Things that Went Down

 Seeing as I'm finished editing my movie intro, and am currently working on my CCR, I wanted to share with you guys, things that just didn't work out in my project journey. Remember that post I made about finding buildings in California? Well, I never got to use any of the footage I got. In my original storyboard, you can see I have her getting out of the car, deep in thought. I was going to use chroma key in order to edit buildings into the background. However, I decided to go a different route. I decided to have her sleeping instead, mainly to show how peaceful she was and how chaotic things started becoming in the next two days. In the movie intro, I also wanted to use a type of glitching effect...that didn't work out either. It kept saying I needed GPU acceleration, and I looked all over the internet to find out what that meant and came up short. Either way, I resolved this issue by using fade to black and fade to white transitions. It honestly works. Lastly, for the few seconds at the end of the intro, I had to film that part another day apart from the day of the intro. I didn't have a camera because school was closed so I used my phone. The quality, you can tell is significantly lower, but hey, that phone saved me in a time of crisis ok. 

CCR Planning

I have decided to create two different forms of media for the CCR.

Media 1 would answer the questions:

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

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

Media 2 would answer:

-How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

- How did you integrate technology in this project?

Now for what the media types are, I am still brainstorming. I was thinking one of them could be like a ride thing. Let me lay out the scene a little bit. You know how you get on a ride at a Universal or Disney theme park and you have the main characters telling you and helping you out on missions? It could be something like that. For the other one I was thinking either a parody for Jeopardy, a talk show, or a WIRED interview. I love seeing The Tonight Show, The Late Late show, and so on. I also love watching Jeopardy and watching my favorite casts on WIRED interviews. So, I could choose any one of these three and still know what I'm doing. I was originally thinking of doing a podcast, mainly so I don't have to show my face, but I don't know a single thing about podcasts so I could mess up really badly if I attempt one without visuals to back me up. 

This is what I meant about the rides: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRchsf41/

New Software Alert!

 Hey! For my title graphics I decided I wanted to go a bit beyond the basic title sequence. So, what did I do? I decided to use another Adobe program called After Effects. After opening it up and playing around with it a little bit, I found a way to make the graphics look cool (with a pop out type of effect) and make it look a bit more professional at the same time. Now, me and After Effects do not, and never have, gotten along. I never understood it no matter how much someone tried to teach me. However, with this project I realized the best way to learn something is through trial and error by your own hand. It has definitely motivated me to play around with Adobe After Effects more in the future. 

Title

 As my editing is coming to an end, it is finally time to come up with a title. I have been researching many mystery movies and they all have at least one thig in common; they have a short title that still manages to install a sense of mystery and fear to the audiences. Knives Out (2019) is a perfect example of that. The title consists of two simple words, one syllable each, yet it explains what is to come in the movie and with the connotation of "knives," it installs a certain sense of mystery and thrill that the movie is supposed to give off. Other examples would include Clue (1985), Gone Girl (2014), Memento (2000), Zodiac (2007), etc. Therefore, I needed to come up with a title that let's audiences know it is a mystery movie, it is nice and short, and one that semi-explains the dancer aspect to it. It took a LOT of thinking and brainstorming, but I finally came up with the perfect name: Tombé. Now that might not seem like it makes a lot of sense, but it will, let me explain. A lot of ballet terms come from the French language and have meanings that non-French speakers don't really think about; they just think of the step. Tombé is a step in ballet whose literal translation is "to fall." That already gives so much context to what might happen to the main character and what has been happening to the disappearing dancers. Don't understand French? That's ok! You may not know the definition but upon looking at the word, another you are reminded of another word: Tomb. That subconscious connection leads a person to believe someone might die, or that people are dying in the film. It makes the film seem way more ominous.

Here is a great example of how this particular step is used in ballet.

Extra Footage

 Hey! So, I'm back!

10:01 AM

Hi guys, so my crew managed to win 4 awards in the span of the week we were in California, so yay. However, I didn't just compete, I filmed footage for the movie intro. There were a lot of palm trees so I had very limited places to film that wouldn't look like actual California and NYC instead. My crew and I also happened to go to the Warner Bros. Studio lot where there was a whole street made out to look like New York City, so that was a must to take pictures, since videos were prohibited :(. I can use the pictures as background and add motion to it in some way. Anyways, I'd like to show all of you what footage I managed to get. 

9:26 PM

Ok, well bad news, I'm deciding to go a different route and not use the footage. In my head, it seemed to work out but the minute I uploaded them for editing... trust me it just didn't fit in with the story and looked funky. The movie intro all happens in her bedroom, and the buildings contradict what I was trying to do with the theme of obsession and how it leads to isolation. It takes away focus of what is actually important, the crime board and her sleeping. 

Editing Time

 I finally started editing!

I was browsing through the effects and found the dip to white which has honestly worked wonders, at least for the very beginning of the intro. I was debating doing the dip to black, but it just doesn't look necessarily right per say. With the first few seconds I wanted to make an impact. What better way to do that than close up shots! I am editing a sequence where three different shots just get closer and closer on her, Genova's, face. It not only shows her emotions, but it also makes the audience wonder what she is so concentrated on. 

In these pictures you can see the zoom in on her face to explain what I was saying before. If you look closely on the timeline panel you can see where I added the dip to white effect, at the beginning of the sequence. So far I think it is coming along nicely. I just cannot edit any more till next week because I am currently in LA for a TV competition, but I will still try to get shots of the city life. 

Until next week!

Music 2.0

 I FINALLY CHOSE ONE! 

I literally took forever to choose, but after much debate I figured out that the one with the tensest feel that I want is number 4 from the picture.

Here is the link to the YouTube: Tense Cinematic NoCopyright Background Music / Phobia by soundridemusic - YouTube

I was thinking that with each beat drop, I should change the shot to keep that fast pacing, you know? I also don't want it to be boring, so I searched up ways to keep the pacing goo and this is what I stumbled upon...

Film Pacing: 5 Secrets to Keep Your Projects from Getting Stale (premiumbeat.com)

Although I've already done most of my filming, all I need is shots of a city and the scene after the title sequence, I realized I can still do a lot to help my pacing through adding graphics and motion in post-production. This website has links to video examples and how to do it. I want to add a lottttt of effects, but I know they will take time, so I'm going to start searching up ways to do these "tricks." 

Stay tuned...