Links to my project!

 Hey guys! Here are the links to my film opening and CCR's. Enjoy!

Reflection

Hey guys, this is officially my last blog post! (Technically not because my last last post has the links for my project and my CCRs, but this is the last time I'll talk to you guys!) These past 8 weeks have been so long, and it has been some of the best and worst times of my journey in AICE Media. 

From the beginning, I was really excited to do this. I have had a lot of friends who have taken this class and they always talked about how much work this project was, so I kind of knew what I was getting into, but when I tackled the project myself, it felt completely different, but I was ready! Mrs. Stoklosa did the perfect amount of preparing us which led me to feel more confident, especially since we already had past experience with using Adobe Premiere Pro. 

While the project was going on, it was honestly going really well. I had such a great time doing this project and I would do it again if I could! I had so much fun filming and editing, and I definitely want to look into doing film stuff during my years in college. Despite all of the issues that my group and I faced, I feel like we still did a great job. Throughout all my 12 years of schooling, and my past 4 years of high school, this definitely was one of my favorite classes and projects that I've done so much. I learned so much about the film industry and myself and my work ethic and I'm so glad that I learned all of this by doing a fun and creative project. I'm really happy with what I've created! Yay! It was really good getting to know you guys. Bye! 

Editing my CCRs!

 Hello everyone! It is finally the last stretch of this project. We have come so far! I have officially finished editing my project and let me walk you through the process. 

I had plans to begin editing on Wednesday, the 19th since I knew that I would travel to Orlando but unfortunately, that didn't work out. But it's okay! This is how it went down. 

On the first day, I had most of the day free so I spent it editing. I'm currently in Orlando visiting my sister, and lucky for me, she was at work from 6AM-4PM and I had that time free. I was hanging out with her girlfriend, Caroline, at her house and she definitely kept me from going insane. I had to make sure that I added more pictures and videos from our film opening, and it turned out quite well! Editing the first CCR video was a lot easier than I expected, but it still took me around 4 hours to finish. This one was a lot more simple since it was one long video that I just had to cut up and make interesting. I was so thankful that I had Caroline and her cats there with me. I wanted to spice up the photos that I added to the project since I didn't want them to just be still, so I put on my thinking cap and I looked up how to make the picture move. It was so much easier than I expected thankfully, and I'm really glad how it turned out! I was really frustrated with one of the pictures since it was in portrait mode, and I could not figure out how to move the picture up and down but I did it and it looks great. I finished my first CCR video and I'm really glad with how it turned out. 

 

On the second day, my sister was working again so I had a lot of time to edit. Editing my second CCR video was such a pain, I wanted to cry. I had a lot of footage to work with, and I was worried that it was going to be too long, and it turns out that it was. I had to cut down a lot of stuff but I'm still glad with

How I was trying to edit the sound

how it turned out. For this one, I had so many issues with editing the sound since during filming, my dog was making a lot of noises with her toys. i didn't make her stop since I thought i would be able to cut it out just like how i cut out the background noises from the band in my film opening, but that was NOT the case. What I was doing was making the sound so much louder and I was so so upset. I ended up cutting out the loudest part but its okay. There were a lot of time jumps throughout the video since I was baking so to cover up those abrupt cuts, I added in a simple transition. I had to take a lot of breaks throughout so i didn't go CRAZY. I had to split up editing between two days since I was so done with editing and I just wanted to sleep.

Splitting my time between BeatStar and editing

On the third day, I finally finished editing. This process was a lot faster for me since I had already done the bulk of the editing on day 2. I had to tweak some stuff and add more clips to exemplify what I was saying. The hardest part of day 3 was figuring out how to screen record on my computer, but it was really easy. I am so glad that I have finished editing! I can't believe that I am officially done! I'm really glad I finished this weekend so I could enjoy my Spring Break without having to worry about this project. I hope you guys enjoy watching my CCRs! Yay!

Filming my CCR!

 Hi friends, we are nearing the end of our project, which also means that we're starting the production of my CCR. 

So I began to film my CCR this past Sunday with the help of my sister since she is home for Spring Break. We filmed questions 1 and 2 first and it went well! 

We had some issues trying to see where to film since my house is literally yellow so we ended up filming in her bedroom with her white closet in the back. It was the best location since my room is full with pictures and posters so that was immediately out of the picture. I was originally going to sit on a chair with my back facing the closet door and my sister would be filming but she didn't want to hold the camera so we changed it up a bit. I sat on the floor with the chair in front of me wit my phone rested on it and my computer so I could use it as a teleprompter. I was worried that it would be really obvious that I was reading off, but it's honestly not too bad. I finished filming the video and it honestly didn't take me long at all so I was really happy about that. I added the video onto Adobe Premiere Pro but I haven't begun editing.

For questions 3 and 4 of my CCR, I am planning on filming today (Tuesday the 18th)! I'm excited because that means I get to bake, woohoo! I'll update you guys on how that goes! Yay!

Hey guys! So, I finished filming my second CCR, and it went so so well. Originally, I was worried about the whole filming and baking process since I had to do it in one take, meaning that I couldn't mess up the batter or anything. But, it went really well.

Ignore my frosting handwriting

My sister and I began filming around 8PM, we were home alone and it was the perfect environment. We had to wait a while since our dishwasher was going and it was really loud. We didn't run into any problems throughout filming, and everything was really straight forward. The whole process took around an hour and a half. The biggest thing that we changed was the baked good that I made. I changed it from a cake to muffins since they're smaller, and easier to handle. I ended up still writing "Watch 18 Before 18" and it looked really good. I also had to change up some of the script to adapt to my muffin making instead of the cake but it wasn't noticeable which was good!

Filming my CCR's were a lot faster than I expected, which I'm really glad about since I thought that it was going to take me a lot longer. Now it's time for the editing process, stay tuned!

Question 4 of my CCR!

My script/answer for this question is a continuation of my last blog post where I answered the third question. While editing my CCRs, I'm planning on adding clips in from my editing process and logos of the softwares and online websites that I used, I'm going to add them on here so they're easy to access. 

Mix everything into the bowl and begin to pour it into the pan

Elke; So the question that I'm going to be answering now has to do with the types of technologies that i integrated into my project. Before answering, I'm going to let the cake bake and cool down and we'll be right back! See you soon

Put pan into the oven - time passes

Elke: Hey so were back and I've cut the top of the cake and we're ready to put frosting on.

Elke: For this project, the main thing that we used throughout this process, software wise, was Adobe Premiere Pro. I’ve used Premiere Pro due to the other projects that we’ve done in this course, so I felt the most comfortable using it, despite my hatred for it. I also used Canva a lot to make templates and the collages for our mood board. Isabella also uses Canva to make our production logo and she used Procreate to create the animation. We also used Pinterest to gather the photos that we used for our mood board. Isabella is also planning on using Da Vinci Resolve to add in the text since we had a hard time figuring it out on Premiere Pro. I’m also in between using Da Vinci or Premiere Pro to edit my CCR, but I’ll let you guys know. We also used Adobe Fonts to find our font!

Putting on crumb coat frosting on the cake

Elke: For our hardware, the main thing that we used was Isabella’s iPhone 15 to film. We had checked our teachers' small microphones but we didn’t end up using them. I’m also using them right now to film this and my other CCR! Very exciting stuff

Putting on layer of frosting

Elke: For online, the main one is blogger obviously. That’s how I was able to keep you guys updated every week. We also used the website Premium Beat to find our royalty free song! All of these resources that we used really helped our film become what it became, and I’m really proud of us!

Writing "Watch 18 Before 18" on the cake

That's it! I hope you guys had a fun time watching me make my cake while also answering my questions. Overall, I learned a lot throughout this project, and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to do this! Yay! 

I'm planning on filming my CCRs sometime this weekend, and spending next week editing. We're almost at the finish line!

Question 3 of my CCR!

 Hey guys! So today I cooked up my response for the third question of my CCR and it was definitely the most fun and personal in my opinion. 

For the 3rd and 4th question, I think that I'm going to do baking while I answer the questions. I'm in between baking a cake or cookies, but I think that I'm going to do the cake since I want to write "Watch 18 Before 18" on it. I'll show you guys an inspo picture right now, but here's my script! Keep in mind that some of the instructions aren't going to be true to the script, and I'm planning on baking the cake while talking, this is just the easiest way I can divide it up, enjoy!

Scene opens up, all of the ingredients are laid out on the table

Elke: Hi guys welcome back to my channel its elke here and I thought it would be fun to do a little q&a for some of the questions you guys have been asking! I will be answering questions 3 and 4 of my CCR. To make this more exciting, I'm going to be baking a cake! I'm not really good at baking so lets hope I don't mess this up. 

Elke: For the sake of time, I'm going to be baking a cake from the box, but I'm going to be elevating the recipe with a few substitutes. 

Opens the cake box and pours the powder into a bowl

Elke: Okay so the first question that I'm going to answer for you guys today has to do with how my skills developed, the problems that I came across throughout the project, and what I learned. 

Puts the milk in the measuring cup and pours it into bowl

Elke: When I first walked into this class, I didn’t know much about film editing or just filmmaking in general. I had done some amateur editing when I was younger so I knew how to work iMovie but I had never dealt with something like Adobe Premiere Pro. The projects that we had throughout the year definitely helped me get more comfortable using Premiere Pro, especially for this project since I am the editor for the film. I had a really good experience throughout the year since I consistently worked with my friend Isabella, and she definitely made me more comfortable with this new stage in my life

Cracks the eggs into the bowl

Elke: When beginning to plan this project, my group, Mariana, Isabella and I, quickly and collectively decided that we wanted to do a coming of age film. For the longest time, we didn't know how we wanted to expand the film more than just us wanting to do the bucket list idea. One day, we sat down at a Panera to work on it, and it just came to us. I personally had a lot of fun with the planning aspect of it since we got to create 2 new characters from scratch, and I really loved that. We faced some complications since we all just have busy schedules. We have to deal with school work, and since it's my senior year and I'm involved in a club called Model UN, I had to leave for a week to go compete in Washington DC. Luckily, this didn't really affect the filming aspect since this was before we had started filming. When we were filming though, we faced so many scheduling issues with our actors, but luckily we persevered.

Puts butter into the microwave

Elke: I learned a whole lot throughout this process. The main thing I learned is how important it is to make sure you delegate!! You can’t do everything by yourself and that's okay if other people do stuff too. During this project, I have to admit that I felt like I was taking charge of a lot of stuff besides the actual directing of the movie, and the fact that I edited the whole thing didn't help. I know that if I did this project by myself I would be able to be in charge of the whole thing, but I also know that I would be 10 times more stressed. I'm really glad that I ended up working with Isabella and Mariana because they definitely helped keep me sane sometimes, and it was good to have someone that I could easily talk to about the project and the stress. I also learned that I have a huge love-hate relationship with editing. Sometimes I absolutely hate adobe premiere pro and there are so many buttons and it's all really confusing, but i also love the feeling when something turns out good or just looks good overall. I really loved this project. I had a great time, and this project was so much fun.

Takes the butter out of the microwave and mixes everything in

Mind you, its going to be 10x worse but the text is the idea!

 

Group Meeting #2!

 Hey guys! Today we had our second, and possibly last, group meeting!

We talked about various topics, such as our CCR, how our filming is going, what we're up to right now, and editing. 

I showed them our opening, and they said it was really cool and creative, that they liked it, and that they would watch it! That's great news; we love to hear it!

But I did come across some problems. The biggest one that's bothering me is my CCR and my ideas. Before we began our group meeting, my teacher was going over the CCR aspect of the project, and she called me out indirectly soooo bad. She said that she had overheard some kid who was talking about doing a Hot Ones interview, and she said that it wasn't necessarily creative, and that's what I was going to do... She also said that she saw a lot of people doing the Google one,

And that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm going to have to come up with a different idea for my second CCR and not my first since I already did it, and I'm too far gone... I really don't know what I'm going to d,o and the rest of my group had an idea for the first but didn't know what to do for the second. At least we're all in the same boat!

When talking about how our film was going, we're all pretty much on the same page. Almost all of our stuff is finished and in the editing process, and we all shared our collective hatred for editing, and I shared my hatred for Adobe Premiere Pro. We did learn that using Da Vinci is a lot easier than using Premiers Pro, so I will definitely keep that in mind when beginning to edit my CCR. 

I really like when we get to do group meetings because we get to learn outside points of view and we get more feedback on the work we’ve done. 

This is my wonderful group! 

Question 2 of my CCR!

 Hey guys! So, for my second question for my CCR, I'm going to keep the same template as question 1, which is "Answering the web's most asked questions." I plan on filming it sometime this week, so stay tuned! 

Since it's going to be the same format, I don't have to worry about making an elaborate script since I'll just be answering the question that's directly on the board! Yay!

"This is a really great question! I’m not worried that our film won't do well or attract audiences since the lucky thing about the genre of my film is that it has a timeless audience. For decades, there have been countless iconic coming-of-age films that have come out, such as The Breakfast Club in the 1980s and Lady Bird in the 2010s. These two movies came out almost 30 years apart from each other, and people still love and cherish them both. But something sort of unique about my film is that our main character, Jordyn, breaks the fourth wall a LOT. This leads the audiences to get a different lens to get to know her and her inner thoughts, which makes the film a lot more interesting. The riveting events that happen throughout our movie bring a lot of excitement and plot twists, which will lead our audience to not know what happens next. To distribute our film, my partners and I have talked about different ways, and this is what we are going to do. We want to release the movie in small independent movie theatres and at film festivals! I feel like it's important to share our film in film festivals near us, such as the Florida Film Festival and the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. We also think that releasing our film on YouTube will make it a lot easier for many different types of audiences to access it, which is also really important."

Our sound editing process!

 Hey guys! SO, I finally finished sound editing! (Well for the most part, we still need to add some clips, but that's okay...)

Since I was the sole person in charge of editing the sound, I felt a lot of pressure, and I still do!! I had to do some reaalllly professional stuff, but it ended up working out perfectly. Let me walk you guys through the process!

So this was me before learning the wonderful clip that I found on Google. I was actually so upset because having to voice over and match the voice to the lips was something that we as a group really really wanted to avoid because it just adds a lot of extra work. While filming, we had some interruptions in the sound thanks to the Sound of Thunder, our school's band. And in the clip, you could hear them SO easily, and we were NOT having it. I was freaking out because I really did not want to have to ask Mariana and Isabel to send a voice over. So, I went to Google and looked up how to remove background noise on Adobe Premiere Pro, and I found this beautiful and helpful website. I'll link it down below so you guys can check it out! But I successfully figured out how to remove the background noises, thank GOD, and it really helped make our video soo much better since you can really hear Mariana and Isabel talking. Now that I know this, I definitely see myself using it in the future.  

After I got this figured out, I looked far and wide to find a "school" background noise, and it took me so long for absolutely no reason. But then I did find it, and it sounds really good. Yay! Today, I also added in a bell sound effect to transition the scenes to alert the audience that we are now in a school. It took me a while to make the sound how I wanted it to, such as making it higher or lower at the right spots. 

That's pretty much all of the sound editing that I accomplished since we are not yet done filming!! We still need to film the establishing shots of the school on Monday since Isabella and Mariana forgot to do it, and I wasn't at school. Mariana is going to be filming the montage shots tomorrow, so I really am hoping to finish the opening scene of the film! Once I am done adding all the shots in, I can add the background music. Isabella and I looked for different options that we could use. I'm just currently waiting on feedback from them on which song to use! This is really exciting stuff; we are almost at the end of the project! 

WONDERFUL website that I used, and it can help you too! Click me!

Our video editing process!

 HELLO! So, I began editing our film opening, and it went really well! When I first acquired the clips, I put them all together, and I did very subtle editing, just trying to make it look neat and proper

My group and I met up after school one day to work on how we wanted to edit it and add clips in, and it went well! We got everything pretty much done with the video; we just have to do the sound, but that's another story. 

Due to our dilemma with refilming, we really had to make sure that we liked the clips we ended up with. We also had to make sure that Mariana and Isabel stayed REALLY still so we'd be able to match cut while editing. I thought that this process would be a lot harder, but it honestly was a lot easier than I expected. Something that I learned throughout this process is how much I HATE Adobe Premiere Pro. It's just so confusing, but since I'm starting to use it a lot more, it's not that bad.

Something that we figured out whilst editing is the font that we wanted to use! The one that we chose fits in really well with our genre and theme, so I'm really glad that we found it! This is what it looks like. I feel like this font perfectly grabs the proper characteristics of a coming-of-age film.

A little roadblock that we did face, though, was how we wanted to make our title sequence. We were really conflicted since we didn't have much to work with, and we wanted the title card to pop up right after Jordyn covered the camera with her hand. We decided that working with the black screen would be too difficult and boring, so we decided that we were going to use the black screen as a transition to the school, and we would do this by using a sound bridge with the sound of a bell! Really exciting stuff. Within the establishing shots of the school, we would include the title card and the credits, which is really exciting!!

All of the visual editing Is done, we just need to add in the montage and the school shots which shouldn't be bad at all. I'm hoping to finally finish up in the next few days! Yay! So close to the finish line. 

Our montage for Jordyn and Amelia!

 Hey guys! Something really important and fun that we are planning on adding to our project is an opening montage of our main girls Jordyn and Amelia. We want to add this to to visually represent the longevity of their friendship. But, one little problem that were facing is that Mariana and Isabel don't have a lot of pictures, so we've just been telling them to take photos whenever they see each other!

So, yesterday, we met up to figure out our editing for sound and video, and we also talked about our ideas for our montage. We went through a lot of different ideas, and we finally came down to one that we are all content with! We are going to make Polaroid pictures of them! To facilitate the images, we're going to use a Canva template and just add the photos in. To film this, we are going to glue the pictures on a door, so we don't go back to Lauren's house, and record them and add a voiceover of Jordyn introducing the scene. Here are the pictures that we are going to do and the Polaroid aspect of it

And I'll show you the process of filming! Stay tuned.

Also! Today during school, Isabella, Mariana, and I scouted places that we wanted to include in our establishing shot of the school.  We went during class, which meant that the hallways and courtyards are empty, so Isabella is going to film the shots during her lunch tomorrow to make our school look more active! Here are some of the shots that we want to include!

I'm a huge fan of this one, personally

Beginning to work on my CCR! Yay!

 Hello!! We have finally reached the point in our project where we are beginning to work on our Creative Critical Reflection. I can't believe that we are getting so close to the end of out project, it felt like just yesterday we were getting the instructions to this project. Time really does fly when you're having fun!! 

Anyway, I was brainstorming my ideas on what I wanted to do for my CCR, and I have dwindled them down to the ideas I'm going to do. For the questions "How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?" and "How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?", there is a trend on YouTube where celebrities are answer the web's most searched questions through the news outlet Wired. 

For this, I'm going to have to create a cardboard and cut out the Google logo and the search bar. I think that the making of this board will be frankly easy. To accomplish the peeling of the paper to reveal the question, I am going to lightly glue on a strip of paper to mimic the same motion. Here's an example of it! Click me!

Here's my script for the first question!

    Elke: Hi I'm Elke Gomez and today I will be answering the web's most searched questions! I'm really excited to be here and I'm so honored I was asked to come on today. So lets just jump right in!"

    "So our film is a coming-of-age that is geared toward teenagers! Like every other coming-of-age movie, it shares the same characteristics, such as our main character going through some type of personal growth. Our main character, Jordyn, faces the emotions of losing a friend and realizing that friendship is more important than other superficial stuff. I personally relate a lot with Jordyn and her behaviours, and this aspect really led to better characterization since Mariana, Isabella, and I knew how to make her like a real teenage girl. This leads to more empathy towards her character since I'm sure that our audience will also be able to relate with Jordyn. One thing that we did really have issues with was trying to avoid the stereotypical portrayal of teenagers in media, because we didn't want her to seem annoying or "chronically online", and we definitely didn't want her to be using abbreviations in real life conversations, because in reality, that's just not something that teenagers do. It was really important for us to make sure that Jordyn and Amelia's characters were realistic, and I think we did a good job at that. When writing our script, we were really worried that the dialogue would be cringey, but I think that it turned out okay. We also made sure to tell our actors to feel free to change up the script a little bit to make it more realistic, which I think helped elevate our film.

Hello again! Future Elke here. I made the board! It wasn't as hard as I expected, thankfully. 

I cut up a piece of cardboard around the size that I wanted, and I glued on white sheets of construction paper. Then, I edited a Google search bar on Canva, and it looks really good! The biggest issue I had was printing out the right size of the papers, but it all worked out. 

I'm really happy with how it turned out!

The Countless Issues that we Face

 Hello guys. To successfully get a product that all three of us were proud of, we had to go through A LOT. Let me walk you through the absolute mess that this week was just trying to begin and finish filming. 

On Monday, Mariana texted us saying that she had gotten really sick and that she wouldn't be able to play Jordyn. Isabella and I were panicking. We were scrambling and asking our friends who could play Jordyn. We had only one day to find an actor since we were going to film on Tuesday. I asked one of my friends, Hayley, if she could play our main girl, and she said yes! Isabella said that she bore the most resemblance to the idea that we had of Jordyn.

Tuesday came around, and filming went great! Or so we thought... This was Hayley's first time acting, and she was really nervous being around a bunch of theatre kids, but she did a great job! We had finished filming after two hours of being at school, which was EXHAUSTING, but I digress, and we had felt really content! Despite Mariana's absence, she was able to gather around 20 people to play background characters, and we honestly wouldn't have been able to do the scene as well as we did without her help.

On Wednesday, Isabella and I got together during our free period to begin editing! Everything was going well until we realized one huge issue. There were MAJOR continuity issues. Due to the time constraints of our background actors, Isabella and I took the executive decision of filming the scenes with them first, and after they had left, we did the scenes with just Hayley and Isabel. HUGE mistake. In some scenes, there would be no people in the background, and in the following scene, there would be people!!!! 

Scene #2

Scene #3

I was LIVID. I was so mad that we would have to refilm most of the school scene. I felt so bad for Hayley, Isabel, and our background actors since they volunteered their time to participate in our film and we messed it up really badly. When telling Hayley and Isabel that we had to refilm, Hayley told us that she had something after school and that she wouldn't be able to participate. So we then realized that we would have to find another actor AND refilm the entire school scene. Luckily, Mariana was feeling a lot better so she took her role back as Jordyn. 

On Thursday, we ended up filming both of our scenes in one day. Thankfully, it went really well and we had no complications! We went back in and made sure that we had all of our background characters in the back to truly make it like a school environment!

All of these issues definitely made me realize that these things happen, and there's really nothing you can do to stop them. I'm really grateful that we caught that, and next time, we will make sure that we double-check everything and to even keep things that seem obvious in mind. I'm really glad that we had to refilm it because I like the newer version a lot more! I'm sad that Hayley wasn't able to continue her role as Jordyn, but Mariana also did a great job.