CAP Hollywood Reflection #3

First off, just so you know Mr. Mayo, I fully acknowledge that my third reflection is a full week late. I'm sorry.

That said, quite a bit has happened in the past two weeks. Last weekend, which is when I would have written this post if it was on time, we had finished filming. Saturday morning, I recorded voiceovers with one of our actors.That afternoon, Kirin and I went with our actors to film the second and third acts of our film in Dupont Circle. I set up each shot and directed the actors in the shot. Kirin kept track of each shot and made sure that we had filmed everything we needed to. She also gave input as to how shots should be set up.

This past week, I came in before school on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and after school  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to edit our footage. Because there was HSA testing happening, I had three hours to edit during those mornings. On Monday morning, Kirin and I went in to edit. We imported the new footage from the camera and edited the footage of the chase scene and the final scene of our film. By the end of the morning, our film was almost done. It needed to be cut shorter and the audio needed to be edited, but besides that, the film was really coming together.

On Tuesday afternoon, I came in afterschool to finish up the film, to find that the hard drive on which we were saving our film had been dropped and our entire timeline was deleted. That day, I stayed after school until 5:30 attempting to salvage some of the raw footage that we had used by dragging it from the hard drive to the media storage on the computer.

The next day, Kirin and I came in again. We found an earlier version of our film saved onto another computer and re-imported the new footage onto that computer. I transferred the voiceovers from the hard drive on which they were saved, to the new computer, using a flash drive. Kirin and I then re-edited the entire second half of the film. We did this in considerably less time than it took us the first time, as we knew what clips needed to be cut, what order shots would be in, and what clips could be cut shorter. With this knowledge, not only did we finish editing more quickly, but we also cut our film down to an acceptable length (four minutes). Kirin and I worked well together. I pieced together the end sequences and kirin worked to cut down the film to the correct length.

After school that day, I came in an edited the audio to make sure all of the sound was at the right levels. The next morning, I came in again to do some fine-tuning and after school, we exported. We effectively completed the majority of our film in a day.

Speaking to your question about my goals, this time last week, our goals were to finish editing and export our film by Friday afternoon. In retrospect, I'd say that we did extremely well with achieving those goals.

CAP Hollywood Reflection

In my media production class right now, we are doing an assignment called CAP Hollywood, in which small groups adapt a short story, written by a group member, into a short film. Our teacher wants us to write a reflection on how the production process has been going. So, that's what this is.

So far, our production process has gone relatively smoothly. Last Sunday we filmed the first half of the footage. We got footage from around Downtown Silver Spring and on the metro. We used a blue tinted filter on the camera which made everything seem darker and drearier. Our current footage is steady and clear. It even has some audio that we can use as background if we bring down the sound levels.

The biggest problem that we ran into was that the red line on the metro going towards DC was shut down for the weekend. We were planning on taking the metro into DC and filming on the metro as we went. Then we were going to film around DC. Instead, we had to take the metro in the other direction to film and we planned to finish filming in DC this weekend.

This didn't happen because one of our actors was sick. Right now, I'm really concerned about how we're going to get our filming finished in time, because our main actor can't film next weekend, and during the week we can't really film because one of my group members babysits, our main actor lives half an hour away, and it's the week before the AP exams. I really don't want to  find a new actor and re-film everything, but we may have to in order to get everything done in time.

Last weekend, I was the cinematographer. I set up angles and shots and filmed. I made sure the footage looked okay. I also directed people to make sure that they were in the right place so that the shots worked. I made sure that the lighting was okay for each shot. In school this week, with the help of my group, I put the some of the shots in the timeline and cut them into a rough cut. I also contributed my input as to what music we should for the first part of the film.

This week, we really need to do our best to finish filming. I'm not sure how realistic that is, but it's a goal. I also plan to help fine tune the editing of the first half of the film. I will help either bring down audio levels or edit out the audio completely. We need to pick the specific music that we want to use. We also need to work on creating a movie poster for our film. Hopefully, we can do that with the footage that we already have. In the long term, we need to put all of our footage in the timeline to make a rough cut  and eventually edit it into the final product.

It looks like we're going to be cutting it pretty close on this project. Hopefully, we get it done in time.

Here's a clip from last weekend's filming session:



In this clip, our main character, Kitty, realizes that a man sitting behind her on the metro is watching her.