Filming Blog: No school

As mentioned last blog school was cancelled due to the spreading of COVID-19 virus. This blog will be about how my group tried to make plans to film. So far the CDC has recommended self quarantine  or social distancing. Social distancing is the practice of staying at least 6 feet from people to prevent the spread of germs.Originally one of group members Maya texted the rest of our group. Maya was interested in when we could begin to film. While the idea originally sounds practical, it could be dangerous. School was out which means more time to film for AICE Media Studies. But by weighing the idea that school is only out because of it being a social place; filming for Media Studied might not be a good idea. Nobody in our group responded to Mayas text. After, Maya was confused as to when we would film. Another group member Gavin responded. When filming the last few times we filmed at Gavin’s house. Gavin’s response asked if we could film Sunday. Our group decided Sunday was appropriate. Then we discussed one possible outcome. Because of the increasing volume of establishments closing, will we be allowed to socialize. The CDC has recommended self quarantine but our group discussed the possibility of it being mandatory. If we are not able to film then my group is completely lost on how to finish our Final task. Attached is a screenshot of the text conversation between my group. We are discussing the plans for us to film. 

Editing blog: COVID-19

Due to the widespread pandemic of COVID-19 our school district has closed schools. This week we would’ve continued to film more of the required shots for our Media Studies project. Social distancing has unfortunately prevent our plans for filming. Our entire community has felt the effect of this virus. Because of it’s ability to quickly spread most families have chosen to self quarantine. By not being able to leave and staying 6 feet apart, editing seems like our only option. Issues that may occur with editing is the software. Because schools are closed students must do all school work at home. When in AICE Media Studies we use Pinnacle Studios which has been downloaded to all our school computers. Some students only have their work saved on the school computer. For those students who have their work and are working from home, other editing software includes iMovie. Some issues that may make the film worse is the noticiarlos difference in editing format. My group is still editing and cutting our shots together. The bad news is Cambridge has said AICE exams have not been affected. Because the AICE exams are still on the same days we must continue to prepare as of there will be no cancellation. It is really unfortunate considering all the other circumstances but it is just the reality. The good news is my class has been preparing. We started our final task in January and know how to prepare on our own. Our teachers are also available through online emails incase we need them. Attached is a screenshot of our final task being edited in iMovie.

Re-Filming: Lighting preferences

In conjunction with my last blog my group decided to fix filming issues. Our class did a peer review last week. Some notes we were given said that it was hard to see. My group came to the conclusion that there was too much light in front of the camera. In order to fix this we adjusted the camera location to the other side of the room. In this particular scene there was a big improvement. The light was now behind the camera. This allowed the camera to focus on the character. The scene was more fluid and you could see what was happening more clearly. The scene that we decided to reshoot was the scene where Alex re-enters the room to find out her grandma lied to her. This scene is pivotal to the story line of our movie opener. This scene is where the conflict is first introduced. If not conveyed properly our entire final task could be confusing to watch. One issue we ran into was length. Our movie opener was already cropped. In my editing blog I mentioned that I had to cut out 30 seconds of footage. Our video time limit was 2 minutes and our video was already that length. The issue with re filming is that every shot needs to be the same length as the original. This was especially hard considering timing the words and cutting the shot was hard. When we plan on re filming other scenes we need to make sure that none are even a half second too long because then multiple fractions of a second can build up to our movie opener being too long. Attached is a screenshot of me editing the new clip into our video.

Re-Editing Blog: Fixing the cuts

Since the peer review I have made some editing fixes to our Final Task. In our movie opening the transitions or cuts were not consistent. This meaning that some cuts were faster and some were slower. Some cuts were also different types as shown in the picture attached. When reading some of the notes that were left on the peer review I decided that we needed to re-shoot scenes also. Because the volume of scenes was too much to re-shoot we decided to tackle the re-editing first. The specific change I made was changing the blunt cut to a slide transition. This made the scene look more professional. At first when I added the slide transition it looked fake. Our movie opener looked more like a powerpoint and less like a thriller. Then I discovered that when setting the slide transition you could adjust the time it took to switch scenes. I adjusted this from 2.0 seconds to 0.5 seconds and our movie looked more professional already. After changing the scene transitions I also looked at changing the shot length. In the comments of our peer review we missed some required shots. Because our film is 1 minute and 58 seconds we don’t have extra room to add shots. So by looking at longer scenes and seeing which area we can cut, we can meet the requirements. Some edits I made were cutting out the chase scene where the aunt chases after the main character Alex. When we re-shoot I will need to re-edit again to include our re-shoots. I also re-recorded the voice over at the end of the video to make it seem more natural. Attached is a screenshot of me editing the transitions between shots of our movie opener.

Peer review

Today we peer reviewed another group in our AICE media studies class. I peer reviewed group 6 who did a thriller 2 minute opening. They did a really good job. It started off with an establishing shot and a nice montage. The montage was of the main character applying makeup. I really liked this because it established a mood and increased suspense. They also added very nice incidental music. The music was light and happy. This helped the entire film because towards the end it’s surprising when the mood shifts. The ending of the film was also great because it was scary and left the reader wondering about the rest of the movie.
If I were to comment on things they could do better I would fix the lighting. In multiple scenes the characters were sitting down and conversing. In all of these scenes I noticed blinds over the windows that were closed. I believe that opening these blinds would help with the lighting. Increasing the natural light would help this film dramatically. I understand that having a darker set scene increases tension. Having a darker scene is also common in the thriller genre. But because the scenes were so dark it was hard to understand what was going on in the film. So making these scenes brighter would make it a more enjoyable watch for the viewer. Other than that this film was very well shot and written.