Creative Critical Reflection 2020. (#39)

We were one away from reaching forty blog posts! Oh well.

To conceal this missed opportunity of reaching blog 40, go ahead and watch my CCR. Quarantine Edition! ish!

https://youtu.be/R3ku9WT_vKM

VALEDICTORIAN. (site, card, film) (#38)

WEBSITE:

https://luislageyreedu.wixsite.com/stokhigh

POSTCARD:

(FRONT): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wO2sA0iRAdGqW-urGiPvVCUHXMD9nXPj/view
(BACK): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d9T-r68OuO6n1miEcmoZPLsuqlgLZ_Xz/view

FILM:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tuj2zLRlaF27pbfzu-pi3qag9wdrEoNa/view



Here are the contents of this year's portfolio. Look through them at your leisure!


Till Next Time, Have a Great Day,

(#37) - Reflection.

What a wild, fun, and positive journey I have been on this year. Not only has this been an emotional joy-ride for me as many school events are canceled, but as a person, I feel as if I've learned so much about myself and my creative process when working on Valedictorian.

As all reflections must, looking back on the absolute beginning of the piece's development was my friendship with Luis. Last year when we met in our AICE Media AS level class, we instantly formed a bond that I cherish every time we share a laugh or talk about complex, outrageous ideas and how they impact the world as we know it. With my spontaneous creativity and his motivated dedication to his work, we made a balanced team when developing what would blossom into a film reflecting on the world around us. Credit is paid where credit is due, and Valedictorian wouldn't be where it is without my brother.

I've always been interested in character development whether that is through one's physicality, costume design, or dialogue. Having this space to experiment and express my thoughts was highly beneficial to creating the unique characters that appeared on the screen. At conception, Luis and I knew we wanted to showcase the personalities we saw walking the halls with us. Brainstorming the stereotypes common for Gen Z people was extremely exciting as they hadn't been defined with the perspective of their own generation before. This responsibility weighed heavily on our shoulders as we wanted to represent our peers accurately, without offending them. Not only did we achieve that goal, but we made each character clear to understand (in some cases) when they weren't even talking.

I confidently say Luis and I achieved that because our last part of our developmental process was to send our video to a focus group. This consisted primarily of Luis' contacts of film personnel, but they ended up being complimentary of both of our efforts. I addition to citing specific areas that needed minor corrections, this group expressed on multiple occasions that we did a great job. After over 4 months of brainstorming, developing a story, writing a script, acquiring a cast, filming, and lots of editing, to hear that our execution was of a high caliber amongst other filmmakers our age proves that the time and energy Luis and I poured into this project was worth it. The excitement we had about beginning this project early shone through all the creative decisions we had to make.

With quarantine, our development process was impacted a lot. Without our typical school day to schedule around and the quick enforcement of quarantine procedures, Luis and I faced major obstacles in filming our last scenes. Fortunately, as the last few scenes required less than four cast members, planning a shooting day was not difficult to arrange. We were very lucky; our enthusiasm for this project made us begin early, putting us out of production by the time heavy quarantine restrictions were put into place by our local government.

My senior year has been my most memorable year to date, and a lot of that is thanks to my portfolio project. I've developed a new confidence in my ability to convert a conception to a viewable film. This would not have been possible without the critique and advice of my teacher Tina Stoklosa, who educated so many on how to create a film that has a clear purpose. For that, much of my current ability is thanks to her. The largest take away I have from this project is simple: it pays off to be excited. Don't let a fear of prematurely jumping into a project sway you from taking the first steps towards your actual goal. Succeed or fail, if you aren't developing something you are excited about, it is impossible to be proud of your end result.

And guess what? I'm proud of the end result.

(#36) - ROLL CREDITS!

To cap the conclusion of the film, we need to recognize all the people that helped along the way.

I give you... the credits of Valedictorian.

Luis and I thought it would be fun to include the character yearbook photo along with their name because some of the character names aren't spoken. This allows the audience to quickly associate a face to a name. We presented the characters in the order they were eliminated in, however, ending with Luis and I.

There were also a handful of people to thank. BEACON TV was where we rented the camera that was used for the competition scenes, Sydney and Tariq both lent their clothes to us to use as costumes, Mel Altschul (my grandfather) gave us perspective as to why students are perceiving stress into their daily lives. Additionally, we both thanked our families. At the conclusion of these thanks, we included a brief message to Tina, our teacher and mentor, for our gratitude in guiding ourselves both as content creators and humans.


To conclude, both my production logo and Luis' are shown. We are extremely proud of this project and care deeply about this topic, as we see our peers stressed about school more time than we can count. The sound of waves crashing against the beach allude to the pivotal scene on the beach where students finally stood up against those who seek only intrinsic gain and idolize the competitive attitude.




The process of working on this short film has been incredible. Look out for a posting where I talk about this reflection process.



Till Next Time, Have a Great Day,

(#35) - shortfilm.com (The Website!)

Here it is, the grand reveal..... THE WEBSITE:

https://luislageyreedu.wixsite.com/stokhigh

I'm beyond excited to finally talk about this part of the project. Luis and I have been talking back and forth about it behind the scenes, and I plan on using this blog post to dive deep into the production of this part of our project!

THE INSPIRATION

As a Pixar fanatic, Luis and I were incredibly excited about the release of Monsters University in 2013, a prequel up to Monsteres Inc. Their promotional website was a pho-school site for the fictional college where one can access information about the classes and student life. 

As the website is no longer active, this is one of the 

only pictures I could find of it online

This idea is genius for a few reasons. One, it's fun and engaging. To have the ability to navigate through a fictional world is such a unique experience and I commend Pixar for creating this environment for people to escape to. Additionally, this idea is smart. Creating a school website as your tool for informing your audience is representative of your film because that's exactly what the movie revolves around—the school.

Therefore, Luis and I created the Stok High School website.

STOKHIGH.COM

Don't be deceived; this isn't the actual domain name.

Now, our website was born. Drawing formatting inspiration from our school's website (Cypress Bay HS) and adding the signature purple and gold, the website, cosmetically, was created.

As Luis has prior experience in building websites, his role was the actual nitty-gritty creation while I managed the important information to be included (similar in our editing breakdown!).

Of course, the viewer is greeted with the about page. This has all the essential information on upcoming events, school news and more from Stok High administration.

Including these elements allows the viewer to wrap themselves up into this fictional world and pretend they are actually engulfing themselves in this campus life.

On our "About Us" tab, there is additional information about the mission of the school, which is to encourage students to pursue heavy academic courses (of course).

Up next, we've actually included a tab about the competition itself. Here, students can find information on where to watch the competition and the people competing in it. Each competitor has their own unique bio, including what fictional clubs they're in, their SSA scores (Student Standardized Assessment, their universe's "SAT"), the students' GPA, and even their signature. This gives the characters some additional personality outside what was presented in the film. Including this information was important to Luis and me because these characters are large than life and have extremely unique personalities that are important to show to viewers of the film, even if they have to access another media source to find this information.

Every character has their own unique signature (including their easter egg last names!)

These are examples of some of the character bios:

SO, WHAT ABOUT THE FILM?

Hey, I'm so glad you asked!! All the information I've showed so far is related to the school, but what about the film? Prepare to have your mind blown.

Every. Button. Routes. You. To. The. Film. Page.

The Stok High logo on the main screen? VALEDICTORIAN page. The school lunch button? VALEDICTORIAN page. Obviously, besides the tabs that do correspond to a pertinent piece of information, every button will take the user directly to the website of the short film. 

At the top of the page, there is a video playing that shows numerous events occurring in the film.

Here, Luis and I plan to have quotes from content viewers of the film.

As of right now, the film is not complete, therefore we don't have quotes at this time.

The production logos for Luis and I (Curly Fries and TFMC respectively).

Additionally, there are tabs here for numerous sources. "Cast" brings up 

a tab with the students' photos (like the competitor's page), "Production" will

have a documentary of the production of the film (release date TBD), "Story"

which brings up the tab below, and "Credits".

A brief "Meet the Directors" that has brief info about Luis and I

and a quote from both of us: "Do unto others as you would

have them do onto you".

CLOSE TAB 

With that, I've updated this blog with all the information of the website, and the post card! The website has some minor edits that need to be corrected and the film still needs credits (blog post tomorrow), audio leveling for scene one, and transitions between the competitions. The finish line is in our sights and I'm so happy to put the finishing touches on this film!!

Till Next Time, Have a Great Day,

(#34) - audio correction!

Casting my sister was a huge benefit.

Obviously, during quarantine, we cannot go out and film or meet up to work on editing or analyzing our website. This is a huge negative because there could be a scene we didn't like due to composition, and we can't go out and reshoot it. Upon editing the scene at the beach, we didn't anticipate how loud and problematic the wind would be in post-production.

Specifically, there was one clip where the wind was louder than the delivery of one of Miranda's lines. As we can't go back to the beach and re-film that moment, I had a brilliant idea. The wind's volume is so loud that if I could layer another clip of Miranda's voice on top of it, the consistent wisp of the wind would still be kept throughout the scene. Now the only problem was recording it. I only had to walk 6 feet down my hallway to tell my sister I needed her voice.

With both of my monitors set up, Kailey was able to watch the scene and speak the line at the exact same time as she did in the clip. She did this with the same microphone that was used to record the scene in the first place, except this was in the comfort of our home.

Now the scene sounds significantly better, thanks to this correction!! Here is a before and after:

Till Next Time, Have a Great Day,

(#33) - Let's figure this out. (meeting up for advice on POSTCARD, WEBSITE, and transitions)

After finishing our first draft of the film, Luis and I showed the film to our mentor for advice. Primarily, we needed help finding a transition between scenes 1-2 and 2-3, and receive some advice on our postcard and website (which I will make separate blog posts about!). 


Currently, there is a black screen in between these scenes, as we wanted to leave space for a transition we would add on after. I brought up my original idea, and both our mentor and Luis liked the idea. As these scenes occur inside the VR world, the transferring between environments is the competitors loading into a new level. I pitched that between scenes we could fade into white and add a sound cue to indicate the players were being transferred somewhere else in this perfectionist reality game. This simplistic approach would be optimal as something overly complex would be a lot to get the audience to understand, especially when they have to wrap their head around the story.


For the postcard, Luis and I decided that we wanted to create an invitation from the school to get people to come to the viewing of the film. This would be similar to a letter that the competitors receive from the school to be in the Valedictorian competition. Using the purple and yellow color scheme, we created this using an online software called Canva:

Luis and I were conflicted about the "Special Screening"; our mentor was to be the tiebreaker. Ultimately they believed that the inclusion of "Special Screening" not only took up valuable space on the postcard but was redundant as this is assumed of a film's premiere. Mine and Luis's updated postcard now looks like this:

Now this postcard looks awesome. Luis and I added the image of the graduation caps as a way to provide a better visual of the actual film in a manner that wouldn't spoil any events and created a fake CTFD festival (an easter egg of one of our favorite sayings).

The website, on the other hand, I am deciding not to show on my blog (yet) as our largest piece of advice from our mentor was spelling mistakes. With numerous errors and corrections that need to be made, one gigantic post for the website and all of its choices would be served justice on its own rather than infused with this already extensive post. 

Our call this morning was really productive! Taking a minute to show your project to someone else and have other brains helping assess materials is imperative to the success of the product. With more eyes and opinions, Luis and I can better assess how a larger audience will receive our piece. This upcoming week we plan to not only finish production but get insight from a test audience about corrections to our film and other materials!!

Till Next Time, Have a Great Day!

(#32) - Editing Day #6 looking at a mirror!

The day has come... the final scene is ready to be edited!!


I hopped on to the WeVideo project tonight to edit the final exchange between Isa and Garrett (YAY, I get to edit vids of myself again!!). After sharing the video files onto the project media, I was equipped with my clips to begin compiling this scene.


Because all of the clips were filmed in order of the dialogue, I didn't feel the need to have the script open during the editing process. Instead, I began watching back clips and inserting which ones I liked the most.


It's strange editing video clips of yourself because you get to analyze and reflect on your expression, actions, and body language, not to mention the delivery of your line. A strange, reflective feeling came over me and brought me back to that day in the park when I was twirling my headphones in my hand and I remembered how much fun I had on set.


There was only one kindof problem that came up during the editing process—there was ONE LINE that had a lot of wind during the clip. I plan on going back to this specific clip later and add one file's audio onto another video. It is super late and I need to sleep, so I will go back and match the clips in the morning (if Luis doesn't get to it first!).


Not to mention, there were some clips where the line delivery was more aggressive and I made sure to include them in this scene. By editing the cuts so the dialogue starts immediately after the previous line, the scene gains intensity. This works well to build towards a climax where Garrett asks Isa what she thinks about stressing herself out to be successful.


Without further ado, here it is!! There is still the one line with the unmatched audio, so just be conscious of that!

I'm excited to micro edit this scene with Luis!!

Oh crap, we still have to do the final announcer voiceover.... Luis and I will do that this week!! In addition, I will make blog posts about the website.

Till Next Time, Have a Great Day!

(#31) - Editing Day 5 - tiny additions!

To cap the end of the third scene, I completed editing the fourth scene. This is the moment where Bryce leaves the simulation in frustration (nice rhyme Jake!).


This wasn't particularly complex to accomplish. Primarily, Bryce falls back in his chair, takes his glasses off, expresses his disappointment, then storms out of the room. Easy. As long as I sifted through the multitude of takes of this scene and selected the one with the clearest performance, scene four was complete.

One more essential element needed to be emphasized here. The VR simulation, having been referenced only briefly in dialogue, needed to be clear in this scene. After a search, I found some close-up shots of the white VR goggles illuminated in the blacklight that were perfect to tack onto the front of this scene.

And with that, I give you scene 3 followed by scene 4 (start the video approximately 4/5 of the way through!).

In the next few days, Luis and I plan to complete the first draft of the film to send to our mentors and others for more opinions!! I'm incredibly excited to view the final results. 

Till Next Time, Have a Great Day,

(#30) - Editing Day #4, what a beach the beach is!

Here's the problem with filming on the beach. There are no obstructions here, so there is nothing to block the wind. The wind, my friends, was a problem. A problem that Luis and I predicted. With my wind cover equipped to my external microphone, nothing stood in between the filming and the final audio quality. 

Alas, we were bamboozled.

Having not been as familiar with the setup I was working with, I was not familiar with gain. The wind was so intense that I turned it up incredibly high. This oversight caused the audio to pick up a plethora of unintended wind that overwhelmed our audio file.

Of course, Luis and I could not predict this outcome. All we foresaw was that we should use only the audio from the external microphone as the internal mic of the camera would be lackluster. We agreed halfway through the production day that we should, in fact, turn on both the internal mic and external mic (which was smart). Fortunately, in post-production, we discovered a miracle...

Bless the beach!

Waves are so chaotic, they are beneficial. Because of how they vary in their sounds, it is easy to put clips together because the waves hide the drastic cuts in the sound. The volume of the waves additionally adds to the ambient sounds of the beach environment that made the scene so much easier to edit. I discovered this halfway through the editing process as a way to ease the stress on my shoulders...

Bamboozled 2, electric boogaloo

Because of the audio being recorded externally, every single clip from the first half of the scene had zero audio attached to it. For about thirty minutes I edited dialogue together without hearing what they were saying. I had the script in my lap and the videos played on repeat, hoping and praying that I was able to get the scene perfectly edited for Luis to go in and micro. I attempted to match the external files to these silent scenes, in order to make the editing process easier on myself. There were now advancements in the edit of this scene! Some audios matched instantly while others needed some adjusting.

With that, I handed off the edit to Luis for micro editing. I was very general with Bryce's elimination at the end of the scene as Luis enjoys making fun cuts between characters in intense moments, indicative of the running montage in scene #2. After working, this is what we ended with:

Till Next Time, Have a Great Day!