CCR

My long awaited CCR! Thanks for coming along on my journey!

The Big Reveal!

     Here it is, in all its glory!! Enjoy my film opening, Harker v. Westwood.

Reflecting

     As my work on my film opening and CCR finally come to a close, I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on my experience.

     I've switched around clips of my opening more times than I can even process, and I think I'm going to have the over dramatic sounds of my parents reciting their lines engraved in my brain forever.  That being said, I really did enjoy completing this project and going through the film making process.

     One thing this project taught me is how nice it is to not procrastinate.  While I'm certainly not the worst procrastinator I know, I do tend to put things off, so the fact that I was able to stay organized and on track for this project was a good step for me.  I ended up preparing everything I needed for filming very early on, and filmed a lot earlier than most people.  This eventually had a much bigger pay off than I could've imagined, thanks to COVID-19.  Although quarantine kept me from being able to reshoot anything for my film, a lot of people had to rethink their entire film ideas, which I didn't have to deal with.  Being that I filmed early, I had ample think to rework my clips in a way that worked for me, and was able to work around the fact that I couldn't reshoot without restarting.

     As for putting my video together, editing helped me to learn a lot.  I'd done a little bit of editing in the past, but this project really improved my skills; it also showed me how much of a perfectionist I am.  Since I transformed my video several times to follow a different flow, I spent an extremely long time altering my opening.  At this point I for sure have a love-hate relationship with editing; every time I'd sit down for a few minutes to work on editing, I'd end up sitting there forever trying to make different changes and improvements.  Even when I wasn't in the mood to keep editing, I couldn't stop myself from sitting there and making alterations.  The positive of this is that I learned a lot about editing and especially about using Premiere.  I had very little prior experience with Premiere, so my journey included a lot of YouTube tutorials and article explanations.  This definitely paid off in the end, since now I have a much better grasp of the program and how to use all of the different functions.

     Overall, although it was frustrating and stressful at times, this project was enjoyable and taught me a lot.  I've always been pretty artsy and even though I'm not looking for a career in the film industry, this project did appeal to my interests and was really fun to do.  I definitely still have a lot of room for improvement, but this process allowed me to greatly improve upon my production and editing skills.  Thanks for coming along on this journey with me, and enjoy my opening!

More CCR Development

     I've been continuing to work on my CCR, so I thought I'd share a bit of behind the scenes for that.
     I decided for my CCR that I'll be doing a voice over on top of clips and stills of my opening, photos to go with my research, and other interesting videos.  I figured it would be most intriguing to mix up stills and videos of my own along with outside clips.  I'll be starting off the CCR with a brief description of my opening and film, which I will be talking about as evidence of my process are shown.  I figured I could show some behind the scenes photos, as well as material from the actual opening.  I only took a few photos on the day of me filming, but I do have a couple, including these:

Beyond behind the scenes photos, I'll also include some fun footage from the actual opening.  I was thinking that I could have some unused clips playing that never made it in the actual opening, just so that the viewer isn't seeing the same clips they're about to see/ just saw in my opening.  This way the clips don't feel as repetitive, but still make sense as they're in the same setting and everything.  That being said, here a few stills I might include from my footage:

     Beyond footage coming from myself,  I'll also be including photos, clips, and graphs from online.  I have a couple statistics that go along with my genre and distribution research, one such being a graph on movie theater attendance. I'll also be putting in clips from other dramas, specifically court room or business dramas, as they share similar characteristics to my film.  This could include movies such as The Verdict, To Kill a Mockingbird, or The Wolf of Wall Street.  While I'm discussing genre conventions and comparisons, this would be beneficial.  Including photos and clips about my equipment and software will also be included in my CCR, to emphasis these steps of my process and to match a vision to my words.  I'm working hard to put my CCR together, and I'll be sharing it with you guys soon!

Putting my CCR Together

  As I prepare for my CCR, I just wrote up an outline for my script, which I will be writing in the very near future.  In the process of writing out my thoughts I gathered a couple statistics, which I've included the sources for below.  These facts are currently embedded in my outline and will most likely be mentioned in my video.  In the meantime, I'm sharing a link to my CCR outline, so you guys can see where I'm at right now! I'll be back to you guys soon with an update.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SaJGFg10K0nHHv0_VZoPp8unKjeiRDsN12xASd6QcYs/edit?usp=sharing

Sources:
https://livestream.com/blog/62-must-know-stats-live-video-streaming
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adambvary/streaming-services-you-probably-didnt-know-existed
https://www.allmovie.com/subgenre/courtroom-drama-d545

Giving Credit and Moving On

     I kept playing around with ending clips, and I think I'm at an end point that I'm happy with!  It's 2:03 minutes, the end is as smooth as I could make it, and I'm finally satisfied with it.  I'm currently moving on to do the CCR, but first I thought I should include a couple of sources for audio I used.
    I bought and downloaded the main music the overlays a lot of my opening, which was from audiojungle.net.
 MAIN MUSIC SOURCE: https://audiojungle.net/item/serious-science-logo/25852940

     The other audio I used was the door of a door opening, which I used as Jackie enters the room.  Even though you could hear the door opening in my clip, it was too soft so I used this sound as reinforcement.  This, I downloaded for free off of https://www.fesliyanstudios.com/.
DOOR OPENING SOURCE: https://www.fesliyanstudios.com/royalty-free-sound-effects-download/opening-closing-door-54

    I got pretty lucky with the rest of my audio, and was able to use and reuse all of the audio from clips I'd collected myself.  In doing this, I think all of the important sounds in my opening are heard well, and I worked hard to balance all of the sounds and am happy with the final product.
     Now, I'm starting to work on my CCR.  I have all of my research on audiences, genre conventions, and distribution from earlier on in my process, but now I need to get everything together so I can write out what I'm going to include.  I haven't decide yet how I'm going to do my video, but I have a few options.  Basically, I could either talk in front of the camera, having photos and videos to play along with me, or I could stay behind the camera, talking over a PowerPoint or similar presentation.  I'll be developing my CCR more over the next couple days, and will get back to you guys in my next post with an update on my progress. 

My Concerns

     After messing around with a few small things, and deciding on my fonts (font #4 for the title, #1 for everything else), my opening is essentially done.  That being said, I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with it, and here's why.
     First of all, no matter which parts of the conversation I use and what clip I use last, the ending looks a little bit abrupt.  It was really hard to piece together a mini conversation from the clips I had, and one that actually flowed.  Overall the conversation isn't that choppy, it's just that I'm not completely satisfied with the end of it.  I played around with a lot of different options, and I think the only way I'd be completely happy with it would be to reshoot a few clips, which thanks to COVID-19 isn't much of an option. That being said, I still think the conversation works, I just thought I should explain how I'm feeling.

     I also made a minor filming error.  Since the office was so backlit, I had a little lamp that we were shining on my dad's face for some of his shots, and you can see the lamp in a couple of the shots.  I purposefully left it in the shot for his establishing clip, since we needed it where it was, but the lamp magically disappears and is never seen again. The lamp is dark blue and skinny so it's actually not even that noticeable, but I felt obligated to mention it since it was something that was bothering me.