HERE IT IS GUYS (the film opening)

 ATARAXIA FILM OPENING

CCR 1 - WHIZ

ASSISTED BY ANEESA BAJAJ

CCR 2 - VLOG

ASSISTED BY ANEESA BAJAJ

Postpartum Depression

 Wow guys, its finally over, id like to thank Cambridge... ok but seriously this was like my baby and its now been born and now I'm sad so I think that makes the title accurate.

In Reflection

It's actually insane to think about how far our film has progressed. We started with this idea of a 2000s film like Legally Blonde, and somehow created a sci-fi drama that's completely new.

As the DP I was losing my mind on a daily basis. Managing every shot so that it became meaningful for Halley's character and then later in the edit making sure every shot was perfectly done with color correction and color grading.The editing was also fascinating. We ended up over-shooting quite a bit, so we had plenty of buffer to play with. Even the tiniest things that didn't make it through helped us get familiar with and develop our storytelling.

We definitely had a fat stack of issues. The competition we were preparing for threw our original schedule off, and getting permission to film at the gas station was its own adventure. It took three weeks to track down the manager and get approval to film, but we made it happen somehow.

The Creative Critical Reflections (CCRs) were a nice challenge. Im glad that they allowed me to be so creative with the approach that I could take it and do something more fun as a little video rather than solely an essay. And even as crazy as it got during the edit, I actually learned something from the process.

In retrospect, this project has been such a learning curve. From the lessons in our first classes to the major research works in our blogs, to actually implementing everything in practice during production and post-production, each step led to our final product.

Editing (soundation i will get you)

 Okay everyone so I've just finished filming my vlog and now I've gotten to editing my first CCR.  As I previously mentioned I decided to go with an arcade-esque theme for my Whiz interview (a decision I now regret). So I boot up after Effects and to my dismay, my laptop has gone bat s-word crazy and decided to run out of memory somehow. After fighting it for some time my computer finally decided to draw its last breaths upon this cruel world and freeze and then shut down. Sadly this was not the end, I yanked my dad away from his adult person job and he found a way to fix it, but not without scolding me for somehow ruining my relatively new laptop (My storage was full that was literally it). Now you may ask, "Samuel, how does full storage take up memory?" and my answer to that would be "idk." ANYWAY, I booted the ol' 'puter back up and began working on the 8-bit effect I would have on the interviewer,  Aneesa.

The actual visual effect was quite simple but the real challenge awaited me in the sound design. A few weeks ago I saw a video on social media about an effect called bitcrusher, which basically lowers the bit-rate your audio plays at to make it sound extremely low quality.

@harkeofficial Replying to @quill ♬ Backrooms - Harke

;This effect seemed perfect for the style I was going for but I was yet to discover the horrors of trying to achieve it without the one thing no student has, money. So when I typed "bitcrusher" into the google search bar the first 20 or so results are plugins for various music production programs, NOT an option since 1. they cost money, and 2. they take storage which we have established I do NOT have. Soon my scrolling eyes gazed upon what seemed to be a glimmering beacon of hope in this money hungered landscape. Soundation: a music production program native to your browser with a built in bitcrusher effect. Clicking on the link shows me:

 FREE?? how is this possible? I think to myself, but nary the time to ponder on such things. I rushedly sign up and import my audio, and apply the effect. I go to export and here is where my beef with this program begins:

WHAT THE HECK DO YOU MEAN UPGRADE TO UNLOCK?? I personally feel that exporting is the ONE feature that should never be locked behind a paywall if you are going to advertise your service as FREE, but that doesn't stop them does it. Well after much fighting with myself i decided to cave and just grab a plugin for adobe audition and pray to god that it doesn't murder my computer, which it didn't!!

Anyway with that out of the way the rest of my editing journey went fairly smoothly, I'm glad the format i chose wasn't very edit intense after the fun effects. now that I've finished editing the Whiz interview i can slap together all the clips from my vlog and hopefully close out my CCR work.

That's all from me for today stay tuned for my next post where ill reflect on the project as a whole.

CCR Filming

 Hey everyone!! It is officially the weekend which means I started as any media production student would, FILMING!! I got with my group member Aneesa and we began the day by picking up some equipment, and then picking up a Green Screen from my group member Oriana. Since one of my CCRs is a daily vlog, I thought I would document the experience while talking about my film opening. 

Once we got back to my house, we set up all the equipment, and the fairly large greenscreen and began filming. We started with Aneesa's CCR before filming my first CCR. The Whiz interview CCR went great, and I stumbled upon the fabulous idea of having it be sort of 8-bit arcade-themed. As you can imagine its been a pretty hectic day since I've been filming practically both of my CCRs at once but with one fully filmed I'm sure ill be able to finish the vlog quite easily.

Thats all for now!! I really need to go edit and continue filming my vlog so stay tuned for my next post on that!! :))

CCR Production Plans

 Hey everyone today I thought i would go over how I plan on filming my CCRs.

For my first CCR I plan on creating a film interview show called "Whiz" which is loosely based off of Genius Lyric breakdowns. For this I plan on using a green screen in our school's production studio in order to create a bright blue background for me to be against while I sit in a stool and go over each question in detail. I would check out a camera from the school's TV club and film in there one day after school. As far as editing I think ill get a basic edit done on After effects with all the motion graphic effects I want to do before sending the video to my iPad for some fun Hand-Drawn animations.

For my second CCR I plan on doing a day in the life vlog where I will take my audience through a day in production, showing both filming and editing while answering the questions. For this one I will most likely film it on my IPhone and then later edit it together in premiere. I'll also have to create some screenshots of fake comments that ask the questions of the CCR for me to answer. Overall the video will be sort of styled as a vlog with sporadic Q&A throughout the vlog.

CCR 4 (THE LAST ONE!!)

 Okay so as I mentioned before, my second CCR is going to be a day in the life video. This format is perfect for this next question being

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

The short answer to this question would be, YES. Our use of technology was unreal, relentless per se. In terms of software, we used Google Docs to organize everyone in the group as well as a program called Writersolo to write the finalized script. We also made use of Premiere Pro as our primary editing suite where we created the line edit, sound design, and color grading. My groupmate Santi also used his subscription to a plugin called Red Giant to add some fun effects that took our video to the next level. 

We also used Adobe After Effects to create the title graphic, as well as the credits and a fun-free plugin called VC Orb to create the planet - probably the highlight of our opening.

In terms of hardware, we went all out for the opening, we used a Canon 5D Mark IV to film in digital format as well as a Magnus VT-4000 tripod to stabilize our shots. We also sparingly used my teammate Santi's DJI Osmo Pocket to film some stable tracking shots.

That's all from me for now!! stay tuned for my next post about my production plans for each CCR

CCR #3 (A day in the life vlog)

 SO for my second CCR I thought it would be fun to create a day in the life vlog. The video would basically take you through my production process in one day (from filming to editing). I would tour the audience through different aspects of my production while answering "questions from viewers." I think this structure is a great way of answering each question in an effective and creative manner.

The third question of my CCR asks 

• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

I would answer this by saying that this project really gave me an opportunity to grow in ways I hadn't expected! Before AICE Media, I had some background from film and TV production classes, but this course has taught me the WHY behind creative decisions - like why shoot wide instead of close, or why make a cut at a specific moment. I'm usually quick with most of my productions, creating them within a week or even within 6 hours, but that meant I didn't always stop to think about my editing choices. This project forced me to slow down and be more intentional with every decision, which has
made me a better filmmaker overall.

My technical skills have definitely improved too. As one of the producers, I had to pay attention to all the small details during shooting to avoid having to reshoot scenes, as well as keeping the production on the track of a schedule. I also pushed myself to expand on pre-existing technical skills like color grading, which I would say I was already pretty good at, but by going online and watching tutorials geared specificallty at films within my genre, which has which has helped me expand my previous niche of bright vibrant warm scenes,  to some cool dramatic scenes. There's also a VISIBLE change in my work from the beginning of the year to now with our film opening. I'm much more careful about framing, lighting consistency, and making sure all our shots serve the story in some way. Overall, this project has helped my expand my skillset and even try my hand at new techniques I hadnt had the opportunity to try yet.

Thats all for today! ill see you in my next blog closing out the CCR Questions!!! ;)