Creative Critical Reflection

Final step...the experience was great but it's time to say goodbyeeeee!

Collaborators: Vanessa Chiquito

Film Opening

The time has finally come! 

Here you have my film opening called What's Next:

CCR Script

Yessss! It is official, editing has been completed. It was hard but we finally did it!

Now on to the CCR...

Throughout the week, on the days we weren't working on the editing, I did research on the questions we have to answer. Since I am doing a screencast, I thought it would be useful to have all the research and what I'll be talking about on one blog post. This way, I can have everything I need to talk about in one place. For the most part, I used Prezis and Slideshares so I'll be including screenshots from specifics slides that I used. Also, to provide information from a specific website, I will do the same thing on certain parts of the text.

Let's begin with the Coming of Age sub-genre of Drama and its conventions: 

Here is a short explanation about what the Coming of Age sub-genre is about.

Here are some of the typical conventions in the Coming of Age sub-genre.

More conventions on the sub-genre that we utilize. 

Coming of Age typical shots

Emotion: fatigue.

Here is how we challenge conventions:

Typical Coming of Age movie

Typical Coming of Age movie

What we are aiming

What we are aiming

Common representation of Hispanics

Common representation of Hispanics

Engaging of our audience:

Appeal to the audience

Iconography

Daniela putting on lipstick

Distribution and marketing:

Distribution

Use of gifs to appeal to young audience

Online website that organizes online film festivals

Film opening already on Youtube

Technology:

Nikon COOLPIX P500

 

                     iMovie

THE END!

Citations in order of appearance:

Hassan, Z. (2015, March 03). Conventions of Coming of Age films. Retrieved April 9, 2017, from https://prezi.com/4vnpvhxbghf2/conventions-of-coming-of-age-films/

Hardacre, O. (2014, March 21). Target Audience Research. Retrieved April 9, 2017, from https://prezi.com/u-mzr7kqffc7/target-audience-research/

Payette, P. (n.d.). Coming of Age [PDF].

Bex Creighton Follow. (2012, December 06). Camera Angles/Movements and Editing. Retrieved April 9, 2017, from https://www.slideshare.net/beccacreighton7/camera-anglesmovements-and-editing

Nittle, N. K. (n.d.). Five Common Latino Stereotypes in Television and Film. Retrieved March 18, 2017, from https://www.thoughtco.com/latino-stereotypes-in-television-and-film-2834654

Jackcm Follow. (2016, January 27). 'Coming of age' Genre Conventions. Retrieved April 9, 2017, from https://www.slideshare.net/jackcm/coming-of-age-genre-conventions

Courshon, J. (n.d.). Retrieved April 9, 2017, from http://www.distribution.la/rights.html

More editing and music

Hii and welcome back!

Today Vanessa and I did some more editing and we searched for the music that will be featured in the film opening. Although we know it might come late, I sent an email to the artist of a song that we liked to see if maybe they would answer soon. Since we knew we might not have the response back in time, we searched on websites that had copyrighted music that we could use. We found the website Bensound and listened to some of the tunes it had but we didn't like any of the songs. My sister saw that we were doing this and she recommended that we use Audio Jungle since she had used it before for her work projects. Thank god she recommended it to us because if not I wouldn't have known what to do. As we searched for music in Audio Jungle, we struggled a little to find the kind of music we wanted but then we found our life savior. This kind of music had some latin guitar and at the same time the mood we wanted the film opening to have.

I was so happy that we had this part of the editing process done because it is a very important one. We are almost done with the editing and tomorrow for sure I will be telling you all about what I plan on doing for the CCR and everything. 

Stay tuned for tomorrow!

Editing, editing, and more editing

I forgot how long editing takes!

We worked for 5 hours with the editing and we're not done yet but we made A LOT of progress. At first we had like a million minutes to edit but then we went on narrowing down to the footage that was useful. Vanessa and I were incredibly tired and almost falling asleep but we pushed through. It was very hard to decide on which content we wanted and which content wasn't really important. We based our final decisions on how our story was and what we wanted to portray in the film opening. 

Using iMovie throughout the process was awesome because it was so easy to use and we were already familiar with it. At the beginning, we had forgotten how to use some tools but then we got used to them. The most traumatic thing was that we had 9 minutes to edit!!! Of course, like the wonderful editors we are, we narrowed it down to 6 minutes.Tomorrow we are meeting up and editing some more. Since we can't meet for a long time, after the editing I am going to start planning for the CCR. I'll tell you all about it later...

Enjoy this picture of me drinking coffee, feeling extremely tired but smiling because that's just how I am:

See you later alligator!

Post Filming

Helloooo 

I have some very good news for you because we finally filmed!!! I was so stressed out about the filming because I wanted to dedicate time to the editing and not just do it all in one go. I learned from the music video that we made before, that editing is an important part of the project. I would like to say that it was a bit stressful today because we had time limits but in the end, Rebeca was an amazing actress and we finished even with some time left to rest. Now what's left is the editing and the CCR, let's go!

Pictures from today:

A charismatic Rebeca (Daniela) smiling as we coordinated the lightning.

Ohh! Fancy

Actress

Hello once again!

Today will be a short review over who our actress is and why we chose her to be our actress. Although we had another actress first, unfortunately she couldn't work with us on the day we have planned to film so we found someone else who could do it. 

Here is our actress who will play the role of Daniela Gonzalez:

Her name is Rebeca Sanchez and she is a 17-year-old girl from Venezuela. We thought she was perfect for the role because she was tall and had the appeal of a model. 

Let's hope that she can play the role well! Byee

Set Design

Hello everyone!

I hope you are having a great day...

Yesterday Vanessa and I met up to set everything ready to film. Before she came to my house, I made sure that any of my pictures were put away and anything that wasn't related to the film was put away as well. Then, we cut out pictures of models from some magazines and we put them around the room. We put some pictures of the actress on the mirror and we had a backstage pass from a fashion show there too. For the most part we made sure that it looked like a normal teenager's room and at the same time that it revealed the protagonist's dilemma before it was actually told. 

I think we did a very good job at having everything ready before the actual day of filming. Even though we are a little behind, I think this time we are doing it right by organizing ourselves and actually be ready to film. 

Here are some pictures from yesterday:

See you soon!

Props!

Helloo

Welcome back to my blog!

Today I'll be telling you all about the props we have for the film opening and how we plan on setting them up. As I told you before, our story has to do with a girl (Daniela Gonzalez) who is passionate for modeling but her parents want her to go to college and get a career in the medical field. In order to show these aspects of her life, we decided to place our focus on the mise-en-scene and how she is conflicted upon what to do. All around her room, various objects will be specifically located in certain places for the audience to build up on what will happen. 

We decided to focus our story on a decision like this one because in Coming of Age films, the audience tends to be of teens from 12-18 and young adults. During the adolescent years, most teens are in the midst of deciding what they want to do with their lives and not many movies depict that. Daniela will be a representation of the teens who have the pressure from their parents and at the same time don't know what to pursue in the future. 

Here are some of the objects that will reveal what the story is about...

Pictures of models to show Daniela's passion

These are some magazines that feature famous models.

Having a backstage pass from a well known designer will depict Daniela's dedication to pursue her dream.

College brochures will reveal the other side of the story that remains constant in the film.


Today we will finish setting everything up and tomorrow I will put up some pictures. 

See you later!!  

Storyboard 2.0

Happy Sunday everyone! 

Today I have the storyboard for you. It's very long so be prepared...

Ok so this is the storyboard. It might seem a bit complicated to you guys but Vanessa and I see perfectly what we want to film and everything. I really like the fact that this time we have everything truly ready and the only thing we need is the actress and the setting. Many of these shots are specific and some are not. As we were doing the storyboard, we walked around Vanessa's house to see how the shots could work together in my house. Also, we used pictures of my room to situate everything in our heads. I think we worked very well together while actually being in a similar setting for the film opening. It gave us a better outlook as to the space we're filming with.  

For the next few days, we will meet up to put together the setting and then we're meeting up to film. After that, editing comes and the Creative Critical Reflection has to be done. We only have a week and two days, oh my god!

Bye for now before I freak out!!