Project Reflection

 I am relived to know I finally finished this project but am also sad. This was such a fun process where I learned so many news things, from camera settings, to sound effects. I was able to spread my previous knowledge in the film industry to my groupmates and it was really fun being able to create something with people I never thought I would be making a film with.  I enjoyed writing, filming, and editing along side my classmates. I have grown closer to my group members and will forever be thankful for the friendships I made from this project. I will continue my media studies in AICE Media A Level next school year. I wish you all the best and thank you for reading my blogs!

Creative Critical Reflections

Here is my first Creative Critical Reflection:

Click here to watch 

And Bellow is my second Creative Critical Reflection:

Click here to watch

Film Opening

 Please click the link bellow to watch the film opening I have been working on with 3 other classmates for the past 8 weeks. 

Click here for the video

Graphics

 I finished adding the text graphics into the film opening. I had the first part of Tina in the office text have a blue tone, and the day shots have a warm tone. This helps emphasize the change in color in the film opening. 

I also made a cool graphic with the name of the film there. It appears as Tina walks by, as shown bellow:

CCRS

 Yesterday, I filmed my CCRS. I did an interview with my mom for the first one, and just me speaking for the second. I still need to film the street interview thing and I plan on doing it after school. 

Bellow is shots from the interview:

I decided to only have my mom dress up because I am being interviewed. The interviewer is supposed to impress. 

Bellow is shots from the standup:

I changed my outfit before shooting this one. The shot was pretty hard to set up myself. I had to look across the room at the camera and I have really bad vision. 

CCR graphics

 I created the graphics for the CCR's in class today. I basically just got a bunch of screenshots of the websites and logos and keyframed (having something move/scale at a certain pace) movement. I also added a cross dissolve to all the graphics. This just makes it flow in better. I also color graded the shots to make them a little less orange. 

CCR scripts finalized

 So I was not clearly paying attention to what our teacher was saying when explaining the CCR. We only have to cover two topics in each. So I revised the first script and transferred some of it over to the second. 

To add up to the new open time, I elaborated on what the film exactly is, to give the viewer a better understanding of the film before I answer all these questions. Here is the finalized script for question 1 and 2 of the CCR:

What is up everyone I am Zain Vidal and I recently made a film opening titled “circles”. This film follows two merged pseudoscience concepts. Before I get into that, pseudoscience is the study of topics that cannot be proven true. Two popular practices that follow into pseudoscience are astrology and conversion therapy.

To continue on, Biorhythm and the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory and the two theories merged into my film opening. The Biorhythm concept is about peoples' daily lives being significantly affected by rhythmic cycles with periods of exactly 23, 28 and 33 days, typically a 23-day physical cycle, a 28-day emotional cycle, and a 33-day intellectual cycle. Founded in the late 19^th century by Wilhelm Fliess.

The Strauss-Howe Generational theory is theorized recurring generation cycle in American history and Western history. Founded by William Strauss and Neil Howe in the late 1900’s.

We merged these two to make a film about a society where pseudoscience is real, and a women named Tina makes a book about it, with one little twist.

 This film brings out representation of young women working under men in the industry. Tina is a 22 year old girl who is expected to do a difficult job without any guidance. Tina works day and night to finish writing this book. Showing this represents how women are just as good as men, even though they don’t get the same credit. According to linkedin, Globally, it is estimated that less than a third of leadership positions are held by women. In the United States and Canada, the situation is not much better, with only 37% and 35% of leadership positions being held by women, respectively, despite women comprising 47% and 46% of the workforce. This film shows that a women can be just as good as a man, despite the less opportunities they have.

This production is part of the mystery genre, having a target audience of 18-24. This target audience was chosen based off a couple factors.

1.     The young representation. Tina is a young women who is struggling to keep up with all her work. She tries her best to stay organized but it is hard. According to the National Library of medicine,  The prevalence of disorganized/controlling patterns was 15% among 20 young adults with no current psychiatric diagnosis. This gives the audience something to relate too.

2.     To add onto this youth representation, is the seeing youth in power. Our film has both a young boss, and young women doing an extremely important task. This sort of representation influences the youth’s motives. It makes them think “I can do that too” According to the National Library of Medicine, The studies reveal the influence of films on people’s beliefs and opinions, stereotypes and attitudes. Movies can have a significant impact on gender and ethnic stereotypes, change attitudes towards certain groups of people and cause newly formed opinions on various issues. With this being said, Circles shows that anyone can do anything, and it surely influences people to believe so.

I went around to see how our target audience feels about this project.

(target audience hypes up wowwww)

Circles is available on Youtube, Instagram, and Tik Tok .Circles will soon be submitted to local student film festivals and award ceremonies. So, check it out.

For the second CCR, I deleted the first two sections because I no longer needed to answer those two questions. I added more to the other two sections, and transferred the answers from the unneeded part of the first CCR.  The filled in bulletins is what the interviewer is asking me and the unfilled one is what I am saying back, here is the final script:

·       What exactly is this film about

o   This film is about Tina, a 22 year old girl who is expected to do a difficult job without any guidance. Tina works day and night to finish writing this mysterious book. Once it is just about over, something horrible happens.

·       How did your production skills develop throughout the project?

o   What was the process of creating the idea and conflict for the project?

§  It took my team and I awhile to come up with an idea. We wanted to do a mystery, just simply because we thought it was an interesting genre. After many failed ideas, I decided to look up the exact definition of “mystery”.  While researching this I found myself on britannica.com definition of the genre. While reading this I stumbled across a word called “pseudoscience” and I didn’t know what it meant. I did my research about it and the rest is history.

o   So what exactly is pseudoscience?          

§  According to Oxford Languages, Pseudoscience is a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method. To put into simpler words, it is a scientific practice that cannot possibly be proven true. A common example of this is conversion therapy, or astrology.

o   What did you use with the knowledge of pseudoscience?

§  We merged two popular practices that follow into pseudoscience, Biorhythm and the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. The Biorhythm concept is about peoples' daily lives being significantly affected by rhythmic cycles with periods of exactly 23, 28 and 33 days, typically a 23-day physical cycle, a 28-day emotional cycle, and a 33-day intellectual cycle. Founded in the late 19^th century by Wilhelm Fliess.

§  The Strauss-Howe Generational theory is theorized recurring generation cycle in American history and Western history. Founded by William Strauss and Neil Howe in the late 1900’s.

§  We merged these two to make a film about a society where pseudoscience is real, and a women named Tina makes a book about it, with one little twist.

o   What hardships did you face during the project?

§  We had lots of hardships. Such as corrupted footage from one day. With this footage the opening would’ve surpassed 2 minutes, so we probably wouldn’t have been able to use it. We were able to leave our film opening off at her leaving the house, instead of arriving at her location. We also had a lack of setting. We were supposed to film in a real office building but we did not have those resources available. We were overall able to get past that and get a film opening that we are all proud of done.

o   How did your group work around your busy schedules?

§  We were all extremely busy. I personally had a TV Production competition right in the middle of the project, in the beginning one of my groupmates had a DECA competition, and all of my group was gone for spring break. We had to film pretty early on because of this. We also did not have all members at all the filming days. This all wound up being fine, because we had good communication with each other.

o   What is something new that you learned during the project

§  I learned a lot about color grading, something I have never really experimented with before.

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

o   What did you use to film the project?

§  The film is show on a Sony A7III one of my favorite Sony cameras. With the two  lenses used being a standard 50 mil and a 18-35 mil lense. The camera was placed on my personal tripod. The dialogue audio was recorded with these super cool wireless GVM Mics. These mics automatically sync into the camera.

o   What was the film edited on?

§  The film opening was edited in adobe premiere, with our free school subscription. Here we added many effects, color graded, and most importantly, put the clips all together.

o   Where did you get the sounds?

§  We used lots of artificial sound, found on Youtube and Pixabay. Some of the sounds found included cars driving by, room tone, chair rolling, and footsteps.

 I really need to film soon because this is due tomorrow... Definitely shouldn't have waited until last minute.