Film Opening - 4/2/23

Here is the link to my two minute film opening!

https://youtu.be/qF-pRffSDgc

I hope you guys have enjoyed this journey with me. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

 

Creative Critical Reflection - 4/1/23

Here are the links to my two Creative Critical Reflections!

Part 1: 

https://youtu.be/brQODSaxb04

Part 2: 

https://youtu.be/y25ezSViZ2o

I’ll talk to you guys later. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

CCR PROGRESS + SIGN OFF - 3/31/23

      Hi blog, just updating you guys today because I finally finished my CCR script! The script is about 2100 words. It took me what felt like absolutely forever to make it. This week I’ve had so much going on that I had to postpone making my script until the end of the week. As you may know, I am one of the chairs for this project at my school called Dance Marathon which happened this Friday. So, I’ve been a little occupied. 

      However, I did make time to finish it and this weekend I have been able to film and edit it. Filming took pretty quick. Most shots were taken once and only once. But by the time I got to editing, I realized that I had an issue because I wasn’t gonna be able to work with Adobe Premiere Pro as I didn’t want to download any new apps to my new computer that I just got because I don’t want to overload it yet. So, I had to work with iMovie.

      Now, I thought that iMovie would’ve made this process easier... but I was VERY wrong. It was so difficult to use iMovie. It was slower, it just didn’t have as many tools as adobe did. For my first project, I answered the first two questions and that one was pretty easy. I just made it like a YouTube video. So, all I had to really do was add some background music and add a couple images over the screen.

      The second car I created was a little bit harder. I did it in a talk show kind of way which meant that I needed to creatively insert photos in a different way than the YouTube video. So in order to do that I decided to use this big monitor that I have in my house, put a green picture on it, and use that as a green screen. But, greenscreening in iMovie is much more difficult than greenscreening in Adobe. So, it was pretty difficult to do so.

      Everything took me about two days to do and I’m pretty happy with the way that it came out. Of course if I used Adobe I could’ve probably added in many more things after editing just like I did with my film opening. But, I’d say that I got all of my points across with research, pictures, evidence, and all the things that you guys would need to see about how I feel about my project. 

      I thought that I was gonna run into an issue because my script is so long, but the videos ended up combining to be 9 1/2 minutes when my limit was 10, so I was
very happy with that as I was scared that I would have to cut the video down, and I wouldn’t know how. I can’t wait to post my opening and my CCR here! I think and hope you guys will love it!

       I can't believe this process is finally coming to a close. I've been through so many highs and lows with you guys and I can't believe that I will be saying goodbye to my blog. This has been such an amazing journey with you all, and I hope that you've enjoyed it just as much as I have.

       I started this project kind of dreading it and now I'm so sad that it's over. I've learned so much about myself through this process and I had so much fun creating my media products. I don't know when I'll "talk to you guys next time," but I am "signing off..."

I hope I'll talk to you guys soon. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

CCR SCRIPT - 3/25/23

      Hi blog, I’ve begun my CCR creation and I’m so excited! At first, I was pretty confused about what I wanted to do but I decided to start the script anyway and see what came to mind. I have four questions that I need to answer which I explained in depth, in a previous blog post. 

      I have to divide them in half between two types of media and after looking at some past CCR videos and having the CCR lesson in class... I’ve decided that for the first two questions, I’m going to do a YouTube video where I review the film opening. For the second one, I’m going to do an interview similar to a talk show where my dad will ask me questions about my film pertaining to the third and fourth questions.

      So far I've been using a lot of my blog posts and sources cited on there to help me with my CCR. especially for the genre, I researched a lot previously to the CCR so I have a lot of research readily available. This is great because I can see the CCR script will take a long time. This first question took me around 2-3 hours to write!

      While I've written the script it's also given me time to watch over my film opening and I've been able to spot little details in it that I didn't previously.

      I’ve written a script for the first question; I have now realized I’m running into a timing issue. For the first question, I wrote about 800 to 900 words. I felt that was too long, so I timed myself reading it, it took me around four minutes. My CCR should be around seven minutes but can be ten. I’d like to keep it at seven minutes; however, I do not know how that would be possible seeing that I’ve already written so much. 

      I'm worried that it will take me a really long time to edit the CCR because it took me 3 or 4 days straight simply focusing on the film opening. But, the CCR is less about camera cuts and more about the information I will be presenting, so I don't think it should take as long. I hoped that I would finish my CCR script today, but now I see it is much more time-consuming and requires a lot more brain power than I had initially assumed.

      I hope that I will be able to figure this out tomorrow in class. I’m going to ask my teacher what I can do to help with this. I have some other questions I need to ask her about citing sources and just some overall questions about my film opening that I haven’t been able to ask her over spring break. 

      I’m very excited that my project is moving along now. It took a pretty long time before I began editing. But now that I began editing, the process is becoming much lengthier. I want to make my CCR relatable and interesting to watch because I don’t want people to get bored as it’s gonna be very long with a lot of words. I also know that I need to include a lot of graphics, which are going to be pictures and videos of my film and other films to compare it to. 

      I'll update you guys soon with the end of my CCR script and some other details about my project as it closes out this upcoming week. I can't believe my project is almost done, it's been such a journey!

I’ll talk to you guys later. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

I AM DONE EDITING! - 3/23/23

      Hi blog, the day is finally here... I AM FINALLY FINISHED EDITING. Now I’ll be able to move on to my CCR! Editing took me about three or four days straight just working, and not doing ANYTHING else. I originally thought the editing would be pretty simple; just splicing a few clips together, adding a song or two, and then being done. However, the editing process was super tedious, and it took me forever.

      I ended up foiling a couple of sounds. For example, when Taylor steps out of the car in the beginning, her footsteps are foiled, along with the dangling of the keys that I created when she reaches into her pocket. I also created the sound when she’s texting along with the swoosh when she sends the message around the middle of the film opening. 

      I ended up having to spend a very long time on the last couple of seconds when she goes to submit her assignment. This is because I actually had to inspect the canvas page because I had to create an assignment for her to submit her psych project, as I in fact, did not have a random psych project assignment lying around that I could use. So I had to inspect the page: I created instructions for the assignment, and I created a fake submission, I had to change the title of the tab, the title of the assignment, the submission details, along with the date and the time submit. This took a pretty long time as I obviously am not the most computer savvy; however, I figured it out. I wanted to make sure that there were enough details in the project to make it seem realistic. I also had to inspect the page and change the assignment to say Taylor Fullman instead of my name (when she realizes that she has to do the assignment), because that’s the character's name and it wouldn’t make sense for it to say my name, a random name in the film opening. 

      I also had to create the opening clip with the company, Bright Light Films; I had to foil the sound too. I made the light switch on and off, and I used an electric razor to create the buzzing sound for when you can see the light shining below the words. I created the logo on Canva and then imported four separate photos into adobe premiere: the black screen, the black screen with the light, the black screen with the light, and the words on the black screen with the light, words, and reflection on the bottom. 

      I went back and watched the whole video to make sure that everything was okay, then I moved on to the credits. I didn’t necessarily know where to put the credits because I know that a lot of the time credits go at the beginning of the film when the music is playing. However, I had the music playing around halfway through so I decided to put it there as that would make the most sense and it would be awkwardly placed if I put it at the beginning of the film opening. I again used Canva to find my fonts. I created the credits on Canva, and then I copied them with a transparent background and download them into Adobe Premiere. 

      Once I was done filling out all of the credits, I watched the video again and decided to change up the bathroom scene a bit. Originally there was one clip of Taylor splashing water in her face, but I changed it into two clips, one being a little more close-up while turning the volume of the music down in order to create that little personal connection with her which I know my genre loves to do. If you guys don’t remember, my genre is coming of age and I wanted to make sure that because my target audience is teenagers they would feel a connection to Taylor being the teenager. Then, I ended up creating a sound for the end of the film opening. When you see the title I wanted to put a sigh as a sigh of relief that she’s finally done it and submitted it at 11:59. I used a pretty basic font for the end because I felt that it was simplistic, and I thought that it looked a lot like the time on the clock, I had to put some different keyframes for the position and the scale of it. The numbers began with the scale being very small and the numbers being out of frame. Then they get bigger as the computer closes. They also move down so you get the full view of the numbers.

      I’ve watched this video now about probably 20 times just to make sure that everything looks right and I think that for the most part, I’m probably done editing. Maybe I’ll change a couple of things here and there but now I’ll be able to focus on my CCR. I have about a week left to finish the project, so I think I’m doing pretty well on time. If anything changes I’ll definitely let you guys know and I’ll update you guys on how my CCR is coming along!

I’ll talk to you guys later. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

TEXT MESSAGES - 3/21/23

      Over today and last night, I spent over six or seven hours just editing text messages. Now to the naked eye or at least what I thought that this would be, it should be about an hour of editing a couple of simple clips to make some cute text messages for my simple video. Oh, how I was wrong... I knew that this would be something difficult but I did not know that it would be this difficult. 

      Once I was about 3/4 of the way done editing my video I realized that it appeared a bit plain. Not plain as in black, white, and boring; but plain as in it just needed something more and I really liked the idea of these text messages.

      Now originally Taylor was going to pick up her phone and begin playing music in order to concentrate to do her project; however, I decided that the text messages would be a nice way to show how teenagers communicate nowadays, which also relates to my genre of coming of age. This genre generally surrounds teenagers and their addictions to technology.

      I went to YouTube to find a quick tutorial on how to do this. I found that the tutorial was about 3 to 4 minutes long so I assumed that it would be quite easy. NEWSFLASH to anybody reading this... It is NOT easy. Editing is NOT EASY. 

      As I was editing these text messages my dad continuously came out into the living room and repeatedly asked me why it was taking so long to edit, saying how I should be spending my spring break doing something else. You know... I kind of just wanted to do it, which is odd. But, never mind that.

STEP 1

      I began by importing two images. One image was a blue speech bubble, and the other image was a grey speech bubble. Now, in order to change the colors of the speech bubbles to the exact shade I wanted I had to search up the tint effect on Premiere and change the color. I ended up importing four speech bubbles in order to write four little sentences. 

STEP 2

      Three of the sentences were from a new character name Maddie. Now, we’re not going to physically see Maddie throughout the film. She’s simply a character that is friends with Taylor and is annoyed that Taylor yet again is taking forever to complete her assignment. She is concerned that since this is a group project, and she will get a bad grade if Taylor doesn’t pull through. But, just as we all know, Taylor always pulls through even if it is last minute. This may not always be convenient for other people, but sometimes teenagers are like that. 

STEP 3

      Once I changed the tint of the speech bubbles, I made sure that instead of having the clips "fit" on my screen, I change fit to either 100% or 200% just so that I can get the fine details of the text bubble. Next, I change the focus of the text bubble to the corner in which it’s coming from rather than the middle. This will help me with the transitions that I use in the future. 

STEP 4

      My next step is to add some more effects to the bubbles by creating three different keyframes in which the bubble goes from zero which means we can’t see it and then at the end to a said number like 100 and then the middle keyframe would be a number like 105 so that it has the effect that a text message word when it comes in pops into your phone. For the middle keyframe, I also right-clicked and selected "ease in."

STEP 5

      Next, on the text placed within that speech bubble, I add the cross-dissolve effect. Then I add another piece of text, which goes above the message which states who is coming from (in this case Maddie) along with the day of the week, which is Tuesday, and the time. There are three different times because Maddie texted Taylor at three different points of the day and Taylor clearly does not respond until right now. 

STEP 6

      I repeat this process until I’ve done all four of the speech bubbles now at the end of the speech bubbles timeframe, I make them all have the transitioning out with the effect "push." Once I add in the sound, this transition will occur once she sends the message almost like she sent a message out of the frame, which she quite literally is.

I’ll talk to you guys later. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

SURPRISE! - 3/19/23

Hi blog, I have an expected yet surprising update...

      So I know yesterday I said that I was switching to iMovie, but I spent all day trying to edit the video with the sound, the sound effects, and all the cuts and clips... 

      I caved, I couldn’t do it. I actually could not do it. So, I went back to my handy old computer that crashes every time I open up Premiere. What else was I supposed to do?

      I opened up Premier and began researching different ways to use Premiere on my computer in order to make sure that it wouldn’t crash. I found that I actually needed to get rid of a lot of storage on my computer, which definitely helped Premiere run faster. Since I don’t have an Apple Computer, I ended up having to take hours to import every single thing from my phone onto my Microsoft surface, because now I’m not editing straight from my phone. Although this took a long time I know that in the future it’ll end up being more beneficial to me than not.

      So I opened up Premiere and I began dragging all of my clips in. Every time I drag in one clip, I would hit enter, which renders the videos and make sure that my computer doesn’t crash. I ended up having about 80 to 100 shots that I had to edit. I began today by simply putting them in order and making sure that they all ran smoothly; this is so that throughout the week as I edit them, the crashing is as minimal as possible. 

      I also began playing around with different ways that I could place the clips in order. I found that, although I envisioned a certain order of clips in my head sometimes it’s okay to switch out that order if it looks better for the aesthetics of your film in relation to the sound or simply so that the film doesn’t appear all over the place.

      The song I chose definitely will help me edit because it’s kind of a guideline of what I should be doing. Once I began editing I lined up the different clips with the song. Now the song only currently takes place in the second half of the video; however, I’m still trying to decide where to put the credits. I am most likely going to place them in the beginning, so I’ll probably add some of that song over the credits too.

      Now that I’ve been editing, I realize that there was absolutely no way that I could’ve done it on iMovie. The amount of clips that I have to layer is insane. iMovie only allows you to layer three; however, I already have a part in my film that layer fourteen clips, and that doesn't even count any of the sound layerings! 

      My laptop only crashed two times today which is much better than the last time. I think that as long as I continue to render all of my clips as I add them in, the video should end up perfectly fine and my laptop crashing should be condensed to a minimum.

I’ll talk to you guys later. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

EDITING - 3/18/23

Hi blog, happy spring break!!! So, this upcoming week is probably going to be pretty difficult for my project as its spring break and I really want to try and relax. These past couple weeks have been very stressful, which I talked about in my last post. However, today I wanted to get a head start, and that head start included some editing. 

In projects before in AICE media class I was editing on adobe premiere Pro or iMovie. Now I know that adobe premiere pro is of course much more efficient than imovie. However, premiere Pro has proven to lead to some issues in compatibility with my computer, but I wanted to try anyway. So, I started premiere Pro on my computer and started editing a couple of shots that I filmed last week. Once I started editing these shots, premiere Pro completely crashed my computer for an hour. I tried again, one more time but the same thing happened so I decided that using iMovie would be much better. Now iMovie isn’t the worst case scenario as it’s still an editing software; however, it is not as high-tech as  Premier Pro or some other websites. 

I do like that iMovie can be used on my phone which means that I can edit from wherever I am. I’m usually not home as this is spring break and I’m trying my hardest not to stay cooped up in my room. 

Using iMovie has been not the most interesting experience as it doesn’t have that many features however, it has been an easy experience because it’s not prone to crash in my phone or making it slow down 

On iMovie it’s much harder to make clips very short because it has a limit to how short your clips can be. While on Premier the clips can be a short as you want. I also find that it’s hard to layer videos, or sounds on iMovie, because it only lets you layer three clips at once. So, if I need to layer four times or more I’ll need to finish editing the first film and then move that video into another iMovie project and start layering on there. 

I haven’t begun editing sound yet, but I’m sure that the layering issue will definitely come across when I’m attempting to do that because I have to layer songs in and I also have to create Foley sounds of outdoors. So, I’m sure that that will be a bit of a struggle, but I hope I’ll be able to figure everything out and Imovie in the end is most likely the better option for me.

I’ll talk to you guys later. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

MUSIC - 3/15/23

      This week has been pretty stressful for me as it’s been the end of the third quarter, which, as I have expressed in recent posts has been pretty difficult for me. So, I wanted to take a step back from the project a little bit: however, that led me to realize that I ABSOLUTELY 100% CAN NOT and will not sit back from this project because I still have so much to do.

      As I begin thinking about editing, I realized that I still needed to pick out my music. Now, music is something that I’ve been struggling with since the beginning of the project because I couldn’t put my finger on the exact type of song I wanted, where I was going to get my song, how to get the songs for free without copyright, and all those other little tiny details that you wouldn’t usually think about. Now that I have this project, I realize that finding music is not as easy as it seems.

      I went scouting for music on different websites such as Spotify, YouTube, and other copyright-free websites. I won’t reveal my song yet until the end of this post. I found my song through Spotify. I’m actually an Apple Music listener, but I asked some friends who have also taken this class, and they said that Spotify was a really great way to find a variety of different songs that were copyright-free. So, I looked up copyright-free music on Spotify and I listened to around 50 songs. Then, I finally found the song that I wanted.

      Now, originally my film was going to be more stressful or sad. However, once I begin looking for songs, I realized that that would be a little bit too difficult; I found that the song I chose fit what I wanted the project to be about a bit more. My song is actually pretty upbeat and very encouraging which is something that Taylor clearly needs in the film.

The song I chose is
DRUMROLL PLEASE...

Anymore - N3X

      The song is copyright-free!!! I went to YouTube to get the full version of this song as Spotify only allowed me to hear a short clip of it because I am not signed up for Spotify. I’m very happy with my song choice, especially because of all of the beats and snaps in the song. It'll be easy to cut and move around within my video however I may please, which will allow for an overall smoother film.

Link to the song:

ANYMORE

I’ll talk to you guys later. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

ROUGH WEEK - 3/12/23

      Besides being your average lazy teenager this week I’ve been pretty unproductive for some real reasons. To start, It’s the end of the third quarter and I’ve been trying really hard to get all A’s. I’ve never had a third quarter where it’s been an issue; however, this quarter has proven to be much more difficult than the ones in the past, and all of my grade-determining tests and assignments have fallen between last week and this upcoming week. So, I’ve been absolutely filled with studying, practicing, and completing assignments which have caused me to be even more stressed than I would usually be. So, I’ve been pretty anxious. 

      In addition to that this has been the first week of cheer tryouts for me at school cheer is something that is very important to me so I’ve been dedicating a lot of time and energy to practicing and making sure that I’m doing everything right in order to hopefully make the team. 

As you can see, I didn't even get the chance to start my CCR or editing!

      This was also the weekend that my cousin came down from college who I don’t see very often so we had a lot of family dinners scheduled and planned along with things to do with him during the day. So, I haven’t been able to spend much time doing my assignments. 

      To top things off I have also come down with some sort of sickness that caused me to be on medicine that has been giving me some pretty bad stomach aches and making me overall feel pretty bad. So, it’s been pretty difficult to focus on school when I haven’t been feeling very well. This actually affected me tonight as I was doing my chemistry homework and studying for a big math test that is tomorrow because I had just taken my medicine and I got this terrible stomach ache which actually caused me to have a panic attack, which isn’t necessarily uncommon for me. It just really sucks when I have other things to be doing. This is something that’s me back pretty regularly For example, when I was in class the other day, completing a media text essay I randomly felt one coming on me and I just had to remind myself that everything was going to be fine which ended up working however, sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes I need to sit alone and make sure everything is okay. 

      Overall, this week has been pretty stressful so making time to follow my calendar that I made a couple weeks ago hasn’t been the easiest. I know this week I was supposed to start editing however, I’m gonna have to start that next week which was not my plan. But, is not the end of the world as I know most of my friends haven’t even started filming filming. 

I’ll talk to you guys later. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies

REFILMING - 3/11/23

      Over the past week, as I was watching over some of my clips, I realized that I needed to refilm a lot of things because either the angle was incorrect or you can’t hear exactly what the character Taylor who’s played by my friend Sammy is trying to say, or little things like that. So this weekend I took it upon myself to invite my friend Sammy over to re-film those things.

      Now this time when filming I made sure that we didn’t make any spur-of-the-moment decisions like we did last time as I stated in my blog last week. So, the second she came over we made a list of all of the shots that we needed to fix along with how we were going to fix them and in what order we were going to fix them. This helped because we weren’t running around, like chickens about heads, and we actually knew what we were doing. Last time we made a lot of decisions on the spot which led to this decision to continue filming. This decision, of course, led me to not be able to start editing this weekend, which has definitely been a major setback for me as now I will have to work on this project over spring break, but you’ve got to do what you’ve gotta do if you want your film to come out as good as it could be, and live up to its full potential.

      This time I made sure to stay with all of my ideas instead of listening to certain ideas that Sammy had although she does know a lot about filmmaking. I felt that because this was my project and it was my idea it would make much more sense for me to just make all of the decisions and have her simply do what I tell her to for each shot. Surprisingly it didn’t take very long to fix the scenes that we had to. I think that is all thanks to the list that we made which split up everything that we needed to do. I think that last week took so long because we didn't have a list.  

      This time I made sure that my tripod was working correctly and had all of its parts. Last week it was not working correctly because it broke halfway through, and I ended up having to make a makeshift tripod and find other ways to film, which led to shaky and blurry videos. 

      What this has taught me is that planning is key and it’s not always the best idea to bring your creative mind to the table right before filming. You should be planning in advance so that when it comes time to film you know exactly what you’re doing and you don’t have to go back and film multiple times. This way, you don’t have to drag the people who are playing the characters out a second time when they might have plans that they would want to be doing on the weekend instead of playing a character for your short film opening. 

Some shots we had to fix:

I’ll talk to you guys later. Signing off!

- Amanda Margulies