Cambridge Portfolio Week 8 4/6; Creative Critical Reflection

 

Cambridge Portfolio Week 8 4/6; Film Opening

 

Cambridge Portfolio Week 8 4/6; Reflecting on the Project

 Hello, this is the final week of my Cambridge Portfolio film opening project, and I am finally done with my film opening. For a recap, my film opening is the intro to a Thriller movie with some horror elements. A man wakes up in a ruined house with no recollection of how he got there. Upon exiting the building, the entire world is shrouded with a warm yellow hue. After investigation, he finds human remains on the ground, and after a panic, he is suddenly killed by an unknown entity, with only a ear remaining of him.

Throughout the process there were many changes, revisions, hardships, and many problems in getting the film to how I wanted it to be. The finished product of my film, although staying true to the original, has changed so much to the original, and it did not turn out the exact same way I expected it to. I would like to start off with the length of the film. When I initially made the product I did not think so much about the 2 minute maximum time limit that the film needed. I only realized this problem late in production when I had compiled my footage. My footage far exceeded 2 minutes, causing me to panic, and unfortunately, make some sacrifices. Some shots were completely cut, some sped up a bit, just to compress the film into 2 minutes. Personally, I think after some careful editing my film did not turn out so bad. In fact, I think some of the scenes I cut out were for the better.

The main scene I cut out was the scene in which I go into somebody's house. I did this shot later in my production because I needed to go inside a friend's house. We were hanging out at his house anyways, so I took the opportunity to do a bit of filming, but his parents did not allow some of the circumstances I needed, so after trying, the shots did not turn out well at all. They contrasted the care I had put in the other shots. In this scene the character would see the eye on the ground and run out, and then get attacked by the entity. I replaced this by the character running from the finger instead, which was meant to precede the second house scene. I think it makes more sense, because it's strange that the character takes no notice of a human finger, but does so when seeing an eye. This did mess with the logic of the other shots just a bit, but it wasn't anything extremely noticeable.

Another problem I had was the lighting. In the house, the lighting did not turn out exactly the way I liked it. I expected the light to be dark enough to not see the background, but light enough to see the character. I was unable to find a perfect balance, so I thought it could be fixed in editing. I was able to remedy it, but it's not exactly the way I wanted it to be. For some reason, my iPhone's camera would make lighting strange depending on the scene's focus on the character, creating some weird "flashing" of lighting, but it wasn't a huge problem.

About the blogs, I was not too fond of having a blog for my project, but I understand it was necessary for me to do. Without blogging, I would have procrastinated on one of my most important grades, and since I needed to make posts, it forced me to make some kind of progress to post about. However, I still think it was asking for a bit much. Making 3 blog posts a week did not feel possible, and I had to rush a few of them. There's no way I could do so much in just one week, enough to make 3 entire blog posts about. However, I did them, and I think it was actually somewhat fun to do a few. It was nice to get away from the stressful filming and just let out what I feel about the project, what I plan to do, etc.

For some things I'm proud of, I'm happy about the way the finger turned out. I was worried I would have to use Photoshop to edit it in, which would have to be a still image in the film, but I was able to make my own in less than a day, and it was quite convincing. It was probably the most fun part of the project. I'm also generally fond of how the project turned out. I expected it to be an absolute disaster, because I don't have a lot of experience filming and I was sure that grading would be strict. It did not turn out the way it did in my head, but that was okay. I showed it to some family members, and they liked it. I guess that when you have a vision for your project, and your final product doesn't live up to it, you feel bummed. But viewers don't know what your original idea is, they just know that it's a pretty decent movie.

This project is one of the hardest I've had to do. I took over free time, my Spring Break, and my head as I tried to film the best I can. But I've learned a lesson in filming, and that's that films don't need to be masterpieces. I had a budget of 0 dollars, I only filmed it with an iPhone camera, and it turned out fine. You don't need expensive technology to create a good film. I'm going to admit that I came up with the idea for this project in a few minutes, almost on the spot, when I needed something to put in the blog, but I think that I would not have come up with this idea and had a good story tell about it if it were not for that. Despite the stress, I look forward to any future projects relating to filming.

Cambridge Portfolio Week 7 3/28; Recording Problems

 I would like to talk about the problems that I have had during filming. Particularly, I want to talk about the time of day and the way it affected my filming.

When I had come up with the idea for this film having a yellowish tint, I forgot that there would be trees. These trees produce a lot of shade, and they make the film look less barren than I thought it would. Trees kind of make the shot look a bit more lively, which is not what I'm going for.

 

I said previously that I would film from 4-7, but that makes it too shady to film. Instead, I tried to do it from 12 to 2, and got better results.

Another problem outside is that there were cars. Sometimes cars would move in the background, sometimes people, and sometimes scenes would be inconsistent since a car that was there before wouldn't be there after.

For example, in this video I had to cut off a bit because a car was coming in the background. Also, there was a very bright truck with people moving in the background that would not go away, so I had to film it somewhere else away from my house.

I am almost done filming, I need 1-2 days to finish and I can use the rest of the week to edit, which won't take a while. Once I am finished editing, I can work on my reflection for my remaining time and submit it.

Cambridge Portfolio Week 7 3/28; My Recorded Clips

 Hello, over the the course of this Spring Break, I have made major strides in my filming process. I have completed most of the filming and am almost ready to compile and do some changes. I am not yet done, but I have done most of the necessary scenes that would require a lot of setup. I would like to discuss some scenes and how I did them, what problems I had, etc. 

I'd like to start with the stairs scene. This is probably my favorite iteration since I got the light just the way I wanted it, but it just had this strange eyeroll I did for some reason. I was thinking about cutting it out but it wouldn't be natural. I don't think it'll make much of a difference. Also, this version has been edited to have a warm color scheme

Here's another attempt I did, except at night. I did this before the one above, and I realize that it would have been better if it was better during day, because there was a window above that would provide enough lighting to see me, but not enough to ruin the dark lighting. It's also a bit easy to tell it's at night, and the light on the left, which is supposed to be from the windows, looks very artificial.

 Here, I did not apply the warmer color scheme, and it was also very dark. For those reasons I did want to use it.

This video isn't cropped yet to make way for the finished film. It does not have the warm yellow tint applied. The cameraman pans over when I audibly snap, but fortunately the sound will be cut out in this part.

This is the first shot of the film. It is quite shaking and not as zoomed in as I'd like, but I did a quick edit on iMovie.

In iMovie, there is an anti-shaking filter, and I think it looks pretty good. There's still a bit but it definitely looks more professional than it did before.

They aren't exactly turning out like I thought they would in my head, but I'm an ambitious person and am not a master filmer. I think they're decent, and I hope that they look good after editing.

Cambridge Portfolio Week 7 3/27, Finger Prop

Hello, welcome to Week 7 of my Cambridge Portfolio project. The reason for my lack of posts this week is because I've been hard at work. I was planning on doing my blog as I went by, but there were setbacks and it was not easy to work consistently and compile enough info for each respective blog.

In this post I'll discuss the process behind a finger prop I did for the film.

I started with the glue process I previously found online. I put on 4-6 coats of glue, but it was very time consuming, and it only ended up cracking. Then, I tried using a hairdryer to speed up the drying process for each coat.

It didn't tear, but it was difficult to get off. I ended up not using this method. I don't know if I didn't powder my hand enough to prevent sticking, or if it just wasn't a good method, but I opted to try another.

What I ultimately went with is using a wax mold.

I started with melting a candle in a cup using boiling water. It took a while, but it finally melted.

I tried putting in my fingers, but it really hurt to put my finger in scalding hot wax, so my dad helped out.

It wasn't really painful for him, so after covering his entire finger, we went into the garage and got some Easy Sand to make a cement/clay mixture that would harden up.

We carefully pulled out the finger and put it in a small plastic cup.

We mixed together the sand with water and made a clay-like mixture.

We initially tried putting it into a glove to see if it would turn out well, and it did. It broke easily though, so we needed to be careful later.

We poured in the clay and waited for it to dry.

After waiting overnight, it was hardened.

We tried shipping it off, starting with the exposed area, but it was too hard.

Instead, we cut some off with a knife and sliced bigger lines so we could safely take off bigger chunks.

This is how the finger turned out.

I got some acryllic paints and painted the finger. I mixed some colors and did a light coat.

 However, it was a bit too pale, so I lightly and gingerly rubbed black paint on to to make it look dirtied and more convincing. This is the final product.

I think me and my father did a good job on the finger. It's not extremely convincing, but for something that was made from scratch without a big team, I think it looks good. It may have been a bit too much work for one shot, but it's always something I can reflect back on and it was fun to make.

Cambridge Portfolio Week 6 3/21, Props

 Hello, now that I will continue filming this Spring break, I need to figure out how I will create the human remain props such as the finger, ear, eye, and tooth. I previously said I would likely use EVA foam to sculpt it, but after looking at the foam I had it was simply too thin and difficult to work with to create props like a finger. I believe EVA foam was made for bigger things like suits of armor and not for tinier things like the ear. I have tried to do some research on how I can create props for use in my film opening.

The finger doesn't seem nearly as difficult as I thought it would, but it still isn't that simple. The girl in this video uses layers of glue to create a finger, and it looks pretty convincing. I have the materials to create this, so I'll probably try this one.

https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Fake-Hand

This wikihow post shows how to create a fake hand. I only need the finger, so I might either do what they do just for the finger, or do the entire hand and have multiple finger props, which may be handy if one gets lost or broken. They utilize a paper plate, clay, and a rubber mold. I only have paper plates, however.

 

For the eyeball, I think it will be the easiest. I could paint a bouncy ball white, paint some red lines, and paste a photo-realistic iris. I have spray paint that can make it shiny, so it doesn't look that fake.

As for the tooth and ear, the tooth is the one thing that cold be sculpted with EVA foam but I can't figure out the ear.

If these don't work, my last resort is Photoshop. Since the shots of these body parts are pretty static, I could just edit in a picture of them. For now, I plan on starting to sculpt them tomorrow before doing some filming.