Yes, I Did Film the CCR

  Good news and bad news, which I notice has been a bit of a theme. So I DID film the CCR, using this old greenscreen that I've had for like four years. It's old, but it works well enough. The problem, as you might be able to tell, is that I don't have it on my computer yet. It was some kind of storage issue, so I deleted a bunch of files that I don't need, and right now I have the videos uploading from my phone. It's not giving me any kind of prompt saying that I don't have enough storage, so hopefully I'm fine. I'll try to get this whole thing edited by tomorrow night.

CCR Approach

  For the CCR, I'll need to make two videos for two different approaches. The idea I've came up with to the two videos represent a kind of "old versus new". The first video will take on a very modern aesthetic, capturing the look of celebrity interview videos posted by publications like Variety and Wired. These videos tend to have sterile, white backgrounds, and feel very formal. For the second video, I'm going to take inspiration for vintage late night TV shows, specifically the ones that would play horror movies with a host that introduces them. For this video, I plan to play the parts of both myself and the host who is interviewing me. I'm excited to film both because I have a lot of things that I want to say about the project and I think this will be a fun exercise in expressing them.

CCR Prep

 Now that the actual film opening is done, it's time to make the creative critical reflection, or CCR. For this I'll need to make two videos that each use a different approach to answer each of these four questions:

• How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

• How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

• How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

I've given it some thought and I've came up with basic ideas ideas for how I want to answer them. This is of course not exactly how I'll express these thoughts in the videos themselves, but it is the core of it.

Question: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

Answer: The Summer of the Swarm uses a variety of horror and thriller genre conventions, such as shots from the point of the view of the monster, a dramatic zoom in, creepy static establishing shots, and a character who serves as the initial victim. There's also the initial black screen and subsequent opening shot with ominous buzzing which is meant to feel foreboding. In terms of challenging conventions, one way this is done is through the film's bright, daylight color scheme and the upbeat music which plays when the park is introduced, which is uncharacteristic of the genre. The other way is through how the first victim is an average looking woman of middle-age, as opposed to a younger, conventionally attractive person

Q: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

A: The product engages with audiences through establishing the setting, then creating suspense and establishing mystery. The setting is established through the weather report voice over as well as the numerous establishing shots of the park and the surrounding South Florida area. The upbeat music during the introduction the park is used to illustrate how it's a popular place during the summer, even if the hot weather can be considered dangerous. The juxtaposition of the weather report and the park introduction creates irony and a sort of dark humor, which also engages audiences. Ironic humor also occurs through the juxtaposition of the calming music playing through the victim's headphones and the danger she is in. Suspense and mystery are created through the POV shots, which inform the audience that danger is present although the victim doesn't know, as well as the fact that the audience doesn't know exactly what the danger is. For distribution, the film would start by premiering at film festivals, possibly some genre specific ones like Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest, or TIFF's Midnight Madness. There it would be able to get the attention of a distribution company, where it would get a limited or wide release in theaters before being released on a streaming service.

Q: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

A: One thing I learned was the importance of casting people who are experienced with acting for roles that require actual dialogue, as this lead me to having to rerecord the weather report with someone more skilled. I also learned that editing takes longer than I thought it would, especially because there are certain small details, like sound, that take a lot of time to get right. Cutting a shot at just the right time is a skill in and of itself, and I needed to learn how to establish a good rhythm of shots through editing.

Q: How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

A: The entire project was filmed on my iPhone, which was very convenient, as it allowed to me to not have to worry about lugging around big and expensive filming equipment. It also allowed to conveniently pull out my phone whenever I wanted if I saw something that would make a good shot, which is exactly what I did for many of the establishing shots. For software, I used Adobe Premiere to edit the project, which was provided many useful tools to allow me to achieve my vision. I also used Canva, an online graphic design program, to create the studio logo and title card. Lastly, I used the online slideshow program PowerPoint to make the presentation slide which is shown at the end.

Branding! Branding! Branding!

  Ok I'm basically done with the film opening, and I know that you're dying to see it. Before I show you that though, there's something else I want you to see. I decided that to make my film opening seem more realistic to how actual movies begin, I would create my own studio logo. This was a relatively simple process, although it was somewhat frustrating, given that I'm not the best at graphic design and will never claim to be. Before I designed it, I had to come up with a name. I settled on the name Livewire Studios, which was inspired by one of my favorite song lyrics ("Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire", from the song "Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads). Plus I just think it sounds cool. Anyway, for the logo itself, I wanted something with a kind of vintage look. This led to me choosing a 50s style font, with a quirky alternating color scheme and lowercase "i"s in the text. After making the logo in Canva, I downloaded multiple versions of it so I could edit them to be slightly animated in Premiere, as I wanted a quick, snappy animation. For the logo's audio, I searched "electric" on Pixabay and found this VHS start up sound effect, which I thought fit perfectly. All that was left was to add some grain to complete the vintage aesthetic, and bam! There it was!

The Final Clips

 On Monday, I filmed the final two shots that I needed for the film opening (finally!), seen below.

 For the shots, I filmed in my media studies teacher's room and used her projector to display the Powerpoint slide that I created. I brought a white polo to wear over my shirt because it was important to me that the character, Todd, looked professional because it fits the personality I imagine he would have in the actual film. I went with blue and white as the color scheme for the presentation because those colors fit the theme of health and safety, which not only fits the presentation itself but further establishes those things as being important to Todd. The shots both total around 30 seconds when combined, which when added to the rest of the footage I shot will get me to two minutes in total. 

We Are Almost There

 So here we have the finished editing timelines for the two of the three scenes that compromise the film opening (the third I'll film tomorrow). Now one thing that isn't present in either of this is the credits, as I haven't yet decided how I want to include them I would like to have the whole thing edited and in front of me before I make that decision. I'm also still unsure I want to have this mosquito sound effect play over the title card as the music fades out. There are a few variations of how I can do the sound for that and I still need to decide which. Lastly, I tired to make graphics for the weather report and display using this green screen effect with the actor's phone, but I just couldn't get it to look good. I just decided to keep the weather report as being audio only, with a little news report sound effect at the start. Even with the changes I had to make, I think it's coming out really good, largely because of the shots I was able to get.

More Stuff

  Yesterday I filmed the last of the footage I needed for the beginning of the film opening, which is a man on a bench watching the weather report on his phone before drinking water. What I did was I filmed his phone screen as a green screen so I can insert the weather report graphics later. 

 My plan is to finish editing the first two sections of the film opening by the end of this weekend (The weather report and the mosquito attack in the park). On Monday I'll film the final clip because that's the day I'll have access to the projector prop I need, and hopefully I'll have the whole opening done by the half-way point of next week. 

Where we're at now

 Right now I'm nearly done with editing the park scene, which you can see here:

 I got some good mosquito sound effects on the website Pixabay, as well as some upbeat sounding rock music to play in the beginning and some calm piano music that's meant to be playing through my mom's headphones. I'm using Adobe Premiere to edit, which gives some great options when it comes to manipulating footage and audio

 Now you see I tried to film the weather report scene again, as I couldn't do it Monday because I was sick to the point that I couldn't go to school. When I tried to do it today, the green screen I wanted to use wasn't available, and and won't be for the rest of the this week. With no good place to film, my solution to this problem was to record audio of my friend Lee, who was supposed to play the weather reporter, and have it play over graphics intercut with the actual outdoor footage. Given that I originally planned on the weather report being voiceover, this isn't a damaging change. I'll just have to make more graphics. 

Look at all this filming I did

 Yesterday I went out to film the park scene, which makes up the bulk of the film opening. I couldn't get anyone to play the person in the chair who gets bit, so I had my mom do it considering that it's a character who literally just sits there. I was actually lucky because there was some kind of event going on at the park I went to, which allowed my show the crowded parking lots and visualize how popular the place is in the universe of the movie. My methodology for filming the scene was that I would get the scene on the chair first, and then walk around to gather establishing shots afterwards. This is what I ended up doing, however I also got some shots from out the window of my mom's car as we were driving in, allowing me to have some usages of motion. Getting the shots with the chair and the initial mosquito attack went great. The lighting really accentuated the scorching summer heat I was trying to illustrate, and the area where the chair was provided me with a decently lengthy path to run down with phone, getting the mosquito's POV. I got multiple variations of that shot, some with me running in a straight line and others being more erratic. 

 As for the establishing shots, there were a lot of visually interesting places in the park that I was able to capture. What I did was a just walked around and filmed stuff that I thought would look cool. In total, I think I got way more shots than I need, but it's better to have more than less. Here are some of the shots that I got:

Good News and Bad News

  As the title suggests, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I tried filming the weather report scene, and it just didn't work out. I had a friend in my media studies class play the weatherman, and I now know that I need to make sure the people I get to be in this video have some kind of experience or knowledge of acting. I also filmed it outside, and the lighting just wasn't right. I need to film it on a green screen to get the true weather report look. I did begin to make graphics for it though, as you can see here.

 In terms of good news, I got some footage to be used as establishing shots in the very beginning of the film opening. For whatever reason the colors got kind of messed up when I downloaded them on my computer, but I can fix it in editing. I plan to get more shots, but these are three that I have now.

This weekend I plan on getting the footage at the park that makes up the bulk of the film opening. As for reshooting the weather report, I wanted to do it today but couldn't, however I do have a person who I know can act willing to play the weatherman. Possibly Monday we can get the footage using the green screen in my school's TV studio. Because of this delay my whole schedule is going to shift somewhat, but I'm not that concerned considering that I'm a fast editor.

Every frame a doodle

 Although I find it to be a pretty tedious process, I think that it's important to have some kind of storyboard to use as reference for filming. Naturally, I made a storyboard for this film as well, which totaled to three pages with eight panels each. Looking at it, I think that I might have more shots than I'll end up using, and there are definitely some that I'll do differently in some way. To me, the storyboard isn't meant to be an exact one to one model of the film, just a set of guidelines. Anyway, here it is: