EDITTINGGGGGGGG

 Hi blog!!!! 

So my partner and I have officially started editing, and before I'd start telling you about her editing process, I'm going to tell you about another little hole in the road we had ran into.....

So Jake's father no longer wanted to help us due to some complications in scheduling, so we had to improvise rather than having a park ranger. We decided what if there were multiple figures and they were haunting Claire individually until they teamed up. We felt that it was the best idea we could come up with in the short amount of time that we had, and I expressed my feeling that this could create a more of a suspenseful storyline for the rest of the story. However, obviously, this is just the opening; it would be left on a cliffhanger. So last minute, we were able to grab two of Jake's friends and my younger brother, who is tall and skinny (I know... crazy my YOUNGER brother is taller than me...), to help us by being our mysterious figure. We had them wear all black and stand under different lighting positions, which you will see later on in the editing process.

Anywhooooo

This is me editing our first few shots, which will later become our credit scene.

Then I remembered CRAP I have to put our production logo video!! So after getting that downloaded and into Clipchamp, I added that at the beginning and included some more shots. LET ME SHOW YOU WHAT WE HAVE SO FAR!

Small Update :)

 GREAT NEWS! WE ARE CHANGING SETS

After discussing the issues with the park closing with my partner and some other classmates. We agreed that we are going to need a new set, which isn't entirely hard, which is a good thing. Due to what we already have filmed is deep in a wooded area thats all we needed. The rest is filmed outside the woods. So all we would need is a Parking lot with a somewhat secluded section with trees to film her "coming out" of the words. That's when one of our peers, Kai recommeded us where he filmed part of his opening, which he claimed was a good spot for what we were describing. I will insert a picture below. Also big PLUS, we will not be in a crunch for time because it is in the back of a church, meaning there is no closing time. As for the park ranger, we realized that Jake's father looks a lot like a park ranger, and we would just have to get him a costume. SOOOO there is, in fact, always light at the tunnel, and I'm really glad we were able to find a solution and continue our shots and plot seamlessly. 

Quiet on set...... ACTION!

HIIII BLOG! GUESS WHAT!! We began filming

We have officially begun our production process for our portfolio project last night! It was so fun and exciting, it feels legit, and I'm so happy to be working on this. We weren't able to finish filming, which is okay because we plan on going back today. 

However..... there was a small obstacle....

The Tree Tops Park, which is our set location, closes a little bit earlier than intended. We arrived at 6:30, and the sun was fairly down, which was what we were looking for because it very gradually got darker through each shot. This is what we intended because it makes the reader feel they are observing it in real time due to the changes of light as the sun goes down. Now time for the bad part :( We were only able to film the very beginning, maybe the first 30 seconds, due to the park closing earlier than intended. We only had 30 minutes. So if anything, we are going to go back each day for 30 mins until we get everything we need. The set was absolutely perfect and everything we were looking for, so we do not want that to go to waste. 

Nowwwww let me show you some of what we have filmed!!! 

 

And in the next blog, I will be telling you about our editing process!! 

CCR Research Question #1

 HIII BLOGGGG!!

As a part of my portfolio project, we also have to do a Critical Creative Reflection. We are given 4 questions about our productions that we must answer creatively. I still haven't thought about how to make my answers to the questions creative, visually pleasing, and entertaining, so I'm going to focus on crafting my answers. Specifically, today's question 1. 

Question 1: How does your product use or challenge conventions, and how does it represent social groups or issues? 

My answer! 

Unfortunatly since we haven't filmed yet, I cannot show you the conventions we have used in our horror opening; however, I can tell you about them. Within one of my very first blogs regarding starting this project, we researched institutional conventions, as well as genre conventions with techniques. But to answer this question, we are going to focus on genre conventions with techniques. 

In that blog, I stated the different techniques that are most used in horror and supernatural horror films. Some of these techniques we are actually going to use within our own film, such as close-ups on terrified faces, slow zooms to build dread, and sudden whip-pans to reveal apparitions. As for the second part of the question about how it represents social groups, I am going to speak about the techniques that provide horror-loving audiences with what they want by using these techniques to build that horror suspense or fear of what is to come.

Group meeting #2

 Group Meeting #2

Hiiii Cambridge, today we had our second group meeting! Once again I had a amzing group who were all very happy, intrested and willing to help provide feedback. My Group members were Santi, Ethan, Camila, Isa, Macie, and Andre. 

Some of my group members are partners with classmates in my first group meeting. So it was really cool to see how their plots and stories are progressing, and the production process is beginning. 

Let me tell you about everyone's plots! Ethan is making a sci-fi stop motion astronaut film, Andre is making a thriller on technology going wrong, Santi is making a story about a doctor who makes a medicine to save the world, but then something in the medicine goes wrong, and the doctor can't take the pressure and commits sucide and a man has to fix it and save the world. Camila's story revolves around a girl whose sister died, and she is reminiscing but can't move on. Isa's story is a drama about a cheerleader who appears to be a popular, normal-seeming girl, but is actually involved in drug dealing. Macie's story is about a janitor who finds himself in a magazine while cleaning. The article is about a government preservation experiment, and he is trying to figure out what this experiment was and how/why he was in it. 

Feedback:

I got tons of great feedback on my opening and how to improve it. Macie and Andre also recommended some shots to include to help with my mysterious figure. This was really helpful as Jake and I are going to begin filming in two days. They also helped me with coming up with ideas for my CCR and how to make it comedic, which is what I am going for.  

Once again id say it was another success, and I'm so grateful for all the help my peers provided. 

production post #2

 For the second production blog post, after further conversation with my partner, we are going to film this Wednesday, the 25th, for sure. I know the mice-en-scene blog post about the costume design of Claire was a lot of maybes, and what ifs, or possibly's, but we have a definite idea of what we will be doing, which is what I will be talking about in this blog. 

As mentioned previously, we wanted Claire's costume design to be bright and colorful. With this being said, after looking through my closet, I found two pieces of clothing that are somewhat colorful but could represent her cuteness. I also thought about brand, Lululemon is an athletic wear brand that was trending for those stereotypical "white girls" who get starbucks everyday, who are super cute but can be evil within a second. Although Claire doesn't become evil or anything like that, she is a cute girl. SOOOOOO I found two Lululemon pieces of clothing that match, have somewhat bright colors, although the pants are navy blue, with the lighting we are hoping to have in the parking lot, it won't be too dark to see that the leggings are blue and not black. On top of that, I found a fitted jacket that is a cream color with a gold zipper. I feel the light color of the cream is very cute, and the gold is a very nice touch, and I feel with contrast with the setting of the forest. 

Without furtherado here is the outfit. 

AB11

 As a part of the whole production process and the filming process, our production company logo and name should also be incorporated into the opening. I sent my previous blog, or production company name was gonna be AB11, no changes have been made to that, and we have decided to keep it. 

However, after looking into research about how A24, the production company that inspired our name and their openings, incorporates its logo with the theme or main idea of its films. So we decided to go for a similar approach, but rather than making it feel included in the film. We are keeping it like A video sort of, in the very beginning. After the logo/video is shown, our initial idea is to incorporate the name of our full opening itself, right after which the name of the film is still to be determined.

For the process of making our logo, we used Canva Plus to help us with the graphics and videoing of it, and we chose dark colors for the background along with the red as the AB11 to bring that sort of darkness and her feeling from the beginning. My partner Jake is a little more tech-savvy than I am, so I left him in charge of actually making it while I provided feedback throughout the process on how I felt about certain elements of the logo scene. Because this isn't just a logo, it's kind of a video, we also included some dark, eerie instrumental, or like almost weathering audio to build that feeling of darkness and suspense of what is going to occur in the following scenes, which will actually be our opening. After about two hours, we finally had a finished product, and I will be placing it below.