Creative Critical Reflection

 CCR

It's finally time to wrap up my journey in this filmmaking process. In my CCRs, I talk about my whole process in making the film Times Up. I hope you guys enjoy!

CCR- How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

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

CCR- How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

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

Final Film

 TIMES UP

    Hello everyone! It is finally here, the finished product.

    This opening sets up the rest of the story, where our 'final girl', Emma, seeks revenge on the killer who murdered her best friend. Alright, let's start this film, 1... 2... 3... Action!

    Isabella and I worked really hard to make our film become a reality, so I hope you guys enjoyed it just as much as I did producing and editing it!  

Production

 New Title Font & Color

    Hii! So, I have some news to share with you all... I changed the title font and color. I know, I know, I already had one picked out, but while we were editing the film, we realized that Premeir didnt have the Weiss font. Because of this, we went searching for a new one. Then we found the font, Lehmann. 

    We really liked this font. It still had that sharp look that we wanted from our other font, but it just had a little bit more (I can't explain it). We used this font for our credits, too. Now, the color we changed to a darkish red because we wanted it to feel like the slasher movie it is, the red representing blood. We also changed some of the letter sizes, just to give it more of a deranged look. Now our title looks like this:

  When showing the title in the film, I wanted it to slowly zoom all the way into the title until the screen goes black. However, I couldn't figure out how to do it without the speed changing halfway through. Even after searching up a video on how to do it, I still couldn't get it right. Again, I am still new to Premier, considering this is the first ever film I have actually made. So, I was expecting some problems like this.

    That's when Isabella came up with a solution to just make it zoom in up to the full title instead. We still get that zoom in affect, but now the speed wouldn't change. It was perfect.

    This was our last step in completing our film. I can't wait to show you guys the finished product!

    

Production

 Fixing the Audio 

    Welcome back! Today, I just wanted to share how I fixed the audio on some of our clips.

    What I wanted to do in this process is make it so that any sudden noise that we had or any non-needed noise was adjusted so that we didn't have conflicting audio. So, that meant any loud noise, like the TV static and the thud that they heard come from upstairs, was raised so that the viewer watching would also get scared. 

    In this picture, you can see how I adjusted the volume of that specific section so that the thud could be heard. 

    In the pictures below, you can see how I muted some background noise. In the first picture, this was the clip we wanted to use; the only problem was that a person in the background dropped something, and there was a loud noise. We really wanted to use this clip because we didn't like the other ones we took, so instead of replacing the clip, I just turned the volume all the way down so that it couldn't be heard.

    In the second picture, I muted a section where the mic caught the rustling of our actor, Ana, moving the blanket.

 

Now that that's done, our film will sound authentic without any bothersome sounds. 

Production

 Fixing the Lighting

    Hello! We are now in the phase of editing our film. So far, we have put clips together, but that's when we noticed an issue: the lighting. 

    We didn't really take into consideration how hard it would be to film in the dark. We noticed when filming that the clips came out a little darker on the camera, but after putting our phone's flashlights up as an extra lighting source and also putting up candles, we thought it would be enough; however, it was not. Some people might say, "Why didn't you film it with brighter light?" or "You should have filmed it with the lights on,"  but doing this would take away the whole idea of the characters watching the movie in the dark.

    After playing with the lighting in Premiere and going back and forth on seeing which filter looks better, we finally managed to get the brightness up as much as we could without it looking unnatural. 

Before:

After:

    However, no matter what we did, the film still looked super grainy. We tried everything we could, but nothing worked. Though I'd still call it a win because the video still looked much brighter than it was before. 

Production

 Behind The Scenes

    Hi everyone! We have officially finished filming. Horray! Filming was actually really fun to do, and we had a great time, but everybody still made sure to work hard and do what they needed to do. While I was filming, Isabella was holding a boom stick that we made for the audio, making sure the video in the background was playing, and also getting all these clips we have of behind the scenes. 

    There were some bad moments, like when my hair caught fire because I leaned too far back to do a shot when there was a candle right behind me, and good moments, like when we got the perfect shot. Soo, I thought it would be a good idea to share what it was like creating our film. I created a little film below of some funny moments we had, and also some serious ones. I hope you enjoy!

 

Planning: Props and Clothing

Props and Clothing

    Hey everyone! Now that we have our title and script, it's time to plan out what our characters are going to wear, the costume designs, and the props that are going to be used. 

    We have three characters: The two girls, Emma and Amberlin, and the killer. During the film, it is clear that both Emma and Amberlin are having a hangout/sleepover. We want them to wear something that they would most likely wear to a sleepover in real life, something comfortable. So, we contacted our actors and told them to wear something like sweatpants and hoodies. However, for our actor for Amberlin, her character gets killed and will have fake blood splattered on her shirt, so Isabella and I told her we were going to provide her with one. 

    We looked through stores for a shirt we could give to our actor. We knew that we wanted the color to be light, so that the blood was visible, and the right size for her to be comfortable enough. 

    We came across 3 shirts that we thought would be a good fit. A bright pink Peanuts shirt, a Blazy Susan pink hoodie, and a Seattle dark blue hoodie.

 

    We quickly ruled out the Seattle hoodie because we knew the color would be too dark and the blood wouldn't show. 

    The Blazy Susan hoodie was a good color, but we didn't know if it would fit our actor 100% or be too baggy. 

    Finally, our last clothing item standing was the Peanuts shirt. We thought it was a good color, would fit her, and was a shirt she could definitely use in the future. 

    A prop we had to prepare was the mask that would be on the killer. We wanted to make the mask original, so we got a white mask from Hobby Lobby. We also got a black cloth for the mask to go over the eyes so that the eyes wouldn't show. 

Process when making the mask:

    After panting and assembling our mask, it came out to look like this:

    Okay... so Isabella and I aren't great artists, BUT we don't expect all the details to come out in the film, as long as the mask looks a little dirtier and used. 

    Our last and final prop was the killer's murder weapon. We wanted something scary, but still safe to use in case anything happened. We were thinking of a prop knife, but it's hard to find them in the middle of March when it's not Halloween season.  So, we ended up going with a knife sharpener I had in my house that looks like this:

Thats it for all our props! Now we are all set to start filming!