The Finale

Thats a Wrap!

Film Opening:

One Last Time 

CCR's:

CCR 1

CCR 2

Summary of Portfolio Project

 This project has been quite the experience. I feel like I learned a lot from this project solely due to the fact that it forced us out of our comfort zone and made us adapt to our situation because if we didn't then the end result would not be good. At the start of this project, I thought I had plenty of time to do everything, and I actually thought I would be done way before the due date, but it is safe to say that this project grabbed me and my whole group by surprise and proved itself to be very time-consuming.

Not everything in life comes easy and some of the small things will force you to take a course of action that will prove to be very unpleasant. An example of this can be seen with my group's dilemma during the bathroom scene. We were presented with a lot of roadblocks during production, but the majority were due to the bathroom scene. Some of the setbacks of the bathroom scene were that Adriana had guests over, so we had to reshoot it in a completely different bathroom, and the camera kept over-exposing the shot, which led to it being unusable. This experience taught us to keep pushing through it all and to be patient.

Editing took way longer than originally thought. Thankfully, I got the hang of it and was able to teach my peers how to do certain things and what not and I also learnt how to do and make certain effects via tutorials on YouTube. Filming also took way longer than expected, mainly due to all the refilling and postponing that was done. We had a minor problem with the camera, and it over-exposing shots that made us have to refilm many times. We then found out it was a problem with the ISO, we then fixed it and proceeded as needed. 

Editing took ages to do, we spent long hours editing at home and when we would meet up. Before this project, we had very minimal experience in editing so this forced us to learn via tutorials or trial and error. I can confidently say that all of our editing skills exponentially grew, thanks to this project. 

This project proved to be very time-consuming and made us spend long nights working on it, but it proved to be worthwhile. We created something that we were all impressed and proud of, but it goes beyond this because it helped us connect with each other and build on our friendship. Spending long stressful hours with each other, making jokes, sharing life stories all these things made this project so much fun to do. It seems like a coincidence how the film that we chose to do kind of reflects on the stage of life that we are currently in. This project has proven to be a sort of oxymoron as it has been painfully annoying and exhausting to work on, yet it has been very pleasant and memorable at the same time.

It is safe to say that this project will be something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. I just hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

CCR Post-Production

 Hey, blog! Today, I started post-production for both of my CCRs, and I think that production went very smoothly, except for a few problems in my second CCR video. The camera is very shaky, and the file from my voice recording corrupted for the first two scenes. However, I managed to enhance some of the audio through Premier Pro, so it sounds a little better.

During the post-production process for CCR 1, I found that I would stutter a bit and that there were a couple of moments where nothing was said or done, so I just cut those out. For every image that I inserted, I added a pop sound effect, and I thought about adding two pops for when I added two images, but I thought it was best to stick with one pop. I also had a mix of images, some being images taken during the production of One Last Time and the rest where stock images.

CCR 2's post-production definitely posed more challenges than the first, and this is mainly due to a poor selection of a cameraman and technical issues that unfortunately could not be resolved but rather enhanced. For the stability issue, there isn't much that can be done. As for the corrupted voice recordings, I simply used the audio from the camera and enhanced it using Premier Pro's enhance speech and repair features. 

CCR Production

Hey blog, The CCR production is going very well. I finished shooting the first CCR on Saturday, and I'm scheduled to shoot the second CCR tomorrow. Honestly, I feel very good about the first one. I like how fast I finished shooting, and I hope it looks good after post-production. But I do feel very confident about it.

CCR 1 Production:

For my first CCR, I asked my friend (Winston), who has a really nice car, to help me out with the CCR. This nice car is crucial for the idea that I had in mind, which is, me walking around and seeing a nice car. I go up to the owner and compliment the car, he thanks me, recognizes me, and asks if I want to take a spin in his car while he asks me some questions. I accept and hope in.

During the production process, we came across a few inconveniences, which led us to reshoot multiple times. Some of these were running out of space, recording the intro vertically instead of horizontally, talking for too long, etc.

The first day, my friends and I went out to eat right after school on Friday, and after we ate, we went to drop off one of our friends. As we did that, I asked him if I could film the introduction scene at his house, and he said yes. Since this was right after school, I didn't have the camera with me so I decided to just do it on my phone. I finished the introduction in like two minutes and we drove around while Winston asked me questions. Unfortunately, during one of the questions, my phone ran out of storage, which forced us to postpone the CCR production.

Winston picked me up again on Saturday morning, and we reshot everything, but this time, the only thing that was recorded on my phone was the introduction, the rest was shot on the Sony A6400 camera. After we finished production, he dropped me off at my house, and I began to edit the clips together. I realized that I recorded the introduction scene vertically and not horizontally and that the video was way too long, it was 8 almost 9 minutes. So, I told him this, and naturally, he was mad, but I told him we had to reshoot, and he said that he would pick me up in 5 minutes to finish it.

Winston picked me up, and we went to 7-Eleven because he needed to get gas. So I just filmed the introduction there, and I did it horizontally this time. After this, we drove around for about an hour and finished the whole thing, and the scenes seemed much shorter because I summarized what I had to say by a lot. As we were getting close to finishing up, the camera did, so the only thing I didn't film was the outro. When I got home, the first thing I did was charge my camera and film the outro. After this, I combined the scenes and made sure it was good on time. It was just under 3 minutes! 

Anyway, that is all for the CCR production currently. I will continue with production tomorrow. How Exiting!

Researching CCR: Question 4

 Hey blog, Today I will be talking about my 4th and final CCR question: How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware, and online – in this project?

In order to create One Last Time, We used Adobe Premier Pro which allowed us to make clean audio bridges, add effects, etc. which helped us build that reminiscent theme around Piper.

To film we used a Sony A6400 with an Interchangeable SEL18135 lens, two iPhone 13s, and an iPhone 15 Pro Max. We used the camera for the majority of production the only time we used the iPhones was to record the memories compilation. We stored all the shots taken on the camera onto a 32GB SD card that we bought from Walmart and the rest was stored on the iPhone's camera roll. 

Every shot was handheld we didn't use any type of tripods or mounts for any of the shots. Surprisingly, every shot looks stable, and can barely notice that it was handheld. When it was too dark out and since we didn't have any lighting equipment like ring lights and whatnot, we had to put the iPhone flashlight on top of the camera in order to get the shot that we needed. For the car scene, I had to get out the window to get the shot of Piper. 

We also researched tutorials on YouTube on how to use Adobe Premier Pro because Adriana and Sienna were having a hard time using it.

On top of that, we added non-copyrighted music from websites provided by my teacher to add more back story and more of a reminiscent effect.

Researching CCR: Question 3

 Hey blog, Today I will discuss yet another CCR. This CCR question is as follows: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

The production and post-production of this film opening have helped me evolve in many ways such as filmmaking, composition, editing, and many more. This was a group project made up of Adriana, Sienna, and me. We all learned new things from this assignment. Adriana learned how to edit, direct, use lighting, and scale rooms to give off the illusion that it is filled. Sienna learned how to act, edit, and direct camera positioning. 

Research:

We first started off by researching different genres and films to see what genre and methods we wanted to incorporate into our film opening. We all really liked the Coming-Of-Age genre as it fit perfectly with the overall idea that we had initially for the film opening. We then individually analyzed film openings from different productions of the Coming-Of-Age genre such as Stand By Me (1986), Juno (2007), and Eighth Grade (2018). After this, we proceeded to analyze the credit scenes from different productions that fall under the Coming-Of-Age genre such as The Perks of Being Wallflower (2012), Juno (2007), and The Edge of Seventeen (2017).

Planning:

After doing all the research we started planning, taking our next course of action. We figured out our production days, post-production days, CCR days, etc and wrote it down in Sienna's notebook. This proved to be very helpful and helped us stay on track excluding other extraneous variables that delayed a few of these days. To give you a small rundown of what we had: 

1. Planning

• Plot
• Script
• Storyboard
• Filming dates
• Production members
• Actors
• Location
• Music

2. Filming

• Film scenes
• Do any retakes if needed
• Record foley

3. Editing

• Edit footage together
• Edit in music, sounds, and foley
• Edit title and credits

4. Review

• Review the film opening and make sure it is good
• Make adjustments if needed

5. Critical Creative Reflection

• Research information that relates to the reflection
• Create the reflection
• Edit and review it

Siennas notebook:

Researching CCR: Question 2

 Hi blog, Today I will be venting about The second CCR question: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

Target Audience:

Coming of Age is a very popular genre in novels and films, defining the growth and maturity of adolescent characters. The genre is aimed at teenagers and young adults aged 13-25, with a more diverse audience and also adopting more varied methods. Modern trends include more diverse audiences, improved awareness of mental health, and blending genres like fantasy and horror. Research sources like books, articles, and social media provide insights into popular themes and stories.

The target audience for One Last Time will be directed towards recently graduated high schoolers or college freshmen who can sympathize with Piper. Our content will work to engage because we have created a film opening that many people can relate to because of the common theme of leaving for college and leaving their old lives with it. This method will grab the attention of the reader and leave them craving for more because once people start to sympathize and relate to a topic they often get 'hooked' on it and it leaves them wanting to find out more.

Film Distribution:

If this was a real production, we would upload it to mainstream media like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. We would do this because this way it would be very easy to catch the attention of our target audience as amateur filmmakers with limited resources and maybe even go viral. If the film does get enough traction to go big we could expand to streaming services like Hulu, Paramount +, Netflix, etc.

Sources:

https://thesixthformreview.wordpress.com/coming-of-age-films/

https://otago.shorthandstories.com/the-evolution-of-the-coming-of-age-film/index.html

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/coming-of-age-movies

https://chsprowl.org/3782/op-ed/the-unfortunate-tale-of-the-coming-of-age-genre/

Group meeting #2

Hey blog! Today was a super fun day in class. Our teacher put us into groups where we all talked about our individual projects (she did not put people in the same portfolio group together). I think that it was a pretty productive day, we got to discuss all sorts of things not just about the film opening.

We started by discussing each other's film opening which I felt went good. There was a lot of constructive criticism on everyone's part and we each gave each other ideas on what and how to improve certain aspects of the film opening such as characters, acting, composition, etc.

After a nice long talk, we started to talk about editing and how we were going to approach it and whatnot. This proved to be very beneficial for everybody in the group as everybody knew different functions and effects that could be implemented into the film opening. We also talked about how time-consuming it was going to be and that with the due date so close we would have to start editing routinely.  We then transitioned to the CCRs and how that would also take out a big chunk of time to produce and edit, to which we passed on fun ideas to each other. One of my partners Veronica said that her friend was thinking about doing their CCR based on the infamous talk show Hot Ones which I thought was very creative and astute. We talked a little more about the Title screen and the fonts. We exchanged our ideas on what we were thinking of doing, most of which were very innovative, but before we could finish our meeting we were cut short on time.

Hope you enjoyed my summary of the meeting!!!

Production Day: 4

 Unfortunately, today we experienced an unforeseen setback. Sienna fell ill, she had to go to the doctor and was bedbound all day so we couldn't film any scenes today. So instead me and Adri decided to do some more editing. We set the next production date to be Tuesday and we are going to try and finish everything on Tuesday. At first, we were going to have Piper scroll through her phone, looking through videos and memories from High School. Instead, we changed it to where one of her friends texts her while Piper is in the bathroom talking about how she edited a bunch of videos of their friend group hanging out and doing fun things like a compilation. Piper then decides to call her and ask if she wants to hangout again before leaving for college

Post-Production: Day 2

 Hey blog! Today we finally started editing but we still haven't finished filming... But we needed to start editing now in order to have time to finish so we don't have to do everything last minute. Apparently, my partners don't know how to use Adobe Premiere Pro so they forced me to watch a quick 13-minute tutorial on YouTube with them. 

Editing isn't too hard it's just really time-consuming and will probably take another week or so to finish and make sure everything is in place, looks good, sounds good, etc. The audio was actually not as hard to make a sound bridge as I thought. I gave the laptop to Adri for 1 second and she did something that muted part of some scenes and I couldn't figure out how to undo it so I had to start anew. Luckily I had just started. Eventually, the audio started to flow very smoothly we started adjusting the decibels and whatnot. Adri started messing around with reverb and other sound effects in order to an echoey sound for one of Piper's scenes. Sienna arranged the scene placement and made sure that everything was running smoothly.

Editing can be fun but very annoying at times. Especially when you have other things to do but you need to edit to
not fail.

Post-Production: Day 1

 Hey blog! Today was the first day of post-production! Even though we still haven't finished production... We still haven't even started editing yet... All we really did today was sift through all 150 clips and label the clips that we thought would be good enough to make the final cut. Before this, we've only looked back at the clips from the camera making sure that we had enough clips and if the sound and quality were good.

The first time we ever loaded the footage on a laptop to be able to properly review it.

Time didn't allow us to work for long because we all had other things to do like homework, work, practice, etc. Looking through the footage we realized that the actor for Piper is not good and she needs to express more emotion so we need to reshoot some more scenes.  We imported the footage to Adobe Premiere Pro lined it up in order and made sure the audio and whatnot transitioned smoothly and worked.

Researching CCR: Question 1

Hey blog! Today I researched the first Creative Critical Reflection question:

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

After researching the coming-of-age genre, I've noticed that many of these productions follow certain patterns. Most of them focus on personal growth, self-discovery, and the struggles of growing up, whether it’s school pressures The Breakfast Club, or family drama Lady Bird. These films usually follow a protagonist dealing that is facing real-life situations that mature them, which is exactly what we want in our film opening.

For our opening, we used some classic coming-of-age ideas:

• A big life event as a turning point- Graduation is a big moment in her life because it means leaving behind everything familiar and starting anew.
• An emotional crisis - Instead of being happy, the protagonist freaks out from all the attention and runs off to be alone.
• Nostalgia and self-discovery - Just like Stand By Me, where the main character remembers an important event from childhood, our character looks through old photos and realizes they aren’t ready to leave their life behind.

We also wanted to do things a little differently. Most coming-of-age productions focus on things like friendship drama or love stories, but our film opening is more about what's going on inside Piper's head. Although we do have to include the huge life-changing event, our film is more about our character's feelings. We don't have the friendship, family, or relationship drama that most films like ours portray. This is similar to Eight Grade, which focuses more on anxiety and the struggles of growing up rather than the basic dramatic moments that coming-of-age films have.

https://thesixthformreview.wordpress.com/coming-of-age-films/

https://otago.shorthandstories.com/the-evolution-of-the-coming-of-age-film/index.html

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/coming-of-age-movies

https://chsprowl.org/3782/op-ed/the-unfortunate-tale-of-the-coming-of-age-genre/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6qEj31Uclw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLREFnFNVUg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JEwSi_TjXI

Production: Day 3

 Hey blog!!!! I'm glad to say that today was a successful day! We managed to get a lot done! Fortunately, plenty of people showed up and all were in the proper attire. My group and Leti started to decorate before everyone got there, they were supposed to come at 7 and we started around 5:45. Adriana tapped together table cloth to hang up to separate the part of the house we used for production to give off the illusion that the house was full. I then tapped the cloth onto the archway while Sienna and Leti blew balloons.

After this, Sienna got changed and we decided to shoot the car scene before everybody came. But it was dark out and the flash from the camera didn't work and the lights inside the car weren't bright enough so we would have to shoot it another day.

When we came back a decent amount of people had arrived and we started to debrief them on what they were going to say and do. Eventually, everybody came and we started to film and it went very well. I cant wait to see how it turned out!

Obstacle/Issues of Production

 Hello blog. Today I want to talk about the issues my group and I have had during production which were both funny and annoying. Our first obstacle was that the camera we borrowed had no SD card so we had to drive 7 miles to a Walmart just to get the SD card.

It's a little hard to see but if you look closely you can see the SD card in the camera

The exact same day we messed up again. When we started recording the bathroom scene, we first recorded Sienna walking into the bathroom where she would use her phone in the bathroom. We forgot that she needed to be holding her phone because she was wearing a dress that had no pockets. We tried to play it off but it just wouldn't work so that added another day to film.

Right after this, we decided to just film the part where we sneak out and go to the gas station. As soon as we started recording the cameraman messed up by zooming out and we didn't look back at the footage so we have to reshoot another day.

Our next issue was that we were going to schedule the graduation scene for last Sunday, but then half of the men who were supposed to go had a tournament like 2 hours away and didn't know if they would make it back in time. Then Adriana got scheduled to work that day so we had to move it to tomorrow. 

We also don't know if the amount of people that are going is enough because the house is pretty big so we will just end up using only one part of the house to give off the illusion that it is full or that there are more people.