Making an outline

Now that I've learned what I need to answer in my CCR, I actually need to plan on how to answer it. So, I thought it would be best to create a script of what I am going to say. I am not the best speaker there is, so I think creating a script is best, because it eliminates most room for error (which I need right now), and makes the entire process just that much simpler. But, before creating the script, I think it is necessary to make on outline of what I will say in response to the questions. The outline will focus on answering each question to the fullest, and only that. The script, on the other hand, will focus on using the information from the outline and contorting it so it flows together and doesn't seem choppy and robotic when I'm reading it. I also want to showcase a little bit of my personality in the script, rather than just reading in a monotone voice. Granted I'm not the best at public speaking, but I think if I treat this like I'm making a YouTube video (for a board of educational superiors), then I can talk easily.

Here is my outline. I decided to be as concise as I could while also answering every aspect of the questions. There is a time limit, or at least a limit until the grader loses interest, so I want to make sure I relay my information in the most effective manner I possibly can. Moreover, I plan to use my graphic editing past to add in some graphics and make it more entertaining. I also plan to use clips from our film itself when explaining, and photos from our research and planning to make it more engaging with the audience. Lastly, I wanted to add something that would make my CCR more personal and similar to our opening. So, I will actually sign my introduction using American Sign Language, and possibly sign the questions too. This will introduce the representation evident in our film from the start of my CCR, and add a fun, personal touch to my video.

Beginning the CCR

Now that we finished the actual opening, there is still one more component of the portfolio left: the Creative Critical Reflection. In class, we learned about the CCR, what we need to include and what we should accomplish. We also saw some student samples, which really helped me envision what I needed to do. There are three main goals we should attain in a CCR:

• reflection on the production
• responding to the questions
• expression of your personality

The CCR should be no more than 8 minutes; we learned, that it is better for this component to be short and concise rather than prolonged and overly-detailed. Our teacher gave us notes on the four main questions we should answer in our video:

1. How does your product use/challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups/issues?

For this component, we should discuss genre conventions of both our production and other movies of the same genre (in general). We should discuss which conventions we chose to use and which we chose to establish. Then, we should end with a discussion on representation established in our opening. For us, we will delve into representation of the Deaf community, but we can also talk about representation of teenage girls, suburbia, etc.

2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

This portion should begin with a discussion on target audience (age range + gender + overall interests of group). Then, we should discuss how production choices, content, etc work to engage with our intended audience. Lastly, we should address how we plan to make the film accessible; we must do so REALISTICALLY (not by international movie theaters).

3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

We should reflect on how the process evolved throughout production: how we began with research and planning, and how we approached production. This portion should include specific details about the processes, and show how we adapted/changes aspects. Lastly, it should end with an overall reflection on where we started and ended.

4. How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware, and online- in this project?

The last portion should discuss any technologies used while producing the project. For instance, we should discuss hardware: camera, lighting, etc, and software: Blogger, editing tools, and Google Docs. We should also discuss HOW we used these technologies: obstacles, learning components.

The last part of the CCR is the ending with a final statement, discussion on what we learned and what we would do different/improve next time. 

Overall, I am excited to start the CCR, even though I feel like I don't have a lot of time for what I want to achieve. I plan to use my experience of graphics editing on After Effects to make an appealing video, and I plan to make the script tomorrow!

Finishing touches

You read that right, we finished!! It's very anticlimactic because there's nowhere for us to submit it until its due date, but nonetheless, this has still felt monumental. I have been editing this all throughout my trip, so it feels surreal to be finally done. I think both my partner and I can agree that this project has been/is kind of like our baby. But overall, we are content with our opening and proud of all that we have accomplished. We feel the opening truly encompasses the coming-of-age feel. Considering our budget (literally nothing) and our experience in film-making (little to nothing), we created the best opening that we could create.

We had to make some changes while we were editing. First, we were a little over time after putting all the clips together, so we had to either get rid of some or shorten some clips in order for us to meet the 2 minute requirement. We also had to download our title font from a different website (freebestfonts.com), because--we didn't realize this before-- the other website required us to pay to download the fonts. Moreover, we recorded the audio separately (as mentioned before) but it sounded a little bad at times when I went back and listened to it. So, I kept some of the original audio in certain clips. If it was truly necessary, then I inserted the recorded audio, which was a little time-consuming but worthwhile in the end. 

Here's the last screenshot of our opening. I plan to export it tomorrow, since it's late tonight, but we are done!

Editing

We are finally editing! But, we have had a few changes. I tried editing on Adobe Premiere Pro, but it was too confusing for me since I had not used it in so long. I figured since I didn't have the time to re-learn the software, I might as well use After Effects instead. So, I switched softwares yesterday. My partner can still help me while I use this program, and I can edit quicker because I'm more comfortable with the control panel and other effects. 

Editing so far has been smooth and problem-less (not to jinx myself). The only problem is that I am editing on the road or in hotels, so I have to edit with worse quality because the service is not great. This won't affect the end result, but it makes editing a little harder because I can't see the full quality of the clips until I render the finished product. Moreover, I was able to download the audios from uppbeat.com without having to pay for them, which is great! Overall, I plan to edit tonight and tomorrow night (during my flight) and finish by tomorrow. That way, my partner and I will start the last portion of this project: the CCR. Here is a screenshot of the editing process:

 

Beginning to edit

Now that we have finished filming, we have to start editing. It IS Spring Break right now, so we don't have as much time to edit, but we planned for this accordingly. We will start editing either tonight or tomorrow, because it has taken a while for me to import the clips. I said before that everything went smoothly with the filming process, and in saying that I kind of jinxed myself because later that day I tried imported the clips to my computer and I didn't have sufficient storage. Luckily, this was an easy fix: all I had to do was clear out items on my computer, but this was not a quick process. I have a lot of stuff on my computer mainly because of school, so it took a while to clear out the unimportant documents (which was surprisingly little). I finally had sufficient storage this morning, which is when I started importing the clips. It is usually a lengthy process (I have done this before), so it took all morning. But now, all the clips are imported, as well as audio, and we are ready to start editing!

My partner and I have taken film classes in middle school, and in those classes we were taught primarily on Adobe Premiere Pro. I, however, also learned special effects editing on Adobe After Effects throughout this time. Since I am the one with the apps already on my personal computer, I will be the main editor while Jaxson helps with decision-making and support. I've primarily used After Effects, but I am comfortable using both softwares. Because this project doesn't require much visual effects and motion effects, I will likely stick to using Premiere Pro because it is a system we are both comfortable with, so Jaxson can also help contribute. Plus, Premiere is perfect for coloring and audio effects, both of which we need for our opening. 

The software we plan on using: Adobe Premiere Pro.

We finished filming!

Yes, you read it correctly, we finally filmed!! Everything's coming together and it's a little scary, but we are glad to have such a large part of the project done and out of the way. Filming was relatively easy: we started when planned and didn't run in to many problems. The only thing that we struggled with was our timing, because our filming ended up running from 2-5 in the afternoon. In the grand scheme of things, 3 hours of filming for 2 minutes is not bad at all, but we found that our cast/crew (us included) were tired towards the end of the process. One thing we will change next time we do something similar is that we will split the filming up in to multiple days: group the scenes by the cast members involved and split it into several days instead of filming all at once. 

My lovely partner helped throughout the entire process, and even took behind-the-scenes pictures (seen below). We filmed entirely at my house--the space was kind of limited because my house is tiny, but we made work with what we had. We also had a lunch break in between which definitely motivated our actresses in performing to the best of their abilities. Everyone say thank you Jaxson for the great pictures.

I mentioned before how we decided not to worry about buying equipment for audio, but we made some last-minute changes the day-of filming. That morning, I tested out my DSLR and discovered that the quality of the audio was actually terrible, so I ran out and bought a small, inexpensive lapel mic from Best Buy. Since my camera is a DSLR, I hooked the mic up to my computer. We recorded the audio on voice memos, and only did this for scenes that we knew 100% were going to have audio, as many scenes were simply just music. As I'm re-listening and re-watching the clips, I'm very glad we decided to do this because the audio is much better and, therefore, our opening will be more enjoyable to watch (because the original audio of my DSLR was just that bad). Overall, we're really happy with how filming went, and we're excited to start the editing process and see this project come together at last.

Getting advice from classmates

Yesterday, we had group meetings in class where we met in small groups of 5-6 to talk about our projects and present our ideas. My group was 5 people, and they were all very helpful and attentive. At first, I presented my idea for the plot and storyline. I directed them to this blog (<3), because it is the ultimate source of anything and everything related to this project. I allowed them to scroll through and ask me questions about any of my posts. Then, I explained some of the finer details of the project: like the actors we plan to have, the location, our title, and music choices. We already planned almost everything we needed to start filming (yay us!), so I didn't have many questions for the group. 

I did, however, ask them for other music recommendations. We already found music that is royalty-free, but I was wondering if there were other, better websites that had a wider range for us to use. My classmates fortunately found several websites that had royalty-free music sorted by genre, like bensound.com and Youtube music libraries. One of them even recommended contacting artists on Instagram and asking for the rights to use their music, because it was a quick process that still gave them written permission to use quality music. 

Overall, these meetings were helpful in simply giving us much needed validation. They really liked our title "Birdcage" and thought it was extremely creative and pertained well to our story. They also liked how our "film" would include and represent a part of society that goes unrepresented a lot of the time. We were both told how great it was that we were doing our film on something we both enjoy and are knowledgeable on: deaf culture. This is what we needed to give us that extra bit of confidence, especially when we planned to film that day. 

Final touches before production

So we know we wanted to film this past weekend, but like always, something came up and we had to move back our filming. But, we are not worried because we have had everything planned out for a while, and we purposely set aside a lot of time for editing in our schedule-- in case filming ran a little late. So we are planning to film all day tomorrow because it's an early-release day, so we have more time to get things done.

We finally decided on a cast! We chose two of our friends to play the distinctive roles of Ava and Sydney, as well as my own mother to play Mrs. Parker. The girl we chose to play Sydney is named Vicky and she is an ASL 4 student. This was imperative because we wanted the signing and acting to be synonymous and be as realistic as possible, which is what she can achieve. In addition, both of our friends have been involved in drama for years, and continue to this day. This will make their acting more natural, and is ultimately why we decided to pick them as our actresses. They are very well-prepared in terms of acting experience, which is exactly what we need for this project to actually come out how we want it to. These are our actresses (excluding my mother):

Our friend Katie, who will play Ava Parker.

Our friend Vicky, who will play Sydney Parker.

Moreover, for camera equipment, we plan to use a DSLR camera along with a tripod. We unfortunately don't have ready access to audio equipment. But we plan to include some foley in post-production-- but we are not too worried about sound because it is one of the lesser qualities that will be judged. The camera we plan to use is the Canon Rebel T6, and we hope using this will compensate for the less-professional audio quality, because it is a nice camera that provides high-definition videos. We also don't have access to lighting kits, but we plan to fix this by filming at specific times (middle of the day) where the lighting is better, and by using lamps or phone lights to add better lighting.

The camera we plan on using.

Lastly, we plan to film tomorrow at my house, acting as the Parkers' house. My room (pictured below) will serve as Sydney's room. My room has numerous posters, tapestries, and stickers on the wall which will help contribute to her alternative/grunge-ish personality. My brother's room will play as Ava's room-- we plan to design it tomorrow, so we don't have a picture as of right now. My brother is an athlete (like Ava) and has a more simple room without anything on the wall. He has many trophies and medals we can hang to resemble Ava's success. 

Sydney's bedroom design.

Character Backgrounds

We realized that we haven't said much about the actual characters themselves in our blogs. One thing that we found very helpful this year was the character background process that we did in a previous project. In that, we created a character and wrote a complete background for them, including their upbringing, relationships, personality, etc. So, we decided to do a less-extensive version of that for this project. This is for our benefit mostly, because this will help us get more in touch with our characters, and it allowed us to develop distinct, realistic stories for each character. We decided to do the main three characters that will be in the opening (Sydney, Ava, and Mrs. Parker) as well as Thomas (he becomes a vital role AFTER the opening, but we still felt it was important to include him. Here are some backgrounds/personality/upbringing descriptions for each character:

Sydney Parker

Sydney is a junior in high school. She was born deaf into a family that is all hearing. She lives with her mother Laura and her older sister Ava. Her father left the family short after Sydney was born because he did not want to deal with raising a deaf daughter. Sydney decided that she does not want a cochlear implant. Ever since elementary school, she has been mainstreamed and attended public schools with other hearing kids. She has not met any other deaf people in her life. Her mother still restricts what Sydney is allowed to do and does not let her do the same things that she allows Ava to do. 

Sydney has a more reserved personality than her older sister. Sydney does not leave the house much due to her mom’s restrictions. The only time she really leaves the house is when she goes to school, and at school she is even more quiet. She does very well in school but she doesn’t interact with any of the other students there. Sydney loves to read books because it allows her to escape and live her life through the characters. Sydney tends to feel more alienated because of her deafness, and is more ashamed than proud because of the environment in which she's grown up in.

Ava Parker

Ava is Sydney's older sister, she is a senior in high school. Even though they are only a year apart, they could not be any more different. Their mother loves Ava and allows her to do basically anything she wants to do. Ava is always out hanging with her friends or at parties. Ava is also very involved in school, she is the cheer captain and does very well in all of her classes. 

Ava’s personality is very different from that of her sister. While her sister is quiet and wears darker color clothes, she is very social and peppy and wears bright colors. Sydney and Ava do not have the best relationship because Sydney is jealous of the life Ava is allowed to live. Ava always tries to talk to Sydney and build their connection but Sydney ignores her attempts because of her extreme jealousy and resentment for her sister.

Thomas Martinez

Thomas is Sydney’s platonic interest/friend that she will meet later in the movie. He is deaf and is fluent in sign language; his mother is also deaf, but his father is hearing. He moved from Rochester, NY– a city with one of the highest populations of deaf people in the country– to South Florida. Thomas’ parents are Colombian, so he has a strong hispanic background involved in his deaf upbringing, and knows only a little Colombian Sign Language.

Thomas grew up in an environment that was very welcoming towards deaf people. He attended a specialized school for the deaf before his move, so he has not been mainstreamed (up until now) like Sydney. Thomas is sound in his deafness and comfortable interacting with both the deaf and hearing communities. He will be the one to bring Sydney “out of her shell” once they meet; he has a lively personality and isn't afraid to speak his mind.

Mrs. Parker

Sydney’s mother is hearing. She grew up from the town in which they live; her and her husband were high school sweethearts. She was very popular back in her high school days: captain of the cheer team, prom queen, etc. So, she can relate a lot more with Ava than with Sydney. She loves Sydney despite her deafness, but she can’t find ways to relate with her like she can with Ava.

Because of Sydney’s deafness, Mrs. Parker tends to try to control every aspect of her life and shelter her from all the “bad people” (people who look down on deaf people). She babies Sydney and gives her little to no freedom, which will become a problem when Sydney meets Thomas. However, she allows Ava unrestricted freedom to “enjoy her high school years”.

These are mood-boards that we created for the main two characters in the opening. We felt this was important to do because we want each character to have a certain "vibe" and "aesthetic" portrayed in the opening.

Script

We have finally finished our script! At first we weren't sure whether or not we needed a script because our opening has little dialogue involved. But, we still had important dialogue and needed a script to ensure the dialogue was as natural as we could get it. Most of our opening dialogue consists of sign language, and one problem we faced during the script-making process was how we can show that the character will be signing. After consideration, we decided to follow the usual script template and place (sign language) or (signing) under the character's name, indicating that they are signing. 

The pictures are very blurry (I'm sorry :/) but if you click on them they become clear! But anyways, completing this was kind of a big deal for us, because it was essentially the last "big thing" we had to get done before filming. Even though it feels like everything is going so fast and all the deadlines are appearing quickly, we are VERY on-time (even ahead...possibly) in our schedule, which is something we're both very proud of. For now, we plan to film either this Sunday or Monday, and take the rest of the week editing and re-filming certain bits if we absolutely need to. 

Subtitles

My partner and I plan to not only include dialogue, but also captions in our opening. Captioning is essential because we plan to include signing portions in our opening, so this will make it accessible to all people, hearing and deaf. Because of this, we have to do some research on the types of fonts to use for subtitles. There are universal fonts used, and universal colors. For instance, we plan to use yellow captions, like many movies and documentaries do. I went on several websites to find the most commonly used and easy-to-read captions used in film-making. Some websites I used were checksub.com and rev.com, and here are the most popularly-used fonts:

• Arial
• Roboto
• Consolas
• Tiresias
• Helvetica
• Antique-Olive
• Myriad
• Lucida Grande

These fonts are the most easy-to-read and visually appealing fonts I found between the two websites. One thing we want to make imperative is that the subtitles can very easily be read by anyone. This isn't just done by making the font big, but also by focusing on the spacing and overall font type. There are four different ways we can format our subtitles, according to An Expert Guide to Subtitling Rules: 

1. Light-colored text with black outline and drop shadow effect (no black box).
2. Black box fitted around width of text (light-colored)
3. Subtitles in black box touching bottom of screen and extending out to width of screen.
4. Same as #4 except positioned higher up as to not touch bottom of screen.

Right now we plan to do number one because we feel it is more aesthetically pleasing, and the black boxes in the other options seem too visually distracting. But, we have not filmed yet. So, if we are editing and the subtitles don't seem to stand out because of the lightness of the clips, then we will consider the other options. 

Moreover, after considering these fonts, we have narrowed it down to a couple of our favorites that we would be most likely to include in our opening. These are: Arial, Helvetica, Antique-Olive, Myriad (used by Apple), and Consolas (used by Netflix***). Here are example pictures of these fonts from checksub.com, and we plan to try them out in post-production to see which one best fits with our title/credits font and overall scene. 

Arial

Helvetica

Antique-Olive

Myriad

Consolas

Titles and fonts!

So right now my partner and I are thinking of a title for our film. We want something that relates to the deaf community, but still can stand by itself as a title. We want it to be short and concise, rather than something very long and symbolic. Mostly because it is a coming-of-age movie, and these films tend to have artsier names. Also, our target audience is teenagers and young adults, so they are most likely to be enticed by shorter titles rather than long ones that require more thinking to understand. Because of this, my partner and I have spent all weekend researching deaf culture and trying to find deaf vocabulary that would be enticing enough to use as our title. As of now, we haven't found anything that REALLY sticks out to us, but we have ideas.

We want something artsy, because that goes with our genre. We were thinking something like "Sound of ...", although it is kinda of overused among deaf movies. We already know movies like the Sound of Metal and the Sound of Fury, so we would have to do something unique if we were to go down this route. We also had and idea where we name our film "Birdcage". Birdcages are common symbolism of being or feeling trapped, which is something our main character struggles with. So, we think this is the best of both worlds in terms of what we are hoping to achieve: a short, easy-to-read name, and something that has symbolic meaning.

Moreover, we have also been looking at fonts for our movie title and credits. Since we plan to make the title so large, we want the font to be something eye-catching but simple. These are some examples we have found from fontsinuse.com that we will take into consideration:

Future plans

So as of now, my partner and I have finished storyboarding and are planning our filming schedule. We plan to reach out to people this weekend in terms of casting, and see when they are available to film. But, we want to get most, if not all, of the filming done next weekend, so we can start editing as soon as possible. We plan to film at my house, because my room mostly resembles the grunge (???) atmosphere we are looking for. I have many posters and tapestries on my walls that would help develop our main character's personality. Our setting choices are pretty limited because of where we live: a pretty small town with infrastructure that is ALL the same (literally every house looks the same). So, we chose conveniency when it came to the setting. Besides filming, there is not much that we need to do before; our opening has little to no dialogue, so we don't necessarily need to create a script. Here is a VERY rough outline of our future schedule:

• March 11th-12th - filming/production
• March 14th-18th - editing/post-production
• March 21st-25th - research and create CCR
• April 4th - submit opening and CCR to blog

Right now, we are mainly thinking of title names. As mentioned before, we want the title to be in big yellow letters, and take up most of the screen in size. We also want it to be synchronized with the beat of the music, which will happen in post-production. But, as for the actual name, my partner and I are kind of lost. We want a short, appealing name, most likely one to two words. We also want it to related to the deaf community and be something that they understand. However, we don't want to make the title something corny that will make it seem as if the entire plot revolves around the MC being deaf. Coda (2021), is a great example of a title that relates to the deaf community. It stands for child of a deaf adult, and represents hearing children from deaf parents. This is something that deaf people understand and can resonate with, so we ultimately want to do something similar for our opening title. 

Storyboarding!!

Based on the title, you can kinda figure out what my partner and I are doing. But, we completed our storyboard today and we're really excited to start the next step in our process! As far as storyboarding went, we were a little stuck at the beginning. I think starting the storyboard was the hardest part because there are so many different ways we could start the opening, so we didn't know which direction we wanted to go in. But, we decided to start off with a usual coming-of-age vibe by portraying the main character and their sibling. We will use various medium and long shots to showcase their opposing personalities, and set up "future" conflicts. We also decided to not include as much "talking" in the opening, because we want to introduce the characters first and foremost. So, we will have one or two "talking scenes"; one with the sibling and one with the parent. For these, we will add captions at the bottom when the MC is signing ASL. Here is our finished storyboard (the pictures are very blurry I apologize):

We plan to start the opening with a black screen introducing our production company, which we did not put on the storyboard. This is when the music will start, and the music will continue until the sibling turns it off. We also plan to put the credits in the corners of the screen up until the sibling and MC interact (page 2). We want the credits to fade in, and think they'll fit in well to the opening while the characters are getting ready. For the title, we plan to put it during the extreme wide shot of the MC getting into the car; it will be in big letters and synch with the music.