Film Opening

Let me just leave this here...

Here it is.. the final product! These past months have went by very quickly and I am very proud of all of the things I have learned throughout the process. I hope you enjoy it 😁

The Nomad by:Joel Loyde

Genre:Drama 

Back Up: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vqZ8tx80CVxSosS5NC7y6iT-QobwvZUj/view?usp=sharing

CCR

Click here to watch the CCR

I have been working on the CCR for a couple day's now. After what seemed like an endless task, I finally was able to get the video to about 6 minutes. I'm absolutely drained of all of my energy. This journey has been such an experience, teaching me multiple things such as editing and production. I wanted to make this CCR really well so... Ta Da here it is. My AICE Media AS portfolio project is officially at an end. Thank you to everyone who participated in the production of my film opening, especially Irvin, for being the main actor in the opening.

Reflections on the Journey

If you have been following up with my blog from the start... thank you! On this post, I will make a quick reflection and refresh your mind's on the whole journey. For any newcomers, let me describe the process and decisions I made while completing the portfolio project. 

From just a vision to my head, to becoming reality, my portfolio project did not come out as I had expected. At first, I wanted to have an airport scene to convey a "moving family", but then I realized that it was unnecessary. Throughout the entire project, I wanted my opening to be meaningful and something that would be relatable to some people who may have gone through the same situation as the character. 

Starting off... I was totally lost. I was not sure what genre to choose: Action, Horror, Comedy, Drama? I then told myself, "What type of movies do you enjoy?", in order to choose a genre I am interested and invested in. Most of the movies I enjoy and find entertaining mainly consisted of drama films. By choosing drama, not only was I able to find a project that I would enjoy making, but I was able to incorporate real life expereiences to develop and produce a meaningful project. Choosing drama allowed me to generate various possible ideast. After deciding on an idea for the opening, I conducted research, created a story board, decided on the setting, and emptied my room/bathroom for the project. Since Irvin and I were not going to be home for spring break, we quickly recorded the shots a few days prior to break. 

To record I initially had a Canon camera I intended to use, but my mom gave it to our aunt to keep.  I felt like having a big camera would have made my film easier to record and make the quality really clear. Due to this, I used my phone which was surprisingly really good for most of the shots. I was very stuck on which song to choose for the project. Since piano music tends to be intense and emotional, researching piano music was my first idea. I sorted through some songs that could be used and finally ended up using Nocturne- C sharp, minor 20. The song was in the Public Domain, so worrying about copy right was not an issue for me. 

Irvin and I needed to finish the filming for the opening prior to spring break, so we intended to split the filming into 2 days. The first day consisted of the car scene with Irvin and the children. Working with the children was very hard so some of the scenes did not come out as intended. At first I wanted a scene of the children playing in the street, but I found the scene of the children playing on the swings more clear and pleasant. A few days after, we met together to film again. This is where Irvin and I shot the rest of the scenes. We started off with the car scene because we did not want the sun to set. Afterwards, we completed the bathroom and bedroom scene. I initially thought we had completed filming until I reviewed our clips and noticed Irvin was wearing a different outfit. We then needed to redo some of the car scenes and bedroom scenes with success. 

Afterwards, the editing took about 2 days. I wanted to utilize slow zoom ins and closeups in my film to make my film more dramatic. By using some of these techniques, I believe the film was made more dramatic. The difficult part was the audio which I am still unsure about. Should the audio of the clips play? Or should they be muted? I ultimately ended up using the audio of the clips, but I do not think it came out very well. 

Overall, this project showed me the difficult process that films undergo during production. Creativity is essential in film making and can ultimately make your film better. By experiencing some difficulties in film making, I was able to learn and fix some of my errors during the process. If I had not deleted the timeline, I would not have known that there was an auto-save file for every document on Adobe Premiere. If I had not changed my location from the airport to my neighborhood, I do not know if the project would have made sense. I believe that these difficulties helped make my project come out better . The difficulties I faced helped me learn how to be a better editor and camera man. Before this project, I did not know how to use Adobe Premiere, but this project taught me how to easily navigate through the software without much difficulty. Creating this film had made me very proud of myself. 

Editing Day #2

Today was such a successful day. I had my scares and successes, but I finally finished my opening! I am actually so proud of how it came out . I also found out something new... Premiere Pro is 100x better than iMovie. Although I was struggling halfway throughout the process, I quickly got the hang of things by watching videos online. Let me take you throughout today's editing process. 

First Things First

I started off today's editing process by sending the music audio to my computer and implementing it into the project panel. The clips were then trimmed down to make the video under two minutes and some of the shots were muted so that the piano music could be loud. I also decided to add and remove some shots after I reviewed my other shots I had previously taken. Afterwards, I synced the first quarter of the film to the music because I believed it would look more refined. 

Picture of the editing process

My heart Shattered into a Million Pieces

When I was going to add text to one of the shots for the credits, I accidentally deleted the timeline. Since I am still a noob (beginner) at premiere pro, I was freaking out because the thought of losing hours worth of work is quite heartbreaking (if you ask me). Was I shouting? Maybe just a little. Was I crying? Absolutely not!! Thinking fast, I searched up a YouTube video and was taught that Adobe Premiere Pro has an autosave file somewhere on my computer. I found the file and to my luck, my project was perfectly fine. ** Gasp of relief**

The Auto-Save file

Onwards!

Continuing the editing process, I successfully added the credits to the first quarter of the film. Placing the cross dissolve feature at the end of the text, I utilized this feature to make the "credits" fade away if the shot was very long. Now it was time to get fancy. I grouped the shots together so it would be easier to add saturation and a slight tint of blue to the filter. Testing out the different color options, the shots were filtered to their liking. The shots of the children playing around on the swing were slowed down because it made the scene more dramatic. An eyeline match was paired with this scene to portray the character's feelings as they feel "alone" in their world. 

Eyeline match utilized

I also kept the audio of a few clips to add to the realism of the scene such as the car scene and bathroom scene, however, the goal was to represent the individual without any dialogue because the characters "silence",  further develops the emotional tone. Also, the piano music soundtrack was cut to a later portion in the musical piece because the upcoming portion would not have developed the emotional/sad tone I intended and would be out of place in the opening.

The red circle represents the portion of the piano piece that was cut and the audio above it represents some of the diegetic sound within the character's world

I am still really proud of the project and its outcome! Although I believe some of the scenes/camera angles could have been done better, the opening is almost exactly how I envisioned it inside of my head. Now it's time to move onto bigger and more complicated things... the CCR!

Research

Recovering Timeline: https://youtu.be/tma9Wdxc0_o

Centering Text: https://youtu.be/r9v8wF4oLtA

Fading Text: https://youtu.be/bL8_BwG7u8Q

Slow down clip: https://youtu.be/4j27_0lOa9I

Zoom-In Clip: https://youtu.be/f-Uaz4NyOXU

Things are starting to come together (Editing Day #1)

 Throughout the day, I worked on the editing process of the opening with some minor difficulties that I was able to overcome through the use of YOUTUBE. Since I wanted to have a black screen with text, for my production company, "Pinto Productions", I searched up how to do so on YouTube. Thanks to one of the thousands of tech YouTube channels on the platform, Adobe in Under a Minute solved my problem. I also decided to go with the "Didot font" for the font style as my font I intended to use did not appear on the font list. 

Afterwards, I sorted throughout my shots, choosing the best shots that suited the opening. The shots that were taken from an awkward angle or had better alternatives were deleted and replaced with the better shot.

Examples:

Shot one did not look "sad", so I decided to keep looking for a better shot

Shot 2 was taken from a awkward angle so I did not want to incorporate it into my opening

Shot 3 was chosen because it looked "sad" and had a close up that could be used in the opening. 

 I changed majority of the shots to a scale of 50.00 as anything higher would zoom in. I put the shots into the correct order to make the trimming down process as easy as possible. Additionally, the soundtrack for my opening is recorded on my phone so I will import the sound track into the tomorrow. This process went by very quickly and learning Premier Pro was challenging at first, however, I was able to quickly learn how to use the software. 

Tomorrow is a big day as it marks the beginning of the end for my film opening journey! I believe I will finish trimming down the shots, adding filters, and getting the right zoom for each shot tomorrow. Also, I will be syncing the soundtrack to the shots as best as I possibly can. Although the film opening will not come out as well as I pictured in my head, at least I know I tried as much as I can. This journey  has improved my film making skills soooo much. Talk to you soon blog... PEACE!

Research

https://youtu.be/65-xuqGHXTY

https://youtu.be/hM7mxBihkxw

Pressure is On... For Real

Sooooooo... a lot of pressure is on me this week. The editing for one. I am freaking out about the editing process because it is taking me a really long time to find the right filters for some of the scenes. Another thing... my shots! I feel like my shots are "bad" and I'm really nervous about how this project will turn out. I cannot do anything about the shots because I have little free time, so I have to work with the shots I currently have. Another thing I'm really nervous about is the CCR. Not only is it a really big portion of the Cambridge Final, but I want to accurately represent my journey throughout the production of this film.  I HAVE to focus on the CCR more than the actual editing process of my film because it also needs to be triple the amount of time than the actual of the opening. I am dedicating almost all of tomorrow to the editing process. I am going to begin in study hall so I can have ideas to think about throughout the rest of the day to improve the opening. I really hope this turns out well... see ya soon

Couple of...Errors in the Production

While reviewing our previous shots, I realized that Irvin’s outfit was different from the first day.  We need to redo the shots from the first day because it would not make sense for Irvin to be wearing two outfits on the “same day”. Also, I realized that the background was showing in some of the close ups of Irvin in the car. Since the background was not moving, I believed we needed to redo the close ups because I did not want the viewers to see the still background as it would take away from the idea that the family is still driving towards the house. 

 

I reshot the close up, vertical pan of Irvin’s legs . I also recorded over the shoulder shots of Irvin looking outside the window. After we finished the over the shoulder shots, I recorded close ups of Irvin looking outside the window without showing the background. I believe some of these shots came out well.

While Irvin carried the box inside the house, I wanted to redo the entrance scene because I wanted a wider variety of options to choose from. I also wanted to try out other angles to see how they would come out.  While doing this, I noticed that the box still had the Amazon Prime tape. After finding this out, we had to remove the tape from the box. This also meant we needed to redo the close-up shots of Irvin opening box. 

 

Since the scene of Irvin laying in the bed was not very well. I wanted to try to redo the close up to mid shot of Irvin laying in the bed. I still believe that the shots did not come out well, but I will review them in the editing process to see if they will make the final video. 

Film Day#3

No Perfect Day

Well… shooting todays shots were difficult. No, the difficult part was not taking the close ups of the box with “Irvin’s Memories”. The hard part was recording the high angle from the bed. To start off today’s production, I took shots of Irvin opening the box with his “memories of his friends”. We utilized the 10-pound weight and dropped the box in front of the camera. I thought this low angle shot came out very well. I then took mid-shots of the box from various angles to make watching the video more appealing to viewers. Over the shoulder shots and close ups were then utilized to depict Irvin looking at the memories of his past friends. 

  

After completing the shots of the box, we worked on the scene where Irvin is looking at the ceiling. I wanted to try to bring the camera from a close up to a long shot, but the possibility of that was very limited because my legs would be showing in the video. I also wanted to portray time from day to night but recording in the dark was very difficult due to poor lighting and camera quality. I decided to shoot a close up to a medium shot. In the editing process, I might put dark filters to depict the transition from day to night, but I am not confident in my editing skills.  

 

Although some of the shots were not very well, I believe we had a very productive day today. However, there were multiple problems I spotted after reviewing our shots.

Film Day #2

 My dad, Irvin, and I continued the production of the opening today. We decided to redo the close ups of Irvin in the car “looking” at the kids playing because he said he had bad acne in the shots I previously took. Irvin and I also worked on the bathroom scene where he reflected on his “inner emotions”.  

Starting on the Outside!

To create the “realistic” atmosphere of a moving family, my dad and I decided to get totes from the garage and put them inside the trunk of the Jeep. The totes were already filled with items, so the totes were very convenient for us to use. Additionally, we put our gym duffel bag in the back seat with Irvin because it would be perceived that the “family” has items in the duffel bag. The box with “Irvin’s Memories” was also put in the back seat because Irvin needed to carry the box inside the house.

     

 

Afterwards, I recorded my dad parking in front of my house. I’m unsure if I am going to put this shot into the final video because the angle was awkward. I then recorded Irvin carrying the box into the inside of the house.  

 

Next Destination... the Bathroom

Finally, we worked on the BATHROOOM scene. I decided to shoot a low angle, long shot of Irvin walking into the bathroom from a corner. I felt like this shot shows how he feels from an outside view which would be “rare” to see because the character hides his inner emotions from the outside world. I then decided to incorporate various close ups and mid shots of his face/body and “reflection”. The close ups would be able to convey his sad emotions while also allowing the audience to be taken into a closer look into his mind. 

 

Overall, today was a very productive day and we accomplished a ton of progress. 

Creating the Setting

Irvin and I decided that we should shoot our film on Wednesday. In order to convey the idea of a "new house", I have decided to clear some of the items in the bathroom and bedroom, relocating them to another area. Because the family just moved into the "new house", the setting should be empty. 

Shots of the cleared Bedroom and Bathroom:

Additionally, I will need a box for Irvin to keep the pictures of his friends and other meaningful belongings. BUT, I ran into a predicament. My mom accidentally threw away the box I was going to use for the film. In need for a box, I discovered an old Amazon package that is an ideal size for the scenes. If the box were to only have the pictures, it would be very flimsy and light. To portray the idea of the box being filled with items other than the pictures, I have decided to put a 10 pound weight inside. 

Pictures of the Box and it's Contents:

Snap...Shoot... EDIT!

So I have been thinking about my next video shoot with Irvin and I thought to myself, "How will I edit the video?". There are so many applications I have access to, so deciding the editing software will be semi-easy. Now the question is, "Which software should I choose?". To choose the software, I have decided to analyze some of the softwares at hand. 

DaVinci Resolve

From previous experiences, DaVinci Resolve provides so many features for users to use in the editing process. ACTUALLY, DaVinci provides TOO MANY features for a "noob"/ amateur (which is me) at film editing. I was really confused at understanding which features did what, so I am discouraged from using DaVinci as my film editing software. 

iMovie 

I have used iMovie to create multiple past montages and compilations, but I felt very limited using the software. I mainly used iMovie because it is free and was very accessible from my phone to my laptop. Although I have used this in the past, I want to use a better software (not DaVinci) to improve my editing skills. This has lead me to...

Premiere Pro 

My teacher said that the school provided Premiere Pro for free; sooooo I was curious and did some investigating. From first look, I can tell it is far better than iMovie. But the thing is, I have not used Premiere Pro to edit a video before. Although I have no experience in the software, videos and tutorials are provided to make a noob (me) feel welcomed to use and understand some of the features. I am committing to learn how to use Premiere Pro because of the many features provided. 

Decision?

If you had not guessed from before, I will use Premiere Pro to edit my shots. There are so many advantages Premiere has over iMovie so deciding the editing software was easy. By watching the tutorials, comprehending the features will be less difficult. 

Sources for Images:

DaVinci Resolve: 1280px-DaVinci_Resolve_17_logo.svg.png

iMovie: IMovie_2013.png

Premiere: 1280px-Adobe_Premiere_Pro_CC_icon.svg.png

Group Meetings

Today we formed groups to discuss our projects and give ideas to each other. With the minds of more than just... me, I can overcome my biggest problem right now. Well, I have multiple problems like the shot angles, editing software and others, but most importantly, THE SONG. Surprisingly, they liked my project. Sabrina and Sasha were very informative with providing information about which websites I can use to find non copyrighted music. 

Sasha suggested that I use Choice.com and upbeat.io to look up sad songs for the project. But Sabrina with how helpful she is... asked her dad, who is a sound creator. She said that he could make me a song for free which is awesome, but I told her that it might be too much work for him. Additionally, she suggested that I could use YouTube Music to look up songs because they're non- copyrighted. 

Filming Day #1

Today, me and Irvin started to film for my opening. I decided to eliminate the shots with Irvin first because he is going to be leaving next week to South Carolina and I will be in Orlando for spring break. We met outside on the street because it was easier for us to meet with everyone. Some of the shots were decently shot while others may need to be redone. For some parts of the filming, camera shakiness is very visible or some of the shots may be too shaky. Additionally, I am unsure if I need to create the audio for the film or if I should include the audio from the shots. 

Still Shots From Filming

Storyboard for the opening shots that helped me imagine the way the shots will come out

This was extremely useful for helping me plan the shots and set down the layout for my opening.

Shot #4

I think this shot was done pretty well, but I may need to cut it early because the window was down in the shot, while other shots had the window opening. 

Shot #5

I liked the way this shot came out and it might make the final cut of the opening. I think I will need to turn down the brightness of the shot to make it have a sadder tone. 

Shot # 6

I think I may need to redo this shot because I recorded from an awkward angle. After post-reviewing the shots, I realized that it might not make sense to transition to this shot because it is shot too far. I also recorded other shots of Isiah playing football with Abhi (his friend), but I think the shots should have been done from a different angle also. Working with children was pretty hard because they did whatever they wanted to do haha. 

  Me and Irvin will meet later this week to finish all the scenes he needs to finish for the opening. Surprisingly, we worked pretty fast today and finished almost half of the required shots.