Creative Critical Reflection

My CCR

Hi all! Here is the CCR, or Creative Critical Reflection, for my project. It has truly been such a fun ride, and I hope you enjoy it! 

My CCR :)

Film Opening

The Final Product!! 

    Without further ado, it's finally here! My film opening!! My creation has finally come to fruition! I'm so excited to share this with you all, and I hope you enjoy. 

Click here to watch my film opening: 

Snapshot

Goodbye :(

 Hasta La Vista, Baby 

    Well, this is it, folks. My last actual post for this project. The only other posts after this will be my Creative Critical Reflection and my Film Opening, so this is really the last one where you'll be hearing from me like this! Wow, what a ride this project has been. It feels like just yesterday when I had no idea what I was doing and didn't even know what genre I wanted to do. Let's take a look back and reflect on this project together, shall we? 

The Beginning

    At the beginning of this project, I was between two choices; doing a thriller or a coming of age piece. I liked thriller because I wanted to make something suspenseful and entertaining to watch, but I also liked coming of age because I thought I could make a creative story and it would also be easy to make a film opening out of. I decided to go with thriller because I realized I had more inspiration to pull for that genre than the other. I had just watched Megan Is Missing recently when this project was given, so that plot was stuck in my mind for weeks. I realized that it was the shock factor that had me stuck on it, and I wanted to create something that caused the audience to experience that shock factor as well. Upon doing more research, I decided I wanted to do something where the main character gets kidnapped. I took inspiration from Megan is Missing as well as one of my favorite video games, Life Is Strange for the plot, and developed research on thrillers for the production.

                      Life is Strange capture of gameplay; characters in "the darkroom".

                                                        Megan is Missing poster 

Creation of Story and Planning

    At first, I really didn't know how I wanted my story to transpire. I actually had this whole elaborate plot of them meeting and then my character getting kidnapped and blah blah blah. After having a meeting about my plot with my teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, I realized that this is a film opening, and I can allude to the kidnapping, but I don't need to do so much. This was a relief to hear, as I was overthinking the amount of work I needed to put on. After this meeting, I finalized the vision for my plot very early on. I knew from the beginning I wanted to do the eyeline match with the cross-cutting, and although I explained to many people and no one really knew what I was talking about, it ended up looking so good in the final result; lesson learned to always trust my gut. She suggested that I use a playground as the setting, so I wrote the plot around that. 

    Once I did research on my target audience, I started to develop my characters. At this point, I knew I was going to need my friend, Ryan, to act in my film. I called him up and when he said yes, I knew we were in business. I started to develop their backstories so the characters were easy to play, and I planned their costumes/style as well. I utilized mis-en-scene here to show the audience what type of people the characters are; the younger sister wearing pigtails and overalls, symbolizing her young age, and the older sister wearing mom jeans and a tight fitted shirt and jewelry, representing that she is a teen that keeps up with the style. For the male character, I made the clothing cover him up, to represent how he's closed off and mysterious/creepy. I also included necessary props for this character that we used in the film opening, such as the camera bag, camera, and photos. I wasn't very creative with the character's names, for a literally just used mine and Ryan's middle name for the characters, but I knew that those names would match our faces. Once I had the plot and characters set, I wrote out the planning of the shots. Once this was done, it was time to film!

Ryan and I have been friends for a long time, so he was the perfect choice to act in my film!

The Filming and Editing Process 

    On filming day, Ryan brought his camera and we were ready to film. It honestly took about half the time I thought it was going to take, and only took us around an hour and a half. The shots looked so good and the camera was so nice, so props to Ryan for letting me use it. It was very hot that day, so we were trying to wrap up quickly as well because there was so much sweat dripping from my face and I didn't want it showing up in the shots. Other than that, things went pretty well! There were no issues with the camera or anything like that, and we saved all the footage on the SD card, and we were ready to edit for the most part. The only scene we needed to film would be filmed the following week; the kidnapping foreshadowing scene. 

    Before filming that scene, I basically edited everything. I don't have Adobe Premiere on my computer, but Ryan does on his. So, I went over to his house a couple times to use his computer so I could edit my project. As described in a previous blog post, editing without adding the cross-cutting was actually pretty simple. I just cut some clips and used them sporadically so the cuts went back and forth, and then just put other clips next to each other. I then just found some copyright-free music, but matched the intense parts of the music to the intense parts of the scene. I also added a camera overlay effect and some clicking sound effects on the part of the film where it was the camera POV. Editing went generally smooth. 

    When the filming day arrived to film the last scene, Ryan and I went into the auditorium after school. Honestly, were we supposed to be in there all by ourselves? Probably not, but Ryan's mom is the drama director at our school and gave us permission to use the space. Ryan closed the curtains and turned off almost all the lights in the auditorium and then we used his phone camera flashlight as the primary light source. As for mice-en-scene, I made my mascara look very smudgy and messy, as well as used dark eyeshadow on my eyelids and under my eyes to make my face looked a little more bruised. I also brought a facial spray to make my face look sweaty. I also brought some yellow duck tape to put over my mouth. The yellow wasn't necessarily an artistic choice, for it was basically the only ducktape I could find on hand, but I think it ended up being better, for the yellow really popped against the black background. 

    The above picture (a snapshot from the actual film opening) ended up being the final look. While I was editing, I actually got a little freaked out about how realistic it looked. Editing this part was a little more difficult only because I had to get the timing right. But, after playing around with the timing, I managed to make it look like how I wanted, foreshadowing what would happen if they met (which they do lolz).  After that, I was so happy with the final results! 

Final Thoughts 

    Honestly, this project was so fun to complete. At the start of this project, I was about ready to gouge my eyes out looking at how much work was required to produce a good piece for this project. But after tuning into my creative side, I actually really liked working on the project. Writing the blog posts didn't feel like work, and I really enjoyed it. It was just so awesome seeing something that originated in my brain come to life. I'm so grateful to Ryan and my little sister for helping me by acting in my project as well. Thank you, Cambridge for allowing me the opportunity to create something that I'm truly proud of. 

Thank you, for staying tuned to find out. <3