Creative Critical Reflection

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Final Project

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Studio Company Montage

Since I'm following the typical conventions for my genre, I'm only including a studio company montage rather than that and the one of the production company. Initially I used the "Picture in a Picture" setting in iMovie to lay my logo on top of a shot of the sea I got while in Barbados. While showing my dad the film he advised that it would look better if I omitted the white background and just had the blue words overlapping the video. My response initially was "I thought about it, but iMovie doesn't allow me to create my own title- I have to use the templates already provided and I don't like them." But alas! I have found a way to make it work. 

I substituted the white background with a green background and later used the "green/blue screen" setting to leave the logo standing alone. As the wave comes in the words start appearing word by word on the screen. Bellow are the pictures in order of appearance in their green template and the way they look on top of the video.

The designs were all created in Canva.

Original Layout

New Layout

Title Change

While adding the finishing touches to my film I decided to change the title of the film from "Prodigy" to "Renegade" as I feel like it suits the main character, Lily, better. Even though I did originally want her to be a genius I realized there is a big difference between being clever and being smart and I would like Lily to be more on the clever side of the spectrum.

The Makeup Department

Lily's makeup was nothing special - I wanted to go for a natural look since she's on the run it wouldn't have made much sense for her to be wearing red lipstick and jet black eyeliner. I opted for some concealer, some brown mascara, brown eyeliner smudged, and some chapstick.

Testing the look the night before

Alex's makeup situation was a little bit more complicated. He had to look like he had been lying in the forrest floor for a while so I tried to create the effect of dirt on his face using brown eyeshadow as seen on this video. I used the Naked 3 Palate from Urban Decay to obtain the brown eyeshadow and I blended it out with a simple makeup sponge. I also used a brown crayon eyeliner and blended it out with my finger. Bellow are the pictures of the finished product on the day of filming. Looking back at the footage the dirt wasn't as visible as I was hoping it would be on camera but I think him laying down on the floor will be enough for the audience to infer that something is wrong.

Another makeup aspect for Alex where a series of fake cuts. I drew three of these: two smaller ones along the right arm and a larger one in the left arm. I would've liked to draw one on his face but one of the markers I was using was a permanent marker and I didn't want to risk it potentially staying in his face for a couple of days. The cuts would've looked more severe and painful if I would've used liquid latex but going out to purchase it would've hindered our tight filming schedule a little bit. Bellow are the pictures of two of the cuts and how I created them.

An Ode to the Youtube Audio Library

I had another post scheduled to go before this one but I'm just so exited I can't wait.

I had to edit the entire sound of my movie from scratch since the one recorded with the film footage was not as neat and crisp as I wanted it to be. Having worked with royalty-free sound effect websites before I know how some of them are not very user-friendly or require you to make an account to download clips.

I have just found the most wonderful thing: The Youtube Audio Library. It is part of the "Creator Studio" feature (which I didn't even know existed!) and I'm not sure if you need to have a google account to be able to access it but come on everyone has a google account (and if you don't please get one...it has so much to offer). The sound effects library includes a wide variety of sound effects from foley to animal and a layout that is extremely easy to navigate and all the sound effects are conveniently placed in one place. No playing hide-and-seek to find the effect needed.

I'm so happy about this discovery since it made my sound effect search so much better and faster. Thank you Youtube!

P.s - I did double check to make sure that the sound effects are 100% royalty free- you can see for yourself here.

Filming Report

“Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out” 

                                        ― Martin Scorsese

It is so strange to think that weeks of preparation all came together only to obtain two hours of footage. I always knew a full length movie must take an awful lot of time to film and edit but I never though about how much meticulous planning goes into them beforehand. There is so much to consider: the right location, the right places to shoot within that location, what costumes represent the characters best, what shots convey the story best... I only needed to make two minutes of what would normally be a 90 minute piece and I now have so much appreciation and respect for film and filmmakers. It is funny because most people only seem to pay attention to the actor names but you can have the most talented actors in the world and still create a bad movie if you don't have the right behind-the-scenes team putting every aspect of the film together.

I think filming went quite well today, I'm quite pleased with the footage. My only concern is that I was planning to use the natural ambience of the forrest as my sound. But even when I sat down to record the sounds in quiet it was disturbed by planes flying above or the sound just didn't come out right. Thankfully, our teacher showed us how to mix sounds in the Apple application Garageband earlier in the year and there are royalty-free sound effect databases like Audioblocks that will allow me to create the sound track I want from scratch.

Here are a couple of behind-the-scenes shots I took today during filming: