My CCR

Below is my CCR for our project Love Ablaze:

Love Ablaze! Final Project! It's Here!

Finally finished, here is our two minute film opening, Love Ablaze.

(music used:
Berlin, Irving. Cheek to cheek. Dorothy Collins. N.d. Web. <https://archive.org/details/Dorothy_Collins_390/CheektoCheek.mp3>  )

Edit: Here is the link on google drive in case the Youtube embedding isn't working

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9yy1BbykjwhTDJra1JSOTF2OW8/view?usp=sharing

Our Song

The song we will be using is.....

Cheek to Cheek, written by Irving Berlin and performed by Dorothy Collins.

You can find the song here: https://archive.org/details/Dorothy_Collins_390/CheektoCheek.mp3

This song is in the public domain, and it fit very well with our project. The light happy tone fits the first half, and contradicts the second. In the second half it's muffled, representing how the world is going on normally outside the room that our main character is torturing the male character.

Why Won't My Text Work Well?

It's almost done. Almost. Done. All that's left now is some last minute cleanup on the editing and placement of text. The issue is, film conventions require us to put credits in the opening; We can't seem to find a place that the bulk of the credits fit. We found decent enough places to overlay the text of our actors' names, however the Directing/Producing credits are bulky and annoying.

We did decide on a text, after struggling to find one that was thick enough to read while still being elegant.

The Lightbulb

Yesterday was our final day of filming. We realized that there were a couple more shots that we needed to get in order to wrap up the opening. It was 5:30, Ash pulled up to my house with Kristen and Berni in the car, and we started unpacking and resetting some of the set from before. Kristen pulled a blanket out of the car, which we were using to block out sunlight in my garage, and something fell out of it. It turns out Kristen's blue lightbulb got caught in the blanket and crashed to the ground, shattering.

This was, while somewhat comical, another setback. So the four of us climbed into Ash's car, and we set out on our way to the hardware store. Unfortunately, we made a mistake navigating there, so a ride that should have taken us 5 minutes took us 15. Oops.

Kristen and her new friend- a weird hardware store mannequin.

We finally got to the store, picked up a lightbulb (plus some sodas), and headed back out. This time we knew where we were going.

Other than that the filming was pretty successful, we just ended later than we thought we would. Not too big of a deal.

-and look at that fresh, new blue LED lightbulb!

Production Company Logo?

Since part of this project is showing that we can follow film conventions, we want to put a production company logo in the beginning of our piece. I wanted to make something delicate, that would go with the beginning of our piece. I was struggling to find an idea that really sat with me, until Thursday in class when Ash saw this owl in her school planner, and drew a sad face on it.

This owl really resonated with me, I thought it was a cute thing that could represent our group as a whole, while not being too specific. Then in school on Friday, I spent all day doodling up a logo that wasn't too busy or detailed. I wanted to keep it delicate. I had an idea on friday to maybe make an animation to make it more interesting. I sketched out the basic frames, and yesterday I got to putting it in an art program on my computer.

The program I used is free, it's called FireAlpaca.

From my basic sketch I got to drawing, and in about half an hour I had drawn all the frames I wanted.

All the frames in separate png files.

I put all the frames into Final Cut Pro X and retimed them all to 1/60 of a second (0:00:01). When I got to a speed I liked, I played around with putting it over the beginning of the piece, or putting it over a black screen beforehand. After discussing with my group, we decided that it looked best over a black screen. I then added some sound effects, because personally I didn't like how it felt with no sound.

We still haven't come up with a name, but when we do I'll add it to right underneath, or right above the animation.

Here it is:

Sources:
The art program I used: http://firealpaca.com/

Editing and Editing Struggles

My favorite part of the whole process is post production. While being on set and filming is fun, I find that editing is the place where I can really do my part. Editing can take a bunch of random footage and make it into a fluid piece, using cuts, and sound elements. The most exciting part for me on this project is color grading. I'm going to try my best to make the beginning look like it's from the late 50's, while still keeping color, and making it have warmer tones. But, I think I'll discuss color correction more on a later post.

The first thing I did when I got the clips on Tuesday, was figure out which to use and which to leave. I wasn't there the first day of filming, so I was really curious to see what shots Kristen and Ash got. It turns out they provided me with plenty of inserts and interesting angles; however, I ran into a little problem. When they shot, they didn't know how much time exactly they had to fill, so they got extra footage of things that work with the plot. I could tell while editing in hindsight, that they were unnecessary, but in fairness there was no way for Kristen and Ash to know that. Unfortunately, cutting these clips leaves me with continuity issues that I have to constantly correct for. For example, there's a shot where Bernie's character takes a bunch of groceries out of a bag, then she takes a knife out of a drawer. I need to cut the part where she takes the groceries out of the bag, which means I have to be really creative in the way that I hide the groceries that just appear on the counter. This issue makes this piece one of the most challenging things I've ever edited. Plus, I have a time limit, but I want to control the pacing of the piece. This makes it even harder, because I have a lot to fit into two minutes, and I still need moments where the audience can think and figure out what is going on.

This is my Final Cut Pro X timeline as of now. I've already added in the foley I recorded on set, (of Nate screaming, of Bernie's shoes on the garage floor, of Nate shuffling in his chair, etc.), and the song we are using (which I'll probably discuss more in a later post).

I had to cut out a lot of things that we loved, but didn't make the piece better as a whole. In my opinion that is one of the worst parts of editing. My favorite part of editing, however, is getting to see the piece evolve with every new draft. Let me just say, I can't wait to be done.