Creative Critical Reflection

Here is my Creative critical reflection.

Thanks for tuning in,

   Jess 

SPECTRUM

Hello!!

I have now officially finished with my film opening of Spectrum!! Although it got pretty stressful at times, I am really happy about the experience and excited for anything else I get to learn from it !! 

Here it is !!! 

Thanks for tuning in!! 

   Jess 

link: https://youtu.be/BhJjUUNn_BQ

google drive link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2gyJxOfXYL7b1RnMkVETEhlckU/view

More sound and Final postings..

  Today during class, Isa and I showed our opening to a friend of ours in the class and she gave us some really good feedback. She told us how although she really liked the opening in general, she understood the idea of what the red world represented more than the blue world. We asked her why she thought that and what we could do to clear it up and she said that with the arguing in the red world plus the article it helped convey the message even more but with the blue world it was only the article and she couldn't really tell the difference. We didn't really know what to do other than change the idea of the article and reshoot that one shot. A different suggestion was given to us which was to make it a little easier on ourselves and instead of reshooting we could just add in a voice over in that one scene plus a different scene in the opening. We could use this to help explain what we are trying to say in a way that it isn't specifically telling you exactly what's happening, but giving more 'hints' to show you. My fear with the voiceover is that there's a chance that it can come out cheesy but there isn't anything else we can do other than try. I am not too stressed about it because I know we have mostly everything else done and we will eventually be okay! As this journey is coming to an end it feels bittersweet. Although it was stressful a lot of the time I feel like i've learned so much about the process and about myself. Over the next 2-3 days I'm going to be putting up my final thoughts and why we made some of our choices to change up our idea along with my CCR and final product. 

   Until next time,

      Jess 

Music and other things...

  After having finished most of the editing, we now had to think about the music and how we wanted to use it to set the tone. Isa told me she would start looking for the music on websites like Purple Planet and Bensound. After browsing through both of these websites, she found a track that established a sense of tension and mystery to put throughout the beginning on the clip. I thought it worked pretty well but when she first showed me it she showed it to me while it played throughout the whole video. I told her that I felt that if it played throughout the the whole opening then it wouldn't establish the difference of the two worlds. I then told her to try and see if theres any sound effects we could add to show the change between the worlds that didn't seem cheesy. I then came across the website freesound.org, where after looking around I found a sound effect that didn't sound as cheesy as many of the other ones and thought it was a perfect sound to show her transition into the blue world. I then sent it to Isa and told her if she could fade the audio from the music into the sound effect and then go in to complete silence to symbolize that isolationism.
  Until next time,
    Jess

Filming Day 3

   On Tuesday, my group and I got together to film our last scene. One of my group members, Isa, had study hall that day and finished editing the whole opening. After showing it to us, we realized that there were some shots that looked weird and that we thought we needed to reshoot in order for the whole thing to come together smoothly. Once we got together, we all sat down and watched the opening a couple of times to see what we wanted to reshoot and how we wanted it to come out. Once we figured it all out, we started filming and everything went as planned. The next day, Isa showed us the new footage and how it came out. Once we watched what she had edited, we told her more stuff that she should try to incorporate and how to better the flow of some of the shots in editing and our final result came out pretty good! Once we finished it, we realized we had more time than expected left, and decided we should do a credit scene. Laerke said how we could have our credits written on newspapers and drop them one after the other in front of  the camera. I thought this was such a cool idea and I really liked how it came out in our opening because it so clearly has to do with news which is the basis of our opening. Our next step is going to be the music choices and how we are going to use more sound to aid in telling the story!
   Until next time
     Jess

Filming Day 2

Hello again! 

    Yesterday was our second day of filming and as of right now we are one shot away from being done. We stayed filming much later than we had the first day trying to make sure we had a lot of shots from a lot of different angles. Although we think we are pretty much finished, I still feel like we are going to have to reshoot some small things once we start editing but I know its all going to work out. I do have to say though, that yesterdays filming was much more difficult than Friday's. We had to control the lighting outside as well as inside the house in a way that one didn't look stronger than the other. We went through the same process that we went through on Friday trying to figure out where the lights could go. Not only did this take us a pretty long time to figure out, it also stressed us out whenever we couldn't really see the main characters face. One of my group members Isa said how we could always try and lighten the shot in post production which could be one solution. If that doesn't look good, I think we should just look at it in the sense that in that moment you can't see her face which shows this disconnect from the world she's in and the one she's about to be in. 

    We each had a separate vision of how we thought each shot should come out. So we each took the camera and showed the vision we each had for the specific scene. I'm glad that we did this because we ended up with a lot of clips and things to work with when we start editing. One shot I did get very excited about was the shot where we got a close up of the main character stepping into the other world. I set the camera on the ground right where the door opened, and it got both colors perfectly inside the shot I thought it just looked so good and I'm really happy about how it looks!! 

  Until next time,

     Jess

Filming Day 1

    Today was our first day of filming, and I think it went pretty well. We got a lot of the red world filming done in the parts where she reads the news and sees the freedom of speech article. Obviously when you film, nothing is going to look exactly how you envisioned it, especially when you don't have the resources to do so. This was something we had to take into consideration. Despite the fact that it didn't look exactly like we envisioned it, I think that for it being the first time we work with lighting and trying to control it at night, we did a pretty good job. It took us a pretty long time to put the red lights where we wanted them so that we could still see the main character. We moved the red light literally everywhere so that it didn't look so intense but nothing was really working. So then we decided to add a white light and then that looked like it took too much away from the red. Then we decided to just put a towel on the white lights and see how it would look and it seemed to work out pretty well.

That was probably the main obstacle we had to face when trying to get things right while filming. Another minor obstacle is whenever we would start filming Isa (our main character) would start giggling for a while. This wasn't a big deal at all though because I understood that it was her first time acting in something and she obviously had to let it all out. Thankfully she got it together after a little and we filmed a lot and it worked out pretty well! 

    Until next time,

       Jess