Portfolio Project Post #22 (CCR)

My final post for my portfolio project will be my creative critical reflection (CCR). I need to answer the following questions.

-How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

-How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

-How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

-How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware, and online – in this project?

- I would say my product challenges conventions by being more like a YouTube video rather than something which you would usually see in a film. That wasn't planned, but it ended up that way. I also think adding animations and onomatopoeia with sound effects was something unique to my opening. My product represents mental illness issues since Will shows signs of depression and schizophrenia as he mopes around and imagines the things happening around him as he talks directly to the audience in some scenes.

- My product engages with audiences by breaking the forth-wall and having Will talk directly to the viewers. Since the product is supposed to be a film it would likely be distributed through movie theaters, DVDs, and most importantly streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.

- I wouldn't say my pre-production or production skills developed much throughout the project, but when it came to post-production I learned a lot. At first, I wasn't sure I'd be able to make everything look good or have smooth pacing, but once I started adding sound effects and music I was able to notice what parts would benefit from having onomatopoeia and graphics. Most of the words seen on screen were thought of during editing and the light bulb graphic was added later as well because I saw that the scene would benefit from having visuals. I also learned how to use after effects to track and animate my graphics so they would stay still and move as I wanted them to.

- I integrated a lot of different technologies. The software I used includes Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, and my brother used Procreate to draw my graphics. For my hardware, I used an iPhone for filming, MacBook Air for research, Omen laptop for editing, my brother used his iPad for illustrating, and I learned how to format my external hard drive so I could transfer data between devices. The online websites I used other than blogger include YouTube, YouTube to MP3, Chosic, and I had to use Gmail a lot to transfer data I couldn't use my hard drive for.

Portfolio Project Post #21 (Opening Video)

Finally, after about nine and a half hours, I finished editing. The coloring techniques didn't really make in the end, but I added plenty of sound effects and music to push the mood of each scene in the viewer's face. I didn't come out as I expected, but the short animations actually came out pretty well for my first time animating. Overall this isn't the best project in my opinion, but the hard work I put into editing was a great learning experience for me. Anyway here is the video.

             https://youtu.be/4uCaSKl0q3Q           

Portfolio Project Post #20

         This is my final reflection on my project. The pre-production phase was pretty straightforward. I was able to develop the story quickly and once I completed the storyboard I had a good perception of what my opening was going to look like. 

         When it came to production I had my brother film the scenes that I couldn't do on my own. Due to his tight schedule, my unhealthy habit of procrastination, and starting new anti-depressants that threw me through constant mood swings and made me vomit twice the filming was a bit rushed. Overall I think I got pretty good shots with some dynamic camera movements, but my acting was definitely worse than usual since my mood made it hard to commit to the role. I had a lot of difficulties when it came to lighting. Trying to find the right lights to have on and off was a bit of a struggle.

         Lastly is post-production. The editing took a total of nine and a half hours because I wanted to make up for the bad acting with better editing. At first, my plan was simple. I was only going to have a little onomatopoeia pop up on the screen, I didn't really plan out the sound design, I had no clue how I was going to animate the character or keep the pictures in place, and I was going to work a lot more with colors. When it was time to edit I decided to add much more onomatopoeia paired with an abundant amount of sound effects to make a well paced video. I ended up not working on colors as much as I planned to which might have been a mistake, but my poor planning didn't give me enough time and after editing for nearly ten hours I just couldn't keep going. Animating the character was surprisingly simple. I watched a few videos on tracking in after effects which I used on all my png drawings. After a few attempts, I synced the mouth movements pretty well to the voice-over.

          All in all, I wanted to display light comedy, suspense, and mystery to the viewers and I think the video was pretty successful in doing that. I'm not extremely proud of the final product and I think if I worked over spring break it definitely would have come out better, but I used this as a very important learning experience. I finally somewhat understand after-effects and seeing what I came up with in the end tells me that if I work harder on my presentation and writing I could probably make pretty good YouTube videos which is something I've wanted to do for a while. This could really motivate me to work on that over the summer or in my free time.

Portfolio Project Post #19

Yesterday I finished filming and today I started editing. My brother also finished the drawings I'll use in the opening. Here are all the shots and 2 of the drawings I got. The last one wouldn't load.

Portfolio Project Post #18

Yesterday I finally completed my first day of filming. I decided to start by filming the kitchen scene because it was just easier to do at the time. I should be able to complete the filming today. Here is everything that I filmed so far.

Portfolio Project Post #17

Today I worked on finalizing my shot list/script so that I can start filming tomorrow. Here it is.

The directions in the left margin are editing notes, the quotations show dialogue, anything in parenthesis is a transition, and anything that has a star before it is a voice-over.

Portfolio Project Post #16

For this post, I believe I finally found the right song to use in my video. The song I was going to use before was a bit too goofy which helps for the comedy aspect, but kinda throws off the mood I wanted to create. So I used the site Chosic.com that was recommended in class to find something a bit more relaxing to keep pace with the character's emotions. Here is a link to the website and the song I chose. 

https://www.chosic.com/download-audio/?t=27285

I chose Fragile by Keys of Moon because I needed something more low-key and relaxing. The way the song builds up creates some anticipation and the tones give off a bit of a mysterious feel. I just think in total this will work better for the movie's general mood and will represent more of what it's about. This aspect of the opening is still up in the air, but this is the closest sound I've found so far to match my theme.