I've Moved Blogs!

 Read my new blog here! This blog will remain untouched and barren! Go to the new blog!

Creative Critical Reflection

 Here is a link to my Creative Critical Reflection video essay. I hope you enjoy the insight I provide in my video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cVDMWMvMpk&t=94s 

Clean Kill Opening

 Here is the link to the official Clean Kill movie opening. I hope you enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKRNOHAB7Ps 

If that link doesn't work, try this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16DeJUkPWlkzzZzhaNCULwYIaABBTy_n7/view?usp=sharing 

Looking Back

 So we've finally made it to the end of this project's progression. I thought I'd have forever to work on this project, though "forever" was a lot shorter than I had expected. That being said, I successfully paced myself and my project's progression throughout these nine or so weeks to a point where I never felt like I was racing against the clock (I still felt very stressed, but that's on me). While there were parts in the production of this project that felt tedious and uncomfortable to work with, I never felt like I was just trying to push through it, or treating it like a chore. If I didn't pace myself as well as I did, by holding myself to post every few days regardless of progress, I would've found this project much less enjoyable, and wouldn't be considering taking the higher level of this course next year. 

    Now yes, there were points in time where I was exasperated with the project and frustrated to the point of insanity with issues that, in retrospect, weren't that bad. If I had a dollar for every time my editing software messed up a frame in my video, I'd have two dollars, which isn't a lot but it's very unlucky that it's happened twice. I'd probably attribute most of the stress I've had about this project in general to the last two or three days, which coincidentally were editing and CCR days.

    It's no secret that I didn't particularly enjoy editing my video. Not only was I vastly inexperienced, but having my first experiment with editing have stakes as high as submitting to Cambridge was not healthy for my mindset. I started out editing on Openshot, serving as a sort of way to ease myself into editing, since the interface is fairly simple and it offered nearly every option I needed. However, its shortcomings were soon apparent, as I found myself having to save the project file every 10 or so minutes because the application would start to lag tremendously. It was through this painful cycle of editing, saving, and restarting the application that I edited my film opening.

    For my CCR, however, I was more cautious about relying on only one editing application to edit my reflection; especially one as volatile as Openshot. So I decided to challenge myself and use Adobe Premiere to edit my CCR. Again, maybe working on a video I need to submit to AICE isn't the best time to pull a learning experience and try something I have no experience in, but I figured it was my project, and I could choose how I did things. And so I spent about eight hours on Sunday (from 11 am to 7pm) to edit my CCR. 

    It was through writing the planning/ script for my CCR that I discovered how much I liked to break down my decisions and thoughts on my film opening, especially when I could shine a light on some behind-the-scenes research that I hadn't been able to mention in my blog. I suppose it was like writing a blog for myself, but then getting to read it out loud and add interesting visuals to work with my words. It's difficult to explain, but even though I know this isn't top notch editing or even script-writing, I felt really satisfied and proud of the CCR, no matter how awkward my voice lines were or how ominous the cutout of myself was in the background.

    Regarding the production of the opening, namely the filming days, I found myself to be very stressed while doing them, even though I was enjoying everything I did. I think my mind was too busy trying to adhere to my self-imposed schedule rather than focus on working on what was directly in front of me. This led to a little neuroticism from me when we would shoot the scenes, but thankfully the crew I worked with was patient with my irritability and insistence on making like 9 takes for a two second scene. Those five days were difficult on me, but I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out. I think moving forward though I'd like to work with someone who is more well-equipped to work on filming things, because I was a little stretched thin with everything that went on.

    My real strength in this process was in pre-production. Maybe I'm being a little self-indulgent, but I feel confident in saying that I feel that my planning, research, and writing processes were the best they could be. Working on pre-production was easily the part I enjoyed most from this project since I am a planner. A schemer, if you will. I am known for being an idea guy, who often lacks the means to follow through with my wild plans. While I appreciate and am proud of finally following through with one of my plans, my heart belongs in the keyboard, where I can plan every minute detail of every step in every stage of the process... I went pretty deep into this stuff. Writing blogs and scripts pertaining to this project was the most fun I've had working on a school assignment in forever, and while that same enthusiasm didn't necessarily extend to some other facets of the project, discovering a passion for writing in these styles has given me some insight on tangible future careers I could be interested in pursuing. And it's this knowledge that is priceless, regardless of how well I do on the opening and CCR.

    And yes, while my name is predominantly featured in the credits for the opening, I couldn't have completed this assignment without a lot of people who came together to contribute to Clean Kill. First and foremost, Blake Crawford and Cesar Rivera, my two starring actors, had dedicated days out of their otherwise jam-packed schedules to work on this film, often spending several hours a day on set. This film couldn't have been completed without them. Also, I'd like to thank Alexander 'Wade' Duque for lending me his microphone for the duration of my shooting days, the voice lines would've otherwise been impossible to decipher had he not given me the hardware I needed to record the audio in the highest quality imaginable. Another massive thank you goes out to DR_ALEXZANDR for producing the main theme for the opening, I can't thank you enough for going out of your way to make music in a style you've never tried just for me.

    A major rule that I had imposed on myself when I started work on this project was to have everything done by myself, even if it wasn't the best quality. I wanted to look at my project and see a labor of work that was 100% me, so I could tell myself that I can do something on my own. But now, looking back at the final product, I can't help but think about how silly that sentiment was. I look at my project and don't see the work of one guy, but rather the combined effort, time, and contributions of many people. This made project made me realize how much work goes into full-on professional media productions, and how many people are involved with each project. I'm happy to see my project as a reflection of me and my team's work. 

    But that's it! I'm finally done. It was a pleasure writing for this audience, and I hope you've enjoyed reading my blogs as much as I've enjoyed writing them! I'll revisit this blog next year, when I start the A level of this course. And for one last time, I get to say: I'll see you then!

CCR? More like Crazy Crunch Rush Time!

 It's been a long weekend. I'm exhausted with all of the work I've done today (I have been editing for about 8 hours) as well as yesterday (recorded about 60 minutes worth of monologuing). Though I've enjoyed this project over these past few weeks, I won't lie to you: I'm glad it's coming to a close. I've lost dozens of hours of sleep worrying about or working on this assignment, and it's about time that I get to rest without worrying about my opening or CCR.

    Though a lot of progress was made on Saturday, there isn't a lot to show for it. I recorded about 50 audio clips, each about a minute in length, as I've read over my script countless times in front of my camera. Though I wasn't keeping track, I think it took me roughly three hours to do everything.

    This process was largely facilitated by my planning for the CCR, which I had broken down into which question I was answering, which part of the script I was reading, and what the visuals for the segment were going to be. These four pages pictured to the right of this paragraph were my guidelines that I used to organize the recording process.

    I stayed up until about 4 in the morning ensuring that each take I chose was the right one, since with 180 takes, I could easily get mixed up.

However, nothing could've prepared me for what today had in store for me. I started work on editing the CCR together at 11 am, by just putting together the correct takes in the right order in a adobe Premiere file. By about 1 pm, I had achieved this, and had also downloaded all other clips and images that I planned on using as visual aides in the video.

    It all went downhill very soon after. I lost track of time. I worked in near complete darkness, eyes lit only by the bright light of the computer screen, and my ears only heard my own voice, endlessly. It took quite a few hours but I finally finished the CCR, though I think I just went through a new form of torture. I tried doing some math homework afterwards but my brain was so addled that I literally couldn't understand anything I read.

I'm blaming any future math failures on this CCR....

    Ignoring potential consequences on my grades, I managed to put everything in relatively good time, and despite crunching everything into only two days, I think that this was the best way to do it, since my vision for the end product was always fresh in my mind.

I've now uploaded it as a private video on YouTube. Clean Kill's Opening and the CCR drops tomorrow, so stay tuned on the blog for the final set of posts! See you tomorrow!

How I Spent 3 Hours Fighting For Half A Second

 I know what you're thinking... the math doesn't add up with that title. But when you're editing, I can assure you that it somehow makes sense. When I wrote my last blog post on Wednesday, I figured that I was essentially done with editing my film opening, and saw it fit to send it out to some of my friends to get some peer review.

    Almost immediately, a glaring issue was brought to my attention. During a close up of hand sanitizer, I realized that a few frames had gone missing during my exporting of the video. Just a few frames, no problem right? That's what I thought, until I realized that this [half a second] blip out of existence messed up my graphic match shot, and transition between the two settings.

Not only did this missing bit ruin a crucial shot in my opening, but it also proved to be ridiculously difficult to fix. Every time that I checked the Openshot file, it showed everything working as intended, but it would once again reappear once I exported it, leading to me making about 5 copies of the same video in vain, costing me 40 minutes going in circles.\

    I was ready to throw in the towel and try recreating the entire thing from scratch on a different editing system, but in my frustration I was saved by my sister, Sofia, who offered to take a look at it. Sofia is much more familiar with editing videos than I am, and was the only person I knew who had experience in Openshot editing, since most of my friends use Adobe Premiere.

    It took the two of us about 2 hours going back and forth trying to find the issue with the clip, fixing what we thought the problem was, and exporting yet another flawed copy. However, my sister had the idea of just opening a different project file and editing the two graphic match shots together separate from the rest of the video. This stroke of genius was exactly the solution we were looking for, and ended our frenzied troubleshooting session.

    So last night I uploaded my final cut of the video (for real this time), and have it sitting on private mode, which I plan to undo on Monday. It was a huge weight off of my shoulders knowing that there's nothing left to do on the actual opening, so I could direct my full attention to the CCR, which I had been chipping away at writing in class, after school, and deep into the night. Today, I read through my script on a dry run (not organized nor stylized, it was just me laying out my answers) and it ended up being about 11 minutes. If I had to guess, this could be cut down to 10 minutes if I had rehearsed a little bit before reading (there were a lot of stumbles and pauses), and maybe 9 minutes if I cut down some redundant text and stylized the script to feel more casual and interesting to watch, instead of just being a bunch of word vomit.

    After I publish this blog I intend to go through these quirks in the script so that tomorrow I can record the audio and make some visual aides to go along with the reflection. I'll probably combine the blogs for recording the CCR and editing it into one mega blog on Sunday night.

I'll see you then, when I have some CCR news to report on!

Congratulations! Your Prize for Finishing Is.... More Writing!

Hello! After a few days spent trying to blur a video (I told you I was hopeless at editing), I finally added the extra bits that I wanted to complete the image I had for the opening. So the good news is: Editing is over! No more torture!

    The blurring of the walking video was a nightmare. I tried fiddling with settings and effects on Openshot to see if I could have the video gradually blur, to show Martin getting unconcentrated, but no matter what I did, the blurring on Openshot was not easy to work with. Either the blurring took too long to get put into effect, or the image wasn't blurry enough, it eventually got to the point where I would save a "blurry" version of the video then run it through Openshot again in an attempt to double-blur it. 

    These efforts were in vain however, and it left me stumped for the better part of Monday. In order to distract myself from this failure, I added the nighttime ambient sounds and the internal ringtone, which made me feel better about how the opening was tied together, albeit somewhat haphazardly.

The preview for my OUTLINE of the CCR script.

    On Tuesday, I looked at a few video tutorials on my phone about how to get the level of blur I wanted, but nearly all of them involved reshooting the scene again, which wasn't an option for me since Danny's actor had since shaved, and would ruin what little continuity I still had. So instead, I tried animating the title card. Note for future reference: Not a good animator. I ended up making a animated title sequence on PowerPoint of all things, which will now haunt me forever.

    I also started some work on my CCR on Tuesday, since I figured I was pretty much done with the brunt of the workload for this project and could relax a little bit with some light script writing. I was very much mistaken. When I laid out the list of all topics I wanted to touch upon in my CCR video, it dawned on me that this would not be a walk in the park. Merely listing the topics had taken up a whole page of paper, which set up how daunting the task was. I ended up writing a rough draft for about half of all of the topics last night, and I plan on finishing writing my first draft tonight. No spoilers on the script though!

WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS MEAN???

    Today, after I got home from school, I decided it was time to stop dragging this on and finally blur out the video. But how? I was forced to use an old enemy of mine, something I swore never to touch again... Adobe Premiere. Even after spending 30 minutes exploring the settings and effects on Adobe, I refused to ask my peers for help out of stubbornness, but miraculously found a setting on Adobe to reduce sharpness and make everything blurrier.

    However, this STILL wasn't blurry enough, even after running it through the old double-blur method, so I figured I'd try to illustrate this "out of focus" experience in a different way, which ended up being messing with the coloring of the video as well as adding a vignette around the edges of the frame to make it feel like he's zeroing in on his target. This ended up being satisfactory enough, but I still have no idea how to use Adobe.

    As I write this blog, I'm uploading what I have for the opening onto a private youtube channel to send to a few friends for some peer review. I'll most likely use their criticisms for a blog post, and to fix any mistakes that have slipped past my very tired eyes. Until then, however, I need to go take a nap.