Film opening

Without further ado, please enjoy this film opening titled "Cycles" that me and my team have spent the last 8 weeks creating. I hope you enjoy!!

Creative critical reflections

 Here are two videos where I answered important questions regarding to my film opening in my own little way. The first Creative critical reflection is done in the form of an interview, and the second is my own informative Youtube video. Enjoy!

Interview

Youtube video

Reflection

     Wow blog. We have finally reached the end of this long, confusing, fun, stressful, and enlightening process. I honestly can not believe this is finally over, since the past many weeks of my life have involved working at making this film opening. It's hard to believe how much work went into just two minutes of a film, and it really made me think about how much of a meticulous process quality movie making is. 

    From finding different sound bites, to color grading specific parts of the film, setting up lighting and cameras, and blogging the whole experience, I feel like I fully immersed myself in the art of film directing and production. I've finally learned how to set up and use a camera, which I have been wanting to do for the longest time, and can now confidently do it on my own. I also learned how to use graphics, color grading, sound layering, and so many other techniques in editing that I had no idea about before. 

    Besides how much I learned in such a short amount of time, one of my favorite parts of creating this opening was working with my team. I went from being almost complete strangers with two of the girls to creating a solid friendship simply from having to come together and create a product that we were all proud of. We had to spend time outside of school planning our script, editing together, filming, and not only did it feel good to be producing our own creative work, but we had an absolute blast doing it.

    Since this is the first project I have put this much time and effort into in the world of film, I can't wait to see what the future holds for me. This has really awakened a lot of different ideas in me that now seem so much more achievable due to my new knowledge and experience that I gained through the making of this film.

Credit scenes

 One of the final parts of editing our film opening is including a credit scene, which we were taught about in the beginning of the year. Credit scenes from the beginning of a movie differ from those at the end of a movie, so let's talk about it. 

Credit scenes are used to appreciate the work put in by contributors to the movie. The reason for putting them at the beginning is because not everyone is going to stay around to the end of a movie, so putting them in the beginning gives people the credit they deserve. 

"Today’s screen credits are almost an art unto themselves—more than a simple list of names"

This stuck out to me, because it will help me keep in mind that incorporating the names into the film is going to be more complicated than just inserting them. They have to be put in in a cohesive, yet noticeable way. According to this website I researched on that shows a full guide on film credits, there is a known order in which film credits are typically put in.

1. Producers/production company

2. Film title

3. Lead cast

4. Supporting cast

5. Casting director

6. Music composer

7. Costume designer

8. Assosicate producers

9. Editors

10. Production designer

11. Director of photography

12. Executive producer

13. Writer

14. Director

The font and movement of these credits is especially important in opening scenes to establish the mood and emotion for the rest of the film. For example, in the 2011 movie "TinTin" by Steven Speilberg, the credits slowly appear throughout different parts of the opening and match themselves to it with font color and movement. For example, the name of the producer appears in the shadow of a doorway. This makes the credits blend in with the movie but still be noticeable, as well as establish the immediate mood for the movie. 

TinTIn opening

CCR part 1

For my first CCR, I decided to go with an interview format. My sister was the perfect candidate for this, since she is visiting from college right now and not only has a lot of free time, but loves being in front of the camera and "acting". I needed someone who was not afraid or embarrassed to act like a host or an interviewer, so this worked out perfectly. 

I started by using my dining room table to set up what I thought was closest to an interview set.

Inspiration:

The first thing I noticed is that in a lot of interviews, both people seem to have some sort of drink or matching cups. I decided it would make mine more realistic if I added this to my set. They also have minimal decoration, and everything is kept neat and close together. The tables are matching, and there is a table in between them. Here was my final set:

I have two matching mugs on each side, and a simple centerpiece. I decided to add the camera because the interview is related to film, so I thought it would be a nice touch.

The hard part of this interview was coming up with my script to answer the questions. I did not want to rant for too long, because that would make the interview boring, and I wanted to not only answer them creatively, but I had my sister switch up the wording to make it less stagnant but still fully answer the question. Here was my final script:

I didn't memorize it word for word, which you will see in the final project since I switch some things up, but it was a general outline of what I wanted to say and it helped me out. My sister also did me a favor and got me a little microphone off of amazon that plugs into phones, which made the audio quality of the CCR amazing. We each had it clipped to our shirts throughout the interview, which I also think added to the realness of it. 

For the framing of the shots, I put my sister in the right third of the camera, and she put me in the left third. This made it obvious that we are having a face to face conversation.

Throughout the video, I used VN, the same editing website I used for my film opening, to include light background music, as well as clips from my original project to add context. I did not add many other images, since this is an interview style video rather than just me talking to the camera. However, when I was talking about different inspirations, I added small images of the movies and genres I was talking about during the question. Filming this was a really fun experience, and not only helped me to reflect on my overall project but taught me about filming interviews and informing an audience about your overall process in a creative way. 

Sound in movies

 Like I mentioned in my last post, something we have to start editing into our opening now that we have combined the clips together is sound. So, I decided to do a little research on how sound, specifically music in our case, is incorporated into films. 

What does music do for a film?

1. Creates plot relationships: this can be done by associating certain sounds/ sequences of music with a character or an idea. For example, when Tina is looking at her discoveries, we can add a very specific piece of music that is played later again in the film when looking at these equations to provide a theme for the audience that goes with that idea. This can also be used for different characters, such as using villainous music when looking at the antagonist of a film.

2. Creates atmosphere: This is one of the most obvious uses in film, and one that we are going to be focusing on in our opening, since it is establishing a tone that the audience should be immediately drawn to. Music can be used to build anticipation, curiosity, a sense of calmness, etc. In our opening, we are looking to build a sense of anticipation, since it is not immediately clear to the audience what Tina, our main character, is looking at or studying.

3. Portray emotions. This is used in short segments, specifically when focused on a character's face. A score of music may be used to portray sadness, anxiety, etc. In our film opening, we have a clip of Tina's eyes wandering around anxiously and frantically, in which we can incorporate this.

From the website I researched from, these were the 3 main points that I related back to our own film opening and what we need in it. 

We already have a couple of music scores we're looking into, but we need to discuss this further as a group before I finalize it.

Not only is music important in our opening, but we also have to foley or find online segments for some sounds in our footage that got lost. We organized this as we were editing our clips together, and we found links that would work for all of the missing or muffled sounds. 

Media Sounds 

Book closing :

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/book-closing-48311/

Dropping pen: 

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/tossing-pen-down-78369/

Chair Rolling: 

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/rolling-office-chair-sitting-standing-up-rolling-again-64831/

Footsteps: 

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/footsteps-solid-wood-female-barefoot-on-toes-slow-pace-34352/

Opening Marker: 

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/068364-marker-openingm4a-44841/

Clock Ticking: 

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/clock-ticking-60-second-countdown-118231/

Turning book page:

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/paper-flutter-5933/

Group editing

 Hey blog! This past Saturday, my team and I got together to start editing the clips that we have for our opening film. Our screenwriter, Clara, is out of town in Brazil, so she could not make it to this editing session, but we missed her and decided to include her in our selfie...

HAHA. Anyways, the editing session was really successful and really got us ahead in our process. It was also cool to see how our work was coming together. Something I noticed is that editing really brings all that we have been working on to life. Before, what we had were just random, disorganized clips, but we brought them all together to create the story we had planned, and it was cool to see. 

We started off by organizing all of the clips into different folders. For example, any clips from the scene of Tina in her office, we labeled "office scene" so that we could use just those when editing that scene. Vanessa and I were mainly using VN to edit, which I researched on in my last blog post, but Zain showed us a couple of tricks on Adobe Premiere, which was really informative. 

Here is a glimpse into the timeline in the adobe editing site.

Another hard lesson I had to learn during this editing process is just how long it really takes. When editing the first two establishing shots together, it took us at least 15 minutes to locate the clips, trim them down, color grade them, and conjoin them on the timeline. And this was for just 5 seconds of our opening. Thankfully, Zain is experienced with editing so she was there to guide me. So far, all we have edited are the clips together. Now we have to incorporate sound, text, credits, and all of the other details.