CCR

     This is my CCR for my recent project. This film was very fun and a great experience for me to do. 

Finalized Film: Fantasia Can Do It!

    Finally! The day is here. After over a month of work, our finalized opening film, "Fantasia Can Do It!" is here! This project brought my group members and I joy and demise, but even through the ups and downs, we made it. Through our long days of research, filming, and editing, I am proud to say that we made a film that we like very much. Even though this project was tough on us, we enjoyed it every step of the way. 

How Editing Went

     We finished editing today. Editing late was something that we wanted to avoid, however life works in mysterious ways and sometimes does not go in your favor. We started editing on Monday, and it is Thursday now. It took about 4 days to finalize the project. 

    On Monday, Perla and I asked Nikaliyah to send the clips into a google drive folder. Perla used After Effects to edit our project. Nikaliyah was absent in most of the editing process, and it was okay because she did most of the work during filming. We had Perla edit the project because she was not present in filming. All I did was supervise, and tell her where to put the clips and what to do. On Monday, we arranged all the plausible clips. The process of rearranging all the clips together took about 2 hours. The film then was around 3:30, and we decided to call it a day there due to us having other work to do.

    On Tuesday, we picked up from where we left off. I had Perla speed up many clips that thought could be sped up for time reduction. We realized after speeding up many clips, that most of the audio did not line up. So Perla had to undo everything she previously had done, and we had to pick which clips could be sped up without the audio messing up or being late. After having all the clips that were good sped up, the project was around 2 minutes long. Our project could only be two minutes. We decided to cut some scenes from the project. We watched the entire project through and cut off a bunch of extras. We had to cut off most of the panning in the clips because it took up too much time in our project. 

    On Wednesday, we continued with the cutting. Even though we cut off almost all of the panning and sped up a bunch of clips, it was still over 2 minutes. We had to cut off actual scenes that we filmed now. We cut off most of the beginning. We had originally planned for a flashback scene and a scene where the son asks his older brother to play, but the brother declines. We had to cut that off and started where the boy puts the unicorn toy on the bed. From memory, I also remember cutting off where the boy was walking over to the kidnapper, the kidnapper running with the kid and putting him into the car, and the dialogue between the kid and the older brother in the car. I cannot remember if we had to cut off more, but those are the most prominent scenes to me.

    On Thursday, we finalized the project by adding music and text.

During Editing

     Perla and I started editing today. Nikaliyah wasn't here as she had other things to do, which was okay since Perla is the one editing. My role was to tell her where to put the clips in. We spent about an hour and a half reviewing all the clips and sorting them in order. It took very long because I was cooking at the same time for time efficiency. Now that I think about it, it might have been dangerous to cook and be distracted. However, I had a bunch of homework and could not sacrifice time that I could've used to be productive.  I think next time I will not do two things at once as I could probably start an accident.

    In the hour and a half that Perla and I spent editing, we put all our clips together. Nikaliyah put them in a Google Drive folder prior to us editing this morning. Perla and I decided that we would put in all the sound tomorrow, as I have a bunch of homework and can't help her. Perla did not have many assignments so I told her to edit the project however she likes that would look best for the film. All our clips, however, went over the 2-minute mark. We think once Perla edits it all since there are clips where we said "action" it would fit the entire 2 minutes. I also asked her to edit in effects to how she sees fit. I left the call afterwards to do my homework. I told her if she needed any help or she wasn't sure to edit/remove a clip that she could ping me if she needed me. 

    Since I had a lot of homework, we decided that we would finish editing tomorrow. During our study halls, Perla will finish putting in the audio and fixing it. I have to tutor during my study hall until 10 AM. Our study hall ends at 10:56, so we will fix up as much as we can during those 56 minutes. We plan to finish the audio by 10:56, but if there is an occurrence where we can't, we will finish it after school. 

Two More Days Until Editing

     I did not do any progress on our film this week. My group and I decided that we would edit everything during the weekend. If it is too much work for us, we will disperse the work over the week. Our project is due on the 16th of April. We want to make sure we have time to overlook our project and see if we still need to make changes around the due date. If we left it all last minute and realized that we didn't like something, we wouldn't be able to have time to edit it.

    There isn't much to talk about my film progress for this week. Instead, I will elaborate more on our filming day. As I mentioned previously, it took 7 hours to record all our scenes. Nikaliyah and I contacted Perla at around 3-4 PM to let her know to film a scene that we conceptualized to replace our photo frame scenes. Due to us not being able to have printer access, we decided to change up the scenes. We originally planned for Perla and her sister to play the mom and the daughter in our movie, but since she is sick, we had to change that. Our replacements were my brother and Nikaliyah's brother, but we realized that they didn't look remotely close. We then decided that Perla would stay in her mom role, and my brother would play the older brother and Nikaliyah's brother would play the youngest. The mom had fallen ill and bedridden, and the older brother promises to hang out more with the youngest. Our original plans differ somewhat, but we had to make do with what we had. I hope that there isn't a big deduction on our final grade due to our changes. As mentioned in the previous blog, I said that I believe my teacher said that we weren't allowed to stray away too far away from our original plan. I don't believe that there will be deductions for that, but better safe than sorry. 

Post Filming

    Nikaliyah and I filmed our blog on Saturday, the 3rd of April. I arrived at her house at around 12 P.M. It took about 7 hours to complete our filming. My brother and I had snacks and dinner at her house. We took breaks often to not stress out her young brother. We learned that the hard way. We were around 2 hours into shooting when we realized we stressed out Nikaliyah's brother. Due to that, and also because the phone we were using to film needed to charge, we made sure to take breaks often.  

    We decided to film all our outside scenes before proceeding to the ones inside. We did this for efficiency because it would mean that we wouldn't have to keep going in and out constantly. We had to change some things in our film that differ from the storyboard. Instead of the photo frame in the first 3 storyboard pages, we decided to make a flashback scene instead because we did not have access to a printer. Some of the storyboard pages that we planned out had to be filmed differently due to things that were happening in her house that we could not control. I can't remember which scenes we had to differently, but there weren't that many. We made do with what we had, and I don't think it would have jeoproadized the film. I remember my teacher saying that we couldn't stray too far from our storyboard, and although we had to change some things, I hope we still stuck to that guideline. 

    It was fun filming with Nikaliyah and her brother. We contacted our group member, Perla, who unfortunately could not make it to filming due to her being sick, often. We would update her with what happened and asked if she could film a scene at her house for us. Although filming took all day and drained my energy for the rest of the evening, it was a fun experience. My group and I will commence editing this upcoming weekend. 

2 More Days Until Filming (Hopefully this time..)

     This Saturday, I will be filming with Nikaliyah. Perla is feeling much better, and I am glad that she and her family are recovering. We don't want to get sick, and we of course would want to follow CDC guidelines, so we are still not going to film with her. Our replacements for actors have been set. We replaced Perla and her sister with Nikaliyah's brother and my brother. We have switched the single mom into a single dad, as my brother is replacing Perla. We have also switched the role of the daughter to be a son, for Nikaliyah's brother is replacing Perla's sister. 

    Perla being sick sets back our plans, as we have to change them. I do not blame her for being sick, as it is something she could not handle. We have to change all of our changing locations. For the beginning scenes, we planned to do it at her house because she has a spacious closet. We changed that location to Nikaliyah's house. Since Nikaliyah lives far from Perla and I, we decided to change the park and school locations so we would not have to drive half an hour to the locations we set. Croissant Park Elementary School's location has now been changed to North Lauderdale Academy. Gore Betz Park's location has been changed to Hampton Pines Park. It would not have been sensible to keep the locations, and I believe it would not affect our filming greatly. 

    We plan to film this Saturday. Currently, we are checking in with our parents to see if we would have to film on the following Sunday. We would want to film everything on Saturday, but understand that we might not be able to and film on Sunday as well.