Peer Review Blog

   At home today I did the peer reviews for other groups. I was group 7. I peer reviewed group 5. In all honesty this group did not fully finish the film. There were no titles at all. Also it did not fulfill the correct time frame. Though the film wasn’t really that bad in all actuality. They just need to finish because they are missing lots of the criteria. Even though it’s only the editing criteria. There was one thing that stood out to me though, that I liked. After a transition to another scene, it opened to a cliche “4 days later” intro. I liked it because it actually gave a sort a time reference and it developed the story a little further. Plus I like those kind of cliches. One very important suggestion for the group to improve there movie is that they need to use the tripod more. Lots of the scenes are shaky and blurry. The group probably used the camera hand- held instead of the tripod. It shows greatly and not in a good way. So maybe they can go back a reshoot some scenes with a tripod. Another suggestion is that they should probably finish the opening sequence titles. You know cause without those they fail. No matter how good the film is.

Editing Blog- Finished

   As you know my last thing to do is the titles. I gotten a in too the titles but took a break. All I did today for this part of the process was finish them up. All titles are in the 1-2.5 second range. Some titles like the movie title and the music title, had less action in the scene so they were on screen longer. Some titles like the production and studio titles were in scenes with a lot of detail, or things watcher needed to catch. So they were on screen for a shorter time frame. As detailed in a earlier blog this software didn’t allow font change and color change. So all font was standard ariel. All color was standard white. However what I took the liberty to add for affect was placement. Lots of the titles were placed in the bottom left corner. Which in my opinion made it more clean. However a fee titles like the movie title and editing title were placed center screen. I did this because one it was the movie title so it needed the most emphasis on. In fact it had the largest lettering size and was bolded. On top of that it was the only title to has a special dissolving- fade transition. The rest just had the standard fade. For the editing title it was just center screen because the scene had a moment of blank screen with a nice scenery. In all I finished my final task project and my only problem now is gonna be the submission of it. Due to the corona virus our plan for submission and what we are submitting has changed frequently and I’m not really sure what to do but I know I’ll pull through.

Editing Blog- Birthday Week

   This weekend I turned 17. So as my own birthday gift. I choose to take a break from the final task. Also I’ve been kinda ahead of schedule. So I didn’t think taking a break would hurt me bad. Instead of doing my final edits. Friends from my team and other life long friends came to my house for a gathering. We played pool, games, and ate food. It was good and I choose to continue to have fun then to do edits. I had lots of family there as well. Also would’ve been very weird of me to be in my room editing while everyone was outside. However I did plan out how the titles would work out in my head. I found the order I would like them in. For instance I want it to be... Studio, Production, Actor, Actor, Movie Title, Music, Editor, Producer, Story, Written, and Director. So even though I didn’t edit. I still was productive and contributed to my next step. So in my next blog it will be my final editing blog. I will be completely done editing saying that all that is left is the titles. In which all I have to do it just type them in. Since it is already planned out.

Editing Blog- Title Design Issue

   Moving on from the accident. My film is almost complete. All the music and transitions are in place. It’s almost completely down. The only thing left to do are the titles the most important thing. I started out on the first title (studio presents...). However there was a big issue that I came across. IMovies doesn’t have costume titles. There are titles and they can be placed in anyway with any transition. The issue is that they don’t allow the text to be customized, meaning I can’t change the font, color, or size of the text. Which places a huge wench in my planning for title design. This was possibly the worst that could’ve happened but I had to improvise. They have a decent font as the set one so I dealt with it and I just used what it did have to continue. So I had to scratch my entire planning of title design. Now instead my font will be ariel. The titles will be on the bottom left corner or center screen. Some with have a special transition and some will be a simple fade transition. I know this might take point off but I had to make with what I have and move forward. In all reality I don’t think it’ll end up looking bad just not as great. One thing I do like about this is that it actually shows struggle in production of a film. I’m sure many professionals have issues with availability of instruments in editing. Either way the problem is some what fixed now I just need to complete the titles now.

Editing Blog- Edit Mishap

   I had a major set back in my edit process today. I went into my iMovies editing app. I clicked onto my edited film to continue onto the titles. However, when I went to start the edit it said my movie was no longer available. It basically screwed up and I can’t continue on it. So I had to start all over again from scratch. Which is very very frustrating because I was halfway done with it already. So I have to go and re import my scenes and then arrange them chronologically in the way I wanted. After I set the movie in correct chronological order I started with transitions. Obviously I like it simple so I kept the fades, dissolves, and jump cuts. What I did change though was the time of the transitions. I noticed in the last film that some transitions could’ve been cut that they didn’t need to be a full second of transition. So I cut those down to .5 of a second and the film looks a lot smoother. So at this point I reached the same point where I was in the last blog. So I decided to continue onto the background music of the film. iMovies has an entire list of free no credit needed music. Which was very useful and I ended up using two of the song for my film. I chose two different songs because there is a tone switch in my film. I want each song to fit in with the two different tones and to also push it out more to the viewer. The first song is Hope by Keith Kenniff. The second is Anythings by Chris James. The difference is Hope is kinda a sad calming song. While anythings is an upbeat sorta action one. Guess we’ll see how it matches the movie. Next blog Titles

Editing Blog- Smoothing

  I’m starting the editing process of my film. I have a 2:00 film exactly. I used iMovies as the editing software. Today I only wanted to just put in all the transitions and smooth out the film. Which I did indeed do. I kept the editing to my style though. In all the film I’ve produced for this class I always kept it simple. I used effective transitions and cuts to make the film feel real. I hate to use dramatic editing. So I wanted to keep that style in making my final task film. I used simple but effective transitions. Such as fades in and out, dissolves, and jumps cuts. I also made each transition take 1 second from the film to ensure the transition was smooth. By the end of finishing all the simple edits my 2:00 film ended up being 1:55. In which still fits the criteria. It just puts in perspective how smooth I want my film to flow. After see the film rough edit I do believe I accomplished that flow. I’m actually very proud of how it is coming along. The best part is editing is the most fun in my opinion. So this process is a breeze

Filming Blog- Final Scenes

   I finally finished all of the filming this weekend. I obviously had help from my friend Jaden. We filmed the final two scenes. Scenes 9 and 10. This filming process was relatively less of a hassle. Since it was the least amount of scenes needed to be filmed. Also the scenes were pretty straight forward to execute. In fact we only took 3 takes for scene 9. Then 2 for scene 10. The following takes ended up being the shot we needed. The take were pretty funny though. In scene 9 I’m skating on a street. The street has a ruff patch of asphalt (newly placed). Well like I said I’m skating and I hit the patch and just wiped out, like completely ate it. Probably the funniest part of the entire film process. For scene 10 however the takes were just simples mess ups. For one the attention grabber for the scene is a picture of the missing father. It was supposed to be put on a tree but I couldn’t really stick it to the tree. Luckily there was a pre-existing nail in the tree. I just put the paper on that and it worked well. The mistake was when the wind would blow the picture off the tree. That caused a few takes to not make the cut. Well my filming is done and I think the final product is gonna be great.