Done Editing.... ish!

      I'm pretty much done editing my film opening! There are a couple of minor things that I would like to tweak here and there but the bulk of my work is done and I could not be more relieved. It took me about five or six hours, which is a lot less than I honestly thought it would take me. But hey, I'm not complaining.
     I'm happy with it. Not 100% yet, because like I said I need to change a few things, but it's pretty much there. I particularly know of a small clip that I want to film, but it would not take much for me to do so. When Natalia talks about how Luna had an amazing family and an amazing life, I want a clip of Natalia laughing. I realized in my edits that I didn't have anything good to insert there, so I want to add that. That won't be hard, I can do it at school with no problem.
     Sorry these posts keep getting shorter, as I approach the end of my little journey with this project, I am running out of things to say. But I'm not gonna lie, I'm a bit sad it's almost over, I really enjoyed filming/editing this opening, and even writing these blogs.

Youtube Audio Library Saves the Day

     When I first started this project, my biggest question was how on Earth I was going to find good, royalty free music. The answer? The Youtube Audio Library! They have a wide range of songs that are completely royalty free. Even better, they divide it by genre so I did not have to search for hours.

     I immediately went to the 'cinematic' genre and I listened to a lot of songs. I probably spent a total of around two hours listening to music. Finally, I decided upon the song Emotional Love Theme by Biz Baz Studio for the credits. It has a sad mood (it's in the 'cinematic sad' category) but it's not overly sad. I am quite happy with that choice.

     For the rest of my opening scene, the song A Quiet Thought by Wayne Jones will be playing on and off. It's in the category of 'cinematic calm' but I think it does have a lot of sad tone to eat, maybe even more so than Emotional Love Theme. I'm not a professional, but I think it fits the mood and pace of Dear Lover.

     I'm really glad I knew of this tool before I even started filming, it was truly a life saver. I've struggled with finding good, royalty free music for other projects in the past. I was scared that it would be the same story for the project, but thankfully my teacher mentioned this wonderful tool before I even started struggling.

AHHHHHH!!! :(

     I should start by saying that I started editing my video today. I've spent a total of three hours and I'm 1 minute and 14 seconds in. Everything was going well. I edited the title sequence and then Natalia's voice over in the the beginning. But I just realized that ALL OF THE AUDIO WE FILMED AT THE PARK IS GONE! IT'S GONE! Pretty much all of it! :( :( :(

     I don't know if I'm angry or frustrated or sad. But I know I'm panicking. I don't know how everything is going to sound if there is no nice audio. I can't film everything again, I'm running out of time already. The audio is completely white noise. I don't understand why because I did sound check every single time I switched the mic from Andrea to Kailynn. I guess it was going too well and something was bound to go wrong.

     I'll update when I figure out what exactly I'm going to do. For now, I'll keep editing. That's all I can really do to make things better: get it done. 

Let's Talk

     I will be honest, it's Spring Break and my motivation to work on this project is not at high as it was a couple of days ago when I filmed. Nevertheless, I have to keep going.

     I have been watching the clips and for the most part, I am completely happy with what I have accomplished in terms of quality, though I haven't checked the audio recordings yet in fear that they may not be perfect. But I want to address something that I don't think I've addressed at all, and if I have it was very briefly.

     When casting Kailynn as my main character, I did not know what I wanted my story to be about. I quickly decided on drama and then decided that I would incorporate Kailynn's Puerto Rican heritage into it. However, when it came time to actually write the script, my mind went blank. I did not know what to write in general much less how to incorporate her ethnicity into it.

     I re-wrote the script about three times until I was happy and it ended up being the one I used. Truthfully, I simply could not think of a story where her ethnicity would be relevant. I decided to completely give up on that idea. I do not want to have diversity for the sake of diversity. I thought it would be unfair if I jut threw the fact that she was Puerto Rican into the story without giving anything else to it. I refuse to have a story in which a character's ethnicity is only mentioned to be diverse. If I was going to mention her ethnicity, it would be because it was relevant to the story.

     Hispanic cultures are so rich that I felt as though just mentioning Puerto Rico and leaving it like that would be somewhat disrespectful. As someone who is Mexican, I know I would feel a little bit offended if I saw a very Americanized character in a film who was claiming to be Mexican. Basically, if I couldn't do it the right way that I wanted to do it, I would not do it at all.

     Had I had more time for this project, maybe the story would be different. For now though, I am happy with what I wrote. I would love to film something with more diversity and culture in the future, where I can actually take my time to research the culture I will be writing about and filming, so I can deliver a respectful and satisfying result.

Filming Day! 2.0

     Let's pick back where we left off. So we filmed the outside portion of the film opening. Now, we had to film the scenes that were inside. It did not take me more than ten seconds when we walked back into my house to realize that natural lighting would not be useful there. I know I should've realized this earlier, but I did and what is this blog for if I don't admit my mistakes and correct them?
     So I did just that, I corrected it. I filmed Natalia's adult clips in my living room and I used this giant metal light that is not that strong but it made a huge difference. I had to hold onto it though, because it is not meant to be used as a studio light and would just drop if I let it go. It made the whole process a little bit more challenging, but it wasn't too bad.

     The fact that the light was not powerful was perfect. That, combined with the sun's light coming from the window made Kailynn's makeup look bright and bold, and it ensured that there were no weird shadows on her face.

     Then I made another mistake. I didn't realize that I need Kailynn without makeup for the part where Natalia is writing a letter to Luna. However, since the particular section does not necessarily need her to do that, I improvised and instead had Andrea go to the mailbox and pretend to be getting a letter. I don't know if I will like it, but if I don't it won't be too hard to film that one scene another with Kailynn.

Filming Day!

     The day is finally here! Today, I filmed the entirety of my film opening, all of it. It only took about... 9 hours. But we did it! Let me start from the beginning. It's all been so hectic that I did not have time to make very many blogs about the details like wardrobe choices, so I'm going to take you through the process now.

     Grades for the quarter were closing on Thursday, which meant that no matter how much I insisted, I truthfully did not know what outfit choices they would come up with until about an hour before we started filming. I understand that they were stressed out because of school so I do not blame them for being too busy to think about my school work, but nevertheless it was still frustrating. 

     I told Kailynn I wanted her to wear a gray hoodie I had, ripped jeans and sneakers for the part where she's younger and something to make her look like an adult for the part where she's older. I did not specify because I did not know what she owned, but her outfit ended up being perfect. She wore a white button up shirt, her pants and shoes were not visible. She put her hair half up half down and kept her makeup minimal for the younger part, but pulled her hair into a bun and has a full face of makeup for the adult part.

     For Andrea, I told her to wear something "cute and innocent", as that is how I visualized Luna's character. She wore a skirt and a t-shirt, which was absolutely perfect. She wore a little bit of makeup too. Unlike Kailynn though, Andrea did not wear any foundation/concealer. She does not like putting it on and so I did not ask her to, even though actors/actresses in films typically do wear some. 

     We filmed at Markham park, in a little place where there was a lake and some trees. It wasn't exactly what I pictures but we did not want to venture too far into the woods for fear of getting lost. I ended up really liking the place though, and we chose and nice little spot near the edge of the water to film. Here you can see the place, plus their costumes.

     It went well. It took us about three hours to get all of it down. It was quite frustrating to have to record audio and video separately, I already know it will be extremely time consuming to edit. Regardless, we had fun and there were minimal problems. A few were that Andrea could not say her lines with a straight face and it took us about ten takes to get them out, and I has to crawl in the mud for certain angles so my shoes are in desperate need of a clean up.

     Other than that, I think we were pretty successful and I'm really happy with how it all turned out. I had to tweak a couple small and technical things but nothing major, I almost completely followed my script word by word. Anyway, I'll continue talking about the filming experience in tomorrow's post, as this one is already getting a little bit too long.

An Actual Storyboard & Wardrobe Choices

     Heeeeello! Good news, I'm done with my storyboard. I definitely feel a lot more relaxed now that I know pretty much everything that is going to happen during this film opening. I still have a lot to do, but I feel as though the planning portion is nearly done. Anyway, here's the storyboard.

     Yeah, I know. It's ugly. But it'll do. I used this storyboard template.
     There's some other planning I also need to do. That's pretty much just costumes/hair, plus I have to work on Luna's character so I can let Andrea know how exactly she needs to act, even though she only has a couple of lines. I think I want her character to be kind and sweet, and I think I'm going to show that through her clothes mostly.
     So, clothes. I'm going to ask Andrea to wear a sundress and wear her glasses. I'll let her make her choice on how she's going to do her makeup as I know she uses light colors and little makeup anyway. As for Kailynn AKA Natalia, she needs to outfits. One for 18-year-old Natalia and one for 28-year-old Natalia. For 18 years, I think I want her to look like a troubled teenager. I'm thinking ripped jeans and maybe a hoodie. Since she's running away, she'd want to lay low. I want to do her makeup very minimally and using techniques to make her look younger. I know a few already, but I definitely have to look for more.

Sources:
https://www.slideshare.net/GregBarker6/storyboard-template-53092537