The Final Product!

     It's been a very long two months, but the final product of "Steve" is finally here! We hope you enjoy it! Thank you to everyone who helped us along the way! 

Creative Critical Reflection!

    Hello! This is my Creative Critical Reflection! This is the penultimate blog post for this overall process. I really hope that you enjoy this video as well as my group's film opening, "Steve"! I want to thank Nicole Borman, Virginia Monasterio, and Mrs. Stoklosa for being such amazing individuals!

 

Planning My CCR!

     Given that we've finished filming and editing, and our film opening is due for submission on April 4th, it is now time for my group members and I to branch out and independently produce our Creative Critical Reflections (CCR). This is a crucial part of this component of the AICE Media AS examination and is probably the most AICE Media-esque way to create a reflection possible. On Wednesday, our teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, lectured on what makes a good CCR, the questions that must be answered in it, and showed us some of her favorite samples from past years. This was a very helpful lesson, and I really enjoyed seeing what people did for their CCR's, especially seeing how they somehow connected it to their film openings using small details.

    Given that the CCR is due in a couple of days and I have to work pretty much all day tomorrow, I have planned what I'm going to do, and will be writing the script shortly after I publish this blog. I plan for my CCR to include various scenes from the film opening so it's not just 6 minutes of me talking to the camera. I have already completed some research regarding genre conventions, target audience, and distribution practices, so I'm definitely going to include that research in my script. Since I'm also planning on using footage from other films (especially when I talk about genre characteristics), I'm going to make use of voiceovers to further verbalize the information while I am not talking to the camera. I'm still brainstorming ways to connect my CCR to the film opening itself, perhaps visually, but as of now, with the limited time I have, my main priority is getting the script written and edited. 

Explaining Some Changes

     When we were filming, we made some executive decisions to change some things about our film opening. These changes were made due to a variety of factors. Some changes we had been thinking about for a while (I've made numerous blog posts about our contemplating on whether to change the setting or not), while others were made right at the time of filming, and some even in the midst of the editing process.

    The first change I want to highlight is the change of setting. I've obviously been blogging quite a bit about this because it's been discussed so often by my group. This couldn't be done because we didn't have access to an all-white room to execute the original idea, but we figured that the field would be equally as effective in creating the surrealistic and mysterious vibe that we originally had in mind. However, with the short time we had to plan, this wasn't a plausible option. Because of this, we decided to film at Markham Park, which was closer and obviously more accessible to us.

    Another thing we changed came during the time of filming. When we were filming the dialogue between Dainty and Steve, instead of doing an over-the-shoulder shot, we decided to do close-ups of ourselves. I think that this definitely aids in making it more surrealistic, as it almost separates the characters from each other, furthering the idea that Steve is extremely out of touch with reality. This was also done as a way to make the filming process easier, as Nicole and I kept messing up our lines and talking over each other. Below is a close-up shot from the film that Virginia sent to us as she was editing. 

    One last change we made came in the post-production/editing process. To deal with the differences in natural lighting in some of our shots, we decided to increase the saturation. We figured that this would also further the surrealist nature of our film opening, and also entrance our viewers into the world we're creating. 

    We obviously knew that the final product we would create would deviate somehow from our original vision. There were lots of factors that were out of control that caused us to change things about the film, and about the process itself. This is exactly what we expected coming into this process, and I believe that our anticipation of such changes is exactly what prepared us for this process so well.