Creative Critical Reflection

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c97SJ58KqPQDD8NtY0fF_JjHNfyewXr4/view?usp=sharing 

Film Opening

 Here is my finished film opening. Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NQp8KL19ihoIGw-IVtqf_uyUfkAZVEd0/view?usp=sharing 

Wrapping Things Up

     Today, I focused on editing my CCR and doing a few finishing touches on my film opening. I put together the clips that I filmed for my CCR in Premiere. What took a lot of my time while editing is inserting pictures and videos from websites that I used for my research, clips from my film opening, and clips from other sci-fi films. My CCR was a bit shorter than I had expected it to be, so editing didn't take as long as I thought it would. I may go back to edit in some music or sound if I have time. After that, I went back and tweaked a few things with my film opening. I slightly edited the title and credits, and I played around a bit more with the dialogue and other sounds within the opening. 

    So, this is pretty much the end of my project. I'm relieved to have finally reached the end, and pretty proud of how my project came out overall. I may still tweak small things, but I'm ready to finally conclude. I've faced a couple obstacles throughout, like not getting the exact costume I wanted or having to push back my film date. At the time, these really stressed me out, but it thankfully didn't affect my project too much in the long run. 

Filming my CCR

     This week, I began working on my CCR more. I started out by reviewing the four questions that I had to answer and thinking about how I could answer them. I went back to my blog to see things that I had already researched, like general information about the genre and who my target audience is. I also researched a bit more on parts of the questions I wasn't already sure about, like how my film would realistically be distributed. I also brainstormed what exactly I was going to do for the videos. I had already made a brainstorming list of ideas a little while ago, but I didn't really like most of the ideas, or I thought they would take too much time or effort that I didn't really have. I ended up deciding what I would do pretty last minute because I spent a lot of time thinking about both the questions and what I would do for the actual videos.

    I then wrote my script for my CCR. I mostly wrote down things that I had to mention and a general outline of what I should say. I was also able to get my friend Jessica to help me film one of the videos today. It took a bit longer than I expected, because we kept laughing and messing up our lines. But overall, filming went pretty well. Tomorrow, I plan to finish editing both videos for my CCR, since this is the last bit of my project that needs to be completed. 

Sound Editing

    This week, I finished editing in the sound for my film opening. The first thing I did was work on the dialogue. There are three separate clips in the opening that include dialogue. While filming, I somehow didn't think of using a mic, which made the audio kind of unclear. Luckily, I found a way to isolate the audio in Premiere. This technique worked really well to enhance the dialogue. For this feature, there's a setting called the mix amount, which determines how much or how little the audio is enhanced. The lower the amount is, the closer the audio sounds to its original, un-enhanced form. One thing I noticed is that the higher I put the amount, the more robotic Nidhi's voice sounded. It was a bit of an obstacle trying to have the right amount to where the ambient sounds weren't too loud, but her voice didn't sound too robotic. Also, I was not able to use this feature to enhance the dialogue on one of the clips, because the audio began to glitch and I couldn't fix it. It doesn't sound ideal, but not horrible at the same time. 

    After I finished working on the dialogue, I began searching for sound effects to use. I used a website called FreeSound, which I also used for a previous project where I needed to find various sounds. I spent some time searching for the right effects. I mostly searched through a lot of siren sound effects, because there is a siren audible throughout the scene, and a different siren used at the very end. I had to find some that fit the tone I was going for, since some of the siren sounds I found were too eerie. I also had to find some that weren't too annoying, since the siren would be playing throughout the scene. I also found sound effects for small actions, like opening a pill bottle and drinking water. After I took the time to find all of these sounds, I sent them from my phone to laptop to edit them in.

    As I edited the sounds in, I played around a lot with the volume of different sounds. I tried to make the audio pretty balanced, and made sure each was at an appropriate volume. For example, I wanted the sound of opening the pill bottle to bo slightly louder than the sound of gulping down a sip of water. I also didn't want the dialogue to be too much louder than the rest of the sound throughout the scene. A lot of time was spent with this, along with making sure each of the sounds was played at the perfect time. During this process, I also learned how to unlink the video and audio of a clip, which was very useful for adding in so many sounds and deleting the original audios of the footage. After finishing this, I went back and tweaked the enhanced dialogue a bit more. 

    Editing in sound was a bit daunting at first. Even though I had done it before, I wasn't looking forward to having to find and edit in every little sound, especially because this scene for my film opening is relatively quiet and these sounds would realistically be very easy to hear. But, I'm glad that this part of my project is finally finished. Sound editing was the last major thing I needed to do during the editing process of my film opening. I may go back and do a few finishing touches, but I'm pretty much done with editing!

Beginning to Edit

    This week, I've begun editing my film opening. The process of editing so far had been pretty straightforward. I started by finding the clips that I planned to use out of the footage I had. I then put these clips in order and slightly edited a few of them (mostly those with dialogue). After I had the clips in order, I tried to work a bit more with the credits. I played around with different fonts to see which specific ones I wanted for the title and credits, including the color of the fonts and the alignment of the credits. I also researched which order film credits usually go in, and mapped out which specific credits would go in which clip.

    

    One thing that took a bit more time was the editing of one scene where the character is talking directly into a digital camera. This shot is from the perspective of the camera, so I wanted to use editing to make it seem like the footage is filmed from the camera she's holding. I had to play around with different effects on Premiere, which took a while because there were so many effects available to achieve this specific look. I wanted to find one that didn't look too vintage, but also didn't look too vivid or modern. I finally settled on one that I think is pretty good. I might decide to change it later, but I think it'll be fine for now. 

    Next, I plan to edit in sound. It was a bit weird having no sound in my project so far (except for dialogue), because I think the sound editing is what will really make this opening more interesting. I've already started planning out which sounds I have to find from an online database, and I plan to finish editing in these sounds within the next few days. 

Learning about Editing

     Earlier this week, I began playing around with different editing softwares. For part of my project, I wanted to make the sky/landscape look different, without making it look like there was a filter over the scene. I wanted to test out making the grass less saturated and making the sky a slightly different hue. I first tried Adobe After Effects, and played around with it a bit. It was a bit hard for me because I didn't really watch any tutorials or anything to help me out. I then tried Photoshop, because I figured it would help achieve my goal easier and I found it more simple than After Effects. I ended up watching a short tutorial on YouTube and using the tutorials within the software itself to help me out. The YouTube video gave me a brief introduction to Photoshop, while the tutorials within Photoshop helped me figure out how to change the hues and saturations of different parts of a photo/video. 

 

    I also tried to learn more about Premiere Pro, since that's the primary editing software I'm using. I've used Premiere twice before for past video projects, but it felt quite clunky to use and I knew there was an easier way to use it. I ended up using tutorials to help guide me, since the first two times I used it, I just did what I could without help from other sources. I really want to edit my project well, so I wanted to make sure I could use Premiere as best as possible without taking more time than it should. 

Photoshop Tutorial for Beginners 2022 | Everything You NEED to KNOW! (n.d.). Www.youtube.com. Retrieved March 24, 2024, from https://youtu.be/61mkx_OV61s?si=fy999ptcYfK8MnA4