The Effects of COVID-19

     Due to the virus outbreak of COVID-19, school closed a week early for spring break. The virus is very serious. Due to social distancing, my parents are keeping me pretty much in full quarantine. Everything is cleaned around the house daily. I have to wash my hands constantly, which isn't really the worst thing. If that's all I need to do to keep the virus away I'll do it gladly. Blogging our journey wasn't required over spring break, but I figure I would update you guys.
      For us, not being able to see each other is not a huge deal. Our movie is fully done. The next step is the creative critical reflection (CCR) questions. It has to be a 12-15 minute video answering 4 questions. Originally we were going to do this together, but now that is not possible so I need a Plan B. I decided that I was going to do something in relation to the fact that we cannot really see anyone outside our families at this time. A talk show would not be ideal for this idea because that would include people seeing each other. Talk shows typically do not include another family member as the interviewer. So, I am going to set up my desk in my room facing a plain wall. I will put 3 relatively heavy boxes on top, then put my laptop on top of those. I'll use my laptop as a stand for my phone so I could film myself. This is better than getting someone else to film me because it will be more still. This is similar to a DIY tripod. But I can't give you every detail, you will have to see for yourself.

Re-edit: Finishing Touches

      After re-shooting, we of course had to re-edit our material. A lot of our material had to be cut out. This was somewhat difficult because while filming we were scared we wouldn't have enough footage so we elongated the take as much as we could. We ended up having to cut full scenes. This made our movie opening go from 3 to 2 characters. That doesn't seem like a big difference but because our film is only 2 minutes, everything is essential. Cutting these parts out made our movie make a little less sense but not by a lot. We ended up switching a lot of things around. This was in order to make it more seamless and perfected. It was really good and ended up being exactly 2 minutes long. This was the exact requirement!
      After perfecting the editing of the scenes, we then had to do music. We had to search for music that would not be copyrighted. This part was a little difficult. However, we eventually found music that fit the exact mood and atmosphere of our movie. It went with the suspense of the movie. It even added to the suspense, in my opinion. If I was watching it for the first time, I would definitely want to watch the rest. After editing in the music, we had to put in the titles. We didn't exactly know how we wanted to do it yet. We started brainstorming ideas for the font, color, size and other things important to adding in titles. We decided on a medium sized font and to do the first name in red and the last name in black.

Reshooting: Fixing the Problems

      Almost all of our footage was usable. This was one reason why we didn’t have much to reshoot. Also, in editing, we had to cut many scenes in order to meet the criteria for the length of our movie. We just had to reshoot one scene. There were voices in the back. We tried to get them out in editing. This didn’t work very well. It was the scene where savanna enters the office in order to get the polaroids. We had to make sure there was no people around. We also had to make sure no music or other background noise was playing. We took many reshoots. This was to ensure that we definitely got a usable shot. We reshot a few other scenes too. This wasn’t exactly necessary but it was just in case we needed it. Mainly, I was just there for additional help. Kelly filmed. Savanna was in the shot so she was acting. The reshoot actually came out better than the original. It was difficult getting it in the exactly same spot, but we made it work. Also, mimicking the lighting from day was also a little difficult.

Peer Review Time

For our peer review we were given numbers. Each group was assigned a number so, whichever number you got was the group film that you were reviewing. The one we got to review was actually very good. This was especially good because we haven’t had too much in class time to edit. Their camera work was very good. They included a tilt shot which was very clean. It was moving upwards. The camera seemed very sturdy. They had most of the required angles and shots. They were only missing a few. The camera work told a story. It was set in a house mostly. The shots showed a girl and a guy each getting ready to see each other and hang out. He seemed to have ulterior motives. The inference my group and I made while watching is that we was maybe going to kidnap her. Also, the editing of this film was very clean. The cuts weren’t chopping and the film flowed very well. The titles done were very good and original. The font matched their film genre and added to the plot. The titles sizes and color made them very clear to see for the audience. Overall, it was really good and it will probably improve with reshooting.

First Looks: Editing Blog

      Well, we had way too much footage. We had to cut out many scenes. We had to cut out the elevator scenes. We also had to cut out the first office scene. This makes our movie not as good but we are still working it out. Our movie right now is still too long. Also, some of the shots are not lined up correctly. We, as a group, still need to work on the editing process. We also have not included our titles yet. We want to do this once our scenes are editing to our liking. This way will be easier so we don’t have to edit where the titles are in the movie. We left a lot of the cuts as jump cuts for now just until we get the perfect amount of each scene into the movie. We want to finish out rough draft basically. We aren’t there yet though because we still have a few things to do. There are only a few scenes we might have to reshoot. We need to find out if we even need them first though. If we reshoot something and then end up not needing it, that would be a waste of time. Also, we still need to add in non-digetic sound. This would include background music. Some of the dialogue in our scenes was hard to hear because the music in the area was loud. To fix this, we may have to reshoot or edit in smooth voiceovers to cover this mistake. There isn’t too much dialogue in our movie so this should be too difficult.