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