Group Meeting

So today we all gathered around and talked about what we are doing for our portfolio projects and everyone was able to give advice and throw in ideas. Luis and Jake are doing a short film based in a virtual reality. Some advice that was given to them was to not have so much dialogue between so many characters and to just `have dialogue between two people. Since you only have five minutes for the short film it was said that in their competition scene with the teens that they should just do the scene with one round instead of multiple rounds of them competing. The next person who talked about their project was Ana. She said that she basically had no idea what she wanted to do but everyone in class helped her out with an idea for her short film. Since Ana immigrated to the U.S everyone gave her the idea to do the short film on the process of her moving her. But instead of the film focusing on how she adjusted in her new school, it would be focused on the legal attributes that affected her through the immigration process. She was talking about this one scene where she wants her character to scream while she rides her bike, so it was suggested that she could use shots of wheels on other vehicles as symbolism. Mariana was the next person to speak about her project. Her idea for her short film was about a women who's husband dies and she sees a random man in a public place and he has all the qualities her husband had and basically seems like her husband except he's dead. We talked about how this story line can go in different ways such as the woman ends up being with the man who may have reincarnated through another person or maybe towards the end you see that she's just making up all this stuff about the man seeming like her husband to cope with her husband's death. It was now up to Mariana to how she was going to execute this idea. Jonathan is also doing a short film and he's choosing to do it on a gay love story. We suggested that instead of the characters actually speaking, there can be an internal dialogue that basically shows what they're thinking in their heads. It was also said that maybe there shouldn't be a 'happy' ending since in the real world, relationships aren't perfect. I was the last one to talk about my music video project and I asked for some advice for the marketing part of my project. It was suggested I could do a audio interview of my artist talking about what his song means and I was also given names of other artists to look at that have something similar to the rap genre I'm doing such as Amine and LSD.

Research

So I started to watch different rap music videos and I realized I really enjoy watching music videos that have cool effects/montages in them. For example, Travis Scott - Butterfly Effect Music video.

This music video has a lot of effects, different colors, sound bites and it's just overall so visually appealing and it's just also so much fun to watch. The video is really fast, the clips are always changing and the colors and overlays just really pop. Most of the video contains Travis rapping in different locations as well as portraying a rich life style. A lot of rappers go the route of lip syncing and showing off their possessions but I just feel like this video is just edited very well and it's exactly the kind of style I'd like to go for when I'm editing my music video. Overall to achieve this type of music video, not only do you need to plan out your shots well but you need to get very creative in the editing process. It's a good thing for me that I LOVE editing. Editing is my favorite part of the process when creating content and I'm so excited to see what I'm going to end up creating.

My Artist

So, initially, I was going to do my music video project on my friend Brandon. He makes a rap music and said he would be able to do this music video with me. However, he lives in North Carolina now. He did first tell me that he'd be able to ask off from work to come down to Florida and film with me but, he ended up telling me that it was best that I found someone else for this project since he didn't want to get himself into something if there was a chance he wouldn't be able to come to Florida. I was stressing out because I wasn't really close with anyone who made music. I did know of people but it wasn't like I talked to them. Thankfully, my Holocaust History teacher knew about my project and told me about a guy named Koree a week prior to Brandon bailing. My teacher had told me that it's always good to have a back up and since she knew I was stressing about the situation with Brandon, she told me Koree would be willing replace him if I needed him to. I did know who Koree was but only because I went to middle school with him, other than that, I never spoke to him. Koree is actually quite known for his music among other people in our school so I did already know he made music. He also makes rap music as well which was the genre I was initially going to do my music video on because of Brandon which is great. So I ended up dming him on Instagram and asking if he could be the artist I promote for my music video project and he said yes! I was so happy and relieved that I finally found someone I could do my project on and he seems to be excited to be apart of it. He does have an album out and I told him I'd get back to him on which song I'd like to do. To listen to one of his songs from his album Heart breaker just click here

Here's the dm between Koree and I. So relieved I have an artist for my music video !

Intro/ portfolio 2

Hello!

So this year I  decided to work on my Aice media A level portfolio project myself. I was initially going to work with my friend Mariana and do a short film, but in 3rd quarter when were were given the option to change groups and topics, Mariana decided to work with someone else so instead of working with another group and doing a short film, I chose to do a music promotion package by myself. Working alone definitely has its pros. I will be having full control over the creative process and planning. I am quite nervous because this is a big project and I did work on it with a group last year. But I have made multiple music videos before for my TV production class so I feel like I'm really comfortable with the process of making a music video.  Music videos are so much fun to make. Editing is something I love to do and I have a lot of experience with it. I feel like editing is a big part of creating a music video. The editing techniques have the capability of pulling in the viewer. When I grow up, making music videos for artists is something I definitely want to do.

I'll be taking you throughout the whole process of creating this music video and I'm really excited for the final result

CHAMPION FILM OPENING

I'm really happy with how everything turned out, enjoy!
Champion film opening

CHAMPION CCR

reflection

For my project I decided to create an Action/drama based film opening called “Champion”. It was created with the help of my partners Jonathan Casaverde, Rafael Sanchez, and Tomas Quilaqueo.

The film opening shows a very experienced boxer named Vincent Montoya played by Rafael, fighting against his rival, named Booker Cannon. As the fight begins we see Vincent starting off strong, however, he then gets knocked out by Booker which then causes Vincent to endure severe injuries that leads him into a coma for multiple months. We then see Vincent in the hospital after a few months have gone by and he is currently still in a coma. The news turns on in the background and we hear the reporter speaking about the events that took place the night of the boxing match. As the reporter is talking about if Vincent will ever return, he open his eyes and finally wakes from his coma. The last scene in the hospital really gives off a climatic feel that will have people wondering what will happen next. So I believe that this film opening as a whole will really keep the viewers engaged. Even though we stuck with the traditional idea of boxing and used males instead of females, our film opening does represent a minority. Both Vincent Montoya and Booker Cannon are Hispanics coming from a low income society. They are both fighting for money so they can live a better life. Since we see Vincent waking up from his coma months later, viewers can infer that the story line of the movie will be based upon the hardships Vincent will have to face to be able to take back his title of a professional boxer.This challenges conventions as it motivates people to fight for their dreams no matter how hard it may seem to reach. The story line of this film can potentially be very inspiring and relatable to viewers, since it’ll represent the idea of fighting for what you want and reaching your goals.Our film opening will connect with audiences emotionally. Since Vincent gets brutally knocked out, our viewers will be worried and hoping he will recover so he can come back and try to win his next boxing match. This will also engage with audiences who are between the ages of teens to adults and who are very into action based films. Distribution for our film might not be so easy for us. We would most likely only be able to show our work to small amounts of people since we aren’t very familiar with people in the film industry. We would be able to enter our film into film festivals or tv production competitions. Student television network is a competition which I have attended to myself and it’s a good platform if you’d want to get your films more known. However, it is a very competitive competition so we could just enter our work into local film festivals.

My production skills developed greatly throughout this project and so did my partners. Tomas, Rafa, and Jonathan became very good at coming up with the story line and creating a script. Tomas worked very well with the camera and Rafa experienced how to get into character and act. I also experienced working with work lights since we were filming during the night and needed to make sure we had good lighting.I also learned how to keep a production going even when things get difficult.At one point it started to rain heavily and we were all multi tasking, having one person filming with the dslr camera, the other holding an umbrella over the camera, and someone else setting up the lights for our subjects. Through this production process I learned that we had to manage our time very wisely and plan what would be taking place on our filming day. If we had called all of our actors in without a plan and just improvised, we wouldn’t have gotten anything done. Even though we faced many obstacles the day we filmed, we got everything done that night. Tomas and I both did the editing. Tomas put everything together on adobe premiere pro and I used after effects to create graphics for our title card and credits. We are both already very familiar with editing so I don’t think that process was too difficult for us, however even though I am very comfortable with using after effects I had never created more of a complex kind of graphics before so I did teach myself how to make those graphics for our titles by watching tutorials on you tube.The making of the graphics wasn’t difficult for me at all, It was more of something fun and new for me to do. I really enjoyed creating cool graphics for my film opening. I know it’s something not a lot of other people have experience in and I really hope the graphics will pull the viewer in. Even though we were focusing a lot on the cinematic aspects of our film opening, sound was also vital for our project.The sound in films is also what tells the story, so we made sure to incorporate sound effects in our film opening. We did use downloaded sound effects and foley in our project. We used the sound of crowds cheering and the sound of car engines in our title sequences to establish the setting of our film opening. We had downloaded an audio effect for it to sound like people cheering and for the car engines we recorded all of that in the school parking lot using tomas’s car. So right from the start the viewer knows we are outside with a crowd of people and cars surrounding them. Since punching sound effects from a website don’t sound so great we decided to use foley for our punch noises by wrapping a text book with bubble wrap and punching that. The making of this film opening was a really great experience that taught me a lot about the production of a film and how to collaborate with others. I truly learned how to think outside the box more and I became more knowledgeable about the process of creating a film.