Film opening

 I am SO excited to present you with the final version of our film opening, Cycles.

CLICK HERE to watch our project.

It was a good run, blog!

I guess this is good-bye.../ CCR

 Good-bye, Blog!

Shortly, I will present you with both of my CCRs, and the final version of our film opening. This project has had it's ips and downs, but I can certainly say that it is one of my favorites I've done throughout my high school experience. This was one of the few opportunities I've had to truly showcase my personality in. 

Yesterday, I filmed all my CCRs and I spent all of my time in class and after school today editing them. It was harder than I expected to be honest. I definitely don't have what it takes to be a youtube. But, I tried.

I'm glad I got to work with such an amazing group of girls on this project. We all met through AICE Media, and I'm grateful to have met people that not only did I work well with but that became friends I hope to carry with me through life. 

CLICK HERE to access my CCRs

Update- CCR and film opening

 Hi, guys.

I guess just because I talked about never missing a blog post on my last post, I missed one. But to be fair it was because my flight was delayed over 10 hours in Brazil and I didn't have data outside of Wi-Fi, which was only free for two hours. But either way, I'm back home now.

Because I got back late yesterday afternoon (and I got food poisoning from airplane food), I didn't get to post my third blog post for last week. But, today I spent the entire afternoon filming my CCRs and I am now in the process of editing them. I had my friend Diego help me, and, since I didn't have the school auditorium, we switched one of the videos to a podcast, and the other video is a tour through the set of the film.

The film's opening is completely done and edited. The original font from Canva ended up not working because we couldn't find a way to make it animated, so we had to use a different font, but still from Canva.  Tomorrow, I'll share with you both my CCRs and the final product of the film opening. I can't wait to hear your thoughts!

CCR script

 Hi, Blog!

As I had said in my previous post, this week I focused on working on my CCR responses. While I couldn't film any of it because, for one of them, I need my school's auditorium, for the other one I need an interviewer to follow me around the house, and since I'm in Brazil, not a lot of people speak English, and I doubt I'd be allowed to film a CCR in Portuguese.

Nonetheless, I am totally done with my script for both products of the CCR. I am flying back to Florida at 6AM on Saturday, and then on Sunday, I will have my cousin come to my house after Easter lunch to film the 73 questions with Vogue-inspired CCR so that I can start editing that as soon as possible. I have to be honest I'm nervous about being on a time-crunch to edit the CCRs before April 2nd. If it was just filming it, that would be easy, but since I have to edit it and add images, it will be a bit more time-consuming.

It took me a good two hours to completely finish the scripts, and I have to say the last paragraph made me quite emotional. In the last paragraph of my script, I chose to do an overall reflection of the project as a whole, and it made me realize it's very close to the finish line, which is a bittersweet feeling. For one, I'm glad I won't have to stress about making three blog posts a week. even though I have never missed a blog post, sometimes it was hard to do three posts a week because there were weeks where I felt I didn't have much of an update to give, but I have to admit that worked for the best as it pushed me to do something to have what to talk about in the posts.

Here's that last paragraph for ya:

Sounds, editing, and title

 Hey, everyone!

As we get closer and closer to the due date for our film opening, all of us are working on different tasks to maximize efficiency, especially since every single one of us is currently traveling, so it's not like we can meet up. I have to be honest I actually kind of miss them. Throughout the entire filming process, we had a lot of fun and I feel like we've all become good friends. I don't want this project to be over just yet.

Okay, enough with the feelings. During the weekend we wrote down all the additional sounds we would need from Pixabay or Soundstripe and I told the girls I could take care of finding all the sounds since I couldn't be there when they met up to start editing. I added the link to all the sounds onto a Google doc and then uploaded that to our AICE Media Google Drive, which is where we're keeping all the footage, sounds, editing, literally everything. Here are all the sounds we are using:

There's two more sounds that aren't on the list, but that's because we want to use Foley to get them. 

When they met up to edit, I asked them to send some photos of the software so that I could share them with you guys here. To my understanding, Zain is doing not all but a good part of the editing, because she's the one who has the most experience with those things, but we are all attempting to edit as well.

Oh, also, since now I figured out how to put images on my blog posts again, I'll leave below the picture of the title slide of the film I had told you guys about. For the font, I used the Canva font "Antio" in the size 435. I am also trying to figure out how to animate the font so that it looks like it is somebody's writing.

Throughout this week, I plan on writing my script for the CCR, which I'm going to record as soon as I get back home. One of the things I'm doing for the CCR is inspired by the 73 questions with Vogue, and I already spoke to one of my friends for him to be the "interviewer" 

ZVCN productions

Hi, again blog!

I was FINALLY able to figure out how to put images on my blog posts again. Usually what I do is just upload or drag the file onto here, but every time I've tried to post whilst in Brazil that doesn't work. So, I resorted to writing the blog posts on my phone and then copying and pasting the image onto here, but, when I write the posts on my phone, they come out in a weird format, so I thought: If I can copy and paste the image on my phone, I could probably do that from my computer, too! This whole process took about 30 minutes to figure out, and a lot of frustration. But we are ready to go now!

Today, my group met up to get started on editing the footage and selecting which clips we should use and which ones we shouldn't. Even though I couldn't meet up with them because I'm not in town, they still made sure to include me in everything and let me know how things were going. Here's a photo they took and then photoshopped me in it.

While they worked on editing, I worked on creating our production company for the film. Vanessa suggested the name ZVCN, which is just our initials put together, but it sounds legit. I feel like it could be a real name for a production company. So, once that was settled I got started on creating the logo. To be honest I didn't really know where to start at first, so I searched production company logos to get some inspiration. I made ours based off of these examples:

I noticed most of them had some sort of camera element, such as camera film, video recorder, etc., and then, using Canva (which I am obsessed with and will be obsessed with til the day I die), I created this:

And then I sent it in our group chat and every one of my group members loved it, which is good because I spent a good 45 minutes on this and I really didn't want to have to do it again. Since I won't be in town all break, we all agreed that I should look for all the sounds/music we will use for the opening, so I've been navigating Soundstripe nonstop. I think we are pretty set on using the sound I told you guys about for the title screen (see last blog post), but I have yet to find the other sounds we will use.

This is pretty much all I got for you guys this week. Catch you next week!!

An ode to Soundstripe

 Hi guys!

I feel like I've been putting off this blog post ever since my last post, which was on Tuesday I think? And you guys deserve a proper apology. So, I'm sorry. The last couple of days have been hectic as I came to Brazil to visit my dad and that alone is a 12-hour trip, so honestly I've just been tired and putting this off for later. But I'm back now and I have really great news.

So, I was doing some digging on other websites for royalty-free music and sounds that aren't Pixabay and I found this website called "soundstripe" which I'm not sure was among the few websites Mrs. Stoklosa suggested we use to find the sounds and music we needed for the project, but I'll make sure to tell her about it so that she can recommend to her future classes because it was really really helpful.

Besides having thousands of audio that we can pick from, they give users the option to pick a list of sounds based on specific characteristics or genres that you can check off on their website. You can also find a sound by searching artists, specific instruments, and playlists. You can also layer multiple sounds within their website, which could be helpful in case my group and I need to do so. And of course, the best part, it's free

I found this one specific sound that I think could be perfect for when the title of the film comes on screen, especially since we are going for something super dramatic. On Canva, I created a document with the shot where the film title will be displayed, the one close-up from the protagonist's eyes, and then on top of that I added the title "Cycles." in the font my group and I agreed on, which I went over a couple blog posts ago, but for some reason, my computer isn't letting me upload any images onto Blogger, not even the screenshot I took of the soundstripe website. 

I'm going to try to figure out why I can't upload any images into my blog posts before my next one because I really want you guys to see what I'm picturing for the title screen. Maybe after I post this it will let me go back and edit it and add the pictures. Either way, I'll update you tomorrow or Sunday!