Creative Critical Reflection

CCR

Greetings and Welcome to the last blog ! We have made it to the end of our production process. I hope you guys saw our film opener, Forsaken, and enjoyed it!!! Today for our last blog post, we will be doing a Creative Critical Reflection of the entirety of our filming journies from day 1 to now and I am so excited to share with you guys my progress and growth as a Co-Director on set of Forsaken. 

Here is my CCR for my film opener, Forsaken!!!

https://prezi.com/view/PmSD3lEXOxn8F2PnmjKB/

 

 

FORSAKEN FINAL PROJECT POST

     NOW SHOWING: FORSAKEN

    Today is the day Bloggers! Our team has finally finalized everything for Forsaken and we will be releasing it in this blog! Thank you guys so much for reading in on our day-to-day progress, this has been such an amazing journey with both you guys and my team. Your encouragement has made this filming dream come to life and as a team with me, Marcus, and Alexander, we are so proud to have finally made it to this finishing point. The long days of filming on set of Forsaken and long nights of editing were so worth it to be where we are today! 

    I hope you all enjoy it as much as me and my whole team did, this was absolutely a dream come true! Since Day 1 of brainstorming Forsaken I could see this day coming and it indeed came really quick, I am just so glad that everything worked out well and that you guys were a part of our journey! This was such a monumental film to all of us and we are so happy to show you guys today the awaited absolutely epic film opener. Enjoy watching bloggers and for the last time, thank you guys so much for reading our updates today and I will catch you guys next time!

UPDATES ON THE RELEASING OF FORSAKEN

    Hello bloggers and welcome back to my blog! I just wanted to touch base with you guys and also make an EXTREMELY EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT!!! I am proud to announce that we are just about to conclude our entire production process of Forsaken! As we finally have wrapped up the different obstacles we encountered with editing, we are seeing a smooth path from here as pretty much most of the film is edited. With that being said be on the lookout for our FINAL FORSAKEN MOVIE OPENER PROJECT. This is so exciting for all of us to hear on our production team and even though we are still wrapping up the editing, Me, Alexander, and Marcus are already celebrating on the inside. 

    This opener has created such a great opportunity for us to advance our skills in filming, editing, story mood board creation, etc. We are so happy to have got done through such a huge chunk of this project and we are even more excited to show you guys! Every single day we have grown in so many different ways with our film production skills and with concurring many obstacles, it has helped us to become better with directing, co=directing, and acting. I am so appreciative and proud of my team and all of their support in making our dreams come true in this opener and helping to devote so much time along with me, into it! They made this such a fun and thrilling experience, everyday all of their enthusiasm has helped us get through the day and I would not be here without them! I am so happy to tell you guys this HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT. 

    Stay tuned for the next post as the Forsaken opener will be debuting!!! I will catch you guys next time!

Forsaken's OFFICIAL Soundtrack

     Greetings bloggers and welcome back! The debut of Forsaken is getting SUPER close and I am so excited to finally release our anticipated soundtrack for our opener! As I discussed in one of our previous posts, we did have to make changes with switching to copyright-free music due to new concerns with the access of our opener towards all of our viewers. With that being said, join me today as I release our finalized copyright-free soundtrack that you will see when watching Forsaken!!!

    This switch to copyright-free music was difficult with navigating at first but now we are so excited that we did. This doesn't only help all of our viewers have access, but it also helps add to the atmosphere and culture of Forsaken. My whole team with me and my friends Marcus and Alexander, have collaboratively selected the best copy-right free music that we felt would just be monumental and authentic for our entire narrative. Through exploring all of the selections, our team has decided and voted on having these two tracks for the final product of Forsaken and as we anticipated, when we started editing it came together perfectly with all of the events that were going on! We are so excited to share another milestone with you guys on the Forsaken Production. KEEP ON THE LOOKOUT!!! We are anticipating the debut of Forsaken to be right after our next blog! 

Thank you so much bloggers for reading today and we will catch you guys next time!!!

Editing Inspiration behind Forsaken

     Greetings bloggers and welcome back! We are so close to the releasing of our film opener, Forsaken! With that being said, today I am going to go over my own inspirations behind the editing contribution I had along with my partners, Alexander and Marcus, and the crucial aspects that we used. To be a little bit more clear with you guys, I just want to clarify that we all added in our own little aspects of editing into each part of the opener and it came together wonderfully! Taking this task into our different perspectives and then having our team collaborate together on the editing and make changes as needed has made this process so much better! Join us today as we analyze the entire inspiration behind the editing of Forsaken!

    When beginning this project and our group decided that all of us were coming together for the editing, I started actually looking at different YouTube videos to understand more of the basics of editing and looking specifically on the use of it in different Movies as well to see how I can perfect it for our opener. One of the movies that most influenced me was Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. I love the way this movie had all the scenes come together so well done and smoothly to give off such a radiant and colorful atmosphere throughout the whole movie! Even before taking a closer look at the transitions and all of the video editing and effects that were used, I still loved it so much just off the back with all of the vibrant and attention-driven animations. This movie has given me so much inspiration especially when it came to portraying the arcade scene since it was one of the most energetic and thrilling scenes throughout the whole opener as well as the vibrancy and colorfulness. This was just so impactful to me throughout my editing experience!

    Thank you guys so much for reading my inspiration on the editing techniques utilized within Forsaken! Stay tuned as the arrival of Forsaken is nearing! I will see you guys in the next post!

 

Forsaken Bloopers/Behind the Scenes

 

    Welcome Back Bloggers! Today, as we are progressing closer to that day, we have a fun little blog for you guys of our bloopers while we were working on the Forsaken Production! This opener was both fun and tedious, especially behind the camera with me and my partner Marcus. With Marcus being our main director, he was going through a whole lot of emotions, especially when we were trying to make a smooth transition in the front and it took us multiple tries to perfect it. I was super frustrated at times as well since most of the time, both of our ideas that we made up were unfortunately unable to make it in the final product since we did not have enough time to fully do the scenes. But throughout all of the obstacles, our filming journey was a really cool and fun opportunity with our friends and the whole plot of Forsaken made it even better. It was difficult at times, but we are so thrilled with the product. Anyways, join us today as we show you guys bloopers/behind-the-scenes of Forsaken!

    So in the clips above, we have our first behind-the-scenes look of Forsaken! This is one of our very first scenes that we took on set and as you can see it was exceptionally eventful. As I was describing, this was the scene that our team was trying to make a fade transition and it was taking a whole toll on us as a whole team. To break it down further, we were trying to have Alexander, who was playing Wyatt, walk towards the camera as they were walking into the mall to create an epic fade transition. Sadly, we were facing many obstacles with Alexander hitting the camera too hard or just in a way that was making the transition wacky. After many takes we did get the transition perfected and we cannot wait for you all to see that in our final project! 

That is a wrap for today, bloggers! Thank you for reading in on this fun post with our Forsaken Bloopers and Behind-the-Scenes shots. I hope you guys enjoyed this and I will see you all in the next blog!

Forsaken Project Update

    Hello Bloggers and welcome back to my blog! Today, we will be giving a general update on the development of Forsaken! As many of you know, we have concluded our filming of Forsaken, it was a very fun and at points challenging journey but we are so happy with how all of the scenes turned out and we cannot wait for you guys to see it very soon! Seeing everything come to life with this filming idea has been amazing and everything came out just how we projected it to be despite some challenges that occurred. Join us today as we provide a current update on what we are exactly working on now with this project!

    Now, that we have finished the filming, we are focusing on the editing of this film as it is just a crucial aspect to portraying everything with the proper transitioning between scenes as well as the lighting, we will be emphasizing these aspects even better for our viewers. Trust me with the specific filming strategies we used along with the editing, you guys are in for an absolute treat. As a team, we were just discussing how amazed we were that we got through so many obstacles and that we are finally in this phase of our project. Previously, we were discussing a change with our sound editing as we are now using free copyrighted music. This was a big change for us and we were not expecting it at all, but I am so happy to announce that with looking over the different music, we have found all that we need for our film and we are progressing into incorporating it into the opener as we speak! We are so thrilled that everything ended up working out and even worked better towards our narrative. That is what we are in the process of as of right now, we just are focusing on the last phase of Forsaken!

Stay tuned as Forsaken is coming out very soon! I will catch you guys in the next post for more updates!

Changes in Sound Editing

    Hello Bloggers! Today I am here to discuss some new changes to the overall sound editing of Forsaken as we have just encountered a significant issue. In our opener, we had planned to utilize an extensive sountrack with some of our favorite songs throghout but when we were attempting to add it into YouTube, we realized that it may be flagged for being copyrighted music leading to certain countries not being able to access it. This is a huge issue and we fear that this will effect the general impact that we are goin for in our opener. Our envison for Forsaken is to reach globally if we can so we had to make a quick fix to this as soon as possible...     

    With that being said, we tried to discuss our possible solutions as a team and we further came up with the idea of using non copyrighted music to acheive our goals in the publishing of our opener. As we began researching different songs that we could use which is not copyrighted, we found several things that we felt gave off more effect than the previous songs that were copyrighted. We were first scared that we would not be able to find anything because copyright free music is not used that much, however we were amazed by the results we have found. As we continue the sound editing process and ruling out different songs to use, we will make sure that this shift in music does not affect the true impacts behind our opener. We are honestly so glad at the results that we are seeing now and trust me our team will find the best copyright free music, you will be amazed. Stay tuned for updates on the sound editing and I will catch you guys next time!

 

My inspiration behind the plot of Forsaken...

    Hello bloggers, and welcome back! Today, I am glad to discuss my true inspirations that helped towards different contributing details showcased within Forsaken. your probably wondering how myself and my partners, Alexander and marcus, compiled this crazy, dramatic narrative together? I am here to break everything down for what personally helped me, so join us today as we talk in-depth about shows and experiences that helped inspire me!!!

    firstly, when we were trying to think of an idea to showcase the crazy scene where Kendrick had transitioned from a super radiant environment to a dark and isolated scene of him realizing everything was a dream, it kind of reminded me of Stranger Things. If you don't know what Stranger Things is, it is basically a show where this boy is living his regular, vibrant life, and then some random creature from another dimension goes into his world and snatches the boy away, leading to his disappearance. This strong and immediate change reminded me of the same tension that we are attempting to utilize in Kendrick's life, and inspired me when it came to the actions utilized in the filming of this scene. As you will see in the film opener, things do take a significant dramatic turn, and this helped us to make it even more mind-blowing. 

    Additionally, this brought in more perspective when it came to the arcade scene, since one of the scenes within Stranger Things also takes place in the Arcade. This inspired me to make sure that we include it in this opener, especially for the big transition to Kendrick waking up. Even the part where they are at the mall in general, between these scenes, inspired me. In Stranger Things, at the mall, they are being chased by these other-dimensional creatures, which made me think that for our opener, we should have a drastic change while we are in the mall. 

Thanks for reading about my personal plot inspirations behind Forsaken, and I will catch you guys in the next blog!!!

Forsaken Wishlist

 Hello bloggers and welcome back to my blog! Today, we are going to be discussing the difference in our production and any movie production if we had a bigger budget. Especially now that we have concluded the entirety of filming and editing, we can take a general look on this topic. We will discuss many different attributes that we could have improved if we had the finances and honestly anything you would wish for within a major movie production. Let's dive straight into it...

Specifically, with Forkaen, we definitely know that if we had better cameras, we would have major improvements on the overall visuals. This advancement would have added so much more to the vibrancy and overall atmosphere that we had been going for. It would have additionally provided so much more capturing of details, providing a wide range of colors and just adding in more focused aspects that would heavily improve the mood. The overall motive of Forsaken was to have the audience really immerse in the environment and with the proper equipment, we could have achieved way more visuals than the iPhone provided us with. 

Additionally, we had also seen that we would have such a greater production if we had better sound equipment. In such a crucial dialogue scene within the beginning of the opener, better sound equipment could have allowed us to block out the natural sounds with the heavy winds that had left us with unusable audio. Since we failed to have this advancement, these winds really affected this beginning scene and we did not know at the time, which lead us to not being able to do any reshoots. If we had better sound equipment we could have really avoided this situation. Not to mention, with better sound devices we could have also better captured the different subtle sounds that had been important for building more tension, making the scenes in Forsaken more emotional towards the audience. 

Thank you so much bloggers for reading in on our Production wishlist for Forsaken! Keep on the look out for more updates!

Specific Camera Shots/Angles

     Greetings Bloggers and Welcome back! As we discussed in the last post, we are finally done with our filming of Forsaken! With that being said, today we are going to take a deeper look at the many different specific camera shots and angles within our opener. Me and my partner Marcus took an extremely close look at how all of these angles and shots would strategically come together with the vibrant atmosphere and the overall tone at the mall. Join us today as we uncover the interesting shots and dynamic angles that we utilized in Forsaken that helped this narrative come smoothly together!

Static Shots

    Throughout the film, one of our major shots that you will see throughout the entire opener is the static shots. We utilized these shots mostly to showcase the conversations on a wide view between our characters! Myself and Marcus both felt that the conversation would be better highlighted with this type of shot and even emphasizes the whole dialogue. With the camera being consistently focused, it enlightens the audience of the body language, facial expressions, and the overall feelings within every word that the characters say. This shot also allows our viewers to feel more connected and a part of the conversation. Overall, these shots help aid and strengthen the mood and setting.

Low Angles

    Additionally, in one of the scenes we utilized a low-angle shot to really portray the protagonist's mighty character while he is also texting his friends in confusion. This elaborates on his confidence and control in uncertain situations which we see as a foundation throughout the opener. Not to mention, the nice bright-blue sky behind him shows a huge contrast from his outfit, highlighting more of his different expressions and overall body language. Also, we see that his phone and the small gestures utilized, add on to the realism and even creates a better understanding for our viewers! We also see the extension of the screen, foreshadowing something that is about to happen. This shot really allows the audience to feel more connected to Kendrick's inner challenges and shows that he is our main character within the narrative. 

High Angles

    Furthermore, we utilized a high-angle shot to really elaborate on the confusion of our characters as they are deciding which place to eat at. We see that the high angle elaborates on the small and unsureness of the characters in this busy section of the mall. We hear people happily eating while Kendrick, Wyatt, and Erricson are confused. We see Wyatt having a possible idea of what exactly he wants to get but the others still don't know exactly what to do. The bright colors and ambient lighting really adds on to the atmosphere of the food court, making this a radiant and memorable scene. 

Arc Shots

    Lastly, we utilized Arc Shots which were incredibly important towards so many different scenes. We utilized two arc shots at two different points within this opener. The arc shot is so important to the image above as it really emphasizes the friendship that Wyatt, Kendrick, and Erison have while they are sitting down and eating. Utilizing this arc movement, adds on to show satisfaction and relief from the previous scene where they were confused. The lively background helps create such a joyful mood where Kendrick is talking to his "friends" and all of the characters are engaging. Overall, we see the arc shots really help to emphasize the mood within the mall and really helps capture such a fun moment a the mall!

Thank you so much bloggers for reading today's blog! Stay tuned for more information as we are embarking towards the end of our production journey!

Editing Day 2 of Forsaken

     Greetings bloggers and welcome back! As you saw in the last blog we have finally concluded our filming of our film opener, Forsaken, and we are so happy with what is next to come! Now, that we are finished me and my partners Marcus and Alexander are continuing the editing process now that we have all of the footage filmed. We have been on a pause on the editing process since we were making our filming the top priority but join us today to discuss new additional information apart from when we last talked about editing.

As we had discussed previously, we brainstormed using Adobe Premiere Pro for the editing of our masterpiece, Forsaken. However, we realized while it is a very powerful and amazing software to edit with, as a team we realized that it just felt unnecessarily complex to utilize. We faced so many issues like crashes of the program, overall just difficult to learn, and it was really just a complicated interface. We realized that this software just was not for us and the majority of the time we were just fixing issues that we encountered when trying to use Premiere Pro. We investigated better video editing platforms and with utilizing easy mobile apps like CapCut and iMovie, this felt like the perfect for us and it was just so much easier to use. Not to mention, the simplicity of all the tools when it came to cutting, arranging and improving the footage at a quicker pace. This really just allowed for more of a smoother and enjoyable editing process for all of us!

Editing is just a crucial task and plays such an important factor as well in the telling of our narrative. Over the next two weeks, we will be really analyzing and checking if everything is perfect down to the different angles that we used. The whole team of me, Marcus, and Alexander will be working effortlessly in making sure every aspect with visuals and the overall pacing matches the vision we are going for in our opener. Teamwork is so crucial for a project like this and with us coming together, especially for the editing is making this whole process so much more reflective and enjoyable. With various different perspectives, as a team we can create ideas and make prominent changes that may be needed to increase the understanding of this opener. We are so excited to have Forsaken portrayed at its full potential and with the help of our team and the new editing softwares that we announced. it will be even greater. Thank you bloggers for reading in today on our editing updates and I will catch you guys in the next post for more updates!