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!

CCR Question 3

 The third question we have to answer for our CCR is: How did your production skills develop throughout this project? Here's the script I wrote for this part of the question. 

Looking back, I feel like my production skills have improved so much with this project because it has truly made me realize just how much work goes into creating a production and how everything has to be planned down to the smallest details, such as lighting, angles, sound, and just everything contributing to the film, or else it will take so much longer and it won't flow as smoothly. The overall planning for this film went pretty well I would say because I remember I came up with the idea when I was trying to fall asleep one day, and from there it just clicked and it was really easy for me to develop a storyboard and an overall plot. Once I started seeing visuals of what I wanted my story to look like in terms of cast, set, and everything, I got really excited because what I had in mind was something I knew I could learn to develop into an amazing film opening and I was starting to see it come together. For our casting, we knew immediately who we wanted Layla to be played by, but it took us a little longer to find the cast for the parents, which ended up being my sister’s boyfriend and his mom. Our first day of filming went really well because I had a shot list of everything I knew I had to capture, and we had a lot of fun trying out different shots and angles to see how everything looked and find the best shot. One of our friends lent us his tripod so we could stabilize our shots but even with that, once I looked back at the shots when editing, some of them came out shaky so I had to re-record like 2 or 3 shots. On our planned second day of filming, the sunset was beautiful which was exactly how we wanted it, to kind of juxtapose all the emotions going on in that house but unfortunately our actress had a last minute emergency so we had to reschedule, but once we did film it went so fast and smoothly. Sadly, the day was very cloudy so we had no pretty sunset but we had to work with what we had because it’s something that was out of our control. I really feel like the part where the growth really came in for me was with editing. I had to do a lot of research on how to use a lot of things on Premiere Pro, like I mentioned earlier, that I didn't need in past projects like the Music Marketing Project or the One Word Film. I feel like towards the end of my editing process, I was doing it with more ease and I felt so much more comfortable with my abilities. However, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t struggle because I definitely did when it came to exporting the movie. It was so frustrating because everything was getting overwashed with white and it just looked so wrong, but I managed to fix it after research, trial, and error. Before taking this class, I had absolutely no experience at all with filming or editing a production like this, but I believe that this project is going to showcase the best I could have done with the editing, but I also believe that I still have so much more space for improvement because I’m just starting and I still have so much to learn and so many opportunities. With this film, I really feel like I was able to grow and learn as a filmmaker, especially as an editor and it really has opened my eyes to potentially taking this up as a career later in life.

Group Meeting #2

     We had our second group meeting today! It was really interesting hearing and seeing everyone's ideas and how they've managed to bring their stories to life. One of the group members showed us his whole opening because his group was done with editing and I thought it was really well done! We all told him to try to fix the colors a little bit because it was different in some clips which made it look a little off but apart from that it was really good. Another group member told us all about how his schedule is not going as planned because he has had to push back a lot of stuff and he's kinda struggling so we all tried to help him work around it. We all talked about our possible ideas for CCRs and helped each other with inspiration overall. 

    I didn't have my laptop with me so I couldn't show what i had edited so far but I explained my idea and they helped me think and decide in which shot it would be best for me to put the title of my film.

    This group meeting made me realize that everyone is working on different timelines and everyone's at a different place, but it was really interesting hearing all the possible ideas that one could come up with for the film and I really enjoy hearing them talk about their film because the passion in their voice just makes it so much better.

 

CCR Question 2

 So the second question we have to answer for our Creative Critical Reflection is: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text? Here's the script I wrote for this one, and it is mean to follow after the first question.

Isa: I’m sure we all will! Speaking of the viewers, I’m curious, who is your target audience?

Gaby: My target audience is teens and young adults, and this age group craves relatable stories that reflect themselves and what they’re living through. They don’t want to see the typical stereotypes that are often pressed on to them, I wanted them to feel seen when they watch my film. 

Isa: And how do you plan on distributing your film as a new filmmaker? 

Gaby: I was thinking about self-distributing my film on YouTube and Vimeo as a start and also submit it to film festivals such as the National Film Festival for Talented Youth and the Miami Film Festival. I’m hoping this will make my film be seen by many people and hopefully make me grow as a filmmaker. 

Isa: I’m sure it will. And I can speak for all of us when I say that we’re so excited to see it. Thank you for being here today to share all about your new film!

Gaby: Thank you so much for having me!

Isa: Tune in to next week’s episode to hear more about new sights coming soon!

Finally Finished Filming!

    We were finally able to finish filming today after having to change our schedules because of the complication we had on Friday. Our original idea was to film with a sunset in the background to act as a kind of contrast from Layla's situation, but unfortunately it was reallyyyyy cloudy today and it was kind of drizzling so the weather wasn't what we planned it to be but we managed to work around it and thought it could be good for our film if we saw it in a positive way. We thought about it and thought about how the cloudy ugly weather could be a reflection of Layla's feelings and all the emotions that are in that house.    

    We were able to finish filming fairly quickly since we already had all the shots planned ahead of time. We filmed I think one of the shots that I had the most fun with because we wanted to film her riding her bike towards the camera but while the camera was also moving, so we asked my mom if she could drive the car and me and my partner where in the trunk of the car filming while moving. I'm so excited to get to editing this part in and see how the whole thing looks put together!

Starting My CCR!!

    Since I'm almost done with the whole film, it's time to start planning for my Creative Critical Reflection! I'm planing on doing a podcast for questions 1 and 2 and a director's commentary for questions 3 and 4. 

The first question we are meant to answer for the CCR is: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? Here's the script I wrote to answer this question:

Isa: Hello! Welcome back to another episode of The Film (In)sights in which we tell YOU which new sights are coming soon. I'm Isa and today I have a very special guest with me, the filmmaker of the remarkable new film, Am I To Blame. Welcome Gabriela Espitia!  

Gaby: Hi! Thank you so much for having me! 

Isa: Yeah no of course, we are so glad you found time to be here cause I know it gets busy around these times.

Gaby: Yeah it really does, but no matter how busy I get, I’m always so happy to talk about something I put so much time and effort on. 

Isa: I’m so glad to hear that, but before we dive [music fades in] in I just want to thank Uniting Families for sponsoring this episode. They are offering a 20% discount of the original price of their family counseling. Use the code FILM INSIGHTS20 (all capitals) when you go to make an appointment. This can truly help with any obstacles your family encounters. [music fades out] Alright now tell me, your film Am I To Blame is a coming of age, am I right about that?

Gaby: You sure are. 

Isa: So how did you follow the conventions of this widespread genre? Because there’s a lottt of boxes to fill.

Gaby: Yeah so coming of age films include like the stereotypical characters like the jock, the IT girl, the nerd, and the outcast to name a few. But I decided to stir away from that a little and focus more on self growth and development of my main character, Layla, instead of following more common tropes such as first love or friendships and show her journey as she is coping with the death of her little brother, Liam, while having no support herself since her parents are always arguing causing her to turn to alcohol as her only coping mechanism. It’s very common for these films to open with a scene in which a voiceover is used to introduce the main character and what they’re going through, but I had minimal dialogue as I wanted to let visual storytelling carry all the emotions throughout the opening scene. 

Isa: So your film isn’t going to be like other coming of age films? That sounds exciting! I can’t wait to watch it. 

Gaby: Thank you!

Isa: In regard to your main character, ….Layla right?

Gaby: Yea Layla

Isa: Ok so how does she represent a social group or how will people connect with her?

Gaby: I think a really important part of the film that shows how teenagers are is when she takes out the alcohol from her drawer because it is very representative of how teens tend to hide a lot of what they do when they know they shouldn't be doing it or it's not right. My overall idea with Layla was to make her as relatable as possible to people who are struggling with their mental health and going through alcohol abuse and addiction who feel like they are alone with no support. It could also even connect with someone struggling with suicidal thoughts, as they might feel connected to Liam even if he isn’t shown in screen, he is still such an important character in my film because the whole story basically revolves around what happened to him. 

Isa: So we know that Liam committed suicide, but does the film ever explain what exactly it is that happened to him?

Gaby: That’s a great question actually. So what I did with Liam’s story is that I incorporated the Narrative Codes theory by Roland Barthes, specifically the Enigma Code, which holds information from the viewer to develop mystery and leave a plot point unexplained. I did this because personally, I really enjoy it when films don’t explain everything and they leave some parts for the viewers to make an image of what could have happened based on what they see in the film. 

Isa: That sounds really interesting. I can tell that you put a lot of thought into this film.

Gaby: Yea I really put my best work towards creating it and I really hope the viewers will enjoy it like I do.

Isa: I’m sure we all will!

Major Setback

    So our plan was to finish filming on Friday but that didn't exactly go as planned..... We ran into a problem. The day was going just fine. Me and my partner had already gotten the bike down from the rack at my house and we were ready to film, we just needed our actress to get here. Once she got here, we parked the cars two houses down from mine because we needed one of the garage spaces to be open, but when we were parking, our actress got a call from her mom that she needed to go rescue her because her car wasn't turning on. So we couldn't end up filming that day because even if she went to get her mom and then come back to film, it would already be too dark to film since we wanted to film with a sunset. It was such a bummer because the sunset was so pretty on Friday and it would have been amazing to film with those colors but it wasn't anyones fault. We had to rearrange our schedule and since my partner was busy during the weekend, we are scheduling to film on Monday at 7 pm. 

This is a picture of what the sunset looked like on Friday so you can feel my pain: 

Text In Our Film

    Today, I focused on creating our production logo and finding possible fonts for the title of our film and the credits we will include throughout the opening. 

    For the production logo, I used Canva since I am very familiar and comfortable with how it works and I started playing around with templates and changing them to fit what I had in my head. I knew I wanted a dark background, preferably black, with white, bold and simple letters. I thought of the name D&G Productions because me and my partners initials are that but I am still not 100% convinced with it but for now it'll do until we come up with a better more creative one. I've never used Canva for the purpose of having it in a video so I started looking around and saw that I could animate the text so I grouped all the elements of the logo together and I started seeing which animation could work for the purpose of our logo. I ended up choosing a simple one because I didn't want it to be all over the place so I chose the "Baseline" animation which just brings in the logo from the bottom to the center. 

    For the fonts, I searched for ideas on Google Fonts and came across this one that I'm writing with right now. The name is Caveat and as soon as I saw it I knew this would be the one to use because I wanted a kind of handwriting looking font to make it seem like Layla's handwriting and give it some authenticity. I downloaded the font to my laptop and I opened Premiere Pro so I could see how it looked with the overall edited part that I have already and once I saw it, I knew this was going to be the one. As I'm writing this I also just realized that I never said what the name of the film was going to be here. We decided the name of our film would be Am I To Blame? because it helps capture the inner conflict that Layla would be having and grief from the lost of her little brother. Hearing her mom constantly tell her dad that it was his fault that Liam was gone eventually made Layla wonder if maybe she had also contributed to it, because what if she wasn't there for Liam enough? 

edit edit and more edit

     Why is editing so fun but soooooo time consuming?????? It's my favorite part of this whole process but it takes up so much of my time and energy. I spent almost my whole day today just editing everything together and I finished just 10 minutes ago. I came across some obstacles but I was able to learn and move forward.

    Before starting this class, I had absolutely no idea how to use Premiere Pro so I'm still learning how to use everything. I had to search up how to use and how to do a lottt of things, such as how to stabilize a video, how to add a zoom in, how to slowly increase the volume, what the razor tool was and how to fade out audio. I managed to learn a lot throughout this whole editing process and it made me love it even more once I started understand how more things worked. The picture to the left is what I had done today at like 6 pm and I was far from being done with that part. Once I finally finished, I realized that we had definitely overshot because I noticed I was at 1 minute and 45 seconds which was a big uhoh since we still have like half of the opening to film, so I had to spend another hour or so cutting down some clips and deleting some, but I eventually managed to get it to 1 minute and around 20 seconds, which I think should work with the other part because it shouldn't be too long.   

Smertimb Graphics. (2024, February 15). How to Stabilize Shaky Video in Premiere Pro | Stabilize Video [Video]. YouTube.                         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XdvxwqypxQ 

Adobe Made Simple. (2023, January 25). How to Add A Basic Zoom IN And OUT In Premiere Pro [Video]. YouTube.                                 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgf5JQQVGLw

CrumplePop. (2022, September 13). How to Change Audio Level in Premiere Pro: Adjusting Volume Guide [Video]. YouTube.                     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjTduvTpu2o

chinfat. (2024, May 21). The Tool Bar - The Razor Tool - Learning Premiere Pro 2024 - Episode 30 [Video]. YouTube.                                 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlo9LKL7IPU&t=11s

FILMING DAY 1

     IT'S FINALLY HERE! WE'RE FINALLY FILMING TODAY! I've been waiting for this day from the moment I came up with the idea and I can finally turn it into real life today. 

    We finished setting up and then got straight to filming as soon as our actress got to the set (and maybe after eating a pizza since we needed a pizza box for the film). We followed our storyboard to keep track of the shots we wanted and in what order. 

    We managed to film every shot we needed for the part where Layla is in her room. One shot that we struggled with a lot was the one where we show the picture of Layla and Liam (her brother) because we couldn't get the light to look right without it reflecting off the glass, but we managed to get it how we wanted after a lot of trial and error with our phone flash lights. Here's how it came out: 

I was overall really proud of this specific shot we got of Layla drinking: 

Here's a time lapse video of us working on a part of the filming process: 

    Overall, I had so much fun filming this because we managed to laugh and also get the work done and I know that once I start editing it will come out just like I wanted.