Film Opening

 Here it finally is. After all this time, I hope the wait was worth it. Enjoy!

Creative Critical Reflection

 

These were super fun to make! It's been a blast documenting my CCRs with you all. I hope you enjoy!

One Last Chat (and my Works Cited!)

 Hey everyone. It's over. After 8 LONG and tireless weeks, it's finally over. Every component of my Cambridge Portfolio Project has been completed. I wanted to take this post to look back on LifeLine's creation, and to talk about any changed or notable moments.

But first! I used quite a bit of copyright free sounds in both my film and CCRs. Although it's not required, I still wanted to cite everything that I used. Here it all is!

First music track in LifeLine https://freesound.org/people/Lordol1/sounds/677665/

Voice of LandLine https://freesound.org/people/ErynKnight/sounds/656918/

Landline's ringing https://freesound.org/people/acclivity/sounds/24928/

Landline being put down https://freesound.org/people/Nox_Sound/sounds/559475/

Landline being slammed down https://freesound.org/people/MootMcnoodles/sounds/444406/

AC Noise https://freesound.org/people/ciccarelli/sounds/512361/

Heart Beat https://freesound.org/people/Johnnie_Holiday/sounds/541721/

Hopeful Music https://freesound.org/people/EFlexMusic/sounds/448358/

Bird Chirps https://freesound.org/people/keweldog/sounds/184870/

I want to thank every single creator that aided in the creation of these audio clips. Without you all, LifeLine's audio wouldn't be near the current quality it is now. Thank you all so much!

As for my reflection, it's a bit difficult. This project was such a massive undertaking that it is difficult to reflect upon one specific thing. The first thing that comes to mind is the conception of the story of LifeLine as a whole. 

It's kind of funny, but I always knew what plot I wanted my film to have since the first day the project was announced. I've always wanted it to revolve around themes of loneliness, emotion, and depression. What's comedic is that at first, I was just projecting. I've had some struggles with mental health in the past and present day, and although it wasn't nowhere near as bad as Theo's condition (who has an alcohol issue and takes medication), I still had problems connecting with others at times. What I find truly poetic is that the characters and story of LifeLine have helped me so much.

I've always had a creative side, but creating characters and planning out their backstories and plot significance allowed my creative prowess to truly shine! In addition to this, I learned a great deal about film genre and drama in general thanks to my research for this film. I learned so much information and was able to show off my skills thanks to this project! Every day, new ideas would pop into my head that would allow myself to express my creativity further. Things such as Bakari's ID, the Light Equals Hope scene, or the entirety of the written music for the film was written on a whim. Those ideas just came to me and I thought they were neat, so I created them! I would've never known that I could work with Canva to create amazing props or that I could somewhat create music without LifeLine. This singular film helped me pick up so many new skills that I cannot wait for my next project!

What I find interesting is that originally, LifeLine wasn't going to have such a hopeful ending as it does now. I just intended for Theo to be sad, and alone. But after doing research, I learned that depression shouldn't and doesn't work that way. Theodore, although broken, is a character with resolve and who cares about his friends. His friends are fountains of positivity, and their happiness is his motivation to keep going and to put himself out there. Halfway through film production, I started to see myself in Theo. I have people behind me, just in the production of this film, I got to catch up with so many friends and amazing people. Theodore's character showed me that my friends and family are soul, and their constant positivity and encouragement are my strength! Theo's personality genuinely helped me and heavily improved my mental state, and I am eternally grateful to this film for helping me see all the amazing things I have going for me.

The hardest but best part about this project were definitely the CCRs. They had to be created amid spring break, which was a really busy time for me. Despite that, I'm so glad with what I was able to create! I genuinely think both CCRs are really well made, and I poured tons of creativity and effort into them.

As a closing statement, I wanted to thank everyone. I want to thank all the creators who made assets used in LifeLine. I want to thank my Aice Media teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, for constantly being available for advice and being a fountain of wonderful ideas. I want to thank all my friends who were able to critique my film or help with production, and I want to thank my prop designer, Luna, for helping out with a large chunk of prop production. Lastly, I wanted to thank you all, the viewers. You have been with me every step of the way, and I'm so blessed to have shared this journey with you all. Thank you so much, you all are my greatest treasure!

IT'S OVER AAA

 It is with a smile on my face that I am pleased to announce, it's over. Everything is done. After 8 long weeks of planning, research, and editing, that it's over. Every section of my Cambridge Portfolio project has been completed!

I won't be sharing the projects or film just yet, as I want to save those for individual postings next week, but I do want to go over how editing went. First off, let's talk about LifeLine. I added in that extra scene I was mentioning last week to show that the film is ongoing, and as an overall project, I think it came out really well! I won't repeat what I've said previously, so to keep it short, I love this film and I'm so proud of what I accomplished. I also made some edits to rectify a couple issues in the original draft of the film, such as the title saying LandLine instead of LifeLine (I have no idea how that slipped past me) or changing the color of some of the credit text, as it was pretty unreadable previously.

For the presentation CCR, I had to finagle with the brightness for a bit. I don't know why, but Adobe Premier has a habit of forcibly brightening imported video clips, and combined with the fact that I was wearing a white shirt, it was practically impossible to see what was going on in the original film. I also had to find the right brightness level where the PowerPoint was readable, but it wasn't dark enough that I was impossible to make out. I also had to stitch the audio of my presentation takes, as there was no take that was "perfect". I had to take audios for separate sections and create cuts that held up the illusion that it was the same recording. It was difficult, but I loved what I came up with, and I think you guys will too!

For the dinner CCR, production went a lot smoother. I already discussed this yesterday, but a big issue was that I breathed really loudly in some takes, so I had to try and adjust the audio levels for those recordings while still making sure that I/Luke weren't intelligible. Another issue was time. The CCRs in total HAD to be less than 10 minutes. I wasn't sure if there was a grace period, but I'm right in the middle of Spring Break, so I couldn't really ask someone about that. I cut down every single audio clip, shaving off any unnecessary pauses. The first CCR came in at 4:48, so I had 5 minutes and 12 seconds to allot to my second CCR. It was incredibly stressful editing this film, as if I was above 5:12, I'd need to cut down on dialogue, meaning that the flow of the CCR would be harmed! It was extremely tight, but I finished with a time of 5:09. Talk about coming close, I had remained within the time limit by the skin of my teeth!

By far, this was both the most difficult and most fun I've had in terms of a production week. I worked nonstop nearly everyday, whether it be filming, editing, recording, or even researching! It was really hard and filled with strife, but the results are amazing. I think I and my team have created something truly beautiful, I am so proud of how far LifeLine and both of my CCRs have come. I can not wait to share them with you next week. Thank you so much for sticking by me during this time. I'll see you all later!

Filming the Second CCR

Hello everyone! Today, I filmed the second CCR. I wanted to run through all my preparations and plans for this section of my project.

Firstly, if this was going to be a nice dinner, I knew I'd be needing some kind of decoration. I wanted to put a flower in a vase, but those are expensive. Instead, I took to arts and crafts! I'm a very large origami fan, and any of my friends will tell you how much time I spend folding together sheets of paper to create things! Recently, I picked up a new skill on how to create origami stars (I actually purchased specialized star paper to create them), and I realized the stars would be the perfect "flowers) for my bouquet.

(The tutorial I used!).

Next, I needed some kind of stem. Luckily, I happened to have some beautiful green paper straws lying around that would be perfect for this. I hot glued the stars to the straws and wrapped it all in tissue paper to look like a bouquet. This was the final result!

For a very minor set piece, I'm super happy with how this came out!

As for clothing, I wanted us to be somewhat fancy, so I asked my friend and actor, Luke, to put on a nice shirt! I followed suit, and put on a casual button down for the filming session.

As for what we were going to say, I actually didn't adhere to the script as much. This was because I realized it would be best if when we spoke, we sounded more "loose" and original. This way, it actually sounds like we're friends and not just two strangers reading off of a script. Filming itself went pretty well, and so did editing, but I ran into a bit of an issue. 

I breathe too loudly.

I think my house was a bit dusty at the time of recording, because whenever I was the one recording, you can clearly hear my loud breathing in the background. This hurts the flow of the recording, but I didn't really know what I could do to fix it. I tried to lower the audio and raise the music, but you can still hear my breathing. All I can do is hope it isn't that noticeable. Next time I'll use a neti-pot before recording, hehe.

That's all I have to share with you today guys. We're in the home stretch, editing is almost done!! I'll see you all tomorrow!

THE FIRST CCR IS (basically) FINISHED

 Hey everyone! I've had a pretty busy week as I've been working on the first CCR (the PowerPoint one) the entire time! In this post, I wanted to go over my entire production process for the CCR, and tell you all what's coming next?

    The first thing I did this week was slightly alter what the CCR would be. Instead of being like a business meeting, it would be more like a college presentation. This way, I could be more casual in tone (and I always create better speeches when in casual tone) as opposed to a formal look.

    Anyways, for a complete tonal shift, let's talk about Instagram. As I was scrolling through my For You page, I came across a page called The PowerPoint guy. I looked through some of this creator's reels, and they were huge. They were animated, fluid, and beautiful, unlike the rigid and stiff PowerPoints that I created in the past. I looked over his page for quite a bit, and soon dived into some tutorials. After an hour or two of learning, I had effectively learned how to animate in PowerPoint! As I created my presentation, I didn't really have a script in mind as I wanted to model what I'd be saying off of the presentation. When I created the PowerPoint, the questions I were trying to answer were

• Who does LifeLine represent?
• How does it differ from standard conventions in media?
• How would LifeLine be distributed as a genuine product?

Surprisingly, this PowerPoint didn't need that much research. In the slideshow, one of the key points is that the media doesn't portray depression effectively, but this didn't require much research. I had already known what depression does to someone through prior research, and I already knew how the media portrays depression due to all the shows and movies I had seen previously. After a bit more research, I was able to prove my point!

As for distribution, that came pretty easily. I knew that we'd need an external distributor, as a new indie filmmaker like myself wouldn't have the funds or popularity to fund a release by ourselves. But first, we would need some notoriety, so we would need to submit our film into some film festivals! (The ones I had in mind after reviewing some were the Woodstock Film Festival and the Cleveland International Film Fest.) After this, I want to contact a distributor in the form of a streaming service, as they have gone to film festivals in the past to pick up films.

After a lot of time and animating, I created this. Enjoy! 

(Sorry for not just linking the actual PowerPoint. To do that, you need OneDrive access and my storage is completely full, so I can't upload anything else currently.)

After the PowerPoint's creation, the rest was smooth sailing! I went through each slide and wrote my script for each slide, and then sending it to some friends for further revision! After quite some time, I came up with this!

As for the last step, I just had to coordinate with a friend to film it! I decided on filming at my prop friend and prop designer's house, Luna as she had access to a projector and a clicker for ease of flicking through PowerPoint slides. We had an issue during production where we couldn't find an HDMI cord, but we eventually found one tucked away in the garage. I can't show you all the recordings just yet as I would like to edit them into the finished product first, but I can't wait until then! For filming, we did several takes, as no specific run of the presentation was perfect, so I want to stitch together audio from several attempts to create a "perfect" final product. I'll see you all then!

IT'S FINALLY DONE

 Ladies and gentlemen, it is finished! Landline has been in production for the better part of eight weeks, and all of my team's hard work and planning has finally come into fruition! 

Although I really want to, I won't start deeply analyzing the film in this post. That's because this is not yet the complete product. I say that even though I just told you all that I had finished the film, because I think this film has an issue. The directions stated to create a film opening, yet the ending of the video is so poetic and nice, that it feels like the conclusion to a short story! To combat this, I'll have to add a super short 5-10 second scene that introduces a new issue in Theo's story. Although I haven't completely thought it out just yet, I want it to consist of Theo in his car mentally preparing himself to drive to Stan's house. The issue is that this film is meant to be 2 minutes long and I've reached that point, so I'll have to keep the next scene very short and sweet if I want to adhere to that rule.

Also, look at how many layers are in my film! If you remember my Soundscape project earlier into this blogs creation, I utilized a lot of my experience in layering from that project here!

And here are some videos of me creating my own sounds for the film!

Lastly, I wanted to share something regarding my CCRs. Last post, I said I wanted to have one CCR revolve around an interview style dinner between I and a friend as he asks me about LandLine's production. I ended up creating a draft for the script of that CCR!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oHjdnkoNrCNs_0H6K5-J8Z2s9jIW14fjqwk74QLmlNI/edit?usp=sharing

I have some issues with the script though, as I feel as though the dialogue is a bit robotic at times. Nevertheless, it'll be updated in time. With editing done, I can begin to dedicate my time solely to CCR development! I'll see you all then!