CCR

 And last but not least, here's my CCR

As difficult as the project was, I actually really enjoyed it. I can't wait till next year

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YfAWreViieCgKi3csIA5UxE2Ddq-njdo/view?usp=sharing

Film Opening

 And now the moment we've all been waiting for *drum roll* the film opening! 

May I present to everyone....

Catharsis! 

Catharsis by Isabella Coronel

https://youtu.be/ubjo4_21hOM

Reflection

     I'm really proud of how far I've come. This school year in Aice Media Studies really taught me a lot and I'm glad that I was able to not only learn something new but also enjoy it. Though there have been many up and downs throughout this project, I've managed to work through them all to the best of my abilities. 

    Catharsis turned out to be so much more than I had originally imagined. As I worked on it day by day, it grew larger than just an idea, just a concept, and in the end, it held more meaning than I had originally intended it to. An artist with anger issues blossomed into something much deeper, it became a tale for those who struggle with their mental health, with the fear of failing. It became a story with a beginning, middle, and end and I can not be prouder of its end result.

    I'm really looking forward to next year to see what else I can create.

CCR Research

     Now that we're finished with the production and editing of the film opening, I began researching how to do the CCR portion of the portfolio. First I began reviewing the CCR segment on the rubric where I found the questions that we have to answer throughout the reflection. These questions are the following:

• How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
• How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
• How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware, and online – in this project?

    I then answered each of these questions every roughly, focusing more on identifying the answer rather than actually making them the nice version of what I will be saying in the video. 

    In order to gain a better understanding of what a CCR is, I watched some of the ones from past Aice Media Students, which taught me that the CCR doesn't have to be just one thing, which makes sense as the first C stands for creativity. 

    After this realization, my mind began to wander off on the different things I could do to differentiate my CRR from others. I came up with a really cool idea for me to film in my "studio" (which really just is my room with an easel) and to make a cool, short intro inspired by Bob Ross. If I can, I would actually love to include the Joy of Painting theme song however I'm not entirely sure if I will be able to due to copyright laws, but I will get back on this thought. 

    

Listen to the Joy of Painting theme song here

    

    I am cutting short on time with this CCR as I initially hoped that I would begin filming during break and editing through the final week however I am confident that with some proper time management (which is something I've always struggled with) I will be able to complete it. 

 

Final Touches

     Today I am finally finished with my Aice Media Film Opening! After a full week of editing, shooting, and more editing, Catharsis is finally complete.

    It was a little rough working through Spring Break. As much as I've come to like filming and editing, a part of me still just wanted to go to sleep and only wake up once school started again. During the week I worked on shooting a new beginning of the opening which would be the turning on of the radio. I also recorded some of the song through my phone in order to create an effect of transitioning the song from being in the scene to out.

Picture of the radio that I used for the first shot

    

    After this, I began working on the music itself. It was fairly simple, the only difficult portion was figuring out how to fade out and fade in the song during the scene where the artist messes up to the part where she knocks over the painting. 

    Lastly, I added my credits and title to the film opening. This was extremely difficult as this was the first time I added text to a video. I also had a hard time downloading and uploading the font I had chosen. I had to ask for help from MANY youtube tutorials as well as some friends who are more experienced with editing. 

    And that the end to the production and editing portion of the film opening! Though it obviously didn't go exactly ad I had initially envisioned, I'm still really proud of the outcome!

Blooper!

     In honor of finishing the (majority of) the editing portion in this project, I thought it would be fun to share a small blooper that took place while filming with Nicole. 

    As we're nearing the end of the project I can't help but be a little sad. As someone with 0 experience with filming and editing, I actually found this process to be really fun despite all of the challenges I've faced and will face. Though the end product won't be the way I envisioned it initially I'm still proud of everything I've accomplished this year when it comes to Aice Media, I've grown a lot since August and I can't wait to see what comes next. 

Music & Tunes

     Today I spent the afternoon searching for songs to include in the background of the film opening. In order to get royalty-free songs, I used a website called Chosic which allows me to not only search songs based off of mood and genre but also through similar songs. 

    Through the Royalty Free tab, I played around with the different tones and genres available, initially starting with the Rock genre as well as a calm tone. 

    The website was a bit slow and hard to manage however eventually I did find a Blues song that was amazing. The song is called Niles Blues by Kevin Macleod and I thought it fit really well with the film opening. When I went to edit it in, however, an idea popped in my head about making the first shot of the opening a scene of the artist turning on a radio and the song playing. I have this really pretty vintage imitating radio that would fit perfectly for this but in order to include these scenes in the opening, I would have to either cut some scenes or delete shots in total as the opening would be too long. This is something that I will be mulling over spring break and though I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to do it I still think it would be a cool idea.

Listen to Niles Blues here 

The Search for Fonts

     This past week I spent time finishing editing the film opening. I went through some obstacles such as having to restart a couple of times due to my computer crashing and not understanding how to use the program well. After multiple attempts, however, I was finally able to edit the clips together. 

    As of now, I'm currently waiting on the music that I will be using in the blog. Like I mentioned before, a friend of mine who is a musician agreed on composing an original "score" for the movie, which in reality will of course just be the one song for the opening. I'm really excited to see how it turns out, but just in case I will be planning on looking into royalty-free music available online as a backup. 

    Today I focused on finding a font for the title as well as the credits that will be included in the opening.

    At first, I thought it would be a cool idea to go for a font that looked like paintbrush strokes but after looking through a couple of different ones I realized it didn't match the genre of the movie, which is drama. It felt like a font perfect for a coming of age movie or something along the same lines. Overall it seemed too joyous and it would not meet the target audience that our drama film is reaching for. 

Paintbrush by Darell Flood on DaFont

Sweet Paint by Darell Flood on DaFont

    In order for my font to properly cater to the target audience, I began researching and looking at the fonts in the drama films I had mentioned in my blog post, Drama Research, as well as the ones listed in Shots and Angles Research. By looking through these movies I gained a better understanding on what type of fonts are most commonly used in drama films. I also referenced a website called Creative Market which had an article on a variety of fonts used in films.

    It was on this website that I found a font called The Artist, which was both clean and matched the content of the opening. I soon found out, however, that this font was only available for purchase through the creative market, and though it was very tempting, I decided against purchasing it. I was sure that I could find something similar for free. 

    Still, I held on to a small string of hope and went back to DaFont, searching for The Artist, and bam I couldn't believe my luck.  

The Artist by MadeType

        After deciding on the font I proceeded to use it in the opening and failing to do so multiple times before heading to my friend for help. I'm very excited about how the project is going and I can't wait to be able to finally complete it. 

I Am Running Out of Editing Titles

      Speaking of titles....... I am still not entirely sure what to name my film! At the moment the running two are "Catharsis" and "Painting in Red" which were both recommended by two friends. I have always been terrible with naming things, whether it's an artwork or a book or even naming pets, I spend hours and hours on end thinking about what to name things only arrive at a dead end. I'll most likely be mulling over this thought for a large portion of the remaining time we have to complete the project. 

    Thinking about title ideas also reminded me of the fact that part of the project requires us to include the title as well as cast list in the film opening, which is something that I, once again, have no clue how to do. And so I referenced this video by Jordan Dueck on youtube for more information, where he edited the word coffee on top of coffee beans. 

    I also tried to look into fonts and font ideas however If I'm being completely honest I'm still not entirely sure how to change fonts in premier. I read this article on Rev which explained how to do so but I definitely will need more help further down the line.

    During the following week, I will continue editing and (hopefully) finish the main sequences so that I have time to give to my musician or a friend that agreed on writing a song for the opening. I will also be looking into fonts as well as title ideas to include.  

More editing conundrums

    Today I managed to sort the order of the recordings (or at least some). Because I didn't have an extremely detailed storyboard/shot list I ran into the problem of not being able to decide what order some of the shots should go. In hindsight, I probably should've put more time into the planning of each shot however it's too late to go back now so I'll have to start thinking and deciding quick, 

    This week I also got the chance to talk to my teacher, Ms. Stoklosa, where she gave me some pointers when it came to editing the opening. She referenced a photo I had included in a past blog post of my friend and actor Nicole holding a paintbrush, wherein the background, my bedroom window shined. She mentioned that the light coming through the window could be edited so that it didn't affect the video as much and with that thought, I went back into researching, 

    Searching up on youtube "How to edit backlight in videos" I came upon this video on youtube by Tony Lee Glenn where he teaches viewers how to reduce backlight in videos using Premiere pro. This video definitely helped and I'll be sure to apply the tips during editing. 

Promenading with Premier Pro

 

    With all this time editing I'm not sure what exactly I can record on here besides what I've done overall, so here it goes. Like I mentioned in a previous blog post I managed to import all of the recordings into premier after hours of trying with the help of friends. Today I spent my time managing and going through each recording to see which ones I'd like to use in the opening and which one's I didn't. I also tried to organize the order of each clip but if I'm being honest I completely gave that up after half an hour as there were too much lag and too many recordings to sort through. 

     Because my computer gave in after a couple of hours and physically couldn't handle running premier any longer I sadly wasn't able to work for as long as I wanted to and definitely was able to make a dent in all of the editing. I was really hoping to be able to finish at least the majority of the editing this weekend in order to give my friend some time to write the song or give myself some time to find another song to play over the video however looking over everything now I don't think it will be possible. I most likely will be finishing during spring break as I will have more time then.

Editing Research

    In order to get straight into editing properly, I decided to research, and by research, I mean watch videos. on tips on how to edit using Premiere Pro. 

    First I began by looking into the videos that Adobe itself has on their website on editing tips using Premiere, In the website, there are tons of videos ranging from sound editing to colour adjustment and even animation.

    These videos really helped me remember some of the tools I had learned to use with past Media projects from this year. 

    I also watched some youtube videos on the basics of editing such as this video from YouTuber Tutvid as well as this video by Parker Welbeck which both went into great detail on the process of editing using premier. 

    My first week's editing didn't go as well as I hoped as I wasn't able to get much done. I kept encountering the same obstacles such as not having a lot of time due to the quarter nearing and also technical difficulties with premier, My computer has taken a toll recently with online school and hasn't been running as smooth as it did before we started using Teams and it basically blue screens every hour or so. I'm hoping that this weekend I'll be able to make time to work on the project extensively.

The Beginning of Editing

     Because I wasn't entirely sure if I had gotten enough shots yesterday, I decided to start editing or at least try to. I've mentioned this before, but besides what we've done in this class my experience in filming and editing is a flat 0, and so it's no surprise that with my first day of editing, there were some problems. 

    The first obstacle was that I had no clue how to transfer my videos to my laptop other than sending them to my phone and then email. This process would've taken me ages as I'd have to practically export and send one by one. With this, I turned to my dad who let me use his computer to transfer directly the videos from the sd to my email. To send it to my email I used a website called WeTranser that allowed me to send multiple files rather than just one. 

    This however presented its own obstacle as I was unaware of a process called "unzipping files". Like I said, I have zero experience when it comes to this so I spent around an hour and a half trying to upload my zipped files into premier to no avail. After researching and trying multiple times and still arriving at a dead end I asked my peers who are taking the same class for some help. These are times that I'm very glass that class group chats exist for a couple of my classmates, including past group members Sabrina and Logan, were able to teach me about zipped files and how I can unzip them. 

   After thanking them for their help I went straight into editing, however, because I had a busy day today that included a 3 hour of SAT tutoring, I wasn't able to get much done. In the end, I was able to only import my files and choose which of the recording I would be using. 

    During the following week, I hope to at least edit a base of my film opening in order to gain a better understanding of which shots are or are not missing. 

Here are some pictures I downloaded from my camera, my amazing friend and actor Nicole, and the masterpiece we created:

Follow along Nicole's own journey with her Aice Media Project here.

Filming Day

     Today was the day we've all been waiting for... filming day! The day began at 9, where I spent the majority of the morning organizing my room to fit the theme of the film. I set up my light, the easel, charged my camera's batteries, and rearranged my room to make it seem more "sophisticated" instead of a teenage girls room, (there wasn't much to do here as my idea of an artist's room doesn't strive too far off from what my room looks like).

    At around 12, I walked over to my friend Nicole's house, the one I mentioned in a past post, to help her with her won film opening. There, I acted as her cameraman as she acted and directed the shots. The whole thing took around 3 hours, and I believe it turned out really well. Her shots came out great and her storyline is really solid as well as her set design. 

    After this,0 we came to my house where we began filming my opening. There was a slow beginning as I wasn't sure what to film first but after just picking something and going for it everything went smoothly. I was able to film the majority, if not all the shots I planned, which were the ones that featured the artist in them. Now, everything boils down to editing. 

       During the following week, I will edit the film. I'm hoping that I got enough footage to reach the two minutes we need, however in case I didn't, I'm planning on filming close-ups of me painting as fillers. I plan on finishing editing this weekend so I can give my musician friend a long enough time to write a melody for the opening. 

Here are some photos I took of our filming day

Full Props and Materials

     A couple of blog posts ago I mentioned some of the materials and props I was planning on using for my film opening. Because tomorrow is the big filming day, I am back here giving a newly updated and accurate version of my materials and props that I will be using tomorrow afternoon. 

Materials

Canon Rebel T71

17-50 mm Sigma Lens

55-250 mm Canon Lens

Tripod

Ring Light Tripod

Props

Meeden Easel

15 x 20 Canvas

An Assortment of Paint Brushes

Handy Art Acrylic Paints

12 x 10 Glass Pane

Scrap Paper

The Kiss Painting Decoration

Storyboarding +Shot list

     After researching shots and angles by watching and sketching out scenes from films that featured artists, I began with my own storyboard. This process actually served to be quite difficult for me. I can practically imagine the film opening in its entirety in my head, but translating it on paper felt impossible. This has been something that I've had to deal with for a while, whether it comes to art or even writing, so in order to combat this, I did my best to keep my drawing simple. Instead of focusing on lighting, shading, and details, I stuck to drawing simple linework in order to show shot types and angles. I also decided to simplify the opening shots. capturing only the main ideas that I know I will include in the opening. I also did this because, for me, it felt like some of the shots were very similar and others were too motion-oriented to draw. 

  

Shot List

First (around) 1 min 30 of the opening 

    -Establishing Shot of the studio, artists setting up

    -Backshot of the artist at canvas 

    -Multiple shots of artist painting, 

        -close-ups

    -Close up of paintbrush, artist messes up (music abruptly stops)

  Last 30 seconds

  -Close up of artist's eyes, zooming in

    -Full shot of studio, artist throwing things around (song starts again)

Peer Feedback + more planning

    Today in class we had the opportunity of getting feedback and advice from our peers. We were placed in random groups of five, where I luckily enough was met with three people whom I worked with in past projects. I was really glad to be able to get advice from people that, to an extent, already know me. We took turns discussing each of our projects and giving our opinions on them. If anything, this discussion just made me really excited to see the finishing pieces of my peers, everyone has unique ideas such as filming about the last person on earth and a person on their descent into madness. Because my idea for the opening is quite simple when compared to others, there wasn't any feedback that presented any new ideas or changed anything that I had already thought of, Overall, the tips I received that did help was some filming and editing techniques that I could use, which is something I've been worrying about considering I have little to no experience with the film other than what we've done in this class. Overall, I'm really glad Ms. Stoklosa gave us this opportunity as not only did it help with the project but it's also nice to talk to some classmates once in a while, especially now that everything's online.

    I also wanted to take the time today to share some new concepts for the opening. Since I'm in the process of drawing up the storyboard and writing a shot list I can't stop thinking about the colours that will be present in the film. As an artist producing a movie featuring an artist, I think it's absolutely important to take time and think about the colours present in the setting as well as the colours I feel it's necessary for the development of the narrative. I plan to use a lot of colour symbolism and contrast in order to convey emotion. In order to organize my thoughts, I decided it would be a good idea to take the time and create a colour palette, so here it is!

Colour palette for the setting- natural hues

Colour palette for the painting- mostly primary hues

    As I'm sure you've noticed above, I included the colour palette for the painting that the artist in the film will be making. The painting itself has been something that I've been thinking about a lot recently. I want the paintings to server a higher purpose than just an item that the artist knocks out in anger, and to do so I have to come up with a design for it. I've been leaning towards an abstract piece, though I tend to focus on realism for my own art, I thought than an abstract piece could perfectly covey the complicated emotions that the artists feel, and that's what this film is about. I do know, however, that I absolutely want the painting to feature primary colours as this creates a contrast between the setting and the art. 

Filming Schedule

    As we begin nearing the actual filming portion of the project I came to the realization that there is no way I can do this completely on my own. As someone with zero filming experience, I thought it'd be best to get some extra help. Luckily for me, a friend of mine that I've known since we were five was in the same position. Because Nicole is in a different class period than I am didn't have the option to officially work together however we came to an agreement to help each other out as much as we can. For me, Nicole will act as the, well, actor for the film. This turned out great for me because not only does she have a passion for writing but I also feel more comfortable behind the camera rather in front. I also have more control over what the film will look when solely directing as opposed to directing while also acting. 

    Our new partnership came with its own set of challenges. As juniors SAT and exams can get the best of us, making our schedules very difficult, and above that Nicole is very committed to her job which takes up a large portion of her time. Earlier today we called each other to discuss filming schedules and came up with the following. 

   Once the items I bought arrive, (which should be Wednesday), I will do my best to film the shots of the opening that don't exactly require an actor. Saturday, March 6th at 12 pm, we will meet together and help to film each of our projects. I'm hoping that we'll be able to decide on another filming date the following week because I genuinely don't think we'll be able to finish filming my shots, let alone hers as well, on one day. If I do end up unable to finish filming the parts that require Nicole, I'll just film myself using my tripod. If it comes down to that hopefully I will only have the indirect shots to film. 

    Despite these challenges, I am still very excited for the opportunity to be able to work with an amazing and talented friend. We have grown so much since we first met and I hope we'll be able to work with each other during our careers in our future.

Nicole (right) and I, 2014

Set Design

     After watching these films that featured artists I began thinking about the mise en scene for my film opening. As of right now, I'm planning on filming in my own room, though the small space may become an obstacle when filming, I feel like it's the most accessible area I have (it also wouldn't bother my parents too much). I am an artist and so my room has become a sort of makeshift studio that, with some tweaking, could become a proper area for the film to take place in. Here, I have listed items and concepts that I either have or will buy that I feel would bring the set together.

An easel is an essential component for many artists and I believe that our character should definitely have one. 

Along with the easel I plan on buying a drop cloth, which is essentially a piece of cloth artists lay on the floor to catch any paint that drips of the canvas/paintbrush

Though I have a fair amount of paintbrushes I do plan on buying more, especially the larger flat brushes, so that I can scatter them around set in random jars to create a messy atmosphere

I plan on getting a glass pane of sorts to films the shots I mentioned in the previous posts where it looks like the artist is painting on the camera lens

New paint is definitely a must as I'm sure during the filming process we'll end up wasting a lot of it

I also would like to decorate my room a bit with some paintings and pottery. I may use some paintings I've done myself or paintings around the house for this. 

 

Along with the set supplies, I also thought I should mention two items that would aid me in the filming itself. My room doesn't have the best lighting so a ring light would definitely help me with that. The tripod would also help me get smooth and still shots. 

Shots and Angles Research

  Last post I shared what type of shots and angles were most commonly used in drama films. Though I gained a great understanding, I thought that I should look into shots and angles used specifically in movies featuring artists. To do so, I spent the majority of the last two days watching the films I mentioned in my post "Art Films" as well as a movie called Fake, directed by Gregory W Friedle. While watching these films I thought it would be a fun idea to do a technique many artists do to practice composition and shading, which was storyboarding. Through this, I was not only able to achieve a better understanding of shots and angles used specifically to develop an artist but I was also able to practice storyboarding for my own movie opening. This was an activity I was looking forward to do even before this project was introduced so I'm really glad I was able to apply it to my portfolio process. 

Here are a couple of the shots I noted: 

(because they are pretty messy and can be hard to understand I added a quick description of each drawing)

Here I sketched out shots focusing on camera movement

these two drawings are of shots of the actor painting a glass frame, I thought it was a cool scene that gives a different perspective to painting

Here are two shots of different angles used to show the artist painting

A large shot that gives a better look of the studio

Here I sketched out two shots that relied heavily on lighting

and these two were great examples of close-ups

And lastly... a shot where the artist was going through a fit of rage