CAP Hollywood

This past week has been a lot better for our film. We've gotten almost all the footage into our film and have the music in our timeline. We have also cut our film down, so it is not as long as it was. It still needs to be cut shorter though, so we will have to work on that this week during the HSAs. The audio is still not even, but we're going to leave that for last. I know that Andreas may want to color grade the whole film, but I think that we should finish our whole project before we do that.
Overall, we just need to fine tune the film and add some voiceovers to it. Some of my group members and I plan on coming in this week before school and after school to finish. I'm hopeful that we will be able to finish our film in time.

Here's the image that will (tentatively) appear title slide for the film.

CAP Hollywood

This past week was a bit bumpy for our film. We didn't have our footage on Monday, so couldn't edit that day. This was a big problem because we then had to rush to finish our rough cut. But we were able to get it together enough to have the create the general timeline of our film.
In the time spent editing, I was able to type up the credits. The only problem with this was that we didn't know some of the actors names because we picked them up at the park. I guessed the one guy's name, but I knew the general sound of his name. Once I finished the credits, I was able to find the music needed for our film. I knew that we would need a lot of different sounds, so I went on to Soundcloud and found a basketball warm-up mix that had lots of different songs in it. By doing this, I was able to find versatile music quickly.
We still need to put the credits and the music in, but I think it is better to put the music in after all the footage is in place. We'll do that this week though and narrow our rough cut down closer to 4 minutes.

This is the link to our music.

Reflection

This past weekend, my group got all of the footage needed for our CAP Hollywood film. We filmed on Saturday at the basketball court. We were lucky enough to have Connor help us film with a the really nice camera, so now our footage is of a higher quality. There was a slight hiccup in the plan, as many of our actors didn't show up. Fortunately, one guy did show up so we used him as the main character. There were other people playing basketball at the courts who played the other characters in the film. We also lost one of the drug dealers halfway through filming so we had to refilm the parts with a new drug dealer.
Overall, this film has proven a real challenge, what with finding actors and scheduling a time to film. But we were able to get it done which means that we are on to the next step. I think that with some really nice editing, our film will look really good. We got some extra footage for b-roll, just to make it more dynamic, and we have a variety of shots so that it doesn't look like a home video in which we just stuck the camera at one place the whole time.
This week, we hope to get a very rough cut of our film and mainly lay out the footage in sequential order. If needed, we can also play around with filters in final cut to see if any will work with our film, but that is just a possibility. That's it for this week!

Documentary Project Reflection Essay

     Our original topic was to do a documentary on homelessness. I was very excited to do this documentary because I thought it would be fun to look into a topic from a creative viewpoint. I would have liked to completed it, but alas it was not to be.
     My group procrastinated and was unable to execute our plans. We did talk to the Martha’s Table organization, but we should have looked elsewhere. We didn’t work over break, which was what really doomed us to failure. We also needed to start filming earlier, but instead we waited until the last minute, at which point it was too late. In addition we should have made sure that you understood our plan for filming. You were not in school when we tried to get a camera and so we had to email you. We hadn’t really talked before about our plan for filming and we should have made it clear what we were planning to do.
     I thought the structure of the assignment was solid and as good as it could be. The process from brainstorming to filming to editing was very put together and represented the actual process that real documentary filmmakers use. You did a great job Mr. Mayo! It was my group’s fault that we were unable to complete our documentary.
     If we had a chance to redo this documentary, we would have started much earlier. We would have talked to multiple organizations to ensure that we had some organization to which to talk. The filming process would be started much, much sooner. Overall, we would just be more on top of things, as opposed to waiting until the last minute.

TV Shows

 

The "it" thing to do now is watch whole entire TV shows, from start to finish. It all started when Ms. Fillman showed us "Lost" in class. Then all of CAP 10 started watching it, all six seasons of it. I've recently started watching "Heroes", as has Cherie.

I think it is sad and disappointing that children now bond over what shows they like. We watch them together and talk about them when we're together. There is so much more we could do and/or talk about, yet we choose to talk about crazy ridiculous TV shows.

For the record, they are SOOO addicting. We live vicariously through the dramatic, plot-twist-filled TV shows. Our mediocre, unadventrous lives cannot compare to a exotic island with magical powers (Lost) or people who can paint the future when high off cocaine (Heroes). Well that's at least why I personally watch these crazy shows. I get really into the plots and the characters. I often find myself wishing I was them, even though I know their world is impossible.

Anyways, I know it's not the best way to be spending our time. But watching TV lets us closely analyze the things that make people human. We see weaknesses and strengths that we couldn't see in our everyday lives. Plus it's all so entertaining.

Spending Life with Technology

I've given a lot of people lots of crap about watching videos on YouTube  My brother spends half his life on his iTouch watching YouTube videos. But, I've been watching a lot lately for some reason. There are probably a million videos that are a waste of my time, but there are definitely some really cool videos out there! The thing is, that you have to spend a lot of time searching for and finding the cool videos. 

There's plenty of time to do that, what with long bus rides, slow coffee shop lines, and weekends filled with nothing. It's really easy to access YouTube too. So many people have smartphones and more and more teenagers are getting their own laptops nowadays. It's  become a social norm to see people on their phones everywhere. It doesn't surprise us and we don't notice it. There are times when I look up and realize that so many people are on their phones. 

People do a lot of other stuff, like work, on their phones. YouTube is just an example. But with this easy 24/7 access to technology, there seems to be so much more time to spend with technology. 

I'm not going to be completely idealistic and say that everybody should throw their phones in the trash, but I think it's reasonable to say that people should spend less time on their phones. 

We can wait in a line for 10 minutes or sit on the bus for an hour without using our phones. People-watch in the store or look at the scenery out the window. Technology has caused us to live faster; it's created a giant rush inside us as we go about our day. Everything has to be done immediately because it can with smartphones. It's not even like we're running through life anymore. We're leaping and bounding to the important landmarks, missing the baby steps in between. Those baby steps are important because those are things that can't always be replicated. They are things that will be left, even when all the big accomplishments have dwindled. 

So, I don't ask that you smash up your computers and laptops and phones. But just take a second to look at life as it's happening, not as it happens on your smartphone wallpaper. 

If you like watching people smash technology up, here's a video of that. These guys are my favorite YouTubers. Not only do the smash stuff up, the light things on fire and shoot balloons with BBs. All in slow motion. They're really cool. 

"Our Lives in a Car"

Cherie and I decided that our independent film project would focus on the rides we take to get to Blair. Both of us live relatively far from Blair, so we spend a lot of time in the car, hence the title "Our Lives in a Car". My bus ride is almost an hour and I can't drive yet so hanging out with people in Silver Spring is a hassle. Cherie and I hang out a lot and I think we became friends because we live so far from everybody else.

For this project I used the online video editor wevideo. I don't have any video editing software at home, so I use an online one. It's difficult to use because the webpage gets hung up a lot and it took a long time to upload the videos. It also requires me to pay in order to export the video in HD and without the watermark. (I didn't pay so that's why there's the little wevideo mark at the top.) I'd imagine it'd be really good to pay for  real video editing software or shell out the 5 bucks for the online editor. But if I'm only going to use these less than 5 times more in my life, I don't think I really need it. (Sorry Mr. Mayo.)

Overall, I'm pretty proud of our project. I know the video quality could have been better and I would have loved to have used the song "I'm Gonna Be" by the Proclaimers. But, I really like the song I found and I think it makes the video better and more upbeat. It reminds me of one of those fun car commercials where they try to convince you that by buying this car you'll have way more fun than in a normal car. Our video is like that so it's basically trying to convince you that if you live far from Blair your life will be 10 times better! (Not actually, I'm just telling myself that.) So, overall, our video really shows what it's like to not live in Silver Spring.

If the video doesn't work within the blog, then here is the link.

The Impossible

This past weekend, I watched the movie, The Impossible, with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. It is a movie about the worst ever recorded tsunami which hit South East Asia in 2004. The movie follows the story of a family who gets separated and is trying to find each other.
The cinematography was fantastic and really enhanced the suspense and drama of the film. Throughout the film, it cuts to black for a few seconds at a time with just sounds. The viewer never knows what's going to happen next. The camera shook a lot during the scenes of the tsunami which partially gave me a headache but it really made me scared of the tsunami. I felt as if I was really there, being swept through the water alongside the mother.
The plot line of the film kept the viewer guessing. You never know if the family will reunite, although you hope against all odds that they will. The actors are all fantastic and draw every ounce of emotion out of you.
The cinematography enhances the film so well by putting you into the actors shoes. You are trudging along in the swamp lands with the mother and boy. You are feeling the pain as the mother suffers from extreme blood loss. The culmination of the terrible things that happen make the happy things a hundred times happier. This is a very intense movie, but it is a must see!
Here is the trailer.