Final Task- CCR

Here is my CCR, or creative critical reflection. I wasn't sure whether to add music to the introduction, where the first title card is, so I just decided not to. I am quite happy with how the video turned out.

My Final Task

We finally finished our final task! Before watching, I must admit there may be glitches, or highly pixelated images within the video. My group tried editing them out, but we found that they popped back up regardless. We also found that there was quite a bit of background sound on the part where Mrs. Maye speaks. We were successful in editing much of it out, however, there was still some left behind that we simply could not edit out. Overall, it has been a long journey and I am proud of how our final task turned out.

Finishing and Having People Review my Final Task

    Unfortunately, we still had a bit of work to do on our final task before we could have someone check it over. From the time of my last blog, Juanita was able to make a bit more progress on our opening sequence. She checked over the titles to make sure that we had all of them in the right order and performed a few more minor editing details to clean up the final task. I then looked at the newly edited opening sequence to see if there was anything left and ended up making a list. I began by telling her to make the banging on the door that you hear within the second scene louder. Then I told her to make the studio company title longer, change the refilmed close up with the mom looking from left to right (before the close up of the drawer) to the original one and change the refilmed over-the-shoulder shot of the mom writing on the notepad (before she runs to the stairs) to the original shot. After I told her to do the things mentioned above, I went on to ask her to make the sound after the title card fade out more and fix some minor sound and video imperfections within certain points of the final task. We quickly finished all of these tasks and had our opening sequence ready to go for a few people to check it over.

    Before moving onto the critiques we received from family members, I should also state that one of the songs we included in our opening sequence did not say that it was copyright free. So, my groupmate Juanita emailed the channel that we got the sound from and asked if we could use the sound in our final task, as shown below. The person who runs the channel said that it would be okay to use the music, so we proceeded to use the sound in our final task.  

    I began by asking my dad his thoughts on the opening sequence. I invited him into my room and we watched it together. Once we were done, I asked if there was anything we should change and he only suggested that we turn up the volume on the part where Mrs. Maye says, "Hey darlin,'" and turn down the volume of the fridge closing. He also said that he understood what was going on and when I asked him about the sting at the end, he said that was good too. I wasn't sure if I liked the sound of the sting at the end, so that is why I asked my dad. Once he told me what to change, we only implemented the lowering of the volume of the fridge, because if we did turn up the volume of Mrs. Maye, the background noise would overshadow what Juanita's character was saying. We decided to implement the sound of the fridge because we thought that it was good advice that we hadn't personally thought of. Overall, I feel like his feedback was helpful and allowed us to finish our opening task confidently. Although there are a few things I would like to change, which are out of my control, such as the pixelated images that will occasionally pop up, I am satisfied with how the opening sequence turned out.

Completing the Addition of Sound and Titles for our Final Task & Refilming Shots

     Over these past few days, we have made quite a bit of progress on our opening sequence by adding titles and sound as well as refilming and adding shots. We continued the title process by inputting the titles for the studio and production company into google slides. We decided that we wanted the font to be different than those for the other titles, such as who the music is by, so we looked at the different fonts available on google meets. We collectively decided on a more vintage font with the font color of white, as shown below. Once we had figured out the font, size, and spacing we wanted, we inputted the titles into the opening sequence. Along with this, we also changed the timing of the titles so that they were a bit shorter, making both titles, the production and studio companies, stay on the screen for 4 seconds combined.

 

    We then went onto the rest of the titles, where we started the process by going onto google slides, selecting the font we wanted, and using the selected spacing as chosen in our original title blog from about a month ago. After viewing the font we originally chose, I thought that it didn't fit the theme or genre of our final task that well, so I looked for different fonts for the titles. This led me to a font website, that caters specifically to fonts of different themes, where I found a font that still went with the handwriting theme we had in mind, but was a bit spookier. The one we selected previously was not scary enough and did not fit with the elements of the thriller genre, whereas the new one I selected from the font website did. After I showed the font to my groupmates, we all decided that it would be a good alternative to the font we had originally chosen. Along with changing the font we also altered the timing of the titles and the colors by which they are shown. The titles (not including the production & studio companies and the Enigma title) now show for about 2 seconds each, but slightly vary depending on the scene. The last thing done was change the color of the titles. When we added the titles in, as we had originally planned, we found that they did not show up in some scenes. So, we decided to put a white border around black text, as shown below.

    The next thing we did was finish adding sound. We wanted to add background sound for what each of the characters were doing, such as opening the drawer, going up the stairs, and writing on the notepad. So, I recorded each of the sounds. However, we quickly found that we wanted to remove the sound of my mother going up the stairs because there was too much background noise each time I tried to record it. Once this was done, we fixed the sting at the end so that it sounded better, however, we might swap this sound out for another one, since it doesn't sound right.

    After we did the sound, we reviewed the opening sequence to see how it looked. My groupmates thought it looked good, but I found a few flaws that I wanted to perfect, so I decided to refilm some shots. The first shots I refilmed were several shots of my mother. While reviewing, I found that some of the shots didn't flow together well, with my mom being in a slightly different position than in the previous shot. So, I refilmed the shot of my mother screaming, her writing on the notepad (right before she runs to the stairs), and the closeup of her looking from left to right. The next shot I wanted to refilm was of me walking towards the door, outside, right after Mrs. Maye finished speaking to me. However, I decided not to because I realized that we recently painted the door of my house from white to pink. I then refilmed, a day later, the last scene of the opening sequence. This was done because, again, some shots didn't line up or just looked odd. So, I refilmed all of scene 9. This process went well, and was done in a timely fashion. We then added all of the scenes that I refilmed into the opening sequence. However, for some shots (specifically the pan and shot where the phone is in the fridge) we decided to use the original shot, since some of the refilmed shots looked odd or the original shots just looked better. 

Adding Sound and Titles to my Final Task

 After adding in the scenes, and trimming them, to our opening sequence, we got to adding sound and titles to our final task. We began by finding the songs we had previously picked out, when we started the production process, and listened to them to see what they sounded like. We all decided that they would not work as many sounded too jarring, so we looked for new sounds that we liked. We started to perform this task together, but found that we kept getting distracted, so we decided to look for sounds by ourselves and then meet up later. While I was doing so, I found that I had a tough time finding songs that I thought would fit, since many of them did not match up with what I pictured in my head. However, after searching through the depths of YouTube, I eventually found a few options that I thought could work within the opening sequence. But, even after the time I spent searching for sound for the other scenes, such as when the mother is running away from the killer, I still wasn't sure what to put within the scenes where my character, the girl, is going up the stairs and making food. I had no clue what genre the sound should be for this scene, let alone the specific sound for the scene. So, with this in mind, I met up with my other group mates to see what they found. To find out which sounds we liked, we inserted each sound within the opening sequence and agreed on what we liked and didn't like. After much consideration, we decided on the sound for when the title card pops up, however, we thought that it needed something extra. This led to us mixing some of the sounds that we found, which created a very nice sound that worked well with the image we wanted to create. 

    Before we began creating the sound mixing for the title card, however, we made the title card. Just to be clear, throughout the whole process of producing the sound and titles, Juanita shared her screen while Jessica and I advised her on what to do or just put our input in. Juanita created the titles by selecting a black screen in PowerPoint and choosing the font that we wanted. She started in google slides, but found that PowerPoint was easier to use so we switched to PowerPoint. We then had to choose different fonts than originally planned, since we used a different software, and different effects as well. We ended up using the Baskerville font with a 5 pt. shadow and 43% transparency, which ended up looking like this when we completed it:

    With this part of the title process out of the way, we continued adding in sound to our final task. I am not sure if this was done before or after we implemented the title card, but we then added in the sound for the scene where my mom is running away. After the main songs/sounds were added in, we began to add in sound effects, such as the chirping birds after the title card. We also did an overview to see what sounded off, and fixed it. We still have a bit more to do with the sound, such as the sting at the end of the opening sequence, but we plan to finish the opening sequence with time left to finalize any remaining flaws or imperfections. 

My group editing on google meets:

Finishing Trimming and Adding the Clips to my Final Task

     After we finished filming the opening sequence, we decided to complete the trimming and addition of clips portion of editing. Although we were feeling a bit lazy the day of editing, we all decided to band together and try to finish this project with time to spare. I also was a little bit scared that we would have to cut off several scenes of the task and create a new storyline to fit the time limit. So, I definitely wanted to get this section of editing done just in case we would have to refilm the entire sequence again. We began by meeting via google meets. We all talked for a little bit and while we were doing so Juanita and Jessica exported the scenes we had filmed to our shared google drive folder, as seen below. 

    Juanita also exported the scenes to the editing software, iMovie, as well. Once we started editing, the process went pretty smoothly. Juanita would add in clips while Jessica and I would help her by letting her know how long to cut the shot to and which shots we should use, since we filmed several of the same shots. The process took quite a bit of time, because when we started we just added in the clips and trimmed them. We then realized that we were about 20 seconds over the 2 minute limit once we had finished and hadn't included room for title cards either. We then had to go back and edit the entire sequence so that it fit within the 1 minute and 55 second mark. The reason why we did not leave this version at 2 minutes was so that we had room for title cards. We ended up being able to edit down the opening sequence, which surprised me. It still is a little too fast paced for my liking, but the story still makes sense and is not too fast to the point of being incomprehensible.

    As stated before, we had to cut down and remove a few shots in order to make our opening sequence fit within the time limit. The first thing we removed was an over-the-shoulder shot of the note the mother had written in scene 8. We decided that by removing this shot, the contrast of my mothers writing from the first few scenes and the last few would not be as noticeable, since my mother had to rewrite the note she had written previously. We also removed the shot before the pan of me walking into the kitchen and turning on the lights.  The last thing done was remove the eyeline match to the fridge in scene 4. This was done because we already had an eyeline match, so we thought that it was not necessary to include this shot. We also cut down several other shots as well, which aided us in the journey of making our film one minute and fifty five seconds.

    

Finishing the Filming Process

     We completed the filming of our opening sequence with scene 9. To prepare, I cleaned the house and changed into the designated outfit for my character. When the filming commenced, it went smoothly. We had to stop a few times to make sure that the cameraman was in the right position and, of course, I made a few hiccups with acting as well. However, when we got to the part where I was going to fetch the food from the refrigerator, I realized that we ran out of carrots. We looked for a food that could substitute the carrots that I was supposed to grab and tested out apples. The filming crew as well as me both tried throwing the apple to see if it would land near the fridge. After a few tries, we were left with a bruised apple, a dirty floor, and no success. We then looked for more foods that could be used and decided on oyster crackers. Again, we practiced throwing the crackers near the fridge and decided to use them within our film after a few tries. When we began filming, I found that the crackers were a good substitute and also found that the note that my mother had written, while filming the first few scenes, was gone and thrown out by my brother. Luckily, my mother was not too busy with her work when I asked her to rewrite the note. While looking for the notepad she had used, I was scared that we had ran out of pages, but after a bit of searching I found the pad. I then pulled up a video, that was used within our opening sequence, showing my mother writing on the notepad. I asked her to copy her handwriting, since it is very distinct, and make it more legible than was in the video I showed her. The final product ended up looking quite different from the writing that was in the video. My mother couldn't try writing another version either since we had run out of pages on the notepad from her previous attempts. My group then decided that we would use the sheet my mother had written and try not to show too much of the notepad in the first couple of scenes. After this was all done, we filmed the last few shots, and tried incorporating different camera movements, such as the zoom. However, it was a bit too difficult and we ended up using a still shot. Once we finished, I cleaned up my house and carried on with my day.

    While filming we also decided to change a few things. To begin, the first and second shots were condensed into one and were filmed from a cowboy shot instead of a medium shot. We also added a pan to this shot as well. The next thing changed was the fourth and fifth shots, as reported in the storyboard. The next few shots will be dictated in this way as well. The fourth and fifth shots were altered as we decided to put food, such as eggs and mayonnaise, in front of the camera. This way, it would seem more as though the camera was in the fridge. We also decided to film from a closeup, high angle as well for these shots. Within shot seven, and the following shots, I am preparing the food from a different counter. Within these shots I decided to use a bowl instead of a plate and it was also filmed as a cowboy shot. Scenes eight, nine, and ten are also shot from the same shot/perspective as the seventh shot. Lastly, shot eleven was deleted, which concluded our changes to the filming process.