson, if you will. This moral would deb that people are not always what they seem and that you have to be careful who you trust, which I think many young people and young adults can relate to since they are building up on life experiences. The moral of the story could easily portrayed by personal experiences and knowing how it feels to be betrayed, deceived, etc. But what we had never addressed was the underlying issue our protagonist is faced with upon waking. Recently, I've had time time to research on amnesia, delirium, and other memory loss sources which is ultimately what our main character experiences.
This source basically help give a basic definition of what amnesia and delirium and i think that we could really bring awareness to this issue in our opening. whilst editing I realized that the quick cuts and shakiness of the videos is representative of an amnesiac's mind, our main character, struggling through their confusion.
A quote from a medical website states that "people with amnesia — also called amnestic syndrome — are usually lucid and know who they are, but may have trouble learning new information and forming new memories". This really relates back to when I discussed inspirations that we had in making the plot line, in which I had mentioned the movies involving Jason Bourne, who, he himself, was an amnesiac who could not remember anything from his former assassin past.
The basic plot line of our film wanted to emphasize that our protagonist had been implanted with a chip, which I persistently tried to create when making Danny's scar on our day of filming, and that the homeless man that he meets has something to do with it upon revealing that he knows the characters name. By doing this and stopping our opening at that moment, we are emphasizing that there is more than just the protagonist in conflict with himself but there is also an unknown conflict that is soon to be revealed. We emphasize this our use of questions left unanswered or practically unanswered throughout the duration of our opening.
Therefore, when discussing our film titles we really wanted to be able to portray the essence of our film. Possible titles included The Chip, Delirium, and Patient 101. However, we wanted to offer a double-meaning, significant title and while Patient 101 was a play on the book 1984 and mind corruption, we wanted to focus more on the manipulation and experimental part of the plot, since the protagonist is being manipulated and blackmailed by this implanted chip. Therefore, we chose "SUBJECTED" as our film title. It was both a play on the word 'subject' because he is a subject in an experiment and a play on 'subjected' which entails that he is being forced to undergo something. We are all very content with the title:)
"Amnesia." - Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic, 4 Sept. 2014. Web. 06 Apr. 2016. <http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/amnesia/basics/definition/con-20033182>.
"Amnesia, Confusion, Memory Loss, and Altered Alertness." WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2016. <http://www.webmd.com/brain/tc/confusion-memory-loss-and-altered-alertness-topic-overview>
N.d. List Verse. Web. 3 Apr. 2016. <http://listverse.com/2013/10/13/10-bizarre-cases-of-amnesia/>.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
4/3/16 - Changes
Yesterday's shooting made me realize that we had worked too much on the storyboard and shot list, as most of what we had planned was cut out of the filming process altogether. I hadn't taken into consideration all the shots that we wanted to incorporate in the two minutes and how long they were going to take. We hadn't realized that 3, 4, 5 seconds videos put together could actually add up to being a long final product. Due to this realization, we had to simplify our shot list and story board.
Here's a picture of the old storyboard that I had recently finished.
And here are the changes we've made to it that we are going to adapt.
For our dialogue, we decided to take a somewhat lax approach towards it after all the changes we made. As seen in the bottom right hand corner of the edited story board, we decided that our theme would remain ambiguous, with no questions answered whatsoever. Therefore, we created limited dialogue that would be required in the scene and then left it to the actors to get into character and change around what they felt would fit the particular scene.
Here is the basic outline that we followed using this website.
"The Origins and Formatting of Modern Screenplays." FilmmakerIQcom. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2016. <http://filmmakeriq.com/lessons/the-origins-and-formatting-of-modern-screenplays/>.
4/3/16 - Editing
Good morning, afternoon, night, I don't even know! Its already been a long day for me as editing over 60 shots can be quite time consuming...
Last night I was oh-so-lucky enough to experience total loss of internet and electricity all throughout my house (yay..) rendering me unable to access my videos or pictures to share on my blog, or to even access my blog. I was up all night anxious about whether or not I had lost our videos or not; thankfully, we hadnt. All sarcasm aside, luckily, my internet is back and I have begun working on all the editing.
I've had experience in using iMovie so I'm not completely lost with what I'm doing. I've already begun using video enhancing techniques as well as camera shakiness regulating and sound editing to stabilize shots and make specific sounds i want to come out. One of the issues that I've started coming across was that some of the shots were ended too quickly or that the dialogue was rushed. It made the scenes feel rushed themselves. To fix this I've attempted to use slo-motion at the beginning and end of the shots that were for the most part pretty stable to elongate the length of the shots so that it doesn't interfere with the pace of the film. Another criticism that I would make about yesterdays shooting was that I don't think we captured the essence of the homeless man as much as we wanted to. When I imagined the homeless man I imagined extended dirtiness and an edgier tone on the voice. But overall it went pretty smoothly and some of the dialogue helped allude to the fact that he is a homeless man.
Here are some images from our filming yesterday.
Last night I was oh-so-lucky enough to experience total loss of internet and electricity all throughout my house (yay..) rendering me unable to access my videos or pictures to share on my blog, or to even access my blog. I was up all night anxious about whether or not I had lost our videos or not; thankfully, we hadnt. All sarcasm aside, luckily, my internet is back and I have begun working on all the editing.
I've had experience in using iMovie so I'm not completely lost with what I'm doing. I've already begun using video enhancing techniques as well as camera shakiness regulating and sound editing to stabilize shots and make specific sounds i want to come out. One of the issues that I've started coming across was that some of the shots were ended too quickly or that the dialogue was rushed. It made the scenes feel rushed themselves. To fix this I've attempted to use slo-motion at the beginning and end of the shots that were for the most part pretty stable to elongate the length of the shots so that it doesn't interfere with the pace of the film. Another criticism that I would make about yesterdays shooting was that I don't think we captured the essence of the homeless man as much as we wanted to. When I imagined the homeless man I imagined extended dirtiness and an edgier tone on the voice. But overall it went pretty smoothly and some of the dialogue helped allude to the fact that he is a homeless man.
Here are some images from our filming yesterday.
Our new location: Abandoned railroad tracks. The ultimately changed our perspective of the film because we realized that an abandoned location provided much more suspense and suspicion for the viewers.
Quick photo shoot.
Danny and Diego discussing their lines.
Saturday, April 2, 2016
4/2/16 - Filming day!!
After a long day working hard, we finally finished filming! With a few technical error and some issues regarding scheduling, we all managed to get ourselves together and film. We decided to change the location, as we could not all meet up in Miami at the same time. Therefore, given those circumstances, I decided to change the setting of our story to a railroad track, which, lucky for us, was available behind one of my dad's business warehouse. With automatic approval for filming, and all materials on deck, we were ready to roll.
Even though I haven't thoroughly looked at the videos and shots that we took, Im very confident that they're going to be good! Since none of us had a professional camera, I decided to download an app that Mrs. Stoklosa recommended to us in the beginning of the year called FilMic. I really helped us greatly by balancing color and by offering clear images and focus pulls that were readily available to us. I'll post a little more on the process of the filming today as well as a few excerpts later tonight. But , for now, enjoy this screenshot of an opening shot of our opening credits, which was created by your truly. It represents all my group members name by putting all our initials together into into one bulb, or idea. Innovative, no?
Even though I haven't thoroughly looked at the videos and shots that we took, Im very confident that they're going to be good! Since none of us had a professional camera, I decided to download an app that Mrs. Stoklosa recommended to us in the beginning of the year called FilMic. I really helped us greatly by balancing color and by offering clear images and focus pulls that were readily available to us. I'll post a little more on the process of the filming today as well as a few excerpts later tonight. But , for now, enjoy this screenshot of an opening shot of our opening credits, which was created by your truly. It represents all my group members name by putting all our initials together into into one bulb, or idea. Innovative, no?
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