(#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!