Creative Critical Reflection

 Click here to watch my first creative critical reflection.

Click here to watch my second creative critical reflection.

My cited sources for both CCRs are here.

Enjoy!

Film Opening

Click here to watch the opening for my film, Lost in the Pages.

Enjoy! 

Project Reflection

 I am very sad to say that this project is coming to an end. I have had a lot of fun and have enjoyed the entire production process. Before I say goodbye to Lost in the Pages, I want to reflect on my project one last time. 

When I started the project, I was so nervous as to how everything would turn out, how I would be able to do everything, and how my process would go, but the more I worked on it, the more comfortable and confident I became. I learned how to have fun with a project which is something I had never done before. The creative freedom allowed me to expand my ideas, change what I needed to change, and really just do whatever I wanted with the project, which was one of the best parts about it. 

One of my favorite parts of working on the project was developing the mise-en-scene elements. Creating the set design, the makeup design, the prop design, and especially the costume design was so fun for me. Designing some sort of mise-en-scene element for a production, whether it be makeup, costumes, set, or props, is something I can see myself doing as a career in the future, so being able to do that for this project was a great way for me to get started with some experience. I also loved filming and seeing my creation being brought to life. The most fun I had while filming was going to the park to film Delilah being transported into the forest. My dad and I went and explored, trying to find a good place to film, and found someone getting married! That was really cool to see although, the music did disrupt my filming process a little bit. 

My dad and I looking for a place to film.

Me taking a break from filming, due to the wedding on the other side of the trees

I am also very proud of how my project turned out as a whole. Even though some parts of the process were stressful, I carried on and tried to make the best of what I could do. Although I keep saying it throughout my blog posts, I am really happy with how both my film opening and my CCR turned out. Things didn't necessarily go my way, especially with my CCR being a little bit too long, but I still think I made something great. I am going to miss creating these posts and working on my project but I can't wait for it to finally be shown online! Both my film opening and my CCR will be in the next two posts, I hope you enjoy watching them as I have enjoyed creating them. 

CCR Process

 I finally finished my CCR! It was a long, and kind of stressful process but I'm really happy with how it turned out. In this blog post, I will detail the entire process of creating my CCR. 

I first started by answering the given CCR questions. I answered the first two questions during my spring break to get a head start when I came back. On Monday, when I came back from my much-needed break, I reworked my schedule to fit what would work best in terms of working on and finishing my CCR. After I did that, I completed the script for my first CCR (linked here), then did my third CCR question (I meant to do them both but procrastination beat me). On Tuesday, I didn't do as much as I would've liked. I finished all of the assigned CCR questions by completing the fourth and final one (my CCR question answers can be found here). Wednesday was also not as productive as I would've liked it to be as I only filmed the first CCR and began writing the second CCR's script. Filming was not the smoothest process and took much longer than I anticipated. To read what I wrote on camera, I downloaded a teleprompter app that would record me talking to the camera while moving text appeared on the screen. This was incredibly useful because I no longer needed to memorize what I was going to say, I could just read it and it would appear the same on camera. My plan was to read everything at once and then decide what I was going to cut and edit later. This didn't work very well because it was hard to say everything coherently in one take. I then had to go back to my script and work out what I was going to do as a voiceover and what I was going to film. Once that was done, I began filming. After several takes of each line and struggling to correctly readjust the camera, I finished my talking heads and then recorded my voiceovers. Those were much easier and faster to record because I didn't have to worry about the camera angles or my facial expressions, I could just talk. As mentioned in a previous blog post about my CCR approach, I mentioned that my second CCR would be in a "talk show" format. I realized as I was writing the second script that this was going to be incredibly difficult to accomplish with the amount of time I had so, I decided to do a podcast interview instead. I asked the same friend if they were still willing to do the project in a different format, and they said yes so, I got to writing.

Thursday had to be my most productive day by far. I started by finishing the second CCR script (linked here) in class, and when I got home, I began to edit my first CCR. I put all of the clips on the Premiere Pro timeline in order and cut them accordingly. When finished, it was six minutes and twenty seconds long. I realized time might be an issue, but decided to wait to finish filming and editing my other CCR to balance the times to get to the recommended ten-minute time frame. As I put the clips and voiceovers on the timeline, my friend Natalia came over to film her parts of my second CCR. She did so and it went very well, only having to rerecord a few times. When she left, I recorded my lines, which went just as smoothly. After that, I continued to edit my first CCR for a little bit longer before continuing the next day. On Friday, I edited almost all of my second CCR and worked on cutting down the length of my first CCR. When I put all of the voiceovers on my timeline for the second CCR, it came to seven minutes and thirty seconds. I panicked a little bit knowing that was going to put me way over time, especially knowing my first CCR was six minutes and twenty seconds so I started to cut them down. I started on my second CCR by speeding up all of the clips because we both talked kind of slowly. This helped more than I anticipated, it got me to six minutes and thirty seconds. I then sped up the voiceovers on my first CCR and got to five minutes and fifty-eight seconds. That was all I did, for editing on Friday, but I finished the next day by picking up where I left off. I started on the second CCR, wanting to get that completely done. I made some cuts to parts I thought were unnecessary or times where I sounded repetitive. This got me to five minutes and fifty-three seconds. I felt there was nothing else I was able to cut or change, so I had to leave it as it was. I listened to it and exported it. One done! I moved on to my first CCR and upon viewing it, I realized I missed exporting an important clip which put me back close to where I had started with time so, I sped up the clips of me talking to the camera. After doing that and cutting unnecessary footage, I was at five minutes and fifty-two seconds. Again, I felt this was the best I could get without cutting anything important, so I left it as is. I then added the graphics and clips that go over the voice-overs, I found copyright-free music online and put it on the timeline, and completed the credits putting the project just under six minutes. I reviewed my finished CCR, and then I exported it. I was finally finished.

Although both of my CCRs combined became over the recommended ten minutes, I felt that I cut my projects to the bare minimum and only kept what was required to answer the questions fully and completely. I am very proud of my final products and am sad that this project is coming to a close.