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 Creative Critical Reflection ScriptBy Rebecca WolffOn completion of production, candidates must reflect upon their work, using digital formats such as director commentaries, slideshows with voiceover, podcasts, prezis or screencasts. The emphasis should be upon creative use of such tools to critically reflect on the work, guided by the following compulsory questions: How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues? ?How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products? How did your production skills develop throughout this project?How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?*( )* = note for editingDP = Director of PhotographyIntroductionHello, my name is Rebecca Wolff and I’m the director of the title sequence for A Lot To Learn. I’ve learned quite a bit from my work on this project and am excited to show it all to you in my CCR.Question #1: How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues? Regarding genre conventions, I wanted to mostly conform to the typical conventions found in comedy and coming-of-age films. A major source of inspiration for me was the opening of The Edge of Seventeen. I love the disorganized vibe and constant state of motion the opening conveys; this was what I envisioned for my project when I started planning. Nadine’s costuming especially was something I wanted to emulate in my final project; she is always wearing something mismatched, yet it somehow looks like it belongs on her. In order to do this, I had my character, Aspen, wear a simple gray sweatshirt, leopard print leggings, and mismatched socks. Her hair was obviously brushed in a hurry and she’s barely wearing any makeup. She doesn’t look totally crazy, but she has elements in her wardrobe that show she is disheveled. I also based a few of my shots off of The Edge of Seventeen, like these tracking shots of my character in the hallways, this shot of my character at her desk, and this shot of her legs as she is getting dressed. These convey that constant state of motion I mentioned earlier and give a more urgent vibe to my whole opening. As for editing, I wanted my shot durations to be relatively short in order to create a fast pace. This was a difficult task for me because achieving it started before I even picked up a camera. I had to make sure I planned enough shots to fill up the two minutes, but not so many that I would go over the time limit. I definitely overplanned, but it wasn’t detrimental to my sequence because a lot of the shots I planned were nonessential and could be cut. After filming, I had to put everything in order. I expected this to be more difficult than it was, but because my planning was so thorough, arranging my shots in order came easily. All I really had to do was crop my clips in a way that made sense. I used a lot of jump cuts, which are commonly found in the comedy genre, and I think they really helped keep the pacing fast. Sound is definitely the make or break of the whole process. My camera captured most of the ambient sounds I needed, but I did go back during post and rerecord certain sound effects in order to make them crisper. My soundtrack was the most important element of sound in my entire title sequence. I wanted to use a rock song that was either from the ‘80’s or had ‘80’s vibes because these are the types of songs typically used in coming-of-age films. I chose the song “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett in order to convey irony; the song is about doing whatever you want no matter the consequences, which directly contrasts with the feeling of anxiety and urgentness that my intro conveys. The song also conveys a theme that is commonly included in coming-of-age movies, which is overcoming the idea of a reputation and what people think of you. I love when movies use music to foreshadow future events, and this song is perfect for this. My titles also conform to comedy genre conventions. I used bright yellow text, which may seem like a bold choice for a film opening. It definitely is bold, but that's because comedies often use bold colors for their titles. Here are some examples from various other openings *(include Mean Girls, The Edge of Seventeen, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, etc. Be sure to list the name of the films under their fonts)*; notice how bright the colors are. Also notice how the text is mostly bolded and typically uses all uppercase letters. As you can see, I did the same sort of thing with my titles. As for representation, I wanted to break the norms of the comedy and coming-of-age genre. Most comedies follow a male lead with women as supporting characters. They are objectified and made to look stupid so the audience can laugh at them. Coming-of-age films frequently use females as leads, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are portrayed better. Female-led coming-of-age films usually focus on women coming into their sexuality after being used by a male romantic partner. I didn’t want my film to be like either of these, so I decided to cast a woman as my lead and not include a romantic problem. The only problem I established in my opening was that my character was late for school. While female sexuality is an important issue to address in modern film, I wanted to break away from always including a man in a woman’s story. Sometimes the simple issues in life are just as important as the heavy ones and I wanted to show that in my opening.Question #2: How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products?When I first came up with the idea for my film, I knew I wanted to make it an indie. I knew that if I went this route, I would have great creative control and wouldn’t be enslaved to a larger production company *(throw disney shade)*. The only indie production and distribution company I knew about beforehand was A24. They produced and distributed Lady Bird, which is one of my favorite movies, and also happens to be in my genre. After conducting thorough research on them, I ended up choosing them to produce and distribute my film. They were perfect for A Lot To Learn because they typically choose to finance coming-of-age comedies like mine, and most of the time they turn out really well. Aside from Lady Bird, A24 has been involved in the 2018 hit Eighth Grade and Never Goin’ Back.My film will be a platform release, starting with a premiere at Sundance Film Festival. Releasing at a film festival before releasing to major theatre chains will give my film the opportunity to gage interest and generate buzz. Since I’m starting out at a popular film festival, my film is going to be seen by various film critics. Once my film hits theaters, my target audience will broaden to teenagers and young adults with a few older teachers and parents in the mix. After its theatrical run, A Lot To Learn will be accessible through the streaming service Amazon Prime Video. One of the downsides to producing and distributing through an independent company is that my film simply won’t receive the same amount of buzz as the next Avengers film. Streaming will give more people access to it, further increasing my audience. Having my film on a streaming platform was very important to me when I was choosing a distribution company; part of the reason I chose A24 was because they have a streaming contract with Amazon.Question #3: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?At the beginning of this project, my production skills were...minimal. This was my first time trying to make a film, so I didn’t really know what to expect. However, once I started to dive into the production process, I learned a lot about the jobs on a film set, including the roles of the cinematographer and director. When I first learned about cinematography in class, I didn’t fully grasp the extent of the DP’s job. I knew they used a camera and filmed the movie, but I didn’t have a deep understanding of the specifics of their job. Once I started production, however, I learned a lot. The main thing I took away from the process was that DP’s have to be insightful. They have to adapt to situations with the actors, various lighting conditions, and orders from the director. They also have to make split second decisions concerning camera angles and shot types. I wasn’t prepared for this; I know it’s sort of naive, but I expected my planned shots to just work. For example, the first shot of my opening is a close up of my character sleeping. I originally planned this to be a high angle close up like this *(insert screenshot here)* but I quickly realized I didn’t like how it looked. I changed it to the side close up you see in my final sequence.Before starting production, I thought the job of the director would be easy. All they have to do is tell everyone else what to do...right? Yeah, not quite. One of the jobs of the director is communicating their ideas to all the people involved. I found myself assuming my actress, Taylor Moore, knew how to act in certain scenes; I didn’t tell her exactly what to do. I didn’t anticipate how difficult it was to communicate my vision to another person. I can only imagine the struggles the director faces when trying to communicate with an entire film crew.I also learned about how injured actors can impact the production process. A week after I finished filming, I planned to refilm the car scene and some tracking shots at my school because they didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to. A few days before refilming though, my actress busted her chin open and had to get stitches. This would have caused various continuity errors, so I made the decision to only reshoot her getting out of her car; she made sure to hide her face from view. This experience It makes me think of how, on an actual movie set, if an actor/actress is injured the entire production halts. This can put a film months behind schedule and cost millions of dollars. I knew this before taking the class, but after enduring this myself I have gained a better understanding of the feelings of frustration that go along with it.Question #4: How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project? In order to film A Lot To Learn, I used my iPhone 8 camera. I chose to film on an iPhone for many different reasons, the first one being it is easily accessible. Another reason is how easy it is to use; there aren’t any complex buttons and it focuses automatically. iPhones are small compared to other cameras so holding my phone during filming wasn’t a big deal. In fact, the iPhone’s small size eliminated the need for me to use a tripod for come scenes. It also made handheld shots like these *(insert handhelds here)* easier to accomplish.To edit my title sequence I used iMovie. Before editing this project, I hadn’t used iMovie that much; the only experience I had with it was editing this music video and this analysis of “get out” *(show thumbnails of the videos? Put “link in description” in letters at bottom of screen?)*. I watched several tutorials to learn the basics, such as cropping, splitting, and arranging clips in the iMovie timeline. This was the easy part; once i watched the videos, I had a firm grasp on how to arrange my clips effectively. After I had a working rough cut, I began color correcting. Once again, I had to watch a video on how to do this in iMovie. I didn’t do much to the colors in my film because all the video tutorials I watched warned me against excessive color correction. I did slightly increase the saturation of all clips in order to conform to the comedy genre convention of bright colors and high saturations. I toned down the brightness for a lot of the clips in the second part of the title sequence because the harsh sunlight got in the way. For the bedroom scenes in the beginning, I darkened the clips to make them look more like a dark bedroom. For the most part I didn’t mess with the warm/cool feature; there were only a couple of clips that I had to make more cool toned.After color correction, I added titles. Titles were very difficult for me because all of the titles in iMovie are awful. The fonts are cheesy and so are the transitions. In order to create sleek titles, I used powerpoint. Now, I know what you’re thinking *(insert dwight saying “powerpoint is boring”)* But in this case it was really helpful! Essentially, I typed my titles out in yellow Libel Suit font and placed them where I wanted them on the screen. Then I added fade in/fade out transitions to my text. After that I made the background a minty shade of green. I screen recorded my powerpoint all the way through and then imported the screen recording into iMovie. I placed the titles where I wanted them to go in the timeline and then selected the green screen feature in iMovie. This feature superimposed the text onto my screen perfectly. After this endeavor, making my title card was easy; I just changed the powerpoint background to black, screen recorded the transitions and placed them where I wanted in my timeline.Once I finished editing the visuals, I began adding sound. Just like before, I watched a few videos on sound editing so I knew where to start. I ended up going back to rerecord a few key sounds, such as a car door closing and a front door locking, with my iPhone’s voice memos. I kept all of my ambient sounds at the 30-100% volume mark. After this, I added music. I downloaded my music from Youtube and it was super loud so I lowered it to around 8% volume. I had to chop up the song and rearrange it so that it would fit in the two minute time limit, which took me a lot of time. I had to match up certain sections of the song so that there wouldn’t be a jump in the audio; this required me to listen to it over and over and over again with my Apple earbuds to make sure everything was level.ConclusionThroughout the making of my film, I learned so much about all the stages of moviemaking and became a better filmmaker. Thank you so much for watching my CCR and be sure to watch my final project. ................
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