Final Product!

 Thanks for watching my journey, this is the final version of my music film opening!

YouTube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5_hKAWVZRo

Week 8 Post 2

    Now That the process is almost over I can take a look back and truly reflect on what went down. During my creative critical reflection, I can look over many of the problems that rose and my stages of thinking, planning, and learning as I developed my film. I enjoy looking back at the process and see how far I have developed the idea with my group. It is exciting to look back at what I thought my problems would be and how I planned for them in the future. I also liked my aspirations and goals I made for the project, this helped tackle many problems that were to come.

    The process from finding the right group members to the reviewing was very well executed, even with the problems that were thrown at us. Generating ideas came easy but it seemed that keeping them was the hard part as we had to adapt due to different circumstances. My group looked over many different techniques that could be implemented such as narrating, settings and clothing. We made good choices that lead us to the finished product. Even though the changes in ideas, we kept a similar setting to the one we offered at the beginning of our process. one thing that did change constantly was the debate on the sounds we wanted to add and the dialogue. We think that the dialogue was perfect because it worked with the total feel of the opening. Many aspects of our film changed but we were able to keep the same base throughout the journey. 

    This experience developed my ideas very well which helped the film opening look great. Teamwork was very important and keeping the same ideas for the film between the whole group was crucial. We were able to pull this off which helped greatly and the film looks great. Although the film is not done the CCR is and it will be linked down below. Final film opening coming soon!

Drive link for CCR:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zdXPshPJE9RYJbF3XXA2s2UQ3Y75TM6s/view?usp=drivesdk

Yout Tube LInk for CCR:

https://youtu.be/jZG_6Gf4O08

Week 8 Post 1

    The editing process has been going great. We don't want to call it a finished product because we are reviewing it carefully. As we have done before we always review and make sure that everything is on point before we end the process. The researching of different genres was crucial in order to figure out many things in the editing. This helped us focus on what was best for the genre we wanted to focus on. The filming aspect and organization of our film were very useful in order to make the editing as clean as possible. We don't want any misconceptions in our film so we made sure to focus on the continuity of our film and editing. 

    After we were set on the drastic change in our film we kept the same script and stories. Throughout the process of preparation, we switched our ideas a lot but kept the same core of our film opening. sticking and adapting to challenges thrown at us was absolutely crucial. We were able to do this through great teamwork and organization. After several discussions, we believe we were able to make the right choices.]

    Overall, we still have work to do before the project is over. This includes more reviews and discussions, but for these new discussions, we can use the past ones as a precedent to make the right calls in the future. Most of our changes towards the end were made because of the last-minute COVID-related accident that one of our group members had. Even with this, we were able to overcome adapt and manage. We are excited to finish our project and showcase our skills. 

Week 7 post 3

    As we get ready for the editing and reshooting, my group feels very confident about the work we have done. We tackled different aspects in our film opening that make it very complete. First, we can look at how the film opening presents the rest of the film to come. As I have stated many times before we wanted to create questions in our audience so that they stay engaged in our film. The best aspect of this is how diverse the film can be. In one way we present the characters, settings, and problem and in another way, we prove to our audience that the film is going to go somewhere.

    Although keeping continuity and getting perfect shots was difficult we believe that we showed technique and demonstrated a lot of what we learned through the year. I believe the editing will be a crucial part of this process but with the right decisions and skills we can certainly pull it off. The preparation for our film helped a lot even though we had a big last-minute change in our project. I'm glad to have a group that has worked very well together with every obstacle is thrown our way and it really demonstrates great teamwork, decision making, and skill. With this film, I'm sure we can combat many false preconceived notions that we have the best equipment to make a great film opening.

    Overall, now that we got most of our shots how we want them we will start reviewing footage and editing. The editing, as said before, will be crucial to portray our film. We have to make sure that our skill can hard work can be shown throughout this process. We are still discussing what type of editing platform we want to use. My group and I have come a long way but we still have more to show!

                                                                           (New setting)

Week 7 post 2

    After filming the base shots of our opening we are moving into the next phase. After the beginning of the film, we moved onto the next scene. This scene is where we show most of our skill and ability that we have learned through the year. We wanted to show the difference between what our character thinks is happening and what is truly occurring. We did this by switching between our character suffering and crawling on the floor to our character walking. This confusion can be used to our advantage to keep the audience engaged in our film. 

    My group wants to extend the audience's engagement in our film so we decided it would be best if we made a sort of "cliff-hanging" clip. In order to do this, we used another actor to pick up the substance that the past actor dropped off. This gets the audience thinking "what happened to the substance". Taking the shots we had to make sure the quality was top notch. For this, we had to take multiple clips from different angles and combine them to make them look as good as possible. For the ending shots, we followed our character back to his car. This builds suspense because the audience may think that something bad might happen. This is where we end the opening scene.

Week 7 post 1

    We started the filming process. We chose to meet up around one pm in order to have the right lighting for our film. We passed by several different filming spots that had great potential. We had to make sure that the spots weren't noisy and we could film there with minimal to no interruptions. We found a beautiful trail that we have seen before. These trails looked like the perfect place to make our film opening. The place was very open but restricted which gave it the perfect sketchiness for our film. There were several ways we could have shown the scenery. We decided to show it with a shot of our character's feet walking and then an "over the shoulder" shot of the scenery. 

    Next, we had to introduce the second character. We tried to make our character look as sketchy as possible by having him under a tree in the middle of the trails. The encounter between both characters has to seem somewhat natural but confrontational. We wanted as minimal dialogue as possible so the scene seems very lowkey and sketchy. It took many shots to get this right so the enditing can look as clean as possible. We took many scenes until we got the right ones that we wanted. When we were satisfied with the shots they were taken we went onto the next scene.

    Finally, it's the walk back to the car. With this walk right after our character took what was given to him we knew what scene we wanted to implement. We were going to use inspiration from a scene used in "The Wolf of Wall Street." The scene with the character crawling and using any means necessary to get to his car. We used this but implemented another aspect. Whenever the camera passed by a tree our character would switch from reality to what he thinks reality is. We wanted to focus on these scenes first and then we will edit and add new ones later on. 

    

Week 6 post 3

    A couple days away from filming we have to make sure that our group is set. This is when the unexpected occurred and one of my teammates, unfortunately, tested positive for Covid-19. This was a huge blow to our morale and everything that we have been building up. The situation was very unfortunate and we knew that we would have to make drastic changes to make this work. The number of people we could work with had been reduced and we had to figure out a way to keep the narrative of our film. We had to review the lines, actors, dialogue, setting, and even our film ideas and genre. We grabbed inspiration from films we studied and looked over them in order to figure out what approach we wanted to take. Our humor relied a lot on a side character for our film. Now that we didn't have this crucial side character to film with, our situation feels very restricted.

    We decided to go back to our drawing board and try to brainstorm a new idea out. This idea needs a strong base and we can do this by keeping some of the same ideas as our last drafts. We kept some of the same unique scenery such as the trails but put a twist in our film. We took inspiration from a very popular scene from the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street". In this scene, the character consumes a substance that leads to an experience where he can't move his body correctly and struggles to make it to his car. We wanted to incorporate some of this into our film but we aren't completely sure how to.

    Besides our inspiration, we also want to keep the bases of a substance that alters our characters' experience. This works well with the scenery and trails that we want to use. Although it is unfortunate that we were a member down we still feel confident that we can show our technique. What happened to us is just another obstacle that we can overcome. FIlming will be great and can lead to many great ideas.