Portfolio Project - Week 6 Update 3

 Sound Design

 Another part of our postproduction process is our sound design, being one of the most important aspects of our opening.

Music:

The only bit of music used in our movie opening is the first 30 or so seconds of "You'll See My Ghost" by Elliot Fulla. Despite this short duration, it is one of the most influential bits of audio in the entire opening.

What's Wrong | Elliott Fulla

There are 2 main reasons for this:

1. The first 11 seconds of this song are extremely aggressive. We want to capitalize on this, as it represents the chaos that ensues within our characters mind.

2. The contrast between the first 11 seconds of the song and the remainder accurately reflects the difference between how our character perceives the world and reality.

Song (YouTube)

Song (Spotify)

Foley:

A huge problem with our music video from a few months ago was that our foley was very poorly done, we want to make sure that were able to make a much better and much nicer sounding video this time around.

We're also currently deciding whether we want to voice over certain scenes or if we want to redo them altogether since we didn't have access to microphones when we filmed.

Portfolio Project - Week 6 Update 2

 Editing

Although my group hasn't started editing our opening yet, we do have some detailed plans on how exactly we plan to edit it.

During filming, everything was made with the edit in mind. Therefore, we did every take at least 3 times to make sure Nina (Designated Editor) has some room to work with. We're going to be using the school-provided editing software: Adobe premiere pro. We plan to use many of its features to really get the best out of our film.

Introduction to Video Editing in Adobe Premiere Pro | Envato Tuts+

Portfolio Project - Week 6 Update 1

 This week, me and my group met up to begin filming. It was honestly a bit of a rollercoaster because of a few different things. 

1. I was supposed to go pick them up at 10 AM this morning but I woke up at 11 to a phone call from Juaquin. I WAS LATE. I rushed to get ready and picked them up as fast as possible.

2. I was very low on gas, so after picking them up, I went to a gas station and to my surprise, it was FULL of cars. I quickly made my way to another one and I was able to get some. 

3. We went to both dollar tree and goodwill to look for props, which took up a very large portion of our time. Thus, we had to hurry back to Juaquin's house to regroup.

4. At Juaquin's house, we prepared some of the scenes we needed to record and took some photos that we need to print for a portion of our opening.

Afterwards we decided to head on over to Juaquin's old house and start filming.

5. Something I'm yet to mention, is the fact that our movie opening is being recorded in 2 separate locations made to look like one. Filming the entire project at Juaquin's current home has a few restrictions as the plot of our movie opening is dependent on the environment being as grim and dark as possible in order to depict the living conditions of our character.

As Juaquin's old house is being sold, we can use the empty space to really sell the whole idea that his house is empty, reflective of his soul.

Here's an example of some of the footage we got from that house:

Portfolio Project - Week 5 Update 4

 Casting:

So currently we have everyone we need for our video. In total, there's only 3 characters:

MC:
The main character is either going to be played by Juaquin or by Nina as they both volunteered, and our story really doesn't depend on our character being male or female.

MC Friend:

The second character is the main characters friend, their only purpose is to annoy the MC about getting help about their drug abuse and to start some sort of conflict. Their gender doesn't matter either and we already have someone in mind for this certain character.

MC Partner:

This character is the main characters main motivation and love interest, as it's the only connection they have to a world outside of drugs and temporary pleasures.

Portfolio Project - Week 5 Update 3

 Production (Camera Shots)

During the meeting at the Panera Bread, we also decided on the specific shots and movement we were going to include, as we wanted everything to be perfect.

Rather than going through each individual shot, I'm going to talk about the most important ones because it would genuinely take 1200+ words to get through all of them otherwise.

1. Low angle closeup of a broken picture frame:

- The low angle close-up of the broken picture frame is mainly to foreshadow the final part of our movie opening. Since the picture frame has a lot to do with the plot of our main story, we wanted to involve it in a creative way during our movie opening.

2. Wide shot High angle over the shoulder:

- So, this super specific shot is specifically done to separate the camera from what is going on in the story. Intentionally placing it away from the character, interacting with the other character, is done to emulate the disconnection the character has from the rest of the world.

3. Mirror POV

- The mirror POV is done not to showcase the character but rather change the main focus of the opening from visual to audio, hinting at some conflict going on across the house, it's also a cool way of moving the camera around without literally following the character.

These are definitely the 3 most important shots I'm going to use, as they're unique and interesting ways of portraying the story we want to tell.