Creative Critical Reflection

 Introduction

Hello and welcome back to my blog, today I'm so excited to share my CCR's with you. This has taken long in the making and also required lots of effort and thought since I wanted them to be unique in their own way. So I hope you enjoy my CCR's.

CCR #1- 

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issue?

Here is the  YouTube video for my CCR

For my first CCR I wanted to do something creative but also. connects me to the film opening and myself. This is why I picked a get ready with me but with a twist of me adding my gymnastic competition getting ready with me routine. This has a direct correlation with the film since it's a gymnastic film and also is informational since I'm a competitive gymnast and I know exactly how to do a competition makeup and hair routine. This also allowed me to connect myself better with the film especially sine the films message has a special place in my heart.

CCR #2- Magazine

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

For my second CCR I wanted to try to do something out of my comfort zone which is a magazine, although I did do a magazine cover at the beginning of the year I wasn't't the best at it and there was a bit of struggle. But on the other had I wanted to be as creative as possible and try something new instead of my original idea of doing a presentation with a voice over. Overall I am really proud of my self especially since I tried my best and put a lot of time and effort into this magazine. Enjoy my response to CCR question # 2!

CCR #3- 

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

Here is link to the Youtube Short since it won't upload as a video since it's less than 3 minutes long.

For this question I wanted to do something that required a voice over so I can be clear while I talk, and it would also allow the  information/ my response to be cohesive. But on the other hand still wanted to do something useful and nice visually, that also had some relation to the film's theme. Thus this led me to making a tutorial of how to make a protein breakfast shake that I usual make before early morning gymnastic practices or competition. And this directly relates to the main character f our film since she is a gymnast and trains a lot for competition.

CCR #4- Podcast

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

For my last CCR I wanted to do something different where there wasn't a lot going on throughout the video, but I still wanted to show some small visuals. That led me to either an interview or a podcast. And I choose a podcast since I was familiar with the conventions of one and also it allowed me to just talk instead of reading off slides. This was one of the easier ones to edit together sine there wasn't a lot going on but I did put a lot of effort into making my script and memorizing it.

Conclusion

Overall, these CCR's have allowed me to reflect on my film opening and also allowed me to be creative when coming up with ideas for my CCR's in all these CCR's were a lot of work and a bit frustrating at times but in the end I am proud of what I made. In addition I can't believe that I have officially finished my portfolio, it took a long time in the making and was difficult at times but I really appreciated the experience since I learned a bunch of new things that I plan to use in the future someway or somehow. I hope you have enjoyed my journey of creating my portfolio.

Final Product - Film Opening

Introduction

Finally, I am so glad to present my partner and I finished product. My partner and I are very happy  and proud of our project. It been a long time in the making with research, planning, and production. In addition my partner and I faced so many challenges  during production, hence we couldn't be prouder that we adapted on the spot and was able to edit and create something we are proud of. Further a do I hope you enjoy, OFF BALANCE - Film Opening.

OFF BALANCE

by Noemy Buenaventura, and Melanie Justo-Choing

 

Editing Part 4

 Introduction

Hello and welcome back, today my partner and I will be adding all the extra details to our film opening. Such as the songs that are supposed to be in the begging and ed of our film opening, and also trying to make transitions smoother so they look more seamless, and more. This may be one of our longer editing posts since did take us a while to do, especially since we started using new features on adobe premiere pro.

Editing Part 4

So the first thing me and my partner did at school when we had 30 minutes together was add the songs. There was a total of two songs both from YouTube's non copyrighted music. This did take us some time to find but we are very glad with our song choices. We also had a ringing sound that would be used for the transition but that one was easy to find.

Here is a link to the song that we used at the end as our radio song. Click here for radio song

Here is a link of the song we used at the beginning for our nostalgic scene. Click here to see nostalgic song

Here is the link to the ringing sound we used for the transition. Click here to see ringing sound effect

After this we both continued with our day until after school where ewe continued editing together. But before we left to our next classes, we decided that I would ask one on my TV production for advice on what needs cleaning up. My TV production friends name is Jessica Laufman-Valdez, and she has been in TV production for 3 years and she uses the same software we are using for our film opening. Hence, her opinion was very helpful, and what she told me was that overall it was edited very well the only thing she commented was that to get a more seem less transition in audio from young Emily to present Emily is to have it fade in. She showed me an example on how to that on her computer. 

She also commented about the part of dialogue in scene 2 that was super low, and she said the best way to fix that is by recording a voice over and adding the voice over into the clip. Sh also showed me how to increase the volume of the radio song at a certain part so that we ca get the effect we wanted of the music becoming louder than the dialogue. After this I was able to relay everything that Jessica had said to my partner Melanie so we can start working on those parts.

Here is a clip of the transition where my partner and I were able to fade out the song and fade in the ringing. This made that whole part more fluid and dynamic.

Here is a clip of the second scene without the audio fixed, and without the voiceovers to enhance the audio.

Here is a clip of the second scene now with the audio fixed, by adding in the voiceovers which enhanced the audio.

Here is an image of what the voice over looks like on the time line. The voice over is the little green audio box. And to make sure that the original audio and the voiceover audio didn't mix, my partner and I just muted the original audio.

Here is the clip of the car scene where we were able to enhance the audio gradually. 

Now moving on the next thing we did which was adding  the opening credits in the scene this part was where Melanie took over and did most of it since she was more efficient at this part then me, but I did contribute by telling her what credit or name came next so she wouldn't have to be looking at two things at the same time. This did take us some time to do since we wanted each credit to fee in and fade out. But overall it was worth it and here are some photos of the process.

Conclusion

In all, Melanie and I are so glad and proud to be done editing now that we finished all the fine details such as the opening credits. We are also very thankful for my friend Jessica o giving us some constructive criticism on our piece as it allowed us to make it better. And I can't wait to show you guys the finish film opening. Stay tuned and see you on the next one.

Editing Part 3

 Introduction 

Welcome back and today my partner and I will be editing scene 3 of our film opening. This will be a short post since my partner and I have gotten familiar with the software and since this scene includes 3 long takes which means there won't be a lot of clips we have to edit together.

To start my partner and I joined a call together an we both told each other that we would have very little time to work on this scene since we both have prior commitments and we had to leave to go to them soon.

This made us glad that this scene was easy  to sine it only included 1 short clip and 3 long take clips. 

I first started with the car clip since it set the next setting and also since it was the nest clip that takes place following our script. After that I included the car clip conversation which was just 1 long take and that was easy to do since they were straight cuts, plus I didn't have to adjust the length of the clip since it was the perfect size. After that I added the clip of Emily looking out the widow and the clip of Emily's face while looking out of the window. 

These were both the other 2 long take clips and the only thing I had to do was drag and drop them next to each other into the timeline like I did with scene 2. Then all I had to do was fix the length of them and make sure I only dragged the video and not the audio since the audio is unnecessary since the radio song will be covering it. My partner and I will be adding the radio song in another day- right now we were focused on getting all the clips in and adding in all the details in later. Here is an image of the 4 clips together on the time line.

Here you can see the white arrow that shows the audio stop right after the conversation scene.

Here is a clip of all the clips of scene 3 put together but with the last 2 clips without audio since my partner and I will add it later.

Conclusion

My partner and I were able to finish scene 3 in record time and now next time that we will meet and that time in person, we will be adding all the final details such as the songs in the begging and end, also the opening credits and title, and w will be making it as cohesive as possible by getting more professional opinion on it. See you in the next post.

Editing Part 2

 Introduction 

Hello and welcome back, today my partner and I started editing day 2 by focusing on finishing editing on the entirety of scene 2. Even though this is our longest my partner  and I know that we are going to be able to finish quickly since all the clips are in chronological order from the bin, which means we won't need to go searching in the bin for the next clip. We also know it won't take us long since all the scenes are back to back and are perfect length so we don't need to be cutting and redoing the length of the clips.

Editing Part 2 

So I first started off by calling my partner since we were in different locations for spring break. Once I had her on the phone we started working. I opened up adobe premiere pro and clicked back into the project to continue working. Once there I started at the beginning of scene 2 where there is the change from young Emily to present Emily. Hence the first clip was off the jump of where the feet transitioned, this took the most time out of all the editing that day since we wanted the feet to align perfectly so the transition would be on time and cohesive. Here is an image of me dragging the first clip from the editing box to the timeline.

Here is the feet clip in the editing box.

And here is it now on the timeline ( it is the blue box in the middle of the timeline)

Next my partner and I moved on to adding the next following clips before the over the shoulder shots. These shots were of the flip, and the clip where Laura the coach told Emily to come here.

Then we moved on to the over the shoulder shots which were fairly easy to edit together as one came right after the other. The only thing that took time was making the shots cohesive by enlarging some of the clips if they felt to fa away on camera. But even then this only took like 10 seconds max to fix. there were also some volume issues during the conversation which we didn't pick up before, so we enhanced the audio on those clips, although, there is one clip that even with the volume max Melanies lines as Laura still sound low but we will figure out how to fix that later since we were both running out of time to work together.

Here is a clip of all of the over the shoulder shots put together until the end of scene 2.

Conclusion

My partner and I finished scene 2 just in time before we both had to leave for the day. We are happy we were able to finish scene 2 and can't wait to move onto scene 3. Until the next one where we will be editing scene 3 together.

Editing Part 1

 Introduction

Today, I will be talking about the editing process of my first editing day. This will be a very straight forward post about the editing process and what went behind every decision. In addition, I focused on just editing scene 1 for my first editing day.

Editing Scene 1

So to start off, since me and my partner Melanie weren't going to be together to edit due to travel purposes. We still made sure to be on call while editing, and we decided that I would edit it on my laptop.  Hence, I had to first download Adobe Premiere Pro onto my laptop since I didn't already had it downloaded. Then after that I was able to create a project by clicking the new project. After that Melanie told me how to add in the all the clips and audios from filming into our adobe project.

Here is an image that shows my mouse hovering over the button that says import which is how I was able to add all the clips into my bin.

                                                     

Here is an image of the clips now placed in the bin for use

Now that that was done I was able to drag in clips to edit, and 

once there I could edit the clip then drag it directly into the timeline. The best part is that we had a choice to drag in only audio, only video, or both.

Therefore we started editing scene 1 together, so we first started by grading our first clip from the first scene where Gaby is playing with a ball. And we fixed the timeline on that because it was extremely long and we only needed a few seconds.

And then we kept doing that for the following clips of Gaby/ young Emily's scene. Until the part where we have the change from young Emily to present Emily. We also followed the starboard and script for these clips and remembered to only use the video portion of the clip since we will be adding a nostalgic song in at the end once all the scenes are put together. In all my partner and I were only able to edit the first scene without the audio, this took my partner and I a while to do since we were still getting familiar with the software, we also had limited time that day to call because of our prior commitments.

Conclusion

In all, editing day one went great and my partner and I are hoping to schedule 3 more days to edit and focus on editing 1 scene per day and then 1 day for all the effects. Until next time where I will be posting about editing day 2

Production Day

Introduction

Hello, and welcome back today I will be giving a short post about how production day went including the successes and the struggles.

 

Production day Run down

To start off, I started the day by texting all the actors an telling them that they have to at the gym before 12 am, and that's when the worst news possible struck my partner and I. First my coach who was goin to play Laura decided that she only wanted to stay behind the screen because of some personal issues which was fine because Melanie is able to step in for her. But then I got a text from Zara our lead that she was really sick and won't be able to come to the shoot. 

This news was harsh because we couldn't reschedule the day because we would fall behind on our posts, there wouldn't be enough time to edit, and the gym wouldn't be able to give us any other days due to their competition season and non one being at the gym to supervise us. 

Now this posed a problem for me and Melanie because now we were booth playing characters that were in the same scene and one of us had to be behind the camera  at all times this led us to finding the quickest solution possible- Body doubles

Since Melanies mom already plays Veronica and she is similar height to me and my partner we decided to use her as a body double so when doing the over the shoulder shots Melanies mom posed as me or Melanie depending on the shot. Now this wasn't ideal but there was nothing else we could do.

As shown here where Melanie is playing both me and Melanie for the over the shoulder shots.

This led us to running ten minutes behind schedule, but we were able to compensate for time by being professional and focusing on scenes.

Hence, we first shot the second scene, then the first ad finally once or time ran out at the gym we shot the third scene. There were a lot of quick changes but we were able to get enough shots and my partner and I are proud of what we did with all the set backs we faced.

Gaby was very professional when it came to her scenes she was very focused so we didn't;t have to spend too much time with her scene which was great. And we were able to use the time we saved from that scene in our third scene since the park we had to drive by was a bit farther than awe thought.

Conclusion

In all our shot day did not go as plan but we were able to adapt under pressure and still produce something that we are proud off. Now all my partner and I have to do is edit all the scenes together to finish our film opening.