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. 

Transitions/Music

 As I may have mentioned in the previous post, a growing concern of mine was that the content of my movie opening was coming across as too dramatic. While the goal of the opening is to give insight on the character’s emotional state, I want to make sure that I am doing so in a way that maintains the playful aura that is characteristic of so many coming-of-age movies. 

 

My solution to this problem is to add music and transitions.

 

Transitions:

The transitions come from the recommendations in my prior post. While I believe they did do their job in fixing the choppiness of the section of shots I had trouble with, they also serve another purpose. The “cheesiness” of these transitions creates a lighter and more playful atmosphere. In doing so, I think that what the character is going through will be more relatable to my audience.

 

Music:

I knew I needed to find music without a copyright that also fit the vibe I was trying to convey. The easiest way to do this was to go to iMovie’s wide selection of non-copyrighted music which is divided up by different emotions/genre (sentimental, playful, retro). Here, I found the song that I think I want to use for the background. It is called “Asagao” and it is by Asuka Ito. However, my main concern with this is that once I begin to add my idea in for audio layering, the music and audio may become too overwhelming. 

Overall, I think I like these changes so far but they may change as I progress in editing. 

Here is the revised section:

Group Meeting

Today in class we got into groups of six and got to talk about our projects. This was super helpful because I got to show my group mates the section of shots I talked about in the previous post. They agreed that it looked too choppy on its own and gave me some recommendations. 

 

The Recommendations: 

 

The first was to add more shots. Someone suggested I add a shot of my character standing up in between the reading the magazine shot and the dropping the magazine pile shot. The second was to add a shot after the dropping of the magazine pile to show her spreading them out on the floor. 

 

Another suggestion was to add transitions. These could lead the previous shot into the next to show that time has passed. I like this idea because I’ve been concerned that my opening is too serious. Even though I am addressing her emotional conflict, I don’t want it to come across dramatic. I think that transitions are a little silly and can bring a more playful element back into my opening. 

I think I will try the transitions idea first because I really do not want to re film anything unless its completely necessary. 

Here was my group:

Shots I Don't Like/Possible Reshoot

 This past week was kind of chaotic so I  haven’t really had time to begin editing my footage yet. What I did do however, was begin to put the shots in order in Adobe Premiere. While doing this, I have come across a couple of shots that I dislike. 

The shots I dislike  actually follow each other. It is when the character has the idea to get more magazines to research and then her actually reading them on the following. I feel that these three shots  don’t have a smooth transition and may be too choppy together. 

Without any editing besides putting the clips in order, this is what the section/shots look like together (I don't know why the quality on Youtube is so bad sorry).

I think I will ask a few people what they think of this part and if they agree with me, then I will either try to brainstorm ways to edit it so it looks more fluid or simply reshoot this section. If I do reshoot, then I need to come up with how I am going to change the shots so that this sequence looks smoother. 

Other than that section, I have not really come across any other shots that may need to be redone yet. As I begin to edit this week, I will be better able to identify other problem areas.

Filming Day

So as you may have guessed from the previous posts, I did film over this past weekend. I’m just going to run through everything that happened. 

Sunday (3/6/22) 2:00 p.m. 

Sophia (the actress) and my friend Rachel showed up at my house. Rachel brought her  tripod which we did not know was broken prior to filming. Sophia changed into her costume which she wants everyone to know is the “ugliest fit” she’s ever worn. 

Then, I went over the storyboard with both of them. We established that I overplanned some of the shots so we decided which ones to cut. The ones we cut were not really necessary so they will not be missed. (Although, I am still kind of worried I have too much footage but I will only really know once I put the clips together). With some shots cut, we continued to film in order of the storyboard and it went pretty well. 

We switched between using a tripod and a hand-held device (it was basically a selfie stick). 

       

We filmed many shots with the half broken tripod but it could not lower as much as it was supposed to and when we tried it just completely fell apart (I indicated in the picture the lowest the tripod went before fully breaking). Luckily, I found this mini selfie-stick that turns into a tripod at Walmart for like $6.00 so it was fine. 

This hand held device also had an effect that I did not expect. We noticed that the shots filmed using this device had a sort of shaky quality to them. This actually ended up working out in our favor as these particular shots were meant to be from the perspective of the protagonist. Thus, the shakiness of the shot actually seems like a more realistic simulation of the character's own perspective.

We followed the storyboard and had no other issues until about page 3. The trouble came in shot #7 of this page because we realized putting the board on the top part of a chair would block Sophia from the view of the camera. We couldn’t really change the angle it was filmed at either because it would reveal the board. We had to get creative so I ended up sitting in my closet behind the chair. The back of the board was propped up against the legs of the chair and my feet. I also placed the mini tripod on the seat of the chair to get the top of the board and Sophia in frame. This angle was perfect because you can see that Sophia is working on the board but you cannot see its contents.

 

We continued to shoot until about shot #4 of page 4 where we needed to actually construct the murder investigation board. We stopped here and went to “Craft Services” which was just my kitchen and some takeout chicken.

After eating, we put together the board because itwould appear in the subsequent shots. To make it, we just used a cork board, multicolored post its, cut-outs from travel/Nat Geo magazines, and red string. We tried to make it look as chaotic as possible. Then, we continued following the storyboard and finished filming all the shots on page 5. Since I am worried about having too much footage and going over 2 minutes, I filmed an alternative ending as well. This second ending stops prior to the last 3 shots on page 5. 

We finished around 4:30 p.m. and I did not do any more work that day. 

Red Throughout the Opening

 The Red Shirt

As I stated before, one way I wanted to unveil the emotional state of my character was through color. The most obvious way I aimed to do so was through her clothing. When we first meet the character, she is wearing the peaceful colors of light blue and green and her hair is pulled back neatly. When Sophia first put on the costume, we clipped the inside to keep the red shirt underneath from showing itself too early.

The character becomes more engrossed in her work, she starts to break her put-together façade. Unconsciously, she is beginning to create a mess in her room. Thus, the red shirt begins to peek through her robe. This is representative of her true emotional state surfacing.

Other Red Elements

The Books

I had mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to incorporate some sort of clue prior to the unveiling of the red shirt that utilized the color to hint at her emotional struggle. I had said I would either do it through a bracelet or nail polish. However, after thinking more, I decided not to do it this way since I already have an unveiling through her costume. Instead, I chose to use a shot before we see the main character. This was a shot of her bookshelf which has orderly green and white books and then scattered red books.

Red Yarn

As the character works on her project she begins to use red yarn. This was another way I chose to incorporate the color red. I wanted this yarn to connect the things she is pinning to the board. Since the color red is meant to be reflective of the character’s true self, I think that in a broader sense, using the red string to connect her thoughts and ideas (the cutouts on the board) could be representative of her passionate work/chaotic mindset.  

Lighting the Set

I decided that I wanted to film without using natural light because I was worried that it would change from shot to shot. Due to this, I had to get creative with how I lit up the room. Originally, I just turned on the overhead light in the room but it ended up not being enough, the room was still too dark. In addition, from certain angles that I had not considered when choosing the room,  I realized it caused a bit of a glare. 

To combat this I decided not to use the overhead light and instead to bring in multiple lamps. I placed one of these lamps on the desk to light the left side of the room and to light the scenes at the desk. Next, I placed a lamp on top of a bookcase on the right side of the room. Here it was removed from most shots but could still cast light over the right side of the room. Lastly, I brought in one last lamp and placed it in the hallway. That way, it could not be seen in the video but still worked to light the room.

My Three Saviors:

        

Here is an example of how the lightning looked in one of the shots:

Setting Up the Set

 Even though I picked the location of the filming, I still thought that the room did not look exactly like I envisioned. I also needed to place the props in the room. 

Firstly, the bedspread seemed a bit too chaotic for someone trying to convey a minimalist vibe. Due to this, I changed the bedspread to white sheets. I think that the sterile nature of the color white will be helpful in creating a "neat" impression. I also added green pillows to keep with the color scheme of green to communicate tranquility and calm.  

Before: 

After:

Secondly, I added the poster props that I discussed in the previous post to the wall. I chose to include all three posters because they all communicated what my character aims for in their life. I also removed everything from the nightstand and instead placed the diffuser and Vix Vapor Rub to contribute to the creation of a calming and tranquil image. Additionally, I replaced the books in the bookshelf with all the self-help books I could find around my house and another row with orderly green books and a tilted red book.

Third, I stuffed a bunch of random supplies in the desk to give off a cluttered look and removed the rug since the pattern seemed to also be too chaotic. 

With all that done, I believe the set is ready for filming.

Prop Creation

As the opening progresses, the girl will become more engrossed in her work. In the process, she will create a mess disturbing her “neat and peaceful” image. The mess will be created as she works on what I call my “RED STRINGS AND MURDER INVESTIGATION BOARD” which is basically one of these:

                 

I will not create this prop beforehand because I want to film her putting the board together. However, I also don’t want to unveil the whole board until the end of the opening. I want it to work as a final emphasis on who she “truly” is since it will be representative of her scattered thinking just like the messy room itself. As such, the whole board won’t be done on camera but I at least want to get a few shots of the creation process. 

I think some time between today or tomorrow I will go to Hobby Lobby or Michaels and pick up the products I will need for the board. As of right now, I want to get a red string and multicolored post-it notes. I already have a poster board and a cork board that could work. I also plan to use article/picture cutouts from old magazines. I’m thinking that the question she is trying to answer in her homework assignment will be something like “What’s your dream vacation?” That way, I can use all the travel, Outside, and National Geographic magazines I already have in my house (Trust me I have a lot).

As for the poster I mentioned for the opening shot, I want it to be something that fits her curated aesthetic but also serves as a reminder/motivation to keep up with it. This will set the tone for her emotional struggle. 


Here are the options I am considering so far: