My Film Opening

 IT'S FINALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR MYSELF!!!!!!!! This has been a long time coming, but I am feeling like I'm on a high of excitement, joy, relief, and satisfaction. Thank you for coming along with me on this journey 

My Opening

Creative Critical Reflection

 And last, but not least, my CCRs!! I uploaded both of them to a Google Drive folder and I am SOOO happy with how both of them turned out. This entire project has been such an experience for me and I'm ecstatic that it's over, but happy that I made something I was proud of in the end. Alessia, signing out. 

Presentation CCR

Vogue Director's Commentary CCR

Final Editing Touches

 Editing has to be one of my favorite production stages because just putting together the final product is the best feeling in the world. On that note, I have finished the line edit of my opening and am now working on color-grading my footage and going through my audio channels to ensure everything sounds right. Working with 6 different audio channels can be a hassle, but whoever made a naming feature for each audio track deserves a noble peace prize. 

Beautiful, right?

   So anyway, editing has gone smoothly so far and I've been breezing through post-production because of the fact that I estimated the length of my clips with black video. I needed more time to work on my CCR, so that technique saved me a bunch of time. I added the second half of my opening into my timeline and added in some new foley sounds, and completed all my graphics. A few weeks ago I was debating between the "against" and "Aubrey" font for my title graphic, but I actually used both. For my credits in the beginning I used "Aubrey" and for my title graphic, I used "against" since it gave more substance to the title.

"Aubrey" font

Now, I know we were advised against putting our opening's title at the end, but I think it fit my opening, so I went with it. Also... a change was made to the ending of my opening. In my storyboard, I was going to have Iris walk out of her room to get her mother's attention, but when I reflected on that, it didn't feel like an appropriate move for Iris. At this point in the film, their relationship is hanging on by a thread and we don't see the complete ambition to save it yet from Iris and I want that to come out later in the film. I really liked the obstructed shot I came up with and felt as though that would be a more appropriate ending to this opening. Iris honestly feels defeated because it takes a lot of courage for her to confront her mother, so that's the vibe I wanted to go for in the ending instead. We see her defeated posture and she lies back down in bed after her mother completely ignores her when she calls out her name. 

"against" font

I'm pretty much done with editing my opening and the last thing I want to do is color grade and after that, I'M FINALLY DONE!!! Kind of. I still need to complete my second CCR, but I don't think it'll take me too long to edit it. All I have left to edit is some B-roll footage for my director's commentary CCR. My next posts will be the final product and I cannot believe I've made it this far. I feel like I'm going a little insane from using Premiere daily, but it's a good insane. I'll see you for the last time in my next post!!!!! :) 

So I leave you with this:

My look of satisfaction when I finished editing:

 

Putting Together My CCR

In my previous blog posts, I discussed what I planned to do for my CCR: one director's commentary-style video and one presentation. I am writing a script for both of these videos, but I decided to work on the director's commentary script first since it involves the more difficult required questions. Here's how I laid out my script:

Director's Commentary Script

There is so much content to go over in this CCR, so I decided to make life easier for myself by color coding within the script when I'll be putting B-roll clips over the stand-up. I can memorize lines, but I don't know about a whole paragraph, so I needed to know when I could take breaks. To keep track of my bibliography, I put all my sources I'd MLA format later at the very bottom. Obviously, I needed to refer back to the required question, so I just put those in bold so I could easily see it in my script. After doing all that jazz, I timed myself and it came out around 4:30, which does give me some time to do my presentation, which I don't imagine going over another 4-5 minutes. Although my presentation was an easier thing to record, I still needed a script to follow for my voiceover.

I made a separate Google Doc with the presentation script, and this gave me a break from the stand-up style thing since all I had to do was read off this document while going through the presentation. As for the presentation, I decided to go with Canva as my resource. 

Presentation Script

I have just always loved the artistic features Canva offers and it has a built-in voice-over recording feature, so I wouldn't need to edit anything separately. Or so I thought. When I downloaded the file as an MP4 from Canva, it came out as 5:15 and that was really pushing it with the time constraint of 10 minutes, so I cut down all the "fat" from my video (pauses, sentences that didn't add much, etc) and I got it down to 4:42 seconds. I wanted this presentation to be around 4 minutes so I could have more leeway with my director's commentary video, which I knew would be longer. 

Presentation Timeline

A sneak peek!

I filmed my director's commentary CCR after the presentation because I wanted to get the easier one out of the way and have an idea of how long my harder video can be. I filmed my CCR in my living room with some cute decor in the background, and I got to take breaks whenever something was highlighted in yellow. I had to print out some stills from my opening and I changed up what I wanted to say directly to the camera and through B-roll along the way, but I really love how my stand-up looked in the end.

As I put everything together in my Premiere timeline, it was time to add in the B-roll and make it look fun. This took me a bit to find all the footage I wanted and I had the source it as well, but it looks like I'm under 10 minutes! My video was 4:42 which was the perfect time because when I made some calculations, I could not go over 5 minutes in this video.  It's creepily the same exact run time as my presentation CCR, but hey, the universe is in my favor! See you soon!

Random Time Calculator

 

And.. scene! Production comes to an end

 As of today, March 28th, I am completely finished with filming my opening and it's been an awesome experience. It feels more surreal than ever to finally be able to see my visions come to life and see them come together in one video. I thought these eight weeks would feel like a lifetime, but it's quite the contrary. On Monday, I got through half of my opening and it came out as 1:20 in my Adobe Premiere timeline. The best feeling is being able to check off certain shots from my storyboard during and after filming. Here are a few photos from Monday:

In the far right photo, I also got some foley out of the way that I needed to do for the first half of my timeline. I did some footsteps, my shoes falling to the ground, and the bag ruffling I spoke about in my previous blog post from a while ago. All I have to say about Monday is that filming in a fridge is a PAIN. I had to readjust the camera's aperture and ISO frequently so my background wouldn't look overexposed, but in the end, I was pretty happy with how all these shots came out. For a visual representation of my timeline yesterday:

As for my second day of filming, Tuesday, this is when all the action was taking place in Iris's room. I needed to film the shots of myself in the room and the mother's clips, which my lovely mother helped me do. I directed my mom on how she should act to make it look as natural as possible since she isn't very artistically inclined, but she understood the assignment! She actually did really well for her first time being on camera and I enjoyed filming the shots in the room the most because it was the part where we finally get to know Iris. 

 

Some Directing Moments

 

Now it's just a matter of importing the second half of my footage in and making sure all the audio is cohesive throughout the opening. I feel like perfecting the audio will take me a while longer than the footage itself. On that note, I'll see you next time when I'm done editing!

I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas

 I got a feeling that I found the PERFECT music for my opening. This song not only imitates what I literally just said, but the upbeat vibe of the song is how I'm feeling right now. For a while I was considering using copyrighted music for the song "Emma Suite", from one of my favorite period dramas, EMMA. 

I have a feeling it would've been harder to contact the composers for this movie since it was technically a Universal Studios picture because of the Working Title Films company. Although it was produced by mostly small film companies, I just didn't want to go through that hassle at this point, so I went to the YouTube channel, Audio Library and I've had really good experiences in the past using this particular channel. I was scrolling through a couple of their videos to search for the perfect music when I came across "Life In Silico" by Scott Buckley. I loved the bubbly strings in the beginning, but when I went to download the audio, I thought the ending fit even more perfectly after seeing its description:

(Look at the first sentence)

The ending of my opening really is "bittersweet", but I'm not sure I want to use the song throughout the entire piece, but I may just put the sorrowful ending of the song as the final music you hear towards the end. I didn't want something super bubbly, but I wanted something that was still upbeat for the beginning of my opening and I'm so happy I found it! I'm going to start putting together the footage and audio I have in an Adobe Premiere timeline, so until next time, see ya later!

And so, Production Begins!

 This past week I started filming my opening and I've only gotten through about 50% of what I need to film. I said this before, but having a storyboard is a lifesaver when filming. Most of the time it was just: film, look at storyboard, film, look at storyboard. It felt even more satisfying to check off each shot I did on paper after successfully filming it. One concern I had going into filming was whether I was really able to film all of this by myself, but the shots weren't that complicated to set up and I could always look back at the footage if I needed to redo something. My mom would watch behind the camera at times to ensure the focus and lighting looked good. If I was filming something on my own, I'd just flip the viewfinder where I could see it. 

A collage of the filming moments!

Since I was filming in broad daylight, I didn't have to worry too much about using actual lights, but I'll be filming the parts where I do need them next week since this week, I only had my camera and audio equipment to work with. I used a Canon T8I to film along with a Rode mic to record some of the room tone and foley downstairs. One of the photos is me recording the foley of the garage opening for the very beginning of the opening. For the intricate foley sounds like footsteps and the bag ruffling, I'll record that with my Blue Yeti microphone after filming everything. So far, everything seems to be smooth sailing, but I'll check back in soon. It feels surreal that these eight weeks have flown by so quickly, but I'm pumped to finish this project and see other people's work as well. See you soon!