This is where we must part...

As I say my last goodbyes, I want to thank everyone and anyone who to the time to actually read any of my blogs, even if it was just one. I really feel like I poured my heart into this project and I want to take you guys even further  behind the scenes of what it took to actually build this project form the ground up. I leave you guys with my final thoughts, I hope you enjoy and thank you for sticking with me all the way to the end!

My CCR......

Without further ado.....Love Me

I can't believe that today is the day that the whole world will finally be exposed to our film opening. I think I've said all that I need to say throughout all my blogs, so I will keep this one short and sweet and get right to the point. I do want to once again thank everybody who was apart of this process; Cambridge for giving me the opportunity, our teacher for being extremely patient with us and helping us through all of our doubts, Isabella’s family that without them we would have never been able to film this, and most importantly Isabella for being the best partner that I could have ever asked for. I really hope that you enjoy our film opening and that you can see all the hard work and dedication that we poured it into this project. Without further ado, I present to you Love Me.

Reflection, reflection, reflection..... Week 9 pt2

Today I want to reflect on my development through this portfolio and the ultimate completion of the project. I first started this project in February of this year, a completely different person than I am now. When you compare the original visions, ideas, and thoughts that I had for this project to the ones that I ultimately ended up with, the changes and development are major. I think the biggest change was the fact that I ended up working with a partner. When I first decided that I was going to work alone on this portfolio, it was very early on in the school year And I really didn't know much about media and all got filming and entails. We were still learning at that moment and I really thought that the best route for me was to work alone. I thought working and partners meant complicating things and having to deal with your partner maybe not liking your ideas and the project not coming out how you wanted it to come out. However months later when we finally got to start the project Week 1 of the project I knew that I was weighing over my head and I was very scared that I actually might not be able to do the project. It was when our teacher told us that we could change our groups that I realized that working with a partner wasn't going to complicate things, it was going to make them easier. I was scared that working with a partner I wasn't going to be able to fully create my vision, but I realized that the whole point of working with someone was for them to challenge your ideas and add more to them. Working with a partner was going to allow my creativity to grow as they gave their ideas and their visions. This is when me and my partner Isabella decided to come together and work as a group on this project. From here on creating the actual concept of our film opening was actually very easy for us. We are very much alike, we really enjoy the same type of movies and we really like the same things, so for us, we got the concept of our movie almost immediately after sitting down. I remember the day that we decided to work together, we got up and told the teacher that we were going to work together, sat back down and probably 20 minutes later we had a very vague concept for our movie. This was very exciting for me because it proved that working with a partner doesn't hold you back, rather it flourishes your creativity and makes for a much better idea. I remember when I wrote the blog about me and Isabella deciding to work together it was the first blog of the second week. By the third blog of the second week, we were already having auditions for our characters and creating a costume design concept. Things started to move very quickly for us as the excitement grew and things started to look concrete on paper. However as you may know from my previous blogs the whole process of creating this portfolio project was very much a roller coaster. When we had our good moments we felt like we were on top of the world and we would just go up and up, but just like a rollercoaster, that drop would hit us out of nowhere and very unexpectedly and all of a sudden things would start to go wrong on left and right. I think that I have focused a lot of my blogs to talk about everything that went wrong and all the changes that we have to make, therefore I really do not want to focus this blog on the stop backs, rather just on our development. I think the best moment for us was when I wrote the script and took it back to Isabella to show her what I had created. This was a great moment for us because we had had a lot of things go wrong and we were feeling very unmotivated so, to have this very important piece of the project be done was really great for us. Once we finalized our script things started to look up again. With the finalization of our script came the story board and with that we were able to start filming. To be honest, for me filming time took a lot longer than I thought it would. Because we had everything so planned out and we had every single shot written down, I really thought that we would be able to go in there and get all the filming done in maybe three to four days. Obviously this did not happen. It was nobody's fault, there were just a lot of things going on in our lives where we had to halt production and because our filming location was inIsabella’s house with and the actors being her family, there was really no way that I could do anything to help with the filming in this given situation.Once we were able to deal with everything else that was going on and we could purely focus on this project, we were able to get filming and editing done within the span of a week and a half. As soon as we got done with filming, the world got hit with COVID-19. As devastating as this whole situation is, having to be quarantined didn't really affect our production that much. Yes, it was very inconvenient because it is one thing to text or call your partner so that you can discuss the project but it is another to actually be able to sit down with them in real life and show them physically the changes and improvements that you want to make. For us, that was the main problem of not being able to sit down next to one another so that we can edit the film in a way that we were both happy with. What we ended up doing was just sending the edited film back and forth to each other. Isabella would send me the edited version of the film and then I would text her with any changes or adjustments that I wanted to make and then she would send me the film again re-edited and so on and so on. This did put us further behind in our schedule, but with this whole situation we were told that Cambridge would extend our deadline, so it worked out in the end. To recap, once Isabella and I got a concrete idea of the storyline that we wanted for our film we didn't really make any changes. Throughout this whole process the storyline, concept, and plot of the movie always remain the same. The only changes that we had to make, dealt with the technical aspects of the production for example, we had to find another song that worked with our film because we didn't get permission from the record company that owned the original song so we weren't able to use it. There were very little things that we're going wrong but once when you added them all up, it became frustrating and emotional so that's where I think the feeling of being unmotivated and not happy with the whole situation started. All in all, I will always say that this project definitely changed me. It made me grow and taught me that I am capable of a lot more than I ever thought I would be. I am proud of what we were able to produce and can't wait to show the world.

The end is near. Week 9 pt 1

This is a very bitter sweet and emotional moment for me, I really can't believe that we are finally here. This is bittersweet because I am extremely happy that I was able to get to this point and actually finish the entirety of the project but I'm pretty sad because this is the last project that I will be doing for a high school class so it's emotional because it's over. If you didn't know, today was the day that we were actually supposed to submit and finish this project but obviously things have changed and Cambridge has altered the due date for April 12th, that means that next Monday I will be submitting my project. When we found out that Cambridge had extended our due date I actually tried to stay within my schedule timeline meaning that I would be finished by April 6th. The reason that I did this was because I had worked really hard on the schedule and I knew that if I were to change it now and extend or prolong my filming days it was just going to be harder for me later on, that means that last weekend all I did was work on my CCR. I know I already uploaded 3 blogs last weekend all about what I did and how the process went about but, to break it down even further I'm going to explain what each filming day entailed. Friday was when I started working on the CCR. I already had the idea of what I wanted to do but I hadn't written a script yet or figured out how and where I was going to film, so I still had a lot to figure out. I dedicated this day to finding a location in my house where I could sit down and film this video while still having good lighting and have a place where I could put my phone. Like I explained on my blog on Friday, I figured out that the best location for filming this was going to be my in living room. I propped my phone using a coffee table and actually used the floor instead of a table for the drawings. Next I had to figure out a system that worked for me when filming. I had never filmed a video like this before so I had to figure out what worked and what didn't. I finally found a good system of filming and editing that worked for me and by the end of Friday I think I had a good 30 seconds of edited film. On Saturday I had set a schedule for myself so that I can work as efficiently as possible. Per my schedule, by the end of Saturday I have to produce at least five minutes of edited film. While 5 minutes sounds like nothing this took me the whole entire day. Last but not least, Sunday I had scheduled myself to work on the last 5 minutes of the CCR. I again spent the whole entire day working on the video. By the end of Sunday I had finished the CCR right on schedule. If you didn't see the blog post that I did on Sunday, one of the things that I was really worried about for the CCR was not being able to stay within 10 minutes but, much to my surprise, I was able to get my CCR to be 10 minutes and 26 seconds. Right when I finished, I was looking back through the footage and making sure that everything was correct which allowed me to really reflect on the whole entire process, I know that I have just created a whole video where I literally only reflect on the process but, this just made me realize how proud I am of myself. When I was looking back I realized that at the beginning I was really really scared, even just at the beginning of filming my CCR, I kept on doubting myself and kept telling myself that I wasn't going to be able to do it but here we are now with a fully finished film opening and CCR. Even though it may not be the best thing that has ever been produced, I'm simply proud that I was able to step out of my comfort zone and try something new. The countdown has really started now, I am just two blogs away from posting our film opening and I am very excited and nervous at the same time. I didn't think that this project could be so emotional but for some reason it is, maybe it’s the quarantine, or maybe it's the fact that I am graduating high school in 45 days and I just finished the last project that I ever do for a high school class, who knows. I would like to post a few seconds of what my CCR looks like and give you guys a sneak peak, so I will try to do this in this blog. I also want to leave you with a song that really captivates the vibe of what I am feeling right now. As always, thank you for listening and letting me express my emotions. I will see you on my next blog!

                                

                               

Week 8 pt3

Welcome back to my blog! I am very excited to write this blog because after a long day of filming it is really nice and forwarding to be able to talk about all the progress that I made yesterday. Yesterday,  Saturday April 4th, I spent my day writing the script for my CCR, filming, editing, RI filming, re editing, and doing voice overs. This was obviously super stressful and exhausting but I'm very proud of myself for what I'm producing and what I've been able to create. Again I don't want to make this blog go on forever so I am going to go straight into my concerns.

Concern number one:

This is really my number one concern and what is kind of boring me at the moment. I am currently in minute 6 of my CCR and have barely just started talking about my project. The Way I Am structuring the CCR for those of you who didn't see my last blog is by starting off with an introduction that includes a backstory of how I was originally supposed to work alone and how I went about choosing a genre, then I start talking about deciding to work with the partner which goes into question 1, 2, 3, and 4. in between these questions however there's obviously a lot of information that needs to be included within the CCR. So I'm really worried that I'm not going to be able to get everything done within 10 minutes. what I decided to do was to keep on filming and working the way that I am until I finish the whole CCR and then go back and cut irrelevant things that take away from the important parts of the CCR. One of my teachers always said that it is better to be over The word or time limit than under, meaning that it is easier to go back and cut things that are not important then have to go back in at a lot of information.

Concern number two:

My second concern is about the overall look of the CCR. I'm really passionate about this idea of drawing out my CCR and being able to draw the whole entire process of it however me not being a great artist or not having the best calligraphy ever slows me down a lot. I'm really concerned that the whole video will end up looking messy but I'm trying my best to make everything look pretty and nice. I have had to go back several times and redo a lot of the drawings to make them better or understandable, So I am trying it is just taking me a lot longer than I would have expected. I really hope that in the end this looks like I thought it would in my head just because one, like I said, I am really passionate about this and two, I'm not going to have enough time to film a whole entire new CCR and edit that one by the due date of this project. Today is Sunday and the project is due April 12th by next Monday, so I don't have a lot of time left. I'm not worried that I'm not going to get everything done, I am just worried that if by the end as me filming this video I'm not completely happy with how it looks, I'm going to have to turn that in regardless.

Regardless of this I am going to try to keep my head up and try to keep on working as hard as I can to produce something that I really like and I am proud of. This is my first time ever filming a video like this and editing such video so I am learning as I go. I will keep you updated on how my CCR is getting along and such, but next week will be the last week that I post updating blogs. This means that next week I will post a couple more blogs updating you guys on the finalization of my CCR and the final last minute changes that I'm going to be making because come Monday April 12th, I will be posting the whole entire project on my blog including my CCR and my film opening. I'm really nervous about this because, like I say and every single one of my blogs, we have worked really hard for this and we have struggled a lot so just I really hope that this turns out to be successful. I don't know why I am so emotional while writing this blog -I am not kidding when I say I cried through the entirety of the blog- but for now I will leave you with this, like always thank you so much for listening and I will see you in a couple of days.

Week 8 pt2

Hello guys! I am back and I am so excited to tell you guys about my progress with the CCR. Last post I talked about the fact that we finished the film opening and I discussed some changes that we made to the final cut so if you missed that post check it out and then come back to this one. now on to where you actually came to hear about. I have actually started filming my CCR (finally) and I can't tell you how excited I am about how it's coming out. Last week in my three blog Saga I talked about the fact that I had some concerns with the lighting and where I was going to put my camera in order to fill my CCR but yesterday I actually figured out the perfect spot where I can put the ring light and place my phone. but, to give this blog some structure for a change I want to focus on three main things in this blog. 1.How I'm going to actually film my CCR ( lights, Camera, location), 2.The content of the CCR, 3.The structure of the CCR.


How I'm going to film my CCR:

So in one of my blogs I discussed the fact that I had no tripod to put my phone in and I obviously can't leave my house to buy one. I had considered ordering one from Amazon and possibly using that but, because we're in the middle of a worldwide pandemic Amazon Prime is only available for essential materials and I'm pretty sure a tripod is not essential. The delivering dates for those would be for Mid April slash mid-may So that obviously was not going to work for me. I searched my house high and low for things that would prompt my phone at the perfect angle where I would be able to draw and write and I can very happily say that I found just the right thing. I realized. It would be a lot easier for me to have my paper be on the floor because I could use a table rather than a bottle to prop my phone. This would be a lot sturdier and secure. so I found a good coffee table That wasn't too high or too low where I could place my phone in the corner of the table and be able to film. This location in my house was perfect because it allowed me to place my ring light right in front of my paper, my phone on the coffee table and my computer right next to my phone where I can read off of my script and follow my guide so I wouldn't be completely lost when drawing.


The content of the CCR:

So as far as the content of the CCR, I won't go into too much depth on this blog just because I already talked about it before and I'm already disgusting in my CCR so I see no point in repeating it again. so like I said in my previous blog I want to mainly focus on How I grew through this project and take you guys step-by-step through what my thought process was all the way from the beginning to this week when I found out we finished the project. I definitely want to discuss all of the stepbacks and problems that we've had while trying to finish this project as well as the big elephant in the room, having to film while in quarantine. I also want to focus a lot on the technical aspects of the projects such as editing, location, casting, set design, and costume design.


The structure of the CCR:

Just like my teacher advised all of us to do, I have created/I am working on A script for my CCR. Because my CCR will be a voice over video I really want to make sure that I create a script so that I can film all the drawing first, Edit that, and then go back in and simply to the voice over while watching the edited film. So what I am doing is creating a “guide” that is basically a timeline of this project. This is basically helping me narrow down the really important parts of the project so that I don't Ramble On and On. After I have created the timeline I can go back and right what I need to say in each of those events in the timeline. I already filmed part of my intro to the CCR where I'm just basically welcoming everybody and setting up the backstory for the project. The basic structure that I have for the project thus far is basically an introduction, picking a genre, merging with Isabella, question one, question 2, question 3, question 4, ending. I want to try to keep this CCR as light and fun as possible just because I feel like that's how I’ve done most of my blogs and that's how I tried to go about filming. With that being said however, I do understand that I am required to talk about the specific things within my CCR so there will be seriousness and structure with it. I just want to make sure that I am having fun and enjoying the process of it.




I really thought that this whole idea of filming a “Draw my CCR” was going to be a struggle and very stressful and while it has been very stressful and I have been struggling a lot, now that I was finally able to at least film 30 seconds of the CCR I'm starting to get excited because it is looking kind of how I wanted it to look. I'm excited to be able to finish this and show you guys What I've been working on for the past 2 months. Bellow I will leave some pictures of what I am working with and how I set up my phone in-order to film. 

Week 8 pt 1

Hello hello! I feel like I haven't been on here in ages since the last time I posted was one week ago. One week too long! I am sorry to have kept you waiting, but worry no more, I am here and I come bearing good news for a change. Before I start with an update on my CCR, I want to give you some updates on the film opening. With all the joy in the world, I couldn't be happier to finally announce that Isabella and I are officially done with all the filming and editing of the film opening. After 8 weeks of hard work, dedication, tears, and a lot of stress we are finally done with everything. This moment is very Bittersweet for us because with everything that happened while we were in the process of filming and creating this project, we never thought that we would be able to get to this point and be successful. I can definitely say that this project has made me grow and mature a lot more than I ever thought a project would or could. It is very weird for me, at least, to talk about a project this way but everything that I said thus far and in every single one of my blogs trying to really get my point across about how this project has really changed me is all very true. I can't wait for everyone to be able to see what we've created and I hope that everyone that is able to see it can enjoy it as much as we did when we created it. However, I did want to share some tiny changes that we decided to include in the final cut of the project. 

As you guys know, a big part of our project was the inclusion of the song by Miley Cyrus and her father because of the meaning and the backstory that it would give us for our project. Early on I discussed in one of my blogs that we made the decision of changing the song due to copyright and permission issues and decided to use a copyright friendly instrumental song by Jason Shaw. Another change in the film opening was the presentation of the credits. In one of my earlier blogs I discussed that we wanted to try to use two different types of fonts to represent the two very different types of main characters in our story. For Avaley, we wanted to use a pretty pink princess-y type of font and for Damien, we wanted to use a very straight and black font. This would be representing the innocence and simplicity of Avaley and the seriousness of Damien. While this idea seemed perfect on paper and we really felt that it would help to further explain the contrast between these two characters, it didn't really look great on film. We ran into two main problems when trying to incorporate this into our film opening; one of them being that it was really hard to find the actual font that we wanted to use for each character, and the other problem being that it was looking messy and taking the seriousness away from our shots. After asking for some advice from Isabella's older sister who has done this before and is extremely talented in these types of things, we came to the conclusion that using a plain white straight font would be the best route for us. The reason that we chose this font was because it created a sense of seriousness, which represented Damian, while still including that simplicity and innocence from Avaley’s part. These two changes are really the main and biggest changes that we made to our opening. In the end, I am extremely happy with what we have produced given our circumstances. I couldn't be prouder of what we were able to create. With that being said, I really have to thank Isabella for all of her hard work and dedication. Never in the entirety of the project did she give up on me or decide that she was going to do things on her own, which I am very thankful for. She really understood my vision and did everything that she could to make sure that what I was trying to get across was being represented in the film and for that I am extremely thankful. As I am writing this blog, I realize that I rambled on for too long, per usual. I don't want to make this go on for eternity therefore I will be including the updates on my CCR in tomorrow's blog. Anyway, thank you for listening and as always letting me express my feelings.

Week 7 pt3 (wow these are getting really long....sorry)

          Hello hello, I'm back and better than ever with the third and final part of this three blog series that I am doing to sort of get started with my CCR. To recap, I started off with the first blog being about some background information on the CCR itself and the general idea that I had for how I wanted to film The CCR. Then, my second blog was about the content of the CCR and how I want it to formulate my answers. I went through each of the four questions that I am required to answer in my CCR and gave a very brief summary of what I want to say. Now, for my third and final blog in this 3-blog saga, I want to talk about how I plan to film and some of my ideas that I have for the filming process. As I discussed in the first blog, I had this idea of doing my own version of the YouTube trend “Draw My Life” and make it a ”draw my CCR” . Now, when I started looking into it and looking up what the actual process entails, I figured out that I needed some supplies and I also needed to figure out how I was going to set up the camera so that you could fully see everything. One of the main things that I needed for this “Draw my CCR” video was a dry erase board and a dry erase marker, which I do not have. In normal circumstances I would drive to my local arts and crafts store or Office Depot and purchase a small dry erase board and marker that I could use for this video however, because we are currently living in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and the state I live in is on a stay-at-home order, this is not actually possible. I started thinking of ways that I could get around this and I realized that I could do one of two things; I could either ask my neighbor if she had a dry erase board and marker that I could potentially borrow for the filming of this video or I could try to film the whole video using paper and a pencil. Because I am leaning more towards the ladder, I started to test ways that I could use paper and pencil to potentially film this video, and quickly figured out that was a little bit harder than I actually thought. First, I was thinking that I could use multiple papers and just flip through them as I'm filmed the video. For example, I would draw out the answer to the first question and then get another piece of paper and draw the next answer to the second question and so on and so on. While this may seem like a good idea, I could run into two problems. One being that this is actually not environmentally friendly at all as I would be wasting a lot of paper, two being that it could potentially look very messy in my CCR and I don't want that at all. The second way that I thought I could maybe get around not having a dry erase board and marker was to just use one paper but erase every time I run out of the room. For example, as I draw and answer my questions I could start erasing anything that I didn't need any more. I like this idea because it resembles more of what I would actually be doing if I had a dry erase board because as you draw in the dry erase board you simply erase what you don't need any more but, this could also be a problem within of itself. I'm worried that if I simply erase every time I don't need a drawing anymore, the paper could get really messy and potentially look really bad on camera.

          Now that I got the whole dry erase board problem out of the way, another issue that I was sort of struggling with was how to actually set up the camera so that this looks nice. Now the setup and the filming are two things that I'm a little bit worried about. First, setting up the camera is going to be a little hard because I don't have a tripod and I will be using my phone to film the video, so in order for me to get a good shot I would have to film everything from a high angle that way the camera can get the whole paper and the whole drawing. I was looking into ways that I could get around it by maybe using things I have around my house to prop my phone up again but it hasn't really been working. One, because I don't really have things that are either high enough or stable enough where my phone could be propped up against it with no problem and two, because the lighting has also been sort of an issue as the films either looks too bright and you can't see the actual drawing or it looks too dark and the quality of the video turns out to be really grainy. Another sort of problem that I'm having is trying to figure out whether I want to film the video in real-time meaning that the speed of the video is going to be a normal speed, do a time-lapse, or have the video be going back and forth between a normal speed and high speed. This can become sort of an issue when time is of the essence with this video, I don't want to make a 20 minute long video of me drawing and erasing and just rambling but I also know that I can't make a really short video if I am drawing essentially my whole project out. So, these are some of the things that I'm trying to figure out that way I can produce the most effective and high quality CCR that I can by just using my surroundings. I did want to mention that I am looking into potentially ordering a small tripod for my phone on Amazon that has a light connected to it which could help solve the issue of how to prop my phone and have good lighting at the same time. I will post a picture of what I'm looking into buying below.
        

         Quick update, I am writing this like 20 minutes later, I figured I would include this update in this blog rather than putting it in a different one so brace yourself. While looking through my stuff and asking different people if they had anything that could potentially help me with this whole phone and lighting situation, I luckily enough I found a neighbor of mine who has a ring light that they are willing to let me borrow for this project. So when I got the ring way I was really excited not only because it was going to help figure out the issue of the lighting but I thought that it could actually help figure out the issue of where I can place my phone because I thought it had a place for you to put your phone in it. However, as always I was a little too enthusiastic and the ring light actually have a place for me to put my phone…..but that's okay because at least now I have the whole lighting situation figured out.

This is sort what I want to buy so the I can film with no problem 

             This is a very embarrassing video of me trying to set up the ring light that my neighbor let me borrow, so enjoy 

Week 7 pt2

          Hello, so as you may or may not have seen, I posted a Blog yesterday starting to talk about my CCR and what it entails. I discussed how I wanted to talk about my CCR my blog and how I will be dividing it up into three blogs. Yesterday's blog was all about the CCR and what it means and today's blog will talk about the actual context of the CCR and what I plan to write in it. My plan had always been to create a sort of script or guide that would help me when I start filming and allow me to have a more organized CCR. As I discussed yesterday, there are four questions that I am required to answer and today I wanted to talk a little bit about my response to those questions and how I plan to answer.

How did we challenge conventions and represent social groups or issues within our film opening?

         When I had originally started planning for this project, some of you may remember that I was working alone and planning on working with the romance genre. however, when Isabella and I made the decision to work together we had decided to step away from the romance genre and really work with the drama genre. This decision wasn't a hard one due to the fact that Isabella had a lot of research within the genre and our ideas seemed to work better with the conventions of this genre. In week 2 of this project, I wrote a Blog all about this switch and our decision to start working together and I really based my knowledge of the genre from Isabella's knowledge. She and I really discussed what she had come up with through her research and started to look into further researching the genre and the conventions of it as well as target audience and other characteristics we felt that were necessary for this genre. Within my CCR, I plan to discuss some of the drama conventions that we researched as well as include some sources where we got this information from. With the main part of this question being how we did or did not challenge the conventions of the genre, I really want to focus this part on the fact that One of the main points of those drama genres is to focus on conflict and realistic struggles. I feel like with our film opening we really did focus on conflict and a realistic struggle like for example a single parent having to deal with racing a child on his own when he has no idea what he's doing or how to even take care of himself. This means that we really stayed within the conventions of our genre and really followed what the main points of the genre usually are. This is one of the things that I really want to focus on on this part of the question, like I said I want to write a sort of script or guideline that will help me narrow down my ideas and really stay organized when filming the CCR but, this is how I basically want to answer this first question.

How our film opening engages our audience and how we plan to distribute it in real media text?

          As I stated above, one of the main conventions of our genre is focusing on a real struggle or conflict. This is how we are going to try to engage with our audience, through the real struggle of a family trying to survive, in this case a single parent trying to deal with the death of his wife and now having to care for his child. The climactic and anti climatic structure over film opening is what is going to keep our audience emotionally attached And keep the tension growing as our film develops. With our target audience being 13 through 25 year olds, we are engaging them by producing and developing a very relatable and dramatic plot and storyline. As far as how we plan to distribute our film, we need to keep this very realistic for a starting director. Throughout my CCR I will discuss how we can still get our film across to millions of people through a low-budget distribution platform without needing to pay millions of dollars to get our movie on the big screen. Some ways we can do this is through YouTube and our local film festivals. Within my CCR, I will discuss specific film festivals that we could potentially distribute our film in.

How our skills developed as we were producing this project?

           This is where we can talk about how we grew from the beginning of this project to the very end. I can definitely say that I went through major growth because of this project, I had to learn how to deal and be able to keep going through major setbacks and realize that not everything is going to be handed to you on a silver platter. While this may sound kind of bad, in no way is it meant like that. What I will try to get across in my CCR is that I, in no way, expected to be met with step backs like I was. In my head, I was going to create a storyboard and a script where I can put all my ideas and my vision for this project and simply turn around and start filming them to create a very successful project. That in no way was the case. As you may know through my previous blogs I have been met with step back after step back whether it is scheduling issues, unexpected travels, casting issues or even worldwide pandemics that no one saw coming. But, I can say that all of these step backs have allowed me to develop my producing skills to a way further level than I ever thought I could have. I have learned how to quickly change the schedule up to make things work for a deadline, I have learned how to rearrange a script in a matter of minutes to make it work with any casting or character issues, I have learned how to still be able to create as successful, hopefully, project that meets all of my expectations through a worldwide pandemic without leaving my house. These are the things that I will definitely discuss in my CCR in a more organized way. I definitely want to discuss my growth, my frustration, and my maturity throughout this project. This is the part of the CCR where I get to do most of my reflecting there for this is where I will discuss all the major flaws that I committed and all the major step backs that had to be taken care of.

How did we integrate technology into our project?

        This is the part of the CCR where I will have to rely a lot on my partner, only because as far as technology, most of the editing and filming of our film opening, with the exception of credits and the song, we're done by Isabella. While this is true, I feel that I can talk about how we went about looking for the song where we had to do a lot of research on the record company that actually owned the song we wanted and how we had to find ways to get permission to use the song, I can also discuss how we integrated different fonts and colors into are credits for all our film opening. I also definitely want to discuss the camera techniques that we use and the editing platform that we will use as well as the distribution platforms that we plan on using.


        Again, this is a very short and sweet version of what I will be talking about in my CCR. I really wanted to be able to write everything down to start to get some ideas on what I actually want to say and how I want to say it. As I was writing this blog, I was making note of my answers for each question and was definitely writing the order that I want to answer the questions and the order that I want to mention certain things in, so this was definitely very helpful to do that. My next blog will be all about how I plan to film because it is proven to be kind of hard so I will definitely keep you updated on that for my next blog.

Week 7 pt1

Hello hello, I hope that everyone is staying safe and inside! This blog is really going to be about my starting process of my CCR. When I started thinking about what I wanted to do for my CCR and how I wanted to presented, I decided to divide everything into three parts. As I have always done, I wanted to continue to keeping you guys updates on what my thought process is, how I am going about things, and what I want my finished product to look like. So, what I decided to do is write three different blogs on my thought process and the ideas that I had for my CCR. The first post will be this one where I will be talking about learning what the CCR entails and what my ideas for presenting are. The second post will be all about the content of the CCR, like the major points that I want to hit, the answers to the four questions required for the CCR, and just a general script to help myself get organized for the actual filming of the CCR. Lastly, the third post will be about the final idea for how I want to present the CCR. This will include behind the scenes of me trying to film it and just general tips and tricks that have work for me and helped facilitate the filming process.
Ok, so now that we got that out of the way, let's get into it shall we. So the first time that we really dove into the ins-and-outs of the CCR and what it entails was actually the last time I ever went to school which was around March 12th. When we talked about this, it really was sort of brief because in class we didn't have that much time so our teacher talked about the main points that we needed to hit in the CCR as well as some tips and tricks that she had seen work when producing a successful CCR. Today what I really wanted to discuss was some of the points that I took from her discussion in class. For starters, we talked about what the purpose of the CCR actually was which for me was really helpful because it allowed me to understand why we are required to do this which motivated me to produce something successful and of high-quality. The CCR really is for reflection as well as serving as an outlet for us, the creators, to be able to discuss some of the things that we weren't able to discuss for example in our blog or express some of the concerns that we had while filming the project, or even talk about some regrets that we had during filming. As far as the actual contents of the CCR, we learned that there were four main questions that needed to be answered during the entirety of the CCR in order for it to be a successful one. The first question being, how we challenged conventions and represent social groups or issues within our film opening. This is where we talked about our genre and why we did or did not challenge the conventions of it, as well as discuss representation and why or why not we included it in our opening. Next, we need to discuss how our film opening engages with our audience and how we plan to distribute it in real media text. This is where we talked about our target audience and their trends of consumption within the Media as well as how we plan to make our film available to our audience. As I mentioned part of the CCR is to reflect back on our product and the toys that we made, one of the questions that we have to answer is how our skills developed as we were producing this project. Lastly, we need to talk about how we integrated technology into our project. The main tip that our teacher gave us for tackling our CCR was to make a script and really think out and write out what we're going to say and how we're going to stay it that way we don't confuse ourselves or confuse the people watching or CCR. That is one of the main things that I will be working on this week, creating my script and sort of a guideline of what I actually want to say and when I want to say it. As far as how I want to present my CCR and how I can make it creative and fun to watch, I have come up with sort of one main idea of how I want to do this. As I have been self quarantine for a week and a half now I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos and this idea came sort of from there. I had seen this old trend where people would film a video about their lives through drawings, trend is called “Draw My Life”, so what I wanted to do and how I wanted to make it work from this project was to film a “Draw My CCR” where I would sit down and do a voiceover over video of me drawing out the whole process and answering the questions through pictures. I haven't really worked out the logistics of how this would work and how I would film it but I think it could be a really fun thing to do. As always I will keep you updated and let you know more on my next blog, this is all for now thank you for tuning in.

Week 6 pt3

It feels like we are moving backwards...

I really don't know if I can take another step-back or delay in this project. When it was first announced that my final project for this class was going to be creating and directing my very own film opening, of course I was super nervous and scared, but I was also really excited to, for the first time, put what I had learned in a classroom to real use and practice. After going through the immense amount of work and stress that were the last two projects, a movie pitch and a music video, and still coming out with two very successful projects, I knew that I would be fine and that I had to let myself have a lot of fun with this project. Also, this was (hopefully still is) the last project that I would be participating in for high school, as my graduation was soon after the deadline for this project. But, we all know that this excitement and motivation left as soon as it came. It seemed that soon after we started working on this project we started to get hit with step-back after step-back. Whether it was our schedules constantly changing, having to stop filming for traveling, not getting permission to use the song we had planned everything around, our actors telling use that they were moving to another state when we are already half way through filming, or the Coronavirus now putting a full stop on filming. I know that most if not all students right now are feeling frustrated and unmotivated, so I am not just sitting here making this about myself, it just a really weird and annoying situation and all I really want is for things to go back to normal. It is really hard to stay motivated to create in times like this. We had a video conference with our teacher not too long ago where we were told that we need to keep working and find ways to work around this, which I understand that she has to help us keep calm and not freak out, but to be honest I really have no idea how we are expected to do this. We were given 8 weeks to complete this project and for the past 6 weeks we have been working hard almost everyday in researching the ins and outs of our genre, creating blog post after blog post talking about the scripts we created, the mood boards for our characters, our set design, costume design, storyboards we made, and some of us even posting about actual props that we made form scratch. Now we are being told, with just 2 weeks left in the project, that if we are unable to continue filming to just either modify your opening or create an entirely new one. It is really hard to create a well produced, well thought-out project that looks like it took a lot of time and effort, when we know have to regroup and try to scramble together what we can without even being able to leave our homes. To finish off because I feel like I have been ranting on for way too long now, I want to make it absolutely clear that I in no way shape or form, put blame on ANYONE for what we are being told to do with our projects. I understand that no one really knows what is going on and that everyone is just trying their best to come up with a solution for everything. This situation is hard for everyone and I am just lucky enough to have a platform like this one where I can express what I am feeling with no fear of judgment. Isa and I will continue to try and come up with ways that we can either film or edit to make this opening make sense and finally finish filming. This is supposed to happen today Sunday 3/22, but I will keep you updated on what we decide and were able to do. As far as my CCR, this has had to be pushed back even further until we are finished with filming. Thank you for letting me rant and I promise to try and make my next post purely based on the updates of our project.