AICE Media Studies

 After a long journey with many ups and downs, our film is nearly to the finish line. Today, my group and I decided that a second opinion on our film would be a great idea. Mila said she would ask her mom to watch. Dara said she would ask her stepdad. Addie said she would ask her dad. I was going to ask one of my parents as well, but I realized I wanted someone less biased. I thought about the people I knew well enough to get a second opinion from, and whom from that group would be willing to give an honest review. I thought about my brother. Initially, I had passed that option off as being to biased because he is my immediate family. However, it occurred to me that he is actually very much into the film world. He loves cinema and analyzing media. I knew also that he would not hold back the truth.  Suddenly, it seemed stupid of me to get anyone else’s opinion. So, I brought the film to him for him to watch. He agreed to give his honest opinion. When he began to watch, he made ...

 While my short film was so close to being complete, production isn’t really production without some conflict. My group ran into a bit of trouble. It began when Addie uploaded the film to YouTube. She did this to ensure that it would not be taken down. It was allowed to post, which made us think we were in the clear. But after a few hours, it suddenly got taken down! We were all very confused. Initially, I had assumed it was something to do with the music. Addie said that she had chosen all royalty free music, but why else would it get taken down? I went through all of our tracks to make sure they were actually allowed without permission. They all were. So what could be the problem? Next, I thought maybe it was the length. While there are a lot of long videos on YouTube, I assumed maybe ours didn’t upload properly because it was 5 minutes long. However, the more I thought about this, the more ridiculous it sounded to me. Of course it wasn’t the length, there are millions of longer ...

 My group has officially completed our short film!!! I could not be happier. Everything looks good to me. The quality is clear. The music is audible, but not overpowering. The scenes flow smoothly. The script and acting worked out. The little girl did an awesome job! All of these things together add up for a pretty great film. When Addie sent the final product, I was shocked by how good it was! Sometimes when you are in the midst of filming something, you don’t see how it really looks until the end. I couldn’t tell how nicely it would pull together, but I was pleasantly surprised. After we had all watched and congratulated ourselves, we figured we should have a watch together. We worked very long and hard on this film together. It would only be right if we watched it together too. So, we all made the trip back to Addie’s place again. Mila and I carpooled, and as I drove her I discovered that she felt the same way that I did. She was surprised by how good the final product was! Howe...

 We are done with editing and filming now. And now, we are done with the whole thing! The one thing we had left was the clip of a little girl with dolls. We assumed that we would use Addison’s sister at first. Her sister is actually 19, but she looks very young. I pictured that with the right makeup, clothes and hair style, she could look almost the age we needed her to look. However, this still wasn’t a great idea because even with all this, she would look too old. This game me pause. However, we were saved! Mila has a neighbor whom she is good friends with. This neighbor has a little sister. And low and behold, the sister is the perfect age! We asked mila to go over and ask her friend if she could use her sister for our film. Mila’s friend said yes, so we were all set. Mila asked if her friend could just film her sister herself, since she was supposed to go out of town and wouldn’t be able to. However, her trip got delayed, so I asked mila to just film it herself because she know...

 As of yesterday, my group had a video with seamlessly flowing clips, that are clear and not blurry. However, we had not yet added music, nor the final scene. Today, we worked on attaining good music. Initially, I had wanted kind of thrilling, scary music. However, I could not find royalty free ones that I liked. So, Addie suggested instead we use more ominous, upbeat music. At first I was opposed. I figured it might make our movie seem like a mockery, or a satire. However, once she showed me an example, my opinion changed. I liked the juxtaposition of the sort of upbeat music with the more thriller genre. So, Addie and I worked together to layer over the music in the film. We had some trouble at first, because the music would not link up to the website we were trying to use. However, Addie fixed that. How, I'm not sure. She is the editing genius, not I! We then added another layer of audio to all the parts where there is a murder attempt. It was a high pitched, horror audio. After...

 My group has finished filming all the scenes we are in. Which means, now it is time to edit. Addison suggested that she do the bulk of the editing. I was curious as to why, so I asked. Apparently, she has experience editing previously. And not just minor experience. She said she edited together a music video for a friend who paid her money for it. I was impressed! So, Addie edited together the bulk of the film. When she sent the first draft, it seemed to be very blurry. I thought maybe it was a problem with my phone. So, I asked Mila and Dara if they too were having problems. They said they were as well. So, I researched some ways to make the video not blurry. I found some helpful information. I told Addie to download it as a file. Once she had done that, I suggested she send it again and see if it was fixed. Fortunately, it was then all good! I was glad that we could find a way to make the quality better. I would be so disappointed if our hard work went to waste because it was to...

 Today was my group’s second day of filming. Today, we finished up our short film! It went great. Unlike yesterday, today we knew it would take a while to get ready. For this reason, we got to Addie’s house a little earlier. When we go there, we began to quickly get ready. This time, I knew what makeup Addie has in mind, so I could do a lot of it myself to save us some time. It still took a lot of time to get ready, but today we had a bit more time because we got there earlier and could leave later. Once ready, we hastily began filming. We picked up right where we left off: around the end of the second scene. We had to work out a few filming issues. For example, Sara is supposed to be hiding a rope from Lynn, but we kept running the scene in a way that Lynn could easily see the rope. After quite a few tries, we finally nailed it. Moving along, we moved locations to the bedroom because that is where the third scene is filmed. We realized that the room was a little messy, so we neate...

Today we began filming. We filmed a little over half of our whole short film. We first had to get ready, which proved to be a more lengthy process than one would imagine. Addie already had her costume and makeup on by the time Dara, mila and I got to her house. This was good because it cut down on the amount of time we had to spend on preparing. Once we arrived, I put on the outfit that Addie supplied for me. I was worried it might not fit, but it ended up being ok. Once I had this on, Addie did my makeup for me. The makeup was very over the top. This is because we are supposed to resemble barbie dolls. So, Addie gave me lots of blush, blue eyeshadow, and mascara. In person, it looked a little intense, but on camera it was perfect. Once we were dressed and ready, we began. It took a minute to get into the swing of things, but once we did it was smooth sailing. Addie has a dog, which we worried would make noise on camera. It kept barking, so I asked mila to hold him to keep him quiet. D...

For the duration of this short film project, it has been a question of how we will film the actual scenes. What I mean by this, is what device we will use. I know that I will not be filming, because I will be acting, but I do not know what way we will film. It was suggested that we use a digital camera. This, while seeming like a good idea in theory, is not actually the best option. While a getting nice, new, high tech camera to film with would be excellent for my group's film, it is not really something that will likely happen. If we did get a digital camera, it would probably be one that we already own: older, not such great visuals, with difficult user settings. Fortunately, the new iPhones that have come out actually have great cameras. I own an iPhone 11. Granted, a cracked, slightly busted up iPhone 11, but still an iPhone 11. Like I said, I know I will not film, but I wanted to make sure my phone was available to film with if it came to that. So, today I decided to clear out...

 This weekend, my group realized once again we could not film. I am out of town right now for a soccer tournament in Tampa. Usually, if just one of our group members is gone we can still film and get some things done. However, I am supposed to be one of the main characters. This poses a problem because almost all of the short film includes both characters. This means that even trying to film only the other character’s parts wouldn’t be helpful. At first, I was disappointed that once again we couldn’t get much done for our film. However, I realized that filming isn’t the only thing we could be doing. I already have been working on finding music for our film. This leaves other duties, such as getting the right props. This weekend, my group is going to acquire our needed props. Obviously, I can’t get the food too early or else it would go bad or be a little old. So instead, I will get a prop knife, a rope, and poison vile. All of these props have something in common: they all seem lik...