Blog Post: CCR

                         Blog Post: CCR

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! For the VERY last time! Isn't it crazy how fast this whole thig went by?

Making this Media Studies video was quite the journey. From the very beginning picking groups and brainstorming, to the final editing touches and now the CCR. This whole process has been filled with many challenges, failures, successes, and learning experiences. I am so glad that I was able to do this with my group and have fun while doing it! 

Here is my completed CCR. I decided to do a Prezi Presentation because I think that the platform is a very creative space that allows for an interesting and playful presentation style. Before I had begun my CCR, I had never used the Prezi Software before! I had to watch a few videos to learn the  basics, but once I got the hang of it, I was SO glad I decided to use it. I really hope that you enjoy watching my  video, and my Prezi Presentation as much as I enjoyed making them! Thank you for following along with me and my blog this whole time!

https://prezi.com/view/sNS1Ppoo7Gzn0O8gTu3R/

Final Project Post

                            Final Project Post

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog!!!! We have finally reached the end, the goal. I hope you enjoy our movie opening that we have been working so hard on!

So our film opening starts with Aleena lighting the candles, and her friendship bracelet is meticulously shown. Then Amaya suggests that they should all play the card game "MAFIA". Amaya deals out the cards, and then a split screen shows who got what cards. Samantha got the police card (king), Zara got the mafia card (Ace), Evelyn got the doctor card (queen) and Amaya got the blank card which is the narrator. She then tells the MAFIA to point to who they want to kill, while everyone else has there eyes closed. It is not shown, but implied that she then tells the doctor to point at who to save and the police to point at who to investigate. It then turns to Maya, the narrator, making up a story on how Samantha died - in the game. Then she tells them all to discuss who they think the MAFIA is. They guess wrong and Amaya tells them it was Zara, and MAFIA won. They all look surprised and the sound of them all yelling is heightened. For dramatic effect, the sound is then cut and causes the audience to jump. It is made clear that it is later, and after the game is over and everyone is asleep. Samantha is shown walking outside and getting in the pool. A dissolve makes a cool effect with the water and shows the scene of Samantha (Me) drowning. This fades to black, and then a short shot of the friendship bracelet in the water fades from the black. It then fades to black again, and the titles sequences fades in. 

Blog: Update

                         Blog: Update

Hello and Welcome back to my blog everyone!!!! This is a very special blog post as today I will be giving the LAST update on our film! I will be explaining how we finished, what we did, and any last minute changes we made in editing! I will also give an overview on our movie opening 'vibe'!!!

    First I want to talk about how we ended up finishing our project! While we had originally fixed the Premier Pro glitch, it started not-working again. So we decided to split up the editing and do it like that. Sofia put all of the clips together in order, did a split screen, and cut the clips to the right size. Then she trimmed it down to get the whole thing under the 2 minute time limit! (This took a lot of time and she did an AMAZING job!!!). Then when she was done with that she sent me the project file and I finished it up. I added the text in the title sequence, changed the color on every clip so that the lighting matched, and added some effects to smooth out and make each clip look better. I also added effects on the words by making them fade in and out throughout the title sequence. This took a lot of time as well, as I had to go through every clip separately and change a bunch of settings to make them all look cohesive in the 'spooky' vibe. Then Amaya and Aleena sent me the public-domain sounds they picked out and I just added them in where they wanted them! Then I sent it to everyone in the group, and changed little things until we all agreed on the final look of the video.

    One last minute change we made to our movie opening was we decided to get rid of the extensive "pointing" scenes. For example, Amaya/Maya stated "police open your eyes and point", and "Mafia open your eyes and point" and then "doctor open your eyes and point". Our original plan was to cut to the person pointing after each of these dialogue scenes. Once we put it together, we realized how repetitive it looked, and it took up wayyy too much time without much purpose. So we just kept the main one - "Mafia open your eyes and point" - and got rid of the other dialogue and insert shots.

    

    We decided to make the overall look of our film opening a 'spooky' and 'old school' vibe by making it look more orange. I made the film look old by changing the color curve and giving it a 'vintage' style. We did this because we all liked the look of the teenage-early 2000's style film opening/TV show! In the end I think this was a great choice and made our whole film opening fit better into our vision and I think that this style matches well with the plot and mystery/horror genre of our film.

Blog : Editing Problems

                         Blog: Editing Problems

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog!!! Today I will be talking about our 'last editing weekend' scheduling problems. 

Approaching the last weekend before the due date of our project, we have realized that we still have ALOT of editing to do. Since two of our members failed in downloading Premier Pro, it is up to me an Sofia to finish. Due to some of the editing software glitches, Sofia and I are still having occasional problems editing together. We then planned on her coming over on Friday, so we could try and finish up most of the editing. This would allow us comfortable time to finish and fix the clips.

Sadly, Sofia can not come over because of personal reasons. Sofia also can not edit on either Sunday or Monday, also due to personal reasons. We are trying now to get it downloaded on Amaya's an Aleena's computer. Unfortunately, Aleena's computer does not have space and Amaya is having more problems. Now our plan is to try and split the project, and then edit them together. We also have to fix some of the lighting issues on the clips.

Blog : Fixing Editing Problems

                        Blog: Fixing Editing Problems

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! Today I will be talking about how we fixed the problems with group editing.

As I spoke about in a previous blog, we were having some trouble with Premier Pro. It was glitching, so even though Sofia and I were on the same account, we could not see each others progress or edit on the same project file. This was a HUGE problem as it meant that only one person could edit. This made it super slow, and also put a huge weight on that one person (Sofia).

We tried closing the program, shutting it down, restarting, and everything you could think of. The program STILL would not work. So we decided to try and open another team project file just to see if it worked. I could now see the project, but not the sequence. Sofia copied and pasted it all from her previous file over to this new one, and thankfully this worked!!! The only issue was that some clips showed up as "error" due to the fact that I did not have those clips downloaded to my computer beforehand. Sofia then sent them to me through email (which took forever), and I had to download them separately (which took even longer). 

Finally, we were able to edit together on the same project file! This sped up the editing process tremendously, and now that this is settled, we are very confident that we will get it fully done very soon.

Blog: Editing Tricks

                          Blog: Editing Tricks

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my blog! Today I will be talking about where we are learning editing tricks!

What we want to do :

In our film opening we want to make the editing look interesting. For example we are doing an insert shot. We are also looking to make some scenes darker and more "vintage-polaroid" vibe. We also wanted to make the names "fade in and out".

How we have achieved this:

In order to do the insert shot, we used google to figure out how to go about it. I am so glad we did because this shot looks amazing done. To make the lighting in some of the scenes darker, we had to ask a friend who is good with editing on Premier Pro. To fade in and Fade the names out, we just spent some time searching through premier pro band playing with the effects. 

Thankfully, we were able to achieve adding these edits, because it truly added to the feel and professionalism look of the film opening.

Blog: Update

                         Blog: Update

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! Today I will be talking about our project status as of right now!

Title sequence:

Regarding the VISUAL part of the title sequence, we are done. We have all of the visuals edited how we like them, and we have all approved of it. We still need to pick and add a song, and we still need to pick a font for the names. We have decided where they will be going and that they will be slowly fading on  and out on each scene. The font is the last part. But as of the visuals, I am very happy about how it looks and I know my team mates are as well! For the 

Main film opening scenes:

Now, the main scenes. We have finished laying out the scenes on Premier Pro but we still need to finalize the complex editing. For some scenes we need to lower the exposure since the environment was brighter on one day of filming compared to the others. We also have to add some effects and transitions between cuts. Most of those scenes have diallage that we already recorded, therefore we aren't worried too much about that.