Reedit Blog: Slowly But Surely

The pandemic known as the coronavirus, or COVID-19, has altered our schedules completely; with much fewer people leaving their homes now, it feels as if our new schedule is just to stay home. For me, personally, I am not bothered by online learning as I've taken, and still am taking online courses; the only difference I see is a very great quarantine break until April 15th, which quite worries me.

At Fort Lauderdale High School, we allow students to challenge themselves by taking high-assessed academic courses that grant college credit. However, we only have approximately half a month or so to review the content in most challenging classes such as AICE. Reviews mainly happen during the school day or after school, even sometimes during the weekends when reviewing with a peer or a peer group. Although, I find it relatively hard to focus on my academics as I'm more concerned about the virus; trying to sustain my health as possible and also my family's health. With this in mind, less of my attention is drawn to what is happening academically rather than what is happening globally. 

I believe it's not just my attention drawn; daily, I see more articles written about COVID-19, how it affects people, how many people were already affected and etc. This pandemic, although much lower here in the United States, is still a humongous issue that needs to settle down before anyone can go back to their "normal routine." However, it seems hard to do so as many events people were looking to are now postponed or canceled altogether. As much can also be said about Hollywood's films and how they've postponed or stopped the process in total. This negatively influences the production process; if filming is postponed then it will obviously have to start at a later date which may conflict with dates the actors already had planned. This may delay the process even further as the conflicts have to be solved in order to continue the already postponed filming.

Relatively, the opposite concept is happening for me; as I only need to finish editing, and I'm content with the editing applications I have at my disposal, this quarantine session is helping me rather than hurting.

Reshoot Blog: The Next Step

I finally have the current schedule for reshooting; it takes into consideration other schedule conflicts, approximately duration per scene, and issues that are occurring or may occur. As I mentioned the first time I filmed for the movie, we used the alternative place (the house) to film as there was a difficult connection to physically meet each other to film; however, since I have to reshoot, I find this an opportunity to film at the places we had before. The main problem is overall scheduling; since this film involves many actors and people, they all need to be available for their selective scenes at the specific time of day. Also, I realized that filming takes so long personally due to mistakes that occurred during the take and had to be reshot during that time or equipment malfunctions; so, in advance to avoid these situations, I will check over the equipment (i.e. the camera is charged, the tripod functions, etc.) and also reduce the number of mistakes by making it officially clear filming is happening, going over parts with actors, and etc. I am quite pleased with this schedule as it seems more elaborate since the amount of time we have is greater due to the number of days that school is closed; which means, the greater likelihood of the schedule following as there are no distractions other than academics.

Recently, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been catching everyone's attention and many organizations have postponed or completely canceled events such as Coachella, and Calle Ocho. In simplicity, no one should obtain this virus and should avoid it at any cost. With this being said, extra measures will be taken to ensure the highest probability of safety and health; for example, the parts of the reshooting scene for the house will be disinfected or clean such as windows, hand objects we will carry, and etc. Although I cannot control how other people act during our outdoor scenes, I will film in a secluded environment and clean the objects around us and objects we will be using. Furthermore, every actor will be wearing a surgical face mask and if they do not have one in their possession, I will supply them with one. Of course, during the scenes we will have to take off the mask and maintain it in a concealed bag; there will be extra masks and other supplies as we film if it is deemed needed. Conclusively, we will ask the organizations or owners of the establishment we are filming at whether we are still allowed to film due to this pandemic; if the given response is a no or similar, then we will schedule a new place. 

Reshoot Blog: Postponed

The information gathered from my peer reviews really guide me into the direction I need and highlight my weakened skills; with full accuracy, I believe this peer review is one of the best ways to understand my progression through the course and reflect on what skills need to be demonstrated better. The main problems identified in my peer reviews is the lighting in the last scene and the sound combinations in the background; for the scene with the lighting, the camera's battery had died, so we had to wait until it was charged enough for the scene- now reflecting on that situation, I will cautiously charge the camera more efficiently before I film. Next, the problem with the sounds was that they were overlapping and caused confusion; this is due to the music being approximately equalized to the same volume as the dialogue in the background- this is a simple fix as I can adjust the music in the background in the video with an app on my laptop. Other than that, most of the details given in the peer reviews match closely or exactly to its requirements; with this idea in mind, as I start reshooting, I will focus on lighting changes and sound quality to ensure I do not repeat any mistakes. Overall, these peer reviews helped me to focus on specific elements of the video that I would not notice that is bad/ low quality; this perspective enforces the idea of audiences and what they want to see when viewing a film.
Although, I did not film any new scenes as it had to be rescheduled due to conflicts with other actors' schedules; with many constraints on filming, I believe that scheduling is always one of the most demanding and time-consuming. This is because peoples' schedules will not always line up and then compromises have to be formed in order to continue with the progress of filming; this is also a part of the reason why it's time-consuming as I personally had to find free time to reschedule and plan how the filming would proceed, which takes much more time with the more actors and people I have involved. Furthermore, scheduling also has to deal with factors that I cannot influence such as weather, events (happening at the said location), and personal emergencies with actors; these factors are the hardest to deal with as there is really little to no compromise. At least there could be a degree of compromise for actors' schedules, however, when it comes to indeterminable variables, it is very risky to make a late compromise.
The place we want to reshoot first is at the house; during the scenes that have overlapping and loud noises in the background, we hope to influence clarity among background sound. I may also take into consideration filming in new alternative places due to personal conflicts with the currently scheduled areas.

Peer Review: Pick a Movie, Any Movie

Last class, we were given a group to peer review their finished product. My group was group six and overall had a decent movie except with a few minor problems. The features I liked most about the movie was the clearness in quality, sharp cuts, great focus on the subject, proper lighting, and efficient backgrounds. The quality throughout the whole movie was contained meaning there were no glitches nor mistakes in the editing; which also reflects the sharp cuts, I love how it flows one scene to the next without hesitation and it looks very organized. In the movie, there is an intense focus on the subject meaning the viewers can easily pick out what/who is the main focus. Also, there was decent lighting in the majority of the film, whether it was indoors with artificial lightings such as lamps or outdoor lighting with the natural glow of the Sun. Lastly, the backgrounds were very efficient and elegant as they weren't very crowded nor messy or confusing; all of the backgrounds were very clear and contributed great quality to the film. However, as I mentioned there are several problems with the film as well.
Films may never be seen as truly perfect because they are all viewed through different perspectives of its viewers and it's up to that viewer to decide on what to think about a certain feature in a film. This does not mean that the film is bad- it just means that there are features incorporated into it which not everyone agrees upon. Some of these features are dim lighting (in a few scenes), story clarity, and missing angles/ shots. In the scenes that occur with the subject getting up from the bed, the camera is pointed down toward the face and shows the casted shadow of one part of the face darker; although the subject can be seen, it could be hard to distinguish what her actual facial features look like; so, the use of a dim light should help see the subject's face without contrasting the darkness too much. Furthermore, the story's plotline is very confusing, as a first-time viewer, I did not know what was happening nor what was the background context to the story; this should be elaborated on, however, through the technique the director sees fit such as whether to add a voice-over or simply arrange the scenes to influence clarity on the goals on the main subject. Lastly, there are various shots and angles missing from the footage as mentioned on the review paper; with those including establishing shot, long shot, over the shoulder shot, pan, tilt, shot reverse shot, eye-line match, and action match; although, these do not pertain as such a problem as they can be quickly implemented in scenes by just changing the angles and shots for scenes that are quite repetitive.

Editing Blog: Fire Alarm Fierce

I have fallen behind schedule due to any negative circumstances. I was editing my film at school on my own personal laptop, I was editing in the morning before school started and lunchtime; however, then the fire alarm was triggered because apparently there was a fire from a teacher's lunch and so then I had to evacuate the building, closing my laptop and doing so erased the edited film I already had on my computer. I still had the film but now nothing was edited; in shock, I tried getting as much done with the leftover battery on my laptop and restarted. Although, I could not do much as my laptop battery died and I had to wait to get home to finish. This taught me a very important lesson to always save my work even when I'm almost finished. It was upsetting to lose all that progress and possibly even more upsetting to restart it all again. It was harsh to have to redo all of my setups, yet I was glad to learn this lesson for future personal projects I may do. This project is probably by far the hardest one that was assigned in the class, yet I do not regret taking it because as I mentioned it always teaches me a lesson. Now the video is mainly edited; yet, I still have quite a few edits to do. I am constantly looking for ways to communicate my ideas; personally, I believe a lot of producers do this. Mainly because it doesn't hurt looking at other people's perspectives; as competitive as it sounds directors drive off of each other's ideas.

Editing Blog: Work at Home

I have finally moved onto the editing phase of my movie. This means I have selected my footage, dumped my raw footage, and organized it by scene. Although my editing process differs from others, I regularly edit individual scenes then edit the film entirely; as in, during this phase, I edited the lighting, background sound level, and overall visual details for the scenes. I do not want to compile so much editing; this is because if an accident occurs. Although not much editing takes place during this phase. Much of my film already has good lighting and decent background so I do not completely edit it. I ensured that most scenes with sound had a clear background and that lighting was bright but not too much. I believe the background music is intense for the action genre; however, not to an extent where it's too loud. I believe the hardest part of this editing process is the sound as it can get very conflicting.