AICE Media Studies Blog

 Working on a short movie as a group for class can be thrilling and difficult. You get to work together with your peers to realize your creative goals. It can, however, occasionally get stressful, particularly when the deadline is drawing near. We came quite close, but we succeeded! Nonetheless, our little video was ultimately completed after several weeks of diligent labor and many late nights! Witnessing our concepts come to life on TV was an amazing experience. We were all pleased with the results of our collaborative efforts. Seeing how everyone's distinctive skills and suggestions combined to produce something genuinely remarkable was one of the most satisfying aspects of the procedure. As filmmakers, we were able to benefit from one another's knowledge. Nevertheless, there were some difficulties along the way as well. Making the final edit required us to make some difficult judgments about what to keep and what to cut. Moreover, our minor mishap with the last-minute filmi

 Since our friends reviewed our short filmed and gave us advice on their thought on the film. We decided as a group to edit our short film together. As a whole we discussed the process that we were going to have when setting up to review and tweak our short film;. with the advice of our friend we looked at each scene to see what we could possibly cut out as previously mentioned our film was over the time limit. so scene by scene we reviewed each scene tweaking along. we went around in a circle asking everyone if they think if a scene to be cut or not. this took some time but eventually, the film was to all of our likings.  Next, we started out with the color of the film even though we thought that this didn't need changes we still felt like it was necessary. Just take precautions we looked over the color of the film deciding if it should be darker or light. And adjusting the gradient level and more.  Then we moved on to music even though my teammates and I individually looked up mu

 We worked together to create the movie and then showed it to a buddy to receive some feedback. We sought an outsider's viewpoint on the movie, someone who wasn't engaged in its creation. We had confidence that our friends would be forthright with us and express their true opinions. I was a little anxious as we sat down to see the movie with our friend. Even though the same buddy saw my video the year before, I often get anxious in circumstances like these. I had high hopes for the project because we had put a lot of effort into it. While we waited for our friends, we all sat on the couch and watched the movie on the TV. Our acquaintance sat in quiet for a short while after the movie concluded as they contemplated what they had just seen. They finally turned to us and began to express their ideas. They were candid yet helpful, highlighting both the movie's advantages and disadvantages. Our acquaintance thought certain sections were nicely done and truly loved them, but they

 Today I edited our short film. Because I did not go to school today, I had spare time to add a little touch to our short film. Even though I would not consider myself a professional in editing or dealing with editing software, I still tried because I had enough time to help out my team. First I started out by adding sound effects, for this, I went on to youtube and searched for non-copyright music. This was to avoid the copyright strike as plagiarizing someone's music is quite bad, it's stealing the arts that they had worked hard for produced by their talent. I added this music to bits and pieces of our film, mostly I looked for pop background music because our film was mostly coming to age/pop-like film. Then I looked at the color. since our film takes place during the daytime and is a coming to age pop-like film I did not edit the color too much. As I thought it was fitting for our film to have that nice daytime look to it. It was a little time-consuming as I had something e

 Today my group is editing our short film. When we initially edited our short film it was 2 minutes but after multiple production blogs, we have now reached 5:22 minutes. This exceeds the short film time, so for our editing today we will be cutting down on our scenes. we started out by trying to shorten our short film by scenes. when we evaluated the scenes we saw that some parts could indeed be cut out or shortened, so I went by each scene choosing whether to add that part or not to our final product. While my other teammates did other editing jobs. Because we had school and could not meet up we mainly edited online. Each team member had different jobs so the editing was faster than usual. Even though we did editing online as a backup, it still worked well for us. there were no major issues and I feel like this way of editing is better for everyone in our team as we don't have to go anywhere, all being introverts with parents that have different schedules. Overall we did cut down

I had been working on my project with my group for several weeks, and we had decided to film our last scene at the park. But, after watching our tape, we noticed that we were missing a crucial shot. While we weren't going to film today, we had to. We had already packed up our gear and left the park the previous day under the impression that we were done, so it was disappointing. After weighing our alternatives, we determined that the mall would be the ideal setting for filming the missing sequence. We hurried to the mall and began looking for the ideal location for the shot. After locating a peaceful location away from the throng, we started assembling our tools. Even though we were a little pressed for time, we managed to get everything up fast. We practiced the situation a few times before acting it out. We needed the film for a while, but it took a few takes to get the shot just perfect. We were happy that we got the photo, but we were also a little miffed because it took longer

      For our second scene at the "valley mall," we had to re-film because when I was editing I noticed that the audio was not very clear. So for this filming day, we are back at the mall to re-shoot the mall scene. This re-shoot was essentially trying to retrace what we originally filmed in quieter locations. for example instead of Macy's which had a Starbucks near the entrance we moved to jcpenny or Dillard's to film those parts. For the scene where Natalie sees her friend Julie, we moved to the back of the store a quieter location than the entrance of the store. after filming the inside scenes we head toward the outdoors. This is where I shoot the establishing shots of the mall and the theater entrance. This was done with a downward tilt showing me walking into the mall. Since today our teammate was here to film with us we took the opportunity to film the therapy scene with her. This took place on the outside bench of the mall. I acted out as Natalie redoing the sc

 Today we returned to the same old neighborhood that we previously filmed in. First, we met at dairy Queen's and made our way to find our location. In walking to our location we saw some adorable dogs being walked! After finding the location that we wanted to film we decided on the scenes we would do. this included the locations to film in with nice houses in the backgrounds. Overall the filming went well as we were more experienced since the last filming date. After filming we went to What The Pho, a Vietnamese restaurant. we decided to eat there because we finished earlier than thought and we wanted to try new cultural food. I ordered a Pho with chicken! The food was delicious, and it showed me that I truly have been missing out on cultural food. this experience inspired me to try new food but as of right now, i have a food ranking list of all the cultural food I have tried. 1: Indian, 2: Haitian, 3: Jamaican, 4: Vietnamese, and Cuban is a tie. I must say that all of them have be

 Today at the old neighborhood we filmed the scene where the character tragically gets hurt in a car accident. This plot of our story is supposed to give the character Nathalie a sense of remorse for the way she treated her friend. Hoping a sense of loss gives her a change of heart toward her selfish behaviors. To do this scene, I had Alexi that has a car drive toward the camera. This took multiple shots, each having different techniques for example the first was just a slow stop but the others combined a honk or a harsh stop. To create the allusion of a car accident without harming each other---we did not actually film a car hitting one of our teammates ( disclaimer) --- I had POV shots of the character acting like they got bumped by the car. To create this I filmed a slow motion of what happens, shooked the camera in the falling motion, filmed inside of the car, and had the actor act out falling. To avoid any danger I made sure to not get too close to the car if any accidents happen,

       Today we filmed the first scene of our short film. We decided the location would be close to the school, as it was a location that was not too far away for all of us. Initially, when deciding the location of the second scene --- being the old neighborhood--- the locations were not compatible for everyone. Since Alexi lived far we had to accommodate the locations for him making sure it was not too far nor too close since he lived far from everyone else, for others it was the main issue with having parents driving them (for example me) though Alexi did not have these issues because he drove.      We started filming when we found a nice location with good lighting and a house with a bush that can give us an allusion that we went in the neighborhood. At first, we filmed the establishing shots, in which we---Alexi and I--- were walking while talking. Then we filmed the conversation scene seen in our screenplay, trying the reverse shot reverse. Occasionally, I would take breaks to rea