Creative Critical Reflection

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R5zSdhYlBJ0&t=8s

Here is my first CCR!!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6gdOZ8WD7Nc&t=1s

Here is my second CCR!!

Film Opening

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQYhmxniu8

Hi! Here is my film opening. I tried to get it to be the best resolution possible, but youtube does diminish the quality a bit. Enjoy:)

CCR Creation 2

 For my second CCR, I wanted something different and it was either a powerpoint or this and i feel like a powerpoint was way more dull than acting like my friend is my paparazzi and trying to get questions out of me. I hope this was a okay to share my reflection and it took many tries after laughing with her too much. The filmer is Carolina Ferrier and she was my “paparazzi” as I was the “famous person” who just went viral with their film opening.

It is different from my first CCR even though it is similar because of the interview type vibe. My first CCR did incorporate photos of statistics and just of what i was explaining and this one was just a flat out live questionaire.  

CCR Creation 1

This is the amazing man who filmed me during my first CCR video in his lovely home called Enzo Zanelato. I used his iphone 13 to create the Vogue 77 questions type youtube videos only using the first 2 questions on the Cambridge Portfolio Project Rubric.

 I filmed in cinematic to make the quality better and also tried to move around while focusing on what I was saying. I apologize for my outfit, i did just come back from work and straight to Enzo’s house. The colors are boring since it is black and I know since it is an interview and it can get a bit boring, so i was going to use IMovie to edit in some statistics and images to show visuals to the audience and create some engagement. 

Editing!!!

 

I decided to edit in Imovie which was a bit of a risk with everyone editing on Adobe, but honestly it was way more user friendly and quick. I have been using IMovie for a long time, so i know how to really use all the tools for creating a film and i think my project came out pretty decent.

Here you can see the different layers I added to create the foley and the background sound. I think getting everything to sound good together was the hardest because since my music is original, it isn’t the best, but i tried to make it good.

I used some slow motion for some videos that went by too quick and I also sped some videos as well. 

Filming Day 2

 Todays filming consisted of finishing the foley for all the videos and retouching the scenes + adding ones that got ruined the filming day before because of the night and rain. 

We had again a few issues we recovered from. 

As you can tell, the first photo is Ricky on the first day of filming with a shirt and the second photo is one of him with a hoodie. He could not bring his old outfit, so I had to reshoot all his scenes because then it would’ve looked really bad as the end result.

I had forgotten to get my dads phone and he had left to a tennis game with my brother… sooo i had to use Ricky’s iphone which ended up being even better quality and it worked out perfectly. 

Here was another problem that I faced with my amazing editing skills because in the first photo, the day was so gloomy and cloudy which gave the perfect setting for a thriller, but since it started raining and got dark so fast, we didnt have enough time to film it. This second photo is the second filming day, and it was so pretty outside which made the video look amazing and great quality, but the difference between some scenes shot the different days was obvious. I tried my best to edit out the gloomy weather and still save some of the videos.

I finished filming this day and all the foley. My actors were literally the perfect pick and they did it so well, so I’m finally relieved!

Filming Day 1

 For the first shooting day, I made some different arrangements.

Instead of me being Chloe and one of my friends filming, I decided for my friend Lauren to be the main character, so I can do the shots and angles in the way I wanted it to be. It was also perfect because she knows my main character "Mike" very well and I knew it would be a perfect casting. 

My dad was amazing and let me take his phone for many hours just to use his better quality camera, so that was perfect because I thought it would be a huge issue since he does use it for work a lot. Then, I grabbed the props and told Lauren  and Ricky to dress in the aesthetic I portrayed my characters. I began shooting just the scenes with "Chloe" at first because "Mike's" actor had a volleyball game and he would arrive a bit later. I didn't realize how long it would actually take to redo so many scenes and get the perfect one because by the time we were finished with a few shots, the day had already become darker and it made the film super confusing.

We began filming at around 6pm and it was still light outside and Ricky arrived at 7pm. We had just begun filming with him and 30 minutes later it became really dark and we decided to redo the whole film during the night.

Another change was also the location because it was still in regional park, but since there were so many little kids running around during soccer practices, I thought it was s dangerous to reshoot so many scenes of Lauren driving my car when there's people everywhere. We decided to go towards the baseball fields where there is a fence between the kids and the cars. 

It was a bit of a mess because an hour after, at 8pm, it started POURING RAIN. Like crazy, and Ricky was being a great actor and decided to even film during the rain at some points, but we realized it kept getting in the way of the rest of the scenes so we split it to film on Thursday and Saturday when all of us were ready. 

Foley

      It is the last week before submissions and since my production process is not yet finished for me to post about it, I wanted to explain my foley examples and how I will be making the noises for each of the scenes. 

https://www.epidemicsound.com/sound-effects/foley/?_us=adwords_max&_usx=14492154145_&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_campaign=max_14492154145&utm_term=&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v-gBhC1ARIsAOQdKY2UJOI1qKhgBFXbBW3yK1rm-H-4em0VkMczeXqF6hsVBQ7oh9TBCNcaAlhLEALw_wcB

This is an amazing website that gives royalty free sounds and it has helped me for a lot of my scenes. I have opened a free trial for it just to get perfect sounds. The ambiance and the chatter is one of the easiest sounds to find online for free or just recreate outside. 

The footsteps in grass I could've filmed it in my production process, but since I am limited in time, this was a perfect sound as Chloe is walking through the grass to the soccer fields.

Here are examples of many options to use for my car scenes since there are many and since it is next to a public road, it won't just be my car that is sounding. Its way easier to make the sound clear because I will have some small background music that I talked about in my last blog post.

For the scene where Chloe calls her friend, I will be using this sound as well because I could use the original iphone, but it wouldn't sound as clear recording it. 

Making Music

 I have made real music.

There was a part of me that wanted to use free copyright music from online or just the ones offered, but then I remembered how when I was younger and I had gotten a new iphone, an application garageband was always installed. I immediately knew I could make my own music using instruments and researching about how to make some suspenseful and tense noise.

The first thing i went to do was research online what were the parts of making a perfect horror soundtrack.

It was clear to me that the first part of a real uncomfortable audio is repetition. Constantly repeating the same sounds. I went into some websites online and read a little bit before i redownloaded garageband and began making music.

Looking at all the instrument options, my first choice was to go straight to the piano because the pitches are very squeaky and can create very eery tones.

So, i began using C4 and repeatedly hitting the black and white keys to create a repetitive sound. It was starting to sound like movie trailer music instead of just tension sound for the scenes I want to create a suspense for which was an issue, but i fixed it by adding another instrument. 

The strings was perfect for bringing the piano sound to a more action type music instead of just background beat. I believe it made the sound way more uncomfortable since the I used the lowest sound the guitar produced and just dragged the string down. Basically I ran my finger through all the strings and pulled each one to the left side and it created a perfect suspense noise.

I created my perfect audio for the thriller opening using just those two instruments and obviously the rest of the sound will come from either the characters or foley/ the natural ambiance noises.

Complications

 I came into many complications during my spring break. I was supposed to film on Tuesday with my friends before Ricky left to California on Wednesday and then we would continue filming when he got back on Sunday. I couldnt do Monday because i did have to have a surgery sadly and it hit me way harder than expected. I felt very ill and could not film Tuesday, so my plans ended up failing and it was my fault because i assumed i would be good to go the next day. 

Today is Friday and it is the first day I’ve actuallt felt better and my brother wanted me to help him with his project as a nurse in his AICE media project. Ricky told me he would get back on Sunday and we’d spend the rest of the last week finishing the film early Monday and Tuesday after school, then i could finish the editing and sound before April 2nd. After being home not feeling good, ive taken this time to finish my CCR before my film is done because i already have my film idea and know how it will come out, so i can answer any of the questions asked. 

This is me dressing up as a nurse to show up in my brothers project! Im getting ideas from his since he is finishing before me.

CCR Creation Idea

 For my CCR, I was viewing some of the samples and I saw a girl called Bianca's youtube video showcasing one of her creative critical reflections. I really enjoyed the way she made it into like an interview and using herself incorporated different characters. For one of my CCR's, I do want to make one of them an interview where I, the director, am speaking out my film and answering questions. 

I watched another CCR sample and this girl Nicole showed many visual examples of her film opening while she is just sitting down in her bed inserting different videos and examples from well known movies to describe her thriller genre. I found it to be engaging and I immediately thought it was perfect for my second CCR since I felt like I would be able to capture the audiences attention as good as she did. 

I want to create my CCR as soon as I finish my film opening. I am supposed to be done with filming by next Tuesday which is during my spring break and im using th only time I am not traveling to film. As soon as I am done, I want to begin my CCR and finish that by the end of spring break weekend.

Cast

I have been deciding which of my friends would represent the role the best and look closest to "Mike" the character I'm portraying and I've chosen Ricardo Puig as I will be playing as Chloe.

"Mike": Ricardo is the guy on the right and this is the photo he begged me to use. Ricky will be wearing the hat with the black sunglasses and will be the assailant of the film. He will be using darker colors for the outfit. For the cinematographer, I will be using my friend Carolina or Lauren to help me film the scenes where me and Ricky are shown together, since he will be standing behind me or watching. If not, I will be filming the rest where it is just one person in the shot. 

"Chloe": I was debating whether to be the girl or not and instead use another one of my friends to portray the role, but I felt that since my car will be involved and I do represent the aesthetics and qualities of Chloe in her personality. This was a random photo I took at work and I felt that it gave off the characters vibes, so I decided to use it.

The other characters behind who will be probably in the background, will be random people that will hopefully be okay with me filming them and if not I will just ask because the park I am filming at does tend to get busy and I am deciding to film at around 5pm. 

Titles & Fonts

 Since I am finally starting to begin my filming, I've had time to think about the fonts for the opening credits. I've been having issues deciding which would fit my film opening title perfectly since this font really needs to reflect what's to come. I feel like a text font does a lot in beginning of films.

Scorsese chose this bold, red font to accentuate the loud and rough title. It also juxtaposes to the background since it is all grey and dark, so the audience can see more clearly. It accentuates the capital letters in R and B as well. This has already created a theme of strength and fight. RagingBull is a drama about a boxing champion.

Scream is a very well known horror movie and its title is popular worldwide because of its correlation to the Scream film series only. It is immediately recognizable because of the diabolic M, which contains like a fang coming out of it or represents something malicious. The audience already can see what they are getting into by just reading the title. As well as the all white uppercase letters which is bold and loud. 

My film opening is obviously a thriller and I had a hard time figuring out a name for it because I wanted it to be original and not too basic. My initial thoughts for my movie title were:

-Captivated

-Chloe (just her name since it is about her)

-Ever-Present

-Bird's Eye

     These were all options and I decided to go with Bird's Eye because it is different, it can catch people's attention, and it connects to my film because "Mike" throughout the movie is shot watching Chloe at like a bird's eye view and it also reinforces the "fiction" aspect of it. The bird represents "Mike" as the assailant , but I also like that a bird is not categorized as a malicious animal at all which also connects to Mike because his intentions are not ill.

For the font, I wanted it to be similar to the characteristics as an actual bird's eye. Obviously I know there are variety's of colors, but the main characteristics is that they are very circular which shows their seriousness and far fetched sight. The font has to include some aspects of small letters in my opinion because they see far. 

Bird's Eye -Inconsolata

Bird's Eye - Shadows Into Light

Bird's Eye - Special Elite

                                     These fonts are my 3 top favorite for my opening title, plus the opening credits. I feel like they all create a darker, serious vibe which represents my film and they all have a large space between each letter which represents the far sighted view of the birds. It will be one of these that I will use, most likely the bottom two.