It's Finally Here!

Film Opening: 

Am I To Blame?

CCR 1:

The Film (In)sights - Episode 17 

CCR 2: 

From A Director’s Lens

Final Reflection

    I can’t believe this project has come to an end. This has truly been my favorite project that I have ever made in my whole 11 years of school because it has shown me what I love to do. There were so many laughs and smiles while creating this project but it also had a lot of tears, frustration and stress. I remember whenever I asked someone about this class they would always mention how time consuming this project was and I always thought they were exaggerating but now I see that they really weren't because this project took so much time and effort and it taught me how to manage my time more wisely, how to be patient, and that if I put my everything into something, that the results will be amazing.  

    I'm truly so so proud and happy with how the project came out. I got really emotional the first time I watched the whole thing once I finished editing it because I worked so hard on it and seeing it complete just overwhelmed me with joy.  

    I really hope that when you watch my film opening that you can see how much thought and effort and time I put into it and that you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Creating My Director’s Commentary

    For the second part of my CCR I decided to make a director's commentary. 

    I started by thinking of a name for it and making a logo for it to show it on the screen as the intro music sounds. I decided to call it "From A Director's Lens" and it would be like a channel in which many directors are featured to talk about their films. This time, I only made one logo and I ended up liking the simplicity of it so I decided to stick with it.

    For the actual production process, I read my script a lot so I knew what I wanted to say because I wanted to film it all in one go, but I also had a teleprompter kind of as a safety net incase I forgot what I was going to say. Once again, I managed to get all the recording and editing done in one day, and the editing for this one was easier than the podcast. I think it was because the podcast was multiple audio clips and I had to cut them to where it didn't sound weird when it transitioned, and for this one it was just one straight audio clip. Here's a screenshot of my timeline when I finished editing. 

Creating the Podcast

     For my Creative Critical Reflection, I decided to do a podcast to answer questions 1 and 2. 

    I started by think of a name for my podcast and making a logo for it to show it on the screen while the podcast plays. I decided to call it "The Film (In)sights" and it would be a podcast that frequently has filmmakers featured talking about their new and upcoming films. I made one logo and I looked at it and I thought it was too simple and I knew I could do better. So I made another one but the colors were too confusing and idk there was something off about it that didn't convince me. Then I tried again and I saw the finished product and it instantly clicked, I knew that was the one. Once I finished it, I animated it and made the wheel kinda like spin. Here's all three of the logos I made, the one to the right is the one I ended up using. 

  

    For the actual production process, I looked over my script one more time to see if I needed to change or add anything. I asked my sister to host it for me and be my interviewer and she said yes. The whole process was so entertaining and funny because every time she tried to talk she would just end up laughing, so it took us much longer than expected but in the end I managed to get every part recorded as well as edited all in one day. It was fairly easy to edit since it was just clips in order that were following a script and all I needed to do was adjust them and add some background music. Here's a screenshot of my timeline when I finished editing. 

    Also something I realized while I was editing the audio clips is how alike me and my sister sound, because at one part I got confused even myself because I didn't even hear the change in voice from one clip to another. 

FINALLY FINISHED EDITINGGG

    I can’t believe I’m finally done editing the whole film opening. This has been such a rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish because I had a lot of challenges that I had to overcome. Today, when I was trying to export the video I almost had a breakdown because whenever I exported it, the light would get messed up when there was a lot of white and it like washed everything out and it looked so bad and you couldn't even see the credits and I couldn’t find a way to fix it. I watched videos, I read articles, I spent so much time trying to fix it but nothing would work. So what I ended up doing was that I adjusted the light and coloring of every clip that would get messed up and I prayed it would work, and after so much trial and error IT EVENTUALLY DID! Here’s an example of what it looked before once exported and how I managed to fix it: 

 

    I’ve put so much effort and time into this and I’m so happy with how the end result turned out. I’m so proud of the way I was able to put all the clips and audio together to make this into a great production and I can’t wait for you guys to see it! 

CCR Question 4

The fourth question of our CCR is: How did you integrate technologies -software, hardware and online - in this project? I plan on answering this question before question 3 because I really want question 3 to be last. Here's my script for this part:

Hello, I’m Gabriela Espitia, the filmmaker of the new coming of age film Am I To Blame, and I’m here to talk all about it. So how did I even make my film? Let’s dive into it. I integrated a lot of different technologies such as software, hardware and online, throughout the whole production process in order to achieve the best product.  The main software I used was Adobe Premiere Pro for editing everything together, and I had a lottt to learn such as how to fade out the sound, or how to cut audio to give the effect of turning up to volume, how to zoom into a shot, how to stabilize a shot, and the list goes on and on. So I spent a lot of time learning as I went about editing it. However, I was familiar with two other softwares that I used for this film: Canva and Notability. I used Canva to help me design the production logo as well as the logo for the podcast. Although I was already very familiar with it, I still had to look up how to do some things like how to increase the time that an animation lasts. For Notability, I simply used it to create my storyboard as I thought it would be easier to draw it by hand AND online so that I would have the ability to draw Layla just once and then copy and paste her wherever I needed her because I’m not the bestttt at drawing people. For hardware technologies, we used my phone to film since we had no access to a camera, but the quality of the shots were still very good. We also used it to record the argument among the parents and the whole podcast. For lighting, we used a lamp that my mom had that could change colors and in some shots, like the one where we show the picture frame of Layla and Liam, we had to play with our phone's flashlights to help the picture actually be seen, but without having the light reflect off of it. In regards to online technologies, I watched many YouTube videos to help me understand how to do a lot of the editing. And of course I used Blogger almost every day to track my progress throughout this whole production! 

more editinggg

    I was on my way to Orlando so I used the time to continue editing my film. We had a little complication with the cast for the parents since we noticed that we would not be able to fit that in the two minutes of the film. We decided that we could just do a voiceover and we found the perfect part in which we could use it and it worked perfectly with the music because it was part where the music was lower. Since we didn't need the actual faces of the parents anymore, I asked my sister and her boyfriend if they could read our script and act like the parents and her boyfriend said yes immediately but my sister was not too hyped about it because she is a terrible actress. In the end, her boyfriend and his mom ended up doing it and I'm really happy with how it came out.     

    I managed to edit in the whole bike scene along with the audio of the parents arguing and it made it to 2 minutes and 25 seconds so I started cutting down a few things until I managed to get it to the 2 minutes. One of the biggest challenges I had while editing the sound after I cut some clips down was timing the part where Layla turns the music up to actually make it seem like she turned it up, but I got it eventually and I think it came out pretty well. Now I have my whole timeline ready and all I'm missing is adding all the credits in and a few more sound effects but that won't be bad at all.

    Watching the whole thing back I'm so happy with how it's coming out and I'm so excited to show you!