CCR Research (Question 1)

 Hi blog! For the Creative Critical Reflection, I was instantly excited because I knew what I knew I wanted to do the second I heard we got to be creative about our choice of presenting the information. I have always been a fan of the YouTube "Web's Most Searched Questions" by WIRED, and I had the idea to recreate one for one of my videos that I submit. The first question of the CCR is  "How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?" which means that it is related to the genre and representation of our project.

    In it, I will discuss how our story is based on the queer community, as all of our actors and production team are members of it, so we wanted to express that in the story, as well as how they come from different backgrounds, specifically Sam being from a Latin country, etc. We will also discuss the genre typically involving love interests, which we did use in our project, however we did not explicitly assign Kai a gender, so that could be a unique factor, as it is very rare to see a mainstream coming of age film connecting to the LGBTQ+ community. We also decided to steer away from having an objectively bad character, as Kai may be the antagonist, but we plan to humanize him later on in the film, and don't want the story to feel like any other coming of age film. I will also discuss how my story represents bullying, stereotypes, self discovery, and abusive relationships. I plan to do my own spin on the autocomplete interview, and I have been brainstorming ways how.

    Although that is a brief overview of what I plan to so with my first question of the CCR, I will upload my script for it later next week once I have finished filming, because as of right now, due to STN and several problems occurring, I do not feel that I can thoroughly answer the question with so much of the filming and official plot that we go with on production day still in the air.

    Here is an example of a WIRED video of Josh Hutcherson answering the "Web's Most Searched Questions" that I enjoyed and will take inspiration from when I film my own for the CCR to answer questions 1 and 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj-3ECizqmk&t=104s&pp=ygUcd2VicyBtb3N0IHNlYXJjaGVkIHF1ZXN0aW9ucw%3D%3Db 

Foley and Credits

     Hi blog! For the editing process, we needed to create some foley sounds, which we worked together to come up with ideas and decide on what ones we would need to film ourselves in contrast to the ones that we could easily find online. We had the idea to film us creating the sounds, however we did not have the time to get together with all of us, which was a major setback to what we wanted. So instead, Lee volunteered to film it herself to upload on our blogs!

    The ideas that we came up with were using a couch for drawing sounds and to imitate the chair sounds of Sam, although we may have to change that if we use a more metal based chair. We also used a pillow to represent Sam falling on the pavement when he almost gets hit by Kai's car. There were several others, but for the most part to save time we are going to use sounds from online. 

    We also needed to come up for what font we would use for the credits, which we decided would not actually represent our jobs because we all worked together for each job. So instead, we put all of our names down on two random jobs to fit the typical style of a real production. For the fonts we knew we wanted it to vaguely resemble handwriting, so here were the options that we did not choose.

    We ended up choosing one that was not cursive like the third option, cause we wanted it to be easily legible, not too thin like the second option so it would show up well on a busy background, and not as large as the first one because we wanted the actual video to be the main focus. The one that we did choose is the closest to handwriting, as it is not as perfect as typical Arial or Times New Roman font, which we definitely didn't want, as the coming of age genre is more relaxed and a kind of unserious genre.

Aurora's Room Design

    Hi blog! When we filmed Aurora's scenes, we needed to officially set up and design her room the way that we had planned, so here is how that went. As we showed in the mood board and the character description, Aurora is really into photography, which we expressed in her bedroom. We displayed several cameras like a Polaroid camera, Lego camera, small handheld camera, etc. on her nightstand, which all three of us there to film worked together to acquire, as we each owned a camera or two. Here is how that turned out!

    Since her main interest is photography, we asked the actress of Aurora (Lee) to bring some printed photos of her and her friends to Sofia's house so we could stage the room. She brought polaroid photos, photo booth strips, baby photos, family photos, etc. It looked really good once we had set it up! Luckily for you, we filmed the whole process of setting it up prior to filming!

    Although the video does most of the explaining on how we set up the room, it is also important to mention that it looks simple, but it took a decent amount of the time we spent to take down the decor in Sofia's room and replace it, and vice versa at the end. But it was worth it to be able to ensure every detail will match our storyline and a huge part of the production is finished!

Aurora's Scenes!

     Hi blog! So, we filmed more this week with Madison and Sofia back in town! However, Madison got extremely sick and Sam was busy, so we were left to film Aurora (Lee)'s scenes. It went extremely smooth and we got everything we needed done in about an hour. We filmed at Sofia's house, as we needed a location that had a window facing the road. We took many behind the scenes photos and videos as well as began editing the clips together. I will explain more about the set decoration in another post, but here are some behind the scenes clips!

    To edit, we used Adobe Premiere Pro, which we have access to through our school production program, and it worked super smooth, as we have practiced using it earlier in the year on projects like the OWF, Music Marketing, and Sound projects.

We used a T7i Canon camera to film, which we didn't have a single problem with, so we will probably continue using that one for the rest of the project to keep consistent quality throughout. We are lucky enough to have access to very good equipment.

    The clips came out great and we are really excited about how it is coming so far! It has been a real struggle finding time for all 4 of us to meet up, as we all are extremely busy, however we were grateful to be able to get the majority of us together on one day with good weather. We are a little behind on our schedule for this reason, but we will hopefully be finished filming by the end of this week to focus on our CCR. 

Getting filming started

    Hi blog! As I mentioned in my last post, Madison and Sofia had to leave for STN this week, but earlier before they had to leave for their trip, we filmed some inserts of the mustang! Here are some behind the scenes photos we took!

    This process was really easy, but it still allowed us to get started on something in the mean time, so that when the two of them return from their trip, we will not be starting from a blank slate of having absolutely no footage. I am a little bummed that we couldn't film much at all this week, because it was planned to get the majority of it done by now, but we gotta roll with the punches.

    However, I am confident in my team and I's ability to stay on time during this next coming week, since we work so well together and do not hinder our creativity when we are together. Since the mustang is such a big part of Kai's character, we wanted to get an immense amount of clips to insert later on, because the car scene is the very first thing that the audience will see appear on the screen.

    We got our hands on a camera to use before CBTV needed them all back for the Tampa trip, which was great because filming on such good quality equipment will allow our film to truly shine more than it would if we were to use a normal iPhone camera.

    Alright blog, that's it from me for this week! I can't wait to keep you updated and I am pretty happy with where we are so far in our production process as of week 5!

Setbacks

     Hi blog! Soooo... my group and I reached a problem, and its a major one. So as I have mentioned, my group is insanely talented when it comes to editing and producing films in general, from their experience in our school's film club CBTV. But something that comes with the territory of having such talented and busy people in group is them having to share their time with other activities. Two of my group members, Sofia and Madison were selected to go compete in Tampa for STN (student television network), which is a national competition for young filmmakers, and is a huge accomplishment for them. 

    The problem with this is that going to this competition means that our scheduled filming week overlaps with the week that they have to leave. Lee and I planned to work on the project just the two of us while they were gone, but since STN is such a big event, we were unable to check out the professional equipment that we planned on using. Instead, we spent the beginning of the week filming some inserts of the mustang, since it was a quite easy task, as well as we spent this week planning immensely, as the better plan you have going into something, the better it will turn out.

    Despite these problems setting back our plans, Lee and I also began planning for our Creative Critical Reflection (CCR) and we are quite excited to really start working on it upon Madison and Sofia's return. Until next time!

Casting

     Hi blog! For the casting of our film opening, we opted mainly for people who we knew really well because it was a more reliable option than for example asking the drama club at our school. We made this choice, and ended up having 2/3 of our characters be people in our group. Those characters being Lee and Madison, playing Aurora and Kai. We asked a friend to play Sam, who we got the name of from the actual person we asked, since we felt like their name Sam fit the character really well in and of itself, however in the comic, Sam goes by the name "Atticus", since we wanted a more mythical sounding name for the fantasy world that Sam is so obsessed with.

    Sam: We went with this person for our character since he has very surface level "nerd" features such as the dark hair, that can still be stylized to be a more objectively attractive look at the end of the film. Sam also genuinely enjoys acting in people's pieces, since he is in CBTV (Cypress Bay Television), and is good at it as well!

Aurora-Lee: We chose Lee to play the character of Aurora because she has a naturally fun and different look, especially with her hair being dyed, as it can be either grungy or quirky, which are the two sides of Aurora's character. Lee also has a very unique style that we thought would work very well with Aurora as a whole.

Kai-Madison: Finally, we selected Madison to portray Kai because of their hairstyle and overall look that could easily fit the "bad boy" aesthetic. Madison is a very sweet person, despite Kai's character, but they enjoy the acting part of production, and they definitely will be able to present Kai's character in their own unique way, aince they have such a genuine enjoyment for acting in different roles.