Final Product!

I know you’re probably sick and tired of hearing me talk about my project without letting you actually see the whole thing. But don’t worry, all your suffering is over! Here is my final product. Please enjoy the opening to Keep it Simple, Stupid:

 https://youtu.be/tibM2bt1Ik4

Creative Critical Reflection (CCR)

 I spent an unholy amount of time recording this. I seriously did not know that talking to a camera alone was so awkward. Anyways, after chugging two Yerba Mates, it's finally done.  Please enjoy my CCR and beware headphone users (I channeled my frustrations into the volume level).

https://youtu.be/9NkhHtQ2XmA

Finishing Touches

 Upon completing the film opening, I realized I still hadn’t given it a title. I figured that this would be a key moment to my project so I’ve decided to write about it. When I was coming up with the idea behind my story, I knew it needed to be something I could relate to. Due to this, I tried to think about things that are constantly in my life. If you know me personally, you may know that I tend to be a chronic over-thinker and because of this, I am always told to keep things simple. The most obvious example of this is my dad introducing me to the mnemonic KISS, which stands for keep it simple, stupid. Remembering the mnemonic is what led me to create the rest of the story thus, i’ve decided to name the opening after the inspiration for this story. 

As for the font I chose to write the titles in, I just went for the one that looked the most clear on the video while also maintaining a somewhat playful appearance.

    

As I mentioned in the last post, I am currently working on the CCR. I spent all day answering the questions which will also serve as my script. This is how all of the pages look:

  

Schedule For the Rest of the Project: (Final Touches/CCR)

 This blog post is going to be short because I am basically done with the video portion of this project. There are only a few things left before I am done with the rest of the project so I decided to plan out what I have left to do with this blog post.

Over the weekend: (March 26-27)

• Choose which font to use for titles.

• Add titles. 

• Plan blog post ideas for the upcoming week. 

Monday-Wednesday 

• Figure out how I want to present CCR.

• Divide up which questions I will work on each day.

Remainder of the project (March 31-April 1) 

• Work on/complete CCR.

• Finalize/fix any errors on this blog. 

• Add film opening to blog. 

Sound Elements

A part of my editing process was adding sound. As I mentioned in the previous post, I had to switch to iMovie as my editing software. Due to this, the audio layering capabilities that I was expecting to have access to on Adobe Premiere were no longer possible as audio layering on  iMovie is slightly more confusing/restricted. 

I ended up going with my plan to use the app “Acapella from PicPlayPost” to record Sophia’s voice and layer it over each other. I recorded two different videos, one with two layers of Sophia speaking and the second with six. I had her read excerpts from the travel magazines to make it seem as if her character were reading the same magazines in their head. 

Here are the videos:

     

Then, I went onto iMovie and separated the audio from these videos. I moved the audio to the clips where she is “thinking to herself” and then deleted their original videos. I was able to do this even with iMovie’s limited audio layering range because it allows for about 2-3 tracks (apart from the videos’ original audio of course) before it gets kind of confusing. The first track (Sophia reading) was set to the foreground and the second track (the background music) was set to the background. The third track I reserved for sound effects/foley. 

Sound effects/foley:

1. TYPING: I wanted to include typing sounds for the background of the first few shots so I recorded myself typing in the one room of my house where the air conditioning was not super loud (the bathroom). I just separated the audio from the video and added it where I wanted it. 

2. PHONE RING: I just screen-recorded the ringer that my phone uses and added it to the clip where it belonged. Even though the phone is meant to keep ringing I added a fade towards the end so that it appears to “fade” out of the character’s attention. 

3. YELL: There is a yell of frustration that I recorded from Sophia but it came out pretty bad. I will have to ask her to redo it when I see her today. 

The last sound element in my opening (apart from the shots’ original audio) is the background music. I removed it at the part of the opening that is the character’s moment of realization as I wanted this moment to be as noticeable to the viewer as it is to the character. However, it returned soon after to continue establishing a lighter/sillier mood. The song is copyright free and called “Itsudemo”.

Problems with Editing

I tried to begin editing my project but for some reason I could not get Adobe Premiere or Davinci Pro to run on my laptop without causing it to overheat. The few clips I was able to put together on Adobe Premiere  would not play properly and the quality got all messed up even after I tried rendering it multiple times. I watched a couple videos and read online to try and fix my issue but nothing really worked. 

Seeing that I was not going to be able to get these softwares to work, (and I had burned through all of my patience) I finally just decided to move my project fully to iMovie. This wasn’t really a big deal because I wasn’t planning to do any kind of color correction or visual editing that would not be possible on iMovie. The only problem with this change is that now I am pretty limited in the fonts I can use for my movie opening’s titles. I also am pretty limited in where exactly they can be placed and how long they will stay on screen. 

As of right now, I have fully edited all the clips together with the music and other sound elements. I have also refilmed one of the shots to turn it into a zoom. As for the other shots I had planned to redo, I ended up actually preferring the originals when paired with the music/sound.

                        

Re-filming/Editing

As I went through the footage for the last post, I realized that I still think that section I mentioned is too choppy even with the transitions. In addition, I noticed a couple of continuity errors in certain shots (Sophia’s snack wrappers/empty water bottle on the desk and differences in camera quality). I have that decided I 100% need to refilm some stuff. I need to film shot 2 from page 2 of the storyboard from a different angle and make sure that nothing new has been added to the background. I also need to make sure that when I do this, the quality on my iPhone is set to 4k like all the other clips. Further, I need to add more shots in between shots 3-5 on page 2 of the storyboard to make the action more fluid. 

 

I plan to do this on either Tuesday or Wednesday of this upcoming week so that I do not have to push editing back even further. 

 

In terms of editing, I truthfully have not really started my idea with the audio layering. I plan to begin that this upcoming week as well. From my research, I know it is possible to accomplish what I want with Adobe Premier. However, the software has been giving me some trouble on my laptop and runs extremely slowly. If this becomes too big of a problem, my back-up plan is to use an app called “Acapella from PicPlayPost” With this app, I can record Sophia’s voice and layer all the audios over each other.  After, I will just save the final product and separate the audio from the video in Adobe Premier (the software should be able to handle that much before overheating and blowing up my computer). Then, I can simply adjust the audio to match the clip it’s supposed to go to as well as make sure it is not overpowered by the music. 

 

I plan to do this after I refilm but prior to the end of the week.