Film Opening

 Film Opening

    Hey everyone! Here's the link to the final film opening!

Film Opening 

Creative Critical Reflection

Creative Critical Reflection

Hey everyone! Below are the links to both media products of the CCR!

CCR #1

CCR #2

Cambridge Portfolio Project: Final Reflection

 Reflecting

    Hey everyone! I am back with more progress updates on the Cambridge Portfolio Project, as I have finished up the Creative Critical Reflection. I decided to take a moment to reflect on the whole process of working through the Film Opening and the Creative Critical Reflection. I want to start by saying that I have learned so much throughout this process; I learned some valuable lessons and learned more about myself along the way. I will now be talking about the 2 very valuable lessons that I learned. 

Lesson #1: Always Have a Back Up Plan

    As you can see from the title, we did not create any back up plans for the film opening project. There were several situations in which we could have used a backup plan, but didn't have one, causing us to solve these issues very quickly. Thankfully, we were able to face these obstacles, but the stress of solving them could have also been avoided. For instance, on the day that we filmed the film opening, the extra actors that were going to be in the film, who would have played Stella's plan, could not end up making it, so we had to completely eliminate them from the film opening. This was a huge issue that caused us lots of stress, since in our storyboard, the family took up lots of the shots...

    Above are the pictures of our storyboard, which as you can see, lots of the frames have the family involved. So, when me and Natalia got the news that the actors playing the family canceled, we were stressed, since we did not have a backup plan for this problem. Even though, as I mentioned earlier, we were luckily able to come up with a quick solution, which was to use tighter close-up shots on Stella, so that it would look like that was the plan all along. However, this process would have been a lot easier if we had a backup plan ready in case this happened. 

Lesson #2: Always do a Trial Run Before Filming

    So, for the next lesson I learned, it had to do with trial runs. Like the first lesson, this was one of our major erros during the production process. So, here's what happened: when we were filming the outdoor scenes of the film, instead of testing how the audio of the shot would sound like, we just began filming without checking on any factors that could possibly affect the film. After recording quite a few shots, we finally decided to check our progress (While we did check the shots, we should have checked the first shot we did right away instead of waiting). This is when we noticed that the device we were using to record, did not capture the audio correctly, so it looked like the dialogue was muted. With this problem in mind, we had to reshoot all of the shots we had. 

       This made us lose a lot of time that we could not get back, which honestly was a bummer, since losing so much time is something that we could have prevented. However, I am just thankful that we at least checked the shots at some point in the production process. However, we now know that we must take trial runs to make sure that everything about the shot is okay.

   Anyways, those were the two main lessons that I learned while working through this project, and I hope that you all learned something from my experiences, and make sure not to repeat my mistakes! This was definitely a long yet meaningful journey, but I am glad that I managed to learn so much from this. This chapter is finally ending, but that does not mean it is completely over! I still have to share with you all my final film opening and CCR, which will be in my next update. 

    So, stay tuned for my next update!

Creative Critical Reflection: Finishing Up

 CCR: Production/ Postproduction

    Hey everyone! Today marks the wrap up day for the CCR! I will be going through both the production and editing process for both media products of the CCR. So, let's get started!

Media Product #1: Presentation with Voice Over

    So as mentioned in my previous blog, this is the first media product that I worked on for the CCR. I already had the presentation ready, but I still needed to record the voice over to complete the presentation. In order to do the voice over, I printed out the script that I would read off of and edit the script in between recordings. I also had the script labeled by slides to prevent myself from getting confused and saying the wrong information on the wrong slides. Anyways, below is the script I used with the corrections on it.

    As you may have noticed, lots of words have been crossed out. The reason being that when I first recorded the audio using the original script, it reached 8 minutes, which would only leave me 2 minutes for the second media product (not enough time!). So, I had to go back to the script and cross out several things to make the presentation the appropriate length to leave time for the other media product. 

    To record the audio, I used an audio feature that PowerPoint offers, allowing me to easily record the entire script on this platform. 

    On the task bar at the top of the screen, there are a list of features to use that PowerPoint offers, and one of them being "Record", is the feature I used to do the voiceover. 

    Anyways, after several attempts of reciting the script, I exported the presentation onto One Drive, and I have it ready for when I post the final media product on my blog. Since I have already been working on this presentation (I talked about it in my last blog), there was not much left for me to do. However, for the second media product, the self-automated interview on my "channel", I had a lot more work ahead of me to go through...

Media Product #2: Self-automated Interview

    For this second media product, I first chose a location that would allow my face to be seen clearly and shows the best quality possible. I ended up choosing a big window from the house, being in my room. I filmed in front of this window during morning, so that the overall lighting would be bright for the interview. Below was my set up for the filming process...

    However, before I began to film, I quickly familiarized myself with the script that I wrote, just by remembering the main points, to talk about them on camera. Below I have the original script for the 2 questions I was going to answer...

    After taking a look at the script, I began to film, and everything was going smoothly, until it was time to edit. When I got to editing, which I used Cap Cut to edit, the videos together were way to long (10 minutes long!). Based on the presentation I created, which was a bit over 5 minutes, this video had to be maximum 4 minutes and 20 seconds, which is less than half of what I had. I started removing clips that were accidently filmed or were mistakes, basically any bloopers. With the removal of the bloopers, I was hoping for the length to go down by a lot, however, it only went down from 10 to 8 minutes. From here, I became very strict on what could go and what could stay, until I finally got to an appropriate length for the interview. 

    After having all of the videos that would stay, I began inserting photos that matched with what I was talking about. The main reason that I chose to do this was because I wanted to make this interview engaging, and I felt that looking at a talking head for 4 minutes wasn't going to make that happen. Here is an example of what I am talking about:

    As you can see from the screenshots above, I am adding things like colorful fonts and photo inserts that relate to my responses. Since I want this interview to be super engaging, this is obviously not going to be all that will be incorporated into this media product, but it is a sneak peak of my work (the rest is a surprise!). With that being said, besides the final touches, I just have to add the references and credits at the end, which I already have in the script that I put in this blog post earlier (it is everything highlighted in red).

   

The final thing that I worked on in relation to the CCR is the YouTube channel. So, for my film opening and CCR to be easily accessible, I have created a YouTube channel, in which these videos will be posted...

 

    The film opening and the CCR are already in my channel, but as drafts, meaning they haven't been posted yet. However, that will change soon! Also, for the thumbnail, specifically for the interview CCR, I used Canva to create it. The reason why I am specializing more for the interview CCR is because of its concept; this type of video is more personalized, so I would rather it have a creative thumbnail. The other CCR, the presentation, will have a more minimalistic thumbnail that looks similar to the actual presentation. Anyways, below, is the thumbnail in work on the Canva platform...

    Anyways, now that I have explained this process of working through the CCR, it is now time to close this chapter of the Cambridge Portfolio Project and move on to my reflection of this whole process (which you will see soon!).

    Stay tuned for my next post!