Filming Blog: Not Now, Not Ever?

     Today my blog will be a little bit different from what I usually blog about. I will be talking about the Coronavirus or COVID-19 and how it has affected our filming and editing progress. Our high school was canceled. It started on March 16 and will resume at the earliest, April 15. We had previously thought that only a few school days were being canceled. We did not take the virus that seriously and we continued to film. Now that the pandemic is becoming more widespread we do not know when or if we will film again. The good news is that we completed all of the necessary filming for our movie. We had planned to film more to make our movie the best it could be but do not know if filming will be a possibility. It will all depend on if the virus gets contained in our county and if our parents will allow us to meet in person. Some of us are already practicing social distancing and are only allowed to leave for important reasons. 

     If we do not see each other in the upcoming period of time we will be able to finish our project electronically. However, I would have to complete all of the editing. I would have to do this because I have the movie and editing software. No one else in my group has an apple computer so they cannot use iMovie. I hope that we do not have to do this, but I am prepared to finish the project if I have to. I may ask some of my group mates to do whatever they can to help. I might ask if they have ideas for some things or if they can find and convert music and sounds. Hopefully they will be cooperative and understand that I will have to do all of the editing and they should help with whatever they can. Most of the editing we have to do is editing in the shots we re-filmed and changing the music. All of this is manageable and I will be able to do it. Attached is a twitter post by Broward County Public Schools. 

Re-Shoot Blog: The New Alley...

     Yesterday, March 15, my group and I met to re-shoot. The first shot I did alone. In this shot I get a call and respond. I filmed this by setting up the camera. Once I finished this and Roscoe and Elijah showed up, I had them record the voice-over and edited it all in. Next when Zeke showed up with his truck, we redid all of the shots that include the truck, so his dad could leave after. We came upon the issue of the new alley during this. The alley we had used when we first filmed had been re-paved. There was really no way to fix this, we just tried to show the least amount of the ground as possible. Once we got these shots we told zeke’s dad that he could leave and we continued filming. 

     The next shot we filmed was the one where Zeke, the main character gets a text from his mom telling him that he needs to come home. We previously had this as a phone call, but decided that a text would be better. For this we just changed Roscoe’s contact to mom and sent a text messages. I filmed this by showing Zeke walking then, he pulls out his phone where he gets a text. I zoom into the text instead of an insert. Once we finished this shot we regrouped and made another plan to re-shot again. We would like to re-film the shot where Roscoe and Elijah tie up Zeke, if possible. We would also like to redo a few shots with the truck and maybe even all of the ones that show the alley, so we have consistency in our film. Overall our re-filming was a success. I have attached an image of the zoom of the text message to show what it looks like. 

Editing Blog: Titles Titles Titles

     Today March 12 and last class, March 10 my group and I continued to edit. For the first day one of my group-mates was given the job to do the titles. The titles were very difficult to add for him because he had never used the software before. Because he didn’t know how to move the titles, he put majority of the titles very large and in the middle of the screen. When I reviewed this I told him to move the titles so they didn’t cover the screen and so they did not all look the same. When he tried to edit them he accidentally made all of the shots black so the whole movie could not be seen on the screen. No one knew how to fix this and we all went in a little bit of a panic. But I looked it up and found that it was a typical technical issue and that our project was fine. Once I fixed it we had little time in class and my group mate tried to keep working on the titles but could just not figure out how to move the titles. We decided that next class we would let him do something else because we had not done much more editing then we had started with. 

     Today when we came into class, Roscoe and I began with the titles. I went through each title and moved them to areas of the screen where both the film and the title could be seen. I also moved some titles and edited the length of them. Once I finished with this I gave the computer to Roscoe. He made all of the fonts the same and most of them black. He had to make a few exceptions because our titles are black and are not always visible in dark backgrounds. Once he finished this we gave the computer to Elijah and Zeke to work more on the music and sound. We had all of our music in already but none of us were very happy with what we had and thought we could find better music. They found music in class today but it was hard because there is only a limited selection of music with no copyright. They changed one song, but we still have a lot of work to do with the sound. 

Editing Blog: Music!!

     In class on Friday, my group and I continued to edit. Our main focus was getting the titles finished and adding the music. Adding the titles was not hard, it just took a while because of one of my group members incompetence. I had to explain how to add the titles even though we both had the same amount of experience using iMovie. After that we began adding music. Elijah took the lead on this. He converted the sound so that we could add it to our movie. He added all of the sound. He also cut it to match the scenes. This was very helpful and helped make lots of progress on our project.

      Once we finished with the music and titles we decided to all watch our final product and make critiques. The major issue we observed was the drastic changes in music. The movie goes from suspenseful music to a cheery song that the kidnappers play when they are on their way to kidnap the lead character. We decided to take out the scene where the kidnappers turn on the radio, and instead just keep suspenseful music. There is another change in sound when the lead puts his ear buds in and music begins to play. I think that our song choice was poor and we could find a song that goes better with the theme of the movie. Next time we are editing and someone else is using the computer, I will look for a better song. The other critique our group agreed was that the titles could be adjusted so they are more legible. We have designated that job to Zeke for the next time we edit because he has been the main person to work on the titles with me.  I have added a photo of the computer screen with the sound added so you can see what it looks like with the sound track.

Peer Review Blog: Not today!

     On March 3rd my class was planned to begin peer reviewing. However, this was not the case for my group. First, we got into class and found out that we were reviewing group 20. The only issue is, that there was no group 20. Once we found a person that was not on the list, we came to the conclusion that she was group 20. But she said that she did not bring her project. So, we had no one to peer review. Then we looked on the list and found that a one person group was supposed to peer review us. He was absent in class so he was unable to review our project. Our group was upset that we could not peer review someone else's because we wanted to see what it was like.
     Since we did not have to peer review, we continued to edit. We spent a lot of our time attempting to move the iMovie that we started on my phone, to my computer. We could not figure this out so we had to restart on my computer. We had to do this because the computer version of iMovie allows you to do more things. For the rest of the class period, my group and I did all of the edits we had done previously, but this time, on a computer. We did this by splitting up the work, in a similar way as last time. Now that all of this has been done, we hope that someone will still peer review us. We are looking forward to the feedback. It will be a great help when we are reshooting and reediting. Attached is a photo of me working on our iMove, on a computer.