Coronavirus Potential Plan Blog

As you must surely know by now, there is a deadly disease going around the world. This disease is called the Coronavirus, and it has currently killed over 135,000 people. As a result, the world has started to notice and now that it is in Florida, we are in serious danger of catching the disease. However, today was literally the first day that it personally affected my day to day life. The virus had the effect of closing all extracurricular activities at my school today which means no sports. This ban will be in effect for at least three weeks, which will prevent me from training before the county championships, an event that my school always wins. This is what made me realize that the coronavirus could potentially destroy any chances for my team and I to finish our final project. That is why we I decided to create this emergency plan.

In the case of mandatory quarantine, because of the government's plan to stop/slow the epidemic, or because of the potential infection of one of my fellow group mates, the workload will be split up in the following way. First, Jake will use his family as actors for any reshoots if they need to occur. This is the correct course of action because of his large family, as well as his access to the filming location (his house). Next, I will select which takes should be used, out of the many potential options. I will do this because of reasons that I will later explain. Thirdly, Tim will select music that he believes will fit our movie introduction. He will do this because he has the best taste in music out of the entire group. Finally, Kyle will edit the final project at home. To do this, he will add the new takes with the music to the original product. Overall, I am the one in charge of selecting takes because of the other's specialties. Once Kyle is done, he will send it to us, and we will all facetime to share opinions of what can be improved. After a final edit by Kyle to make the appropriate changes, we will submit us to Cambridge. As always this is just a precaution. Stay safe and healthy!!!!

Planning to Reshoot Blog

Last tuesday, we were peer reviewed. And we had a few main errors that we are hoping to fix with our new takes. As i reviewed in my previous blog (Peer Review Blog), we had three main issues. All of these were related so they should be easy to fix. First off, we had no titles. We can fix this by adding stock footage, that is related to the plot, and then placing titles on this. Our next issue was the fact that our video was not long enough. the previous idea will take care of this. Finally, our last issue was a sketchy plot. Apparently, our movie was lacking sound so we definitely need to add that.

The overall, we are planning to reshoot on saturday the 14th. We will again be at Jake's house for the filming.  This will hopefully prevent any changes in scenario from being noticed. The plan for when we will be getting the camera is as following: I will get the camera in class on the 13th, and then give it to Jake. Hopefully, Tim will be able to film this weekend, as he wasn't able to film on any of the previous dates.  Alternatively, he could help Kyle edit in the final edit. Personally, I believe that we should reshoot the scene where the mother was killed. Geo was unclear about what was happening in this scene so we clearly did it wrong. Overall re filming will be fun and I can't wait. Until next time.

Peer Review Blog

In class yesterday, we were reviewed by our pier Geo. In addition to this, we also peer reviewed another group's final project. When Geo viewed our project, he gave us a few suggestions. His first suggestion is that we expand the length of our film to the proper time. currently, without titles, our video is 1:39 in length and must be expanded by at least 11 seconds. We can easily do this if we add titles.  That was the second critique, we didn't have titles. However, this is an easy part of the process and will only take a few minutes. Our video's final issue was the lack of volume in our video. This is something that was actually planned as we are going to incorporate voice overs as I discussed in my previous storyboard blogs. Overall, we only had a few issues and we will be easily able to fix them.

In addition to having our our video graded, we also graded another group's video. I have to say, I was confused. The film started off with a couple fighting, and then them being called for dinner. At dinner they are not at all angry with each other as they previously were. Plot twist, they were eating human hands, eyes, and brains. Again how these topics are related I don't know. Overall, there video was filmed perfectly but their storyline was not present. Attached are pictures of my rubric for the video that i graded as well as half of the rubric from Geo.

Editing Blog for Final Project

 This week, we had another recording session for our film. I was unfortunately unable to film. however, the new clips boosted our ability to make a final product. With this we went into choosing clips. As we expected, there were some bad clips from our first session of filming, manly bloopers of me doing weird things and trying to figure out the camera.like any good group, we wanted to start editing at school on Wednesday, but we had technical difficulties. exactly like last time. We knew we would have to edit a lot at school on Friday, and if not then, then Kyle would have to do the editing at home. As you can probably guess, Kyle did have to do some editing at home. This was because unfortunately when we got there on Friday,  the computer wasn't working again. So they decided to film on Friday after school. However only Jake and Kyle could do it because Tim and myself were out of town. So after they did the re-shooting, Kyle went home and started working on editing. I felt bad for both Kyle and Jake, but because especially Kyle as he had to edit the entire movie by himself. He needed to get it done before our peer editing on Tuesday, of the next week though. He was a little rushed because his computer at home kept crashing. However, he ultimately did do it. Unfortunately, he couldn't put in the titles because it was too late. I'm excited to see the final product. Though this may be what we have now, it's far from the final version of the project. Our project is looking to finish on time. 

Filming Recap Blog

     This Blog was not published on time because of technical difficulties. Attached is the blog I made on the 22nd.

     This blog is meant to be a recap of the filming that occurred on February 22nd, and a plan for future filming that occurred on February 28th. On the 22nd, we ran into three main problems. The first problem was the lack of a teammate Tim who was unable to film. The second main issue was a lack of oversight and planning regarding our child actor. As we found out on Sunday, making a 16-year-old with a beard to look like a 6-year-old is just not possible. Our final mistake was a lack of props. This made filming the video difficult because we had to then improvise and switch to movies as inspirations for our character. Alternatively, we had two main successes when it came to filming. The first success was with the murdering of the parent’s scene because during that shot clouds rolled in and made the take darker at the exact time of the murdering. This added to the intensity of the shot, and I believe that with the proper soundtrack, we can make this shot epic. Secondly, we realized a potential mistake before it became catastrophic. This mistake that I am referencing is the decision about who should be the main actor. If I was supposed to fill this role, we wouldn't be able to film next weekend. 

This weekend, we will be filming the rest of our takes of our project.  We will also be re-filming some scenes as we reviewed some in class. One of these scenes includes the scene in which I knock on the door and say I am a police officer. In addition to re-shoots, we will also be filming with new actors like an actual mom playing as the mom in the story. Unfortunately, Tim one of our main actors will not be able to film over the weekend, and I will not be able to either. This is because I will be in California, but I will be calling in from time to time to help with ideas. 

Final Project Filming Day 1

This weekend was the first day that me and two other of my group members could meet up. I arrived at Jake's house promptly on time at 11:15. From here, we proceeded to film some of our one person shots. While we were filming, before Kyle arrived, I was the camera man and Jake was the actor. we decided that this would be a good idea, because I will be unable to film next weekend. This is important because we realized that we didn't have enough footage at the end of the day to make a two minute intro to a movie. Anyhow,  at 12:00 we ran into some problems when trying to pick up Kyle. So, we left Jake's house at 12:05 and when we arrived we couldn't figure out which house was his and he didn't come outside. when we finally picked him up, we realized that we needed to re-shoot many scenes.

For example, we realized that having a teen wear and look the exact same as a younger version oh himself was just not realistic. To change this, we had Jake wear lighter colored clothing, and we also opened the blinds to let in more light. This was my idea and it is supposed to represent the lighter, and more insentient time. This time is also known as childhood. However, we decided that this still wasn't enough so next week, we are going to film the kid's scenes in first person perspective. This way, we won't see Jake's face as much. It would also be  much easier to film when Tim is there to film with us.

Overall, we spent about five hours of filming at Jake's on Saturday. We did spend some time attempting to try and finding props at target and Walmart, but this did not help at all. Overall, I had fun filming with my group and I am very sad that I can't finish filming with them.

Attached is a picture from one of our scenes...

Pre-Filming Blog

     Before we film this weekend, we wished to plan out when we were going to film. However, before we could pick dates, we wanted to insure that we took all safety precautions. This is important because in my opinion safety should always come first. The next topic on our checklist was to secure a date where we could all film on. After I spoke to Tim, Kyle, and Jake, we could all film in the afternoon but not the morning.  We also decided that Jake should be the one who gets the camera and bring it home. This is because we are planning to film at his house.
     In addition to discussing safety, we also started to discuss movies that have a similar plot to ours. specifically, we started to discuss the way that the titles were presented in these films. This will hopefully make filming go faster and more cohesive. We will probably not need to film over the course of two days, but if we do it will be during the afternoons. we will have to film at different times of the day because if we wish to show a passing of time, we will be utilizing day and night lights. I am particularly excited to film the night scenes because I believe that darkness is where the evil of humanity hides. If our actor Tim can capture that, I truly believe that our movie will be great. I am so excited to bring our creation to life. Our group's storyboard will be recreated. However, we will have to edit some parts. Lets hope that we won't have to change too much of our story board for the sake of my sanity. I believe that we will all have a great time filming this weekend. My biggest contribution will probably be helping to film, as well as being a director as well as a co-writer.