Day 30

Day 30: CCR.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tfVM6_rakKxn2QJRwaJ2S99O33TUaMNh

Okay... it has all come to an end! Maybe I'll keep writing here because I kinda like it!!

Day 29

Hey!

Wow. Day 29. We're coming to an end! I'm gonna miss writing in this blog:)

Day 29: Almost Done.

This post is just to inform you that I am doing my final touches on my CCR and it will be posted tomorrow:)

It is also to inform you that there's this musical. It's new. It's called Six. I used to not like it at all. I was like "mm I don't like modern music for musicals." Also, it's in a concert-like form. The actresses carry handheld mics and everything. 

BUT I had to do this assignment for my musical theatre online class. It was a documentary on the musical Hamilton. The people interviewed kept repeating that this musical changed Broadway, it introduced rap to the musical theatre genre. And I started thinking: That's true, the musical is original, it's unique. 

So I decided to give Six another try, because it also is original and unique and new and even if I don't like the music I very much appreciate the originality. I think being unique is very important. 
Now I love it. The music and everything. 

*Look at the costumes, I've always loved these. 


See they're so original! I'm sure there's a meaning behind them.

The musical is about the six wives of Henry VIII. It's really good. Special appreciation for these girls' vocal range.

That's all for today!

Day twenty-what-now?

Ok. I checked. It's 

DAY 28: Project Reflection.

Looking back at where I started... wow, it's been a longgg run

I remember starting this project. It was a mix of emotions. I thought "Ok! Fun! should I do it alone? in a group? Ok my teacher called me and I have no group so I'll do it by myself." That was my downfall. Nah I'm kidding, but I do really like working in a group and throughout the project I wondered how it would have been if I had gone with a group. However, I liked working alone on this. It made me brainstorm by myself which is MUCH harder than brainstorming with other people. Now, I don't know if you could tell, but I am a slow worker. Especially when it comes to creating stuff. Anyways, it doesn't usually take me as long as it did for this project to come up with ideas. 
I had my first idea, which I really liked. I told it to my friends in the class and they looked at me like: 

And I was like "pff. whatever. they don't know anything", all defensive:

And then I told my teacher and she was like "No." And I was like "but you didn't even let me explaiinnnnn":

But then I got over it.

as I struggled to come up with an idea, I talked to my teacher and she told me to do it about a social issue I cared for because all my favorite movies happen to be about something around that. I decided to do it on LGBTQ+ issues, as you may have noticed. 

Then one day, I was walking through the Wynwood Walls and I saw this big wall. Its background had a lot of colors and it said in big white letters "+ AMOR" which means "more love". And that's when I was like OMG!!! I have it! I developed the idea: a boy paints and protests through art about an issue he cares about.

I loved that wall so much and I decided to pretend this wall was painted by my main character, and that's how the film is going to start, with some spray paint cans and him looking at it proudly (obviously I was gonna cite that the wall wasn't actually painted by us).

But then I realized we had to do it all by ourselves, we couldn't use somebody else's work let alone an entire wall. So I emailed the Wynwood Walls if I could have a small part of a wall to paint for a project, they said that unfortunately I couldn't and they gave me someone else to talk to but by then I had started to develop my back-up idea and I went with that one. 

So this is the second part I struggled with. After thinking and thinking and thinking and watching other film openings from films I liked, I got the idea for my opening. 

Then, when I finished struggling with that, I got started with struggling for what my painting was going to be. I wanted it to be symbolic. That's all I knew. I saw a youtube video on how to make symbolic art, the guy did a face with all these random animals and stuff around it and then he explained them. That gave me the idea to look up "symbolic things". I looked at examples "symbolic art" "art that is symbolic" "art for protests" "art social issues" "abstract art". Then I came up with the idea of doing a face, after all, my main character loves people. I watched lots of youtube videos and saw a lot of step-by-step drawings on how to do an okay-looking face. I couldn't. So I went for a it's-bad-enaugh-that-you-know-I-didn't-mean-to-make-it-look-perfect look. I liked it though, but I know I'm not an artist! Then I looked at the "symbolic things" page and got the idea for the message. 

After that, I looked at what colors represented what feelings and went for purple (power), red (love, passion, strength) and blue (truth). 

Quarantine happened, but my idea didn't require anything from the outside world so I was good, the only thing is I had to change my actor. My brother did the honors.

Something I learned from this project and this class is how much work goes into it. I knew that a lot of work went into movies. But I feel it's just one of those things where you never really know what it takes until you try it. Everything you hear and see in a movie was thought out by someone. Nothing is 'just there'. I find that amazing. So, everything I shot I shot for a reason.

Filming was easy, except for the whole filming in front of a mirror thing. There's this problem I have that when I start filming I can't stop until I get everything from 10 different angles. Let's just say it was a long filming day. And then re-filming, also from a lot of different angles but this time I told myself to stop. 

Editing: ugh. I don't like editing. Only because it takes me such a long time to edit things! Because, once again, I edit, I think, I look up "how to do [...] in Premiere Pro", I do it, I mess up, I have to delete everything or it just deletes by itself because I messed up, I start over, I export, I change things, I export, I send it to people, I delete the message, I re-edit, I export, I re-edit again but this time I just correct a mistake, I export, I sen it to people. And there are always things that can be done better. It's a never-ending process!

In conclusion(I hate this transition word but I don't know what else to say), we can say that I struggled the most with creativity. It's not that I don't consider myself to be a creative person, I just have more bursts of creativity than constant amazing ideas. From knowing what my film was going to be about to what my painting was gonna be to what shots to use. Everything took thought and analysis. It was a struggle. A long, but fun struggle. 

Day 27

Day 27: It's here!!! Again.

I don't know why but it's not playing how I posted it before.

Don't worry, I uploaded it to YouTube. here's the link! :) 

Day 26: It's here!

Day 26: Here it issss!!!

After a lot of hard work: Here is my film opening:

Hope you enjoy!

Day 25

Day 25: final arrangements.

I'm doing some final editing stuff before I submit! Any minute now my video will be ready!

*At the end, right before the title, I made an effect which then dips to white and the title appears. I wanted to go for a silhouette effect. I didn't. But what I did is similar. The image fades to this harsh white contrast. It looks like it's drawn. That goes together with the whole artist thing. 
Plus, my opening is more artistic-at least that's what I was going for-  so I felt giving this ending to the opening would make it more dramatic and would tie the whole thing together. 
Anddd you how I did that...??!! Experimenting with color grading!!! Yes! Using this video, the one that complicated my life the other day!

*I ended up starting the song from the beginning because it didn't feel right to start the song out of nowhere just to get a specific line with a specific image.

BTW: I've been watching this show called Once Upon A Time, it's soooo goood. It's about fairy tale characters who are stuck in a normal world (ours). I'm not gonna say much so I don't spoil it but there's this curse and stuff it's really good. 

Day 23-24

Hey!

Day 23-24: EDITING. (yes, it took me 2 days)

Editing is the part that I struggle the most with, even when I edit news videos for my TV class. There are just so many ways we can go and so many different looks we can give the video that it takes me a long time to get done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0MeDQlrfgQ (black and white silhouette) Okay, but I don't know if I should use it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYNaj-DPseQ&t=61s (black bars) Got it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvFCnVRcT3Q (color grading) This is where it all went wrong. 

I did this whole color grading thing, clip by clip. I experimented with blacks, whites, shadows, contrast. I finished, they looked great. I render the sequence, I watch the video: the quality of every clip lowered!!! 
I undid the whole color grading thing and found another way to fix some of the clips that really needed help. 

Here are some photos of my editing progress: 

 

Organized footage. These are all the clips after my first "throw away the ones that I won't use." After this, I reshot some footage but those videos are in another folder.

Editing some audio things that I don't know if I'm gonna keep. 

Color grading fiasco^

* Font: I wanted to go for an elegant look, cause I'm planning for this film to be serious, that's why I chose a simple, formal font, and put it in white- a very simple, formal and serious color. 

*I figured the opening shot is really important so I thought about it and I decided to open the sequence with a shot of Aaron painting a heart. It's telling the audience that this film, above all, is a film about love, love for a cause, love for justice. I wanted my film to start that way!