CCR!!!

After the wonderfully impromptu interview with the paparazzi, I present to you my official, formal statement:

 1) How do your products use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

        Conventions are a way in which something is usually done, especially within a movie. In order to determine the generic conventions of our type of film, I had to do extended research on the different genres. By using the romantic tragedy as a genre, we had to follow the conventions of the genre (i.e. the couple dying at the end). This film is about the longing of another while being stuck in a heteronormative relationship. While it is dramatized, this movie brings attention to the phenomenon that is gay people repressing their love/desires for a more socially acceptable relationship. Which is tragic.

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

    I would distribute the full film on YouTube for practical and technical reasons. YouTube is a site that mostly deals with long form videos that are in landscape mode, making it the perfect place for our minute film. I would engage with our audience by using tiktok and twitter. I would post tiny clips of the film to tiktok to incentivize the audience to go see the full movie on YouTube. For twitter, I would post funny memes about the film and the YouTube link.

3) How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

    My overall skills have undoubtedly improved throughout the project. This is because I've learned how to manage my time, improved my communication and collaboration skills, and improved my research and planning abilities. Also, I feel as though I have become more experienced with software such as Premier Rush as I now understand how to put clips together on the timeline, edit mistakes out, make transitions and add audio.

4) How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online - in this project?

    The hardware that I integrated into this project is tripods, iPhone 12, super high-tech laptops, and headphones. As for software, I only used premier rush. I had to research many articles for this project and used websites like google and film blogs to be able to find what I needed. 

Final Cut < 3

After weeks of filming and weeks of editing, I present to you, our pride and joy: 

Queen of Hearts 

Shot List + Shot Log

I had never done a shot list before, but I had to for this film. I had asked my teacher how to do it but by the time I had taken the time to sit down and do it, I had forgotten everything he said. I had to research through multiple sites and apparently, it isn't a widely talked about skill because I could find anything barely. The websites I did find could have been better at providing straightforward solutions or examples. 

Obviously, this is not the best of work when it comes to shot lists. It is very vague about the shots and their details and there are only six shots on the list. My teacher said it was concerning and I agree. Surprisingly, this list was a big help in remembering what we needed to film during our production days. 

For the post-production of our film, I needed to fill out the Camera Shot Log, which is a piece of paper with all the shots we took, no matter if they ended up in the film. I think my shot log is much better than my shot list because I add more shots to the list and clear up vague details. It was also surprising to figure out how many takes we did for each shot.

The Weather Causing Shadows + Blinding White Light

While filming, we ran into issues regarding the weather. It was a relatively nice day for Florida as it was cooler than normal. It was also very sunny. The sun allowed our shots to look more alive than gloomy and was just a nice addition to our silent film. But it also caused some issues on set.

While filming over-the-shoulder shots from Melina's side, the sun was to the back of Melina and me. It caused problems as it created shadows in our takes as I moved around to get behind the tripod. Here is a short clip showing the shadows that my movement created:

The sun also caused a problem with the white squares of the chess board and the white pieces. When the sun hit just right, the pieces and board completely blended together or created a blinding white light in the shot. Here is a still from production while I was setting up a high-angle shot:

The white was so blinding to the camera that it took multiple tries and takes to have the camera comprehend that there were objects there. We couldn't really work around the issue and had to just deal with it, but in the end, we got some cool and experimental shots using the sun. 

Focus in Shots

We had many interesting moments during filming while doing extreme close-up shots of the chess pieces. The most interesting part was having to battle the camera to focus on the pieces. But through the battle, I discovered that the use of focus and unfocus could add to our shots. One of the Queen's looking at the other, but only for that view to be interrupted by another piece. It just seems straight out of a professional film. But the risk of doing something like this with a phone camera is that it can just look like poor camera-manship. Like I didn't bother to have the clip in focus and it just looks messy. But that is the price that comes with being artistic. Anyways, here is the shot:

Another example of us playing around with focus: