CCR

   Hello everyone! It's the final countdown. The final frontier. The eye of the tiger. Everything has been leading up to this moment right here, right now. My Creative Critical Reflection. It has been quite a journey. Honestly, I'm incredibly proud of what Daniel and I have accomplished with this project. We hope you will be too. Thank you all for your support throughout this journey of ours, we really appreciate it. You can access it on

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0By500QDKRJ97U2gzZkZJTWZ1TDQ

or

https://youtu.be/dgaqyZwDFzY

Until next film, 

Nicole Abuid

Our final video:)

    Here is the final product everyone! The link to our film, Jasmin. I hope you all enjoy, and thank you so much for traveling along this journey with Daniel and I:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW-JKRcT0QE

Until next post,
Nicole Abuid

EDITING?!?

     Hello everyone! The entirety of my Saturday was spent editing. Or should I say, half of my Saturday was spent editing while the other half consisted of me trying to fix my glitchy computer which kept shutting down on me and even erasing my project file! 

Flashback to Thursday 4/6- Nicole, yelling at her computer as premiere pro decides to completely look the other way and say it cannot locate the media that is oh-so-clearly on my desktop. 

Flashback to Friday 4/7- Nicole, figuring out why the files do not have audio, screaming at her computer yet again for dooming her yet again

Flashback to Saturday morning 4/8- Nicole, finally fixes and redoes the gun scene

Saturday afternoon- Nicole, writhing in pain as premiere pro shuts down, losing her project file

Saturday night- Nicole finds an earlier autosave of the project, completes the last finishing touches with daniel and exports

     Daniel and I worked to edit together on Saturday night through a software called TeamViewer where it allows you to share your screen with another person. We struggled to fix some continuity errors which we did not realize would be a problem while we were storyboarding (such as Jasmin standing in one shot, then kneeling in the next). We also struggled with the differing audio levels because we used different devices and/or recorded them at different times, such as a voiceover. However, we soon found a solution to the continuity errors and fixed the audio the best that we could with what we had (there is no easy solution in post-production unless we were to use adobe audition, and we did not have the time to begin to even mess with it). 

     Editing would've gone a lot smoother if there were not so many issues with the conversion of our files and the glitchiness of my computer- but we couldn't control this. If my previous issues with my Dell computer haven't convinced me before, after this experience I am team Mac. I actually ended up going to the apple store and found out that a Macbook Pro is great for editing. But I digress. Daniel and I are completely finished with the video itself and WOW is it relieving. It was an incredibly long and hard process- I can't even begin to estimate how much time we put into this project, but definitely over 50 hours. It's amazing what you can accomplish with so much planning and so much effort put into it. I do have to say I'm a bit disappointed that it didn't come out as perfect as I imagined it, but that's why this is a learning process! I definitely learned more than I ever thought I would while creating this project, and I can't wait to learn more. 

Until next post, 

Nicole Abuid.

Adobe Audition CC. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.adobe.com/products/audition.html

MacBook Pro. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/?afid=p238%7Cs0vC2LySe-dc_mtid_1870765e38482_pcrid_172123740631_&cid=aos-us-kwgo-mac--slid--product-

Download TeamViewer. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/windows/

It’s time to talk about Editing!

It’s time to talk about Editing! Get it? It’s time to talk about Kevin? Because in the film Kevin is incredibly frustrating and hurts people who care about him? Replace the name Kevin in that sentence with editing, and there is truly no difference. Truthfully I do enjoy editing, but it is a bit tedious, and more than a bit frustrating when things do not go as planned. Daniel came over to my house today to edit the film with me, I named all the night before he arrived. I didn’t realize however that the clips from the gun scene had no audio when played on my desktop, and when I improved them into premiere pro it had audio but no video! We were so confused and tried just about everything we could, yet nothing worked. Daniel even called window’s help line and cursed out Bill Gates when they said we’d have to pay to skip the one hour wait time). Finally I thought that maybe converting the files to a different format would help. I converted a file (which took five minutes), imported it into premiere, and it worked! Thank you mp4! Because the 23 files we needed each took so long to convert (one took 20 minutes), we decided to start the claymation scene first. After the time reached 8 pm, we then decided that I’d finish converting the clips for the gun scene and put them in order, and together during class we’d edit it during class.

We did end up finishing editing the claymation scene aside from color correcting (which we also will finish in class). Daniel is a color correcting guru. It was a really fantastic experience seeing us both work off of each others strengths and weaknesses throughout the entire process of the project. Since I had named the clips before we imported them into premiere, the entire process was so much simpler. During class this whole week Daniel and I had looked through our clips and deleted the ones which we were not going to use (the best out of two shots, shots where Jessica said her line wrong, etc), which also made the editing process easier.

    We already had a selection of music which we intended to use for this particular scene, yet after placing them over the near-finished product we decided none of them worked. We continued our quest until we found the perfect song. We never intended our song for this scene to have a psychedelic feel to it, however when placed over the other video/audio tracks it made perfect sense. The colors we intended to emphasize within our set and costume choices seemed even brighter and more noticeable with this song complementing it.

    The audio of the video clips themselves gave us a bit of trouble though. Even the separate audio which we recorded with my iPhone did not sound the best, and static could be heard in the background. However with the use of audio key framing, we were able to keep the original audio attached to the video clips, and when the music track was laid over it, the audio actually sounds decent. Thank you key framing!

Until next post,
Nicole Abuid

R. (2016, February 12). Premiere Pro Color Correction Tutorial with Fast Color Corrector | Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1drvNwiDEjU


Online video converter. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://video.online-convert.com/

 Adding, navigating, and setting keyframes in Premiere Pro. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/adding-navigating-setting-keyframes.html

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://player.epidemicsound.com/#/my_music/projects/450108/playlists/507314/

Second day of filming...

    Our second day of filming didn’t go so smoothly… Lighting is NOT our friend. We were filming the gun scene today, which meant we needed to somehow figure out a way to get the lighting work to make the background dark but the subjects (Jessica and the doll) bright. We decided to shoot in my dads office which had neutral/dark tones as the color scheme, which was much better for filming this particular scene than it would be in my room (which had a bright color scheme). We put black garbage bags over the window of the office, which made the room almost pitch black if the door closed and no other light was turned on. However when we added our strategically placed lamps and flashlights and had Jessica stand in the position in which we wanted her to, we could still see the background no matter what we tried. After much frustration from trying everything we could to make the background dark on my DSLR, we decided to use filmic pro on my iPhone7 (which helped our problem immensely, yet didn’t solve it). Then Daniel, the artistic mastermind, had the idea of putting black garbage bags on and hanging from the wall. Once we found enough tape, put them all up, and tested the set with lighting- it was perfect. We were able to manipulate the lighting to make the background barely show at all! DIY tricks really can make a difference.

        Throughout filming we still had many issues trying to get the perfect lighting for the shot we wanted, but everything ended up working out. A huge issue was trying to get the doll to stay on the table when Jessica slammed her hands on it. We ended up gluing the doll to the table, and when we needed to move the doll, we would move the table- very fun. We not only made Jessica look like a "baddie" with the dark lighting, but with her costuming/makeup as well. We wanted her to be wearing all black, but needed something about her to pop-which is why we chose her to wear the purple lipstick. The purple lipstick also added to the blue tone which we tried to emulate through digital methods on the filmic pro app. This shoot definitely took a lot longer, but all our time trying different things and trying to find the best option was totally worth it- the shots came out beautifully.

Until next post!
Nicole Abuid

F. (2014, March 28). How To Light For Darkness! Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15tYFWR4cvA

The Basics of Lighting for Film Noir. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://filmmakeriq.com/lessons/the-basics-of-lighting-for-film-noir/

D. (2016, March 24). How to Shoot in Low Light. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flh31ZosL-Y

I STEPPED ON THE PRETZELS

   
      Hey y'all! It's time to talk about Sunday- our unusual day of filming. We filmed the entirety of the claymation scene and it went incredibly smoothly quite to my surprise. Since we had already set everything up on Saturday we went straight to shooting. I had already written on the storyboard what lines were to be said at each shot so we knew exactly what Jessica, our actress, needed to say exactly when she needed to say it.

 Some of the issues which we had, yet fixed within a short amount of time, included:
-Getting into the right position to achieve a specific shot
-Changing the ISO depending on the varying light of what area of my room we were shooting in
-Doing manual focus pulls
-Trying to decrease the noise of our shots without majorly changing the ISO
-(More like a mishap) At the beginning of filming we shot a couple shots with Jessica wearing the wrong outfit and we had to re-shoot
-...Audio

       Let me expand upon this. We didn't have a lavalier microphone, so we decided to just use the audio captured from the DSLR...with a back-up plan. We made our own makeshift boom microphone. We taped my iPhone to the end of a Swifter Sweeper and I held it above Jessica (and above the frame of the shot as to not appear within it) and used the voice memos app to record the audio at every shot which required her to speak. Most likely we will use the audio from the DSLR, but its better to be safe than sorry. We will use a voice over in certain shots (the scenes where Jasmin's mom yells at her through her door) but level the audio in post production in order for it not to sound out of place.

    We were incredibly satisfied with the color scheme we chose for Jasmin's room, for the claymation set, for the the doll, the costuming (for both Jessica and the doll), and the filter we achieved through manipulation of the white balance setting. We wanted the color scheme to consist of pinks, oranges, and yellows- for specific reasons. Pink represents happiness and playfulness, yellow represents brightness and creativity, and orange represents courage and confidence- all characteristics which our character possesses. My room already had strong orange tones, and we emphasized the other tones through props and the box set we made for the doll.

Until next post!
Nicole Abuid

Color Psychology: How Different Colors Are Influencing You. (2016, April 16). Retrieved from https://facthacker.com/color-psychology/

The warmer the better!

      HELLO EVERYONE! THERE IS SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT! This weekend was rather hectic for Daniel and I. We spent both Saturday and Sunday on the creation of our film intro.

    Saturday was dedicated to getting the set ready as well as testing camera settings. There were SO MANY discoveries and mishaps which we made throughout this process. We started off by creating the claymation set which we would place the doll in, and which we would get many shots of Jasmin playing and tweaking with. My room quickly became a makeshift art studio- we had paint thrown in one area, clay in another, clothes, cardboard boxes, tiny figurines, and cellophane paper strewn about everywhere. Daniel would be working on one aspect of the room (such as our doll's clay bed) while I worked on another (painting, then blow drying the doll's dresser). 

     After finishing the makeshift doll-house set, we went about transforming my room into Jasmin's. We brainstormed and worked tirelessly in order to make my room into the cave of a bohemian-indie-quirky-nerdy-teen filmmaker. We added posters, blankets, strategically-thrown yellow clothing, and other minute details such as hangers, pens and pencils, water bottles, half eaten food bowls and backpacks in order to achieve the aesthetic we wanted for her room. 

    THEN CAME THE LIGHTS! Now this was a struggle. Everything else before was child's play compared to us having to figure out how the lighting scheme would work, what color cellophane paper we would use, and what setting to use/manipulate on my DSLR. We kept the central lightning of my room's fan but covered it with pink and yellow cellophane paper in order to create a warm room tone, and also covered my desk lamp with the same colors for the same effect. We added a clip-on light to my closet in order to be the main light shining on Jasmin's right side and covered it with only pink cellophane paper (the warmer the better right?). We also added white string lights on my back wall, mainly because string lights look incredibly pretty and give off the "hipster" aesthetic. After we were situated with our lighting, we moved on to figuring out what exactly we were going to do with our DSLR. This is where the bulk of our frustration with the lights came in. We looked up articles about f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO and figured out which settings would be best for us- and then we had to figure out how to access those settings, which lead to ANOTHER round of looking up articles. Daniel then came up with a fantastic idea... we could trick the camera.

    Now hear me out, it makes sense! He said we could work with the white-balance setting to trick the camera into thinking that white was blue- which would then give the film an orange tone. After multiple tries with multiple different colors and objects (once we took a picture of blue cellophane paper reflected onto a piece of purple paper) we decided to use the blue of my wall in order to white-balance the camera. After that, the camera created a beautiful orange filter. I was amazed that we could create that filter just through manipulation of the DSLR and not in post production- it looks so much more natural. We kept these settings for our shoot the next day, which I'll talk more about in my next post!

Until next post,

Nicole Abuid


Mansurov, N. Understanding ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture - A Beginner's Guide. Retrieved from https://photographylife.com/iso-shutter-speed-and-aperture-for-beginners/

Manipulating White Balance for Artistic Effect. (2009, March 02). Retrieved from https://digital-photography-school.com/manipulating-white-balance-for-artistic-effect/