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.

Voice over

Other than the foley and title card we have to work on recording the voice over, which will go like this -            NEWS REPORTER (V.O.)
         A statement was released today by the
         family of boxer JESUS MONTOYA who was
         brutally knocked into a coma 4 months
ago after getting involved in a street fight.While In a coma his family has decided for him that he will NOT return to the ring upon his awakening,
Created using Celtx
which is another subject that has
         recently been in doubt.
Jesus Montoya becomes visible as the patient in the bed. He
is unconscious.
         Having shown no signs of recovery
         since he was first put in the
         hospital, the family has asked for
         privacy at this time at an attempt to
         decide what will be done about
         Montoya.
Camera approaching Montoya's unconscious face, eyes closed,
no expression.
Jesus Montoya left a large legacy, but if he ever does come back, will he be the same? And more importantly, will he ever return?
Opens his eyes.
Black Screen
Title Card

Tomas is just going to use his phone to record his voice and it should turn out just fine. Since we're in tv we have a lot of experience doing voice overs so it’s not going to be difficult. I can also edit the audio to actually sound like it’s coming from a tv using my editing software and adding audio effects

Title name

So I’m currently on a tv production trip in Seattle for school so I’ve  been pretty focused on that. We’re constantly out and competing or sight seeing so it’s been very hard for me to keep up with class work. And since Tomas and I are on this trip it’s hard to keep in contact with Rafa and Jonathan but we know we’ll finish everything on time. The I only things we have left to do is to record the foley sounds, voice over, and come up with a title. I was thinking the title can be something like “The Last Fight” but that didn’t make much sense to me because even though there is one fight with a lot of significance to it, it isn’t the “last” one. And then I also came up with “The Conquerer” because our main character will have to over come many any obstacles to heal from his wounds and fight his rival again. I will also be adding the title name at the last part of the film opening

Peer review #2

Elizabeth is doing a travel magazine for Miami. She's making it about unique places in Miami that everyone can find an interest in. She showed us a template for her magazine. She's doing something simple that matches the Miami vibe but at the same time there is a lot going on. The target audience for her magazine is young people mostly. We gave her our opinions on which set ups we like better for the text and picture placements. 

Mariana is doing a film opening about a girl growing up in a low class family. Her mom gets remarried but the man isn't a good person. He abuses his wife and after the mother passes away he abused the daughter as well. The daughter meets a guy who she falls in love with. However after the her father sees her and her boyfriend together he kills him because he is just a horrible person. He cleans up everything so there is no evidence of the killing. The daughter is so sad and angry she decides to kill her father but she doesn't care to hide it in that moment. So when the police come and she is trying to explain what happened, they don't care because they see that she just killed someone. She then gets sentenced to death row. This is where the film opening is going to take place. It's going to be the day of her execution and a reporter comes into to get the daughter's side of the story. The reporter asks "what happened" and there will then be flash backs of all the events leading up to this. The daughter then says "everything" and that's when the title card pops up. We suggested for the dialogue that she leaves a phone close to the person talking so the phone will pick up a clearer recording of the dialogue that she can then just sync together in the editing process 

Daniela is doing a film opening about a girl running away with her boyfriend. The opening scene is the girl packing her clothes to run away. There is going to be flash backs during the film opening on the girl and her boyfriend talking about running away together. They are going to present the girl is all nice and girly at first but when she goes to run away she is going to change her clothes to black and we suggested maybe adding colored hair extensions for an edgier look.

Sarah is doing a food magazine on healthy foods. She is going to have a page that talks about easy ways to cook healthy meals fast. Her double paged spread is going to contain how breakfast is really important and it will include three cooking recipes. We all thought her ideas were good 

Isabelle is doing a baking magazine. Since time was running short she didn't have much time to explain everything to us. She told us she is going to have her friend help her with recipes and how she is going to have a celebrity chef kind of section. She will also be adding pictures of really pretty cakes and what not.  

Using Foley

As I was editing and applying sound effects where it was needed, I went to the audio library to find punching sound effects. As I was going through them I didn't like any of them at all. They sounded really bad and fake. I did try applying them to the footage but it just did not sound real at all. So we decided that we should do foley for the punch sound effects.

As you can see, the punch sound effects sound really fake and just don't go with the fight scene at all. 

I watched some videos on different methods of foley for punch sounds. Some different methods are

• hitting pillows with different types of hard object like a wooden stick. 
• hitting a plastic like stick to a cabbage 
• hitting an ax to a cabbage 
• twisting and tearing leeks
• cutting a grapefruit in half and punching it with your fingers
• taking a wet towel and hitting it to a wooden platform
• hitting your arm or chest
• taking wooden sticks and breaking them with your knee, this could be used for the sound of breaking bones.
• Taking a wooden stick and waving it really hard, this creates a wind type of sound that makes it match with when the punch is being thrown. 

These are all really good methods to create the punch sound effects we need. They are also really do-able as in we are able to do them at home without many difficulties.

Tod, Chris Allan. “Recording Punch Sound Sources.” YouTube, YouTube, 14 Apr. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArqiTny3ZoM.