Editing the opening

Alright. Faye did the heavy lifting by line editing the film opening. I'm adding the final touches, like coloring, titles, credits, and effects.

At first, we had said to each make our own version, but ultimately, there was no point in doing the same thing twice, so Faye made the draft and handed it over to me. Before that though, we went back and forth between the sound design, whether to use static or brown noise or anxiety inducing music, or silence.

This original draft of the opening included creepy music underneath the scene of the large painting, which we deleted from the timeline because it sounded too much like horror.

Faye and I trying to come up with something else.

In the end, we opted for silence, hoping that it would contrast with the rest of the opening because each section has sound elements (footsteps and natural sound in the intro, diegetic music from the record player, non diegetic music during the anxiety scenes, water during the fridge scene). We think the lack of sound will create an isolating feel, and feel separate to the rest.

Once I got the draft in my own timeline, Faye and I looked through fonts. Faye liked fonts with a handwriting feel to it, but wanted it to be more simple and clean. Some of the fonts we tested are pictured below:

 

In the end, we chose the font Monotype Corsiva. I then credited Faye and I as creators, Camila as our lead actress, Fesliyan studios for the music, and David Renda for the song. 

Then I worked on creating the title graphic, which we finally named our film Borderline and used a masking effect to reveal the text. I did this by keyframing an opacity mask frame by frame so that the text would reveal from behind her hair. 

First version.

After showing this part of the opening to a friend, we both thought it needed something more, like perhaps a special effect, to understand that the main character is hallucinating. I decided to add a directional blur that would blur the edges of the painting, and increased the exposure while adding rotation key frames to the directional blur, so the final effect looks psychadelic, and in this way we hope the audience understands even more clearly that it is a hallucination.

Final version with effects and the title in ALL CAPS.

The last thing I did was color correct the shots, which was fairly simple with Premiere Pro 2024, because the lumetri color panel has an option to automatically help correct shots; however, I would always have to fix the coloring anyway when the "auto-correct" would often over expose shots, leaving them looking worse off. A mix between my own eyes and the computer intelligence resulted in the final coloring job. 

One cool thing though that I learned was how to match the coloring effect from one shot to another, by usng a tool called Comparison View. I used an official Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial and was able to match the coloring from a warmer shot to a cooler shot, creating the same warm tone throughout.

The shot before comparison view and color match vs after color match.

I exported different drafts and sent them to Faye, then went back to editing, sent another draft, until finally on the 5th attempt, we had it. Our film opening was complete. We now had our final draft. It was time to go to sleep. I can't wait for everyone to see it.

Cooking up a CCR

Okay so with the deadline approaching, and after viewing projects from older media students, I realized that my "bedtime story" idea was good, but my poetry idea wasn't very strong and would be quite difficult. Poetry would likely restrain my answers from being as clear as they need to be, which is very important for the answers. The whole point is to tell a story of reflection and show the amount of thought and effort that was put into this whole nine-week process, in a creative way of course. TStok said to keep it under 10 minutes, and that 7 minutes is the sweet spot, meaning each CCR would have to be around 3 minutes. Thinking of it at first, the spoken word poems I write for the competition are actually 3 minutes long in length, so I wouldn't be a stranger to the challenge; however, the current spoken word I'm using to compete in Louder Than a Bomb took me about 2 months to write... and I don't have 2 months to write a poem as a CCR as there's only about a week before all these elements are due. 

Therefore, the spoken word CCR idea: scrapped.

Luckily though, through utter coincidence, I was scrolling through the chat history of a conversation between my best friends and I caught myself saying 

"you guys are like my little angels debating with the devils on my shoulders." 

The gears started turning, and an idea popped out of whatever little machine I had running up there in that brain of mine: it would be a skit of myself arguing with myself. Starring me as me, and me as the devil on my shoulder, and me as the angel on my shoulder. How? Well, this would take a little bit of green screen magic of course.

I mean it it when I say everything happens for a reason, because recently my long-time friend sent me a video of myself back from 2020, because she was clearing up some storage from her phone and stumbled upon the funny vid. In the video, strewn up on the wall, was a green blanket. 

I had completely forgotten about it, but in 2020 when all our classes were moved to Zoom, I totally made a makeshift greenscreen in my bedroom to use for my middle school TV production class. With this memory fresh in my mind, I was able to craft the idea for the new CCR; I could totally pull off homemade greenscreen because if I'd done it before, I could do it again!

Problem: I couldn't find the green blanket.

I have no clue where it went, however, I did find a solid-colored deep-blue blanket that simply was screaming "USE ME, PICK ME!" so I guess bluescreen it is!

Said Blue Blanket. See how it's perfect?

I've worked with Chromakey before in premiere, as I've mentioned before, meaning I know that really all that's needed to key out a background is a solid color, that contrasts what you don't want to key out, and even lighting. I don't have my ring light back from Faye yet, but I have a pretty strong desk lamp that will have to do the job (which is giving major deja vu because that's exactly what I used to do in middle school). All that matters now is that I don't wear blue. So I looked in my closet for some costume design, and I seriously think this is the best idea I've had yet because everything was right there.

I had an angel's halo from Halloween which I paired with this white romper.

And I paired these red bunny ears I had as a souvenir from homecoming with a red shirt. Mischievous.

I'm already imagining these mini versions of me arguing on my shoulder, a conversation something like:

Normal me: Did I improve my skills throughout this project?

Devil me: Are you kidding? You still suck and you didn't learn anything!

Angel me: Don't listen to her! Of course, you did! You studied genre and audiences and learned what it takes to develop a film idea, as well as what the word mise-en-scene means, prop creation, and set design!

Or something like that.

My "bedtime story" idea would be me telling the viewer a bedtime story, and at the end, I reveal that it was me Nyxed Media, all along. A little bit corny but in my head it parodies of some sort of program made for kids. I'm thinking of wearing my most "pajama" looking pajamas and filming it with low lighting while sitting on my bed, lit by some of the cute lamps I have above my bedframe. It'll be cute I think. 

Anyway, I'm gonna start writing down my answers to the questions so I can record, because I don't have a lot of time left, and I need time to edit. Peace out.

Screaming and Crying

 WHYYYYYYYYYYY. ℗ smoking frog media you are now my enemy.

So the Breakfast for One people never responded. As in, the piece of music we kinda based our whole first half of the opening to be based on. But its okay, because we will just have to settle, I guess. 

The move was now to look through royalty-free music to use, which is a bit unfortunate because it can (in some ways) take away from the realism of the character if it sounds too... boring. Royalty-free music tends to repeat itself annoyingly or sound very generic, and since our character is a teenager, this might go against the genre, if she's listening to some random song no one has heard of. 

Granted, Breakfast for One isn't the hit song of the summer either, so maybe we were already breaking coming-of-age/drama stereotypes anyway. That's the thing, our genre is coming-of-age but only because the plot of our film would hypothetically deal with themes of young adulthood that the character will face. However, only mental health is taken a brief look at in the opening, and it may not be too clear to the viewer what is actually happening in the beginning (which is intentional). I'll talk about this more in a later blogpost, but I guess I'm realizing that Faye and I are mostly breaking the genre rather than following it. 

Anyway, I suggested a couple websites for Faye and me to search through below, which I really just lifted from the Soundscape project assignment links our teacher gave us earlier in the year, as well as some wesbsites I knew from over the years (Bensound). Ultimately, we chose a song from Fesliyan Studios, a website I learned through working with my Silent Film team at STN.

The song is called Smoky Lounge by David Renda.

Anyway, Faye suggested that we edit our own version of the opening and then pick which one is better, but I'd prefer if we share the workload according to our preferences and strengths (for example, I'm the one with the vision for the credits and knowledge on how to do the graphics effects). Though, I guess I'll get started editing anyway in the meantime. "It'll be okay" is what I just have to keep telling myself.

ITS OKAY! Hopefully...

Things worked out in the end! Well, not without a big scare, however...

I came back from my trip and checked up on Faye and whether we would be able to film the last shots we needed. In our heads, our opening is split into 5 parts:

• The introduction
• Peaceful Painting sequence
• Anxiety Painting sequence
• Title scene
• Fridge scene

The first day of filming, we knocked out 3/5, aka the intro and all the painting scenes. We needed the giant prop to be done to get the title scene, so that is what we filmed last. On Tuesday after my return, I went over to Faye's house and we shot the fridge scene, which for us is the device we use to indicate there's more to the story in the film, the "dot dot dot" of the film opening. 

Said fridge scene, to be used for about 10 seconds at the end of our opening.

We successfully got what we needed, and began to set up the shot for the title scene, with the painting looming over our main character. However, we were going to have to reshoot the scene anyway. Why? Well, my amazing, beautiful, lovely partner Faye worked on painting the 6ftx9ft canvas with all the paint and colors we imagined; however, she left it outside to dry and Tuesday morning, it rained.

The photo Faye sent me Tuesday morning, in distress because she thought it was ruined.

However, once I was at Faye's house, in it's dried state it was evident it was salvageable, and although it wasn't exactly what Faye envisioned, I believe it still captured the abstract art that I imagined. We didn't have command strips to hang it by the ceiling like we imagined, but Faye's mom brought out these tripods and clips used for a movie screen for projecting, that we were able to use to hang up the painting. 

The painting in its Tuesday state. Not perfect, but it works.

Ultimately, I had to go home, but I left my equipment with Faye so she could finish filming the next day. In the end, Faye didn't touch up the painting, so I think we could have finished filming on Tuesday, but our actress (aka Faye's little sister) was sleepy and tired regardless, so Wednesday it would be. 

Wednesday after school, I wasn't available to help Faye film, so I gave Faye the equipment, put my faith in her and God that she understood how to use it now that we had spent hours working with the equipment for the majority of the film opening, and hoped that nothing else tragic would happen.

And lo' and behold. We were done filming. Faye sent me over the takes she got and we had completed everything we needed. I got the equipment back from her the next morning, went about my school day, and we were officially out for Spring Break. We did it. 

Transition scene for the title graphic. Painting looking... good I think at least. 

I hope the people get it...

That's a wrap on production. Now it's time for post-production...

Nervous

It’s the end of the quarter and everything is falling apart except for my things that are media related. My competition went really well, my team is now nationally awarded, and I think Faye and I are on schedule for our film opening. However, if we don’t finish filming what we have left to finish this week, there’s potential that we fall behind; so I am nervous.

For filming, we used a Cannon DSLR T-8i, which I borrowed from my school’s TV program. However, we are not allowed to use those cameras over spring break because they have to stay in school. I received a message from Faye asking if we could use the cameras for more days because she has doubts that we are going to be able to finish filming in the time we planned. 

There’s another place we can check out cameras from called BECON TV but from what I’ve heard, a lot of their equipment have already been reserved for the break and it it might be too late to ask Jim Guarasci, the manager of the Short Cuts program , for equipment to check out. I also do not want to risk asking and looking unprofessional in front of him as he is someone I hold a lot of respect for, and hope to impress one day.

I’m hoping things turn out okay and we finish filming this week with the Canon DSLR as planned, but the backup plan is that we can finish filming with my own old personal camera, which isn’t as high quality but it will get the job done. Still nervous though.

Trip

As I mentioned earlier on this blog, this week I finally left for my trip to Long Beach California to compete in the Student Television Network (International) Convention. I went with my TV program and it was great being surrounded by media students and professionals from all around the country, as well as competing to prove the skills that we have been training for the past 6 months. 

I attended a workshop about transmedia storytelling, which expanded upon a topic we briefly mentioned while studying media contexts.

One of the competitions I competed in was Silent Film, and my team and I came up with a silly idea to reveal that the mysterious character was going a date with a monkey, as the plot twist for the ending. However, we needed a couple props to accomplish this that we didn't have, so under the time constraint, I rushed over to the nearest dollar tree to buy utensils, plates, and a bouquet of flowers; the dating essentials. We tried out best to transform the hotel room into a romantic setting, and this sort of effort reminded me heavily of what we had to do for our film opening (where we had to completely destroy and reorganize Faye's living room according to the plot of our opening and the nature of our main character). 

The props I bought at the Dollar Tree.

The living room transformed into a romantic date setting with DJ the Monkey.

I was pretty grateful for my experience in AICE Media this year coming into this competition because I felt more capable of being able to pull off creating what is essentially a one-minute short film in under 6 hours.

Edit: We placed 4th in the nation !!!!

Learning about the CCR

Since some of my classmates and I are leaving for a trip soon, T Stok decided to address the CCR so that we could start planning and thinking about what we want to create. The CCR is a super important part of the project as its 20/50 points of our score. 

As I was sitting in class I already started coming up with some ideas, and I'm planning on potentially asking some alumni for their opinions, especially since our teacher even showed their CCRs as a good example to follow. Since we have to answer four questions and make two different media products, I was hoping one could be a poem since I frequently write poetry, where I can incorporate images from production as I reflect upon my development and the process, while another idea is to pretend to read from a storybook and tell the reflection as a fairytale or fable. Both of these will allow me to specifically write a script for its success, which is something T Stok highly encourages (because if you don't the response will not be as effective as it could be.)

WE FILMED!

Very happy that Faye and I were able to meet up to film together because since I leave for my trip soon, it's so important that we get this out of the way now. We had hoped to film the whole opening, but since our big painting prop wasn't ready yet, we decided only to film the first half of the opening. This was, either way, still ambitious thinking because even though we only needed to film around 1:00 minute to 1:25 of the opening, we spent around 7 HOURS or more in production and filming. Very glad I had two camera batteries because we would charge the dead battery while filming with the second one, and vice versa (meaning we probably went through 4-5 battery lives total). 

Some behind-the-scenes of me setting up a shot.

The shot in the viewfinder.

The actual shot, and the first shot of our main character's face.

Some things I regret though is we would often redo shots over and over again, meticulously until they were perfect, when in reality the significance of the changes we were making was minimal. We redid a shot of our character pouring paint in a bowl 14 or 15 times when really any of the takes were fine. This would later affect us negatively because taking too long affected the amount of light in the room, as the sun eventually started going down, so by the time we were done filming, a lot of the shots were pretty dark. 

We had always intended to rely mainly on natural lighting from the windows, but I had forgotten to bring my ring light when bringing all my equipment, which was supposed to serve as a secondary lighting source. I was able to think innovatively and deconstruct a lampshade in Faye's house that we ended up using as practical lighting in the set, but also to control the lighting of different shots more accurately. Still, the sun was the most powerful, so shots when the sun was down were still darker. This of course can be somewhat resolved in post-production, but I do think what needed to be fixed was the time efficiency during production. 

This was more at the start of filming, where you can see it's clearly day.

This was shot later in the day, when the sun had clearly set, making everything darker.

Faye and I paused a lot because we decided to re-storyboard a couple of sequences, and we also got a late start on filming because we met up and weren't prepared. The day before filming, I was extremely busy the whole day, then went to sleep without making sure we had everything we needed for filming and got to Faye's house, and realized everything we were missing. Not good. I had told Faye the week prior that I probably had a friend who had an easel, but I showed up to film easel-less, so we spent around 40 minutes trying to figure out what to do (I called 2 different friends to see if they had an easel, then we looked at different stores that potentially had easels for sale, etc.) Turns out though, Faye's sister the artist in our film and the artist who served as inspiration for the idea in real life, had an art station already. So we never even needed to source an easel from elsewhere because Faye had one all along. Once we got it out of the garage and lifted it to the living room, we tore the living room apart, which also took a while. 

The "before."

The"after."

Overall, we spent 2-3 hours discussing and problem-solving instead of filming because we couldn't until we resolved those aforementioned issues. And even though we didn't have the time to film the entire opening, the fault was still on us for not having the painting prop prepared in time for us to film anyway. In the end, I am content with the footage we did create, however, in the future, I realize we need to make 100% sure we have everything accounted for and in order before arriving on set. That sounds obvious, but for amateur filmmakers, it's a lesson, hard, but well-learned. 

I'll be leaving for my trip this week, but I'm trusting Faye to finish painting the prop so that we can get the last scenes filmed once I'm back. Then we'll edit the opening over Spring Break since we'll have all our footage filmed by then.

Color Theory My Love

Now that Faye and I are getting ready to film, we're thinking about what outfit we should wear, and when we think about costume design, color comes into question. I brought up the color theory notes we had taken back when T Stok taught us about mise-en-scene elements and my partner had no idea what I was talking about. I gladly, and quite proudly, pulled out the notes that I had taken and explained the basics of each color and their meaning. 

We decided ultimately NO GREEN. Faye saw that green can symbolize good health and prosperity, and we want NONE of that, so definitely no green in our character's outfit. This also made us think about the colors of the large painting that we debated over earlier. Between darker and lighter colors, we realized that to avoid buying more paint and hurting our wallets, we would use all the paint available to us, except green. We have yet to finish the painting but we will spend the short amount of time I have in Florida next week to do that. We're filming on Sunday however, which means we won't be able to film the part with the painting. When I get back from my trip, that will be the first thing we do.

Music? Sound?

Over the last weekend, I rewatched Everything, Everywhere, All at Once and when Faye and I were talking in class about music selection, I pitched to her about using a similar music swell when we reveal the giant painting. The clip doesn't seem to be online, but in essence, the film is separated into 3 parts (Part One: Everything, Part Two: Everywhere, and Part Three: All at Once) and each time the text graphic is revealed in the film, there is a large crescendoing music swell. It feels very grandiose and almost terrifying, a feeling of being awestruck, and that is the same emotion I believe our character feels when she sees a giant painting looming over her, taunting her, watching her, a manifestation of her own fears right in front of her eyes.

Faye also showed me this song, titled Breakfast for One, that we would like to use as music in our opening. This would play as our artist feels that sense of artistic freedom and calm, and will eventually fade away when she becomes more frantic and stressed. We have contacted the business email to see if we can get the copyright to use it.

Location and Film Plan

I was able to meet up at Faye's house this past week to begin working on our big prop, but we were also able to create a plan for the actual day of filming. We made changes to our schedule as well. 

First, we decided to accurately account for how much time we need to finish our pre-production planning, which would go into next week. Because of this, we made a big change to the film schedule. Since we want to take advantage of the large amount of natural lighting the room provides in the day, we decided to try and film all the opening on Sunday, from 10am-3pm, that way A) we have a better control of lighting B) there's less risk for continuity errors in the set and camera if we film on one day and C) it works better for our schedules in terms of availability. Depending on how it goes on Sunday, we will decide on back-up days to finish filming, but so far it seems like that could be the 19th or 22nd.

Going to Faye's house also allowed me to see the environment and begin planning how to film. We are going to need to deconstruct Faye's living room, basically, in order to set up our main character's area. Faye wanted a focus on natural lighting for our artist, so we plan to set up her art easel against the large window pictured in the image. We will move the couches out of the living room, but keep and utilize the coffee table to establish a little bit about the character. We're hoping to litter the short table with art supplies and messy, random junk to show that she is a little bit messy, and not completely put together. Even a pan of the coffee table would be one of the first shots of the opening, and I had thought that maybe she could walk by it and we could reveal a credit after she walks past it, using a masking tool in premiere pro.

We were very productive with our time together working on the opening, we just need a couple more things before we're ready to film, and I believe we can get a lot done in the time we have set for ourselves.

Prop Creation

So. This is what I consider to be our first day of production, even though we're not filming, this hands-on prop creation feels like a more permanent move, that comes from what we planned for in pre-production. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, our goal was to create a painting with an obstruction in the center of it, inspired by the show Love, Death, and Robots, Episode Zima Blue. Faye was having trouble imagining what exactly we were supposed to be painting though, so with a quick Google search of "abstract paintings," I stumbled upon this piece by Jill Dowell:

The "House of Enchantment" painting by Jill Dowell.

This colorful piece seemed perfect for inspiration, and so I opened up my sketchbook app on my phone and painted over a big white square in the middle of it.  Once I showed the image to Faye, we were both set on the same vision, and we began painting.

The edited version I created on my phone.

As we laid out our canvas on the floor, I realized this thing was LARGE. I bought the 6ftx9ft canvas drop cloth and it wasn't even the largest size; however, I think it was perfect for what we needed. Our idea is to eventually hang this from the ceiling possibly, so that it is able to stand upright and loom down over our character, in a moment of fear and awe.

The dropcloth options Home Depot had to offer.

The 6ftx9ft dropcloth laid out on the floor.

We discussed a little bit more about color but decided we didn't have enough bottles of paint yet to achieve the coloring, so we decided to just begin on the white. While painting, we listened to music and discussed some choices we wanted to make when we eventually film. In the end, we got most of the square painted before I needed to go home, but meeting up with Faye after school to get this done felt like a very productive step for our film opening. It truly is so essential to communicate in person, because text does not do our creative ideas and passions any justice.

Wrap on Day 1 of painting our "big prop."