CCR!

 And with you My CCR! 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SL8pue4w2sqkm9wEBJtlyAm0_7d8CtI3/view?usp=sharing

Thank you for following my journey, I hope you enjoy!

FINAL PORJECT!!

 After what seemed like 9 never ending weeks... 

I present to you, Spiraling. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt0xyL6FDo4

The last stretch...

 WOW, what a journey this was. I had never gotten the chance to work on a long term project like this so being able to experience what that feels like was helpful for my future, but also extremely challenging since it was all new to me. I would say my all time biggest obstacle is procrastination. Since I have never done a long term project like this it always felt like I was never going to run out of time because the actual due date was so far away. However, we still managed to put our obstacles aside and create something that we are proud of. 

We have officially concluded with the editing of our film opening. What a relief, now we just have to finish editing our CCR's and we are officially done. While this project may have brought some challenges and countless amounts of stress, it was also a very fun experience since I had my partner to do it with. We are both in agreeance that we put our best into this project and are very proud with what we have managed to create. This project also helped me understand that I am more creative than I originally thought I was. I never considered myself a creative person, but this project helped me see that everyone can be creative. 

Now about my CCR, I have started editing it already and am almost done with it. I just want to tweak a few things that are bothering me about it and then I will be ready. My CCR was challenging because while I did have a script sometimes the answers I gave did not feel like they truly represented the experience so I would reshoot that specific part. Anyways, WERE ALMOST THERE!

Script for CCR

 I forgot to upload my script so here it is: 

Hi, my name is Federica Briones and this is my CCR for my film opening named Spiraling.

 

To start everything off, my film opening takes place in Weston FL and is about a girl named Serena, who was played my Sara Montenegro, who unfortunately has a mental breakdown because of her home life. Her parents have always wanted her to maintain a perfect image of herself when in reality she does not feel this way whatsoever. As Serena grows more and more tired of her mothers’ expectations, she breaks down and decides to run away from her house.

 

Question #1

Like many other movies about runaways, my film fits inside the thriller genre. The thriller genre is the easiest genre to merge with other genre, which explains why there are so many of these films and why it is one of the most popular genres.

 

Despite how much we have watched these types of movies over and over again they always keep us hooked until the very end. It's like we know what to expect but for some reason keep watching the film. This is all due to the different ways in which suspense is created throughout the film. Suspense can be created with anything, from a difference in lighting to the soundtrack used. 

 

This genre is best described by the mood that it ignites inside of the viewer, the different moods can vary anywhere from feelings of anxiousness or excitement. Movies in this genre also tend to only use one main character who is stuck in a conflict and therefore takes the decision to isolate themselves from the world, especially from the people who care about them the most.

Suspense is a huge part of a thriller movie, it is what creates all the different emotions evoked in a viewer. Without suspense could a thriller even be called a thriller? Absolutely not! Suspense is unpredictability, which leads to mystery and hooks readers to watching the piece of film.A prime example of a master of thriller movies was filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. People loved his movies because he was astonishingly great at creating that feel of suspense and keeping people on the edge of their seats. Some of his best thriller movies include, North by Northwest, The 39 Steps, Rear Window, and Vertigo.

 

With every genre in film there is said to be a core emotion, for the thriller genre that emotion is excitement. People most commonly lean towards this genre because it feels as if they are taking risks without any actual risks involved. These risks are then deflated by the satisfaction of the protagonist uncovering what they needed to do in order to avoid destruction or disaster. All good thriller films have a controlling idea which can be defined as the lesson a filmmaker wants the audience to leave with. This controlling idea is most often developed unconsciously but it is always present. A controlling idea can be displayed through an ordinary sentence or developed through the actions of the characters throughout the film. Controlling ideas will differ depending on the nature of your story, meaning if it is meant to be a positive story or a negative one. 

 

 

There are also various different conventions that must be followed in the thriller genre. Conventions are NOT obligatory scenes, the difference is that conventions are requirements that must be met in order to further develop a story's characters and plot. Conventions do not have to occur in a specific order unlike obligatory scenes. 

 

Here are some examples of conventions: 

·                     Detailed description of atmosphere 

·                     Crimes must contain a clue 

·                     Limited time for protagonist to act 

·                     Protagonist actively investigates 

·                     Lives depending on protagonist defeating antagonist 

·                     Hypocrite character

 

Wow no that we got the research out of the way lets talk about the convention that my partner and I decided to challenge. In our film opening instead of excitement being the core emotion we decided to make it suspense. This can be seen through the music that we used which varies in pitch throughout the film and has stronger music towards the end when Serena is officially exciting her house. Also, since we decided to film everything during sunset, it adds that darker lightning that we needed to create even more suspense.

We decided not to challenge that many genre conventions because we wanted to create something that also fit right into what defines the thriller genre. We want people to watch our creation and one hundred percent know that it is within the thriller genre. Additionally, with our storyline it just made sense to stick to the common conventions of the genre.

The typical conventions of the genre are what tend to attract the target audience that we are hoping for.

Our target audience is often older audience from ages 20-25, mostly made up of males but not entirely. The interests of the TA often are trying to outsmart what is happening in the film, so basically thinking more maturely. There is a reason why these films target older audience since younger audience might not be mature enough to handle the different plot twists within a movie.

So, we have a target audience but how are we supposed to engage this audience in our film. Well, the answer is through our production choices! In our production we used a number of different choices which will attract this audience, for example the suspense created because no one knows what will happen next or why Serena is running away from her house. Hopefully viewers will start thinking about what could happen next and become more engaged at the end because like any film opening it does not include a clear ending.

Even though we want to attract that audience, we also wanted to challenge it a little bit. In thriller films it id very common that the main character is a male but in our film the main character is a female, which will hopefully attract more females to watching our film.

But how will audiences even watch our film? Well let’s talk about it, as amateur filmmakers it would be completely unrealistic to talk about releasing our movie in theaters so let’s start a little smaller. We would definitely publish our movie on YouTube and make various social media accounts for it especially on TikTok since we can post small clips of it to so when people are scrolling, they stop, watch, and hopefully are interested in watching our whole movie. If everything goes well on our social media accounts and we get enough traction we would consider entering it into a film festival, which would widen our viewers.

 

#3

When we first began making our film opening we were worried about our limited skills that we had learned through classes we had taken in middle school, but now towards the end I can confidently say that I have improved my production skills.

First the storyline, the storyline was definitely the best part of the whole project because I really enjoyed how creative I could get with it and it could really have been about anything that we wanted it to be.

After the storyline we had to develop our characters which I also really enjoyed because the characters were completely created by us, there were no rules that we had to follow and we could make the backstory the way that we wanted.

The whole production process which I found to be the most challenging part of everything because you want everything to be perfect and exactly the way you imagine it in your head. This reminds me of one of the major changes we wanted to incorporate into our film but unfortunately were not able to get it the way we wanted to so we opted out for something else. This change was suggested to me by one of my group members when we did our class group meetings and it was that in the moment when Serena is having her mental breakdown the room behind her should be spinning while she is standing there having her breakdown. We could not figure out how to get the proper look for this scene so but we still wanted to have a spiraling scene because it would integrate out title into the film even more so, we decided that Sara would sit on the floor and since I was the videographer, I would spin around her and then zoom in to her face. Even though it was not our original idea, we still like how the scene turned out.

We used an iPhone for filming, Adobe Premier Pro for editing, and documented our whole project through our online blog posts.

We decided to use an iPhone to film because neither one of us had another cameras and we also felt that filming with our phone would give us more mobility when filming since we would not have to carry around a big camera. We were going to use a ring light but we decided not to because we wanted the whole opening to be during the night so using a ring light would defeat the purpose of that specific lighting we wanted.

Using Adobe Premier was amazing because we both already had experience with this editing software from previous classes we had taken so editing was not as challenging as we expected it to be/ Being familiar with the software truly helps when your on a specific timeline. Also, being able to document everything since beginning through our blog posts really helps to see the progress that has been made.

The only problem that we had with Adobe Premier was that the share feature was not working, the share feature is basically a feature where multiple people can be logged into one project and edit it at the same time. For some reason this did not work for us.

Finally the end,

I am extremenly proud of what my partner and I were able to achieve and have learned so much and grown an appreciation for the film industry now that I have an idea of exactly how much work goes into every single choice in a film. The only thing I wish I could improve is my time management skills, but this project was a great way to start doing that. Bye!

 

I cannot believe I am so close to finishing everything. I decided not to do the 4 questions with Federica because it was just not working out in my favor. Make sure to stay tuned for the final results of everything! 

 

 

 

 

Editing!!

 So we started the whole editing process and it was surprisingly not as hard as we had previously anticipated. We both took film classes in middle school and used Adobe Premier so we are familiar with it. My partner was the prominent editor and I was more involved in the whole filming process, but we made it all work. We discovered that in Adobe Premier there is a share feature which lets you share projects with other people, but for some reason this feature was not working for us even though we were both on the same project. However, we still managed to figure out the best way to edit collaboratively. 

My partner and I decided on using no dialogue and dramatic copyright free music for the film. The music adds a much more dramatic flare to it and kind of builds up to the final part of the opening, which is the beginning of the actual movie. As I mentioned in previous blogs, we decided that we wanted our film opening to be dramatic and not have a clear ending. I am proud to say that we are successfully achieving this through our editing. We also decided on using big white letters for our credits because we wanted the credits to stand out. 

While my partner was editing, she accidently deleted our whole project which was a big scare to us, but she managed to get everything to how it originally was. I will begin my CCR and start writing out my script because I want to do my CCR like 73 Questions With Vogue, but obviously change the name. I was thinking maybe "4 Questions With Federica" but I'm still unsure. Me and my partner will be filming each other's CCR's and hopefully will have them edited by the end of this week.

Final Day of Filming!!

 Finally!! We were able to complete our whole production process and have enough time for the editing we want to do. I am so happy that we were able to get all the shots the way we want them and can make something that we are proud off. 

During our final day of filming we went through all the shots we had taken over the course of the week and decided which ones we were going to keep and the ones we wanted to reshoot. We ended up reshooting a lot of shots because we realized that our reflections were in the windows and mirrors. We fixed this by making sure to change our angles and since I was the one filming I would duck down just in case on specific shots. We also found that some shots were shaky so we decided to also refilm those to get a cleaner look in the final result. 

Our actress was amazing, she was very easy to work with and she really tried to capture what we wanted for the film. The wardrobe is exactly how I showed it in a previous blog and Sara, our actress, smeared eyeshadow down her face to make it look as if she was crying. This gave a very realistic look to the spiraling part, now to talk about the spiraling part, unfortunately we were not able to achieve the exact result that we wanted. Instead, we had Sara sitting down on the floor and I circled her with the camera and then it turns into a zoom in close-up of her. Our other actress, Sandra, was also very collaborative and played the part exactly like we wanted her to. 

The whole production process in itself was not what I expected at all. I was convinced that it was going to be easier than it was, but we did face challenges that luckily we were able to overcome. I found that while we were filming we diverted from our original storyboard a lot. This surprised me because I believed that following the storyboard was going to be the easiest option for us in terms of time, but truthfully diverting from it made both of us feel less stressed. Now we are going to start editing the whole project and see how we wanted to place the shots. Were almost done!!

Still filming...

We are so close to the end of filming!! Finally we can start focusing on the editing!! 

Before that, let me explain the only thing we have left for filming. THE SPIRALING SCENE! I do not understand why we are having such a challenge with this specific part of our project. We do not want to give it up because it will really elevate our whole project but we cannot seem to find a solution. We could not even try the fan idea because my partner's fan is broken, we tried one person walking around our actress but that did not work, and lastly the rolling chair just made the whole scene shaky and that is not what we want. I had the idea of maybe attacking a string to the ceiling and guiding the phone around our actress, we have no tried it yet but when we do I will give an update. 

We finished all the scenes of Serna's mother, and the ones of her making her room a mess, and the ones of Serena leaving through the window. The best part is that we actually had a fun time filming since we are all friends. I cannot imagine doing this by myself, it would not have been the same experience I have had with my partner. 

Now I'm going some editing ideas we have: 

1. Giving a darker tint to the whole introduction to fit that darkness we want to give. 

2. Making it brighter when her mom appears on screen and lowering that brightness when Serena comes into the scene.

3. Making our credits play when Serena is messing up her room

4. Having the screen fade to black at the end of immediately to complete darkness and then end the whole introduction. 

Filming wardrobe && updates!

 I want to show a specific example of what Serena will be wearing just so it is easier to visualize. 

I already mentioned why we are using these specific colors in a previous blog post, but I wanted to mention again that we are trying for Serena to have a comfortable but also careless vibe to her. We also wanted our actress to be comfortable while filming since she is doing us a favor or being in our introduction so me and my partner can focus more on the actual filming on it. 

We have all the shots of her mother walking into the house, we decided we are just going to cut these in editing. We choose to film a long shot of this because then in editing we can select the parts that we like the most and use those for the final product. We also have all the shots done of Serena messing up her room. We started with these two shots because they are the least technical to film and we want to get the easier shots out of the way so we have more time to focus on the more challenging shots like the spiraling one. 

We have began filming the continuation of the messing up the room shots and we were able to get to the part where she is finishing her luggage to get away. However, we did not yet reach the part where we will do the back and forth cuts between the mother walking into the house and Serena exiting through the backdoor. Next time we film we will finish these shots and hopefully start on the spiraling scene because it is consuming a lot of the time we need for editing, but I am not worried about the time because we are right on the track we want to be. 

Filming

 So we started to film and we discovered some of the challenges we will possibly face. 

The most prominent one is the spiraling scene we have to film. We tried with a rolling chair and unfortunately the results were not what we expected. The camera was shaky and it was just not the result we want to put in our final project. I have been trying to discover new ways to film this scene but I am currently out of ideas on how we could do it. 

Another challenge is the lighting of our project. Since we are basing our story around night time we need to wait until the sun is completely down to film our scenes, which takes all our natural light away and forces us to film only at night. Filming at night is more challenging since we need stronger light and we cannot rely on natural lighting at all. Using light from the regular room is simply not enough and gives it a weird look to the final clip. To fix this, we are using a ring light that my partner has. 

We are filming everything on my phone, which has a high quality camera. The only challenge with filming on an iPhone is the shakiness of our hands. Unfortunately, we do not have a tripod to utilize for all the scenes so we are trying to film as steady as we possibly can. 

Stay tuned to see the rest of the filming process!     

Challenges with the changes

 As I mentioned in my previous post, we have decided to make changes to our project. With these changes come challenges and longer filming times. 

The biggest challenge we will face is figuring out how to do the spiraling idea, where Serena is still but the room behind her is spinning. A spinning chair is the best option I can think of, the videographer would be sitting down in a spinning chair, the other person would be spinning the chair around Serena. The only problem with this is that the end result might look shaky which is not what we want. However, a shaky look to the scene could add more to that chaos that Serena is experiencing mentally. 

Since we are changing things about our storyline, we have to take some and add some scenes to our storyboard. I am not worried about the time frame because since we have such as clear picture of what we want to create I know we can do it and have the end result we have been wanting this whole time. Instead of the back and forth scene with Serena's mom going up the stairs while Serena is trying to escape, we will change the back and forth to Serena's mom getting home from work (so as she is walking to the house) and Serena will still be trying to escape. 

We are also considering adding just one word of dialogue at the end of the introduction. The one piece of dialogue will be Serena's mom yelling out "Serena" when she arrives at home. The idea is that as the mom closes the front door, Serena closes her window and then you hear the dialogue. This adds a dramatic ending to the introduction and also hooks viewers into wanting to watch the rest of the movie which is exactly what we want! 

We have started our filming process, stay tuned to see how that goes!!

Changes...

 Here are the permanent changes we are going to adapt into our project: 

1. We will incorporate the spiraling scenes that I mentioned in my previous blog because we want to connect the title to the actual introduction. Also, we feel that it will bring an extra factor into our project and really highlight that Serena's downfall and what drove her over the edge to run away was that scene. It also gives us a chance to show our editing and filming techniques that we have learned. 

2. Instead of Serena's mother being home the whole time, she will be getting into the house from work as Serena is leaving through her rooms window. This just makes more sense with our story because it shows that her mother was always busy and she was alone in real life and mentally she felt the same way. It adds more depth to the story and also adds a dramatic flare to the introduction. 

3. We are completely cutting out the idea that Serena is going to make it appear as a kidnapping because if she was to get kidnapped we would have to make the atmosphere more realistic and we would have to rethink our whole filming process. With how she is spiraling, it does not make sense for her to get kidnapped and her background does not have anything to do with her getting kidnapped either. 

We acknowledge that with these changes we will face different challengers. For example, for the new spiraling scene we are adding, we have to figure out a way to make the room behind Serena spin but have her stay still. This is going to be a challenge, we originally planed to use a ceiling fan, but my partner's fan is broken in her room so unfortunately we have to rethink our whole idea. Another idea we came up with was using a rolling chair but it would just make the whole scene very shaky and that is not what we are trying to go for. We will keep thinking of ways to make this scene a reality! 

I will be making the necessary adjustments to our storyboard. Stay tuned!!