Sunday, April 7, 2019

Aberration.

Here it is. The final film. Aberration. Hope you guys enjoy it!


See you guys later ✌️

CCR IS DONE

Here is the long awaited CCR.


Hope you guys like it! :)

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Portfolio Project: Editing is done

Bailey and I went to his house after class today to finish all of the editing. We began the process at around 12:45 and it lasted to around 8:00. In total, there was about 5-5.5 hours of editing between the both of us, with breaks taken to retain our sanity. We first began with the intention of finishing by 4:00. Little did we know, as we kept editing, we discovered more and more that we needed to add in order to satisfy our vision. Eventually, 4:00 comes around and we just decided to go eat something. We save the project from where we left off, and return to continue editing around 5:00. About an hour into the process, however, the application (Adobe Premiere) freezes and then we have to restart from our last save, that being before we left to go eat. And an autosave feature is turned on to save every 15 minutes, but that did not seem to work as we were presented with work from 4:00 when the program was rebooted. Eventually, after re-editing the same content that we just did for an hour, we began to finalize a few concepts, such as where to place the credits and where to cut certain shots, such as the punch shot and the trunk closing, finishing the entire project at about 8:00.

For some shots as well, we could not get the right sound we needed, so for me punching out of the trunk scene, we got a foley sound by hitting Bailey's bed and recording that. A video of that is below:


Sunday, March 31, 2019

Portfolio Project: Shooting is complete!

Yesterday night, Bailey and I finished all of the shooting necessary for our project. At around 9:30 Bailey had arrived at my house and we began filming with the "outside the bar" sequence, utilizing the tripod shown in the previous blog post. I was wearing a clean white shirt, not the bloody one from yesterday's post, as I have yet to be beaten up. Since it was only Bailey and I, we had to use tiny pieces of cardboard to mark where to stand in order to get the framing right. We would position ourselves while one other person monitors the camera, and once the best place was determined, we put the piece of cardboard down to know where to stop. We did this for both Bailey and me. 


After that, we filmed the scene of me inside the trunk, giving the illusion that a body was being placed inside it. This was done by me, inside the trunk, put all my weight and jumped as Bailey did a motion of heaving a heavy body within his trunk. From the camera's perspective, it seems as tho there is a body being thrown in the trunk. The video of this is below.


After those two parts, it was time for the lamppost. This was a terrifying event. Unfortunately, due to our strong desire to leave, we did not have the idea to take any pictures for the blog. We parked the car on a grass/rock path on the side of the road. We began filming with the scenes of me escaping Bailey's trunk and then me running away while Bailey chases me. During this time, a number of cars were passing through and interfered with the shot. However, one car specifically drove by right next to Bailey and I and honked his modified car horn that sounded like a train honk. The volume was extremely loud and felt near deafening. This was due to a man just feeling like being a terrible person. We know this as he drove back 10 minutes later, asking if we had a video of him scaring us. We told him no and he drove off. 

From then on, we had an extremely strong desire to leave. I then switched into my bloody shirt, which Bailey and I suspected would be an issue in public as people may think it is real and call authorities. Thankfully this did not happen but it instilled great fear in us and made us work diligently. Eventually, we finished filming and ran to the car, sighing with great relief as we made our way back to my house. 

There were doubts of the lamppost not being ominous and creepy enough, but I can ensure that it definitely was.

Saturday, March 30, 2019

Portfolio Project: Shooting preparation

Yesterday night, Bailey and I were dedicated to finish the filming for the project. The first thing we did was film the "outside the bar" scene which was just in my parking lot. We had a good amount of cars parked there so it fit the setting quite well. The lighting also worked well due to the late time and the warm hued lights of my house. When we began to film, we needed a tall tripod, so we resorted to what we did in the past shooting by using a ladder and stacking things atop it. What it looked like without the phone atop it is below:


Additionally, we made fake blood by mixing together 1 teaspoon of flour, 1 teaspoon of red food coloring, 1 drop of blue food coloring, and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch. We made way too much for what we needed, but that is just because we blindly followed this video: 


We also prepared the shirt that I will be wearing in the film opening with all the blood. Here is a photo of the finished product of that:


Tonight we plan to film with the assets we prepared yesterday and finish all of our shooting! 

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Project Portfolio: Font Finalization

Today, Bailey and I settled on a specific font to use. The font is titled Mistral and can be seen below

We chose this font because we enjoyed clear legibility of it when compared the other fonts we were in decision about.

We found that the first font on the list captured the creepy aesthetic perfectly, but we also found that it was too illegible for a title and would not suffice.

We found the second font to be too simplistic, not really capturing the creepy feel that we need.

The third and fourth font suffered the same fate as the second, being too simplistic for our desires.

The fifth font, the one we chose, had the perfect combination of simplicity, yet getting the creepy feel across, as well as being clearly legible. Bailey and I both agreed it was a great candidate for our title font, so we kept it in consideration as we continued down the list.

The sixth font, we felt, did not have a creepy feel to it as we would like, thus not fitting the film.

The last font was too a strong choice due to its extremely creepy vibes paired with decent legibility. However, we found that although this font is creepier in comparison to the fifth font, we wouldn't want to sacrifice the legibility of the font to gain more creepiness. And so, we settled on the fifth font, believing it best captured the creepiness of the film while still retaining the cleanness and legibility.

Friday, March 22, 2019

Portfolio Project: Spring Break

In the following days, Bailey and I plan to finish filming the project and have a good portion of it edited. We will try to take advantage of Spring Break and film when we are available, but Bailey is going away for the first couple days, limiting our opportunities to film. And again, I still work on the weekend so we will likely still be crunched for time. Most likely on a Saturday night or Thursday night we will have the best chances to film, but it will be difficult considering the conflicts betweens our schedules. Editing, however, can be done independently for the most part, so we will try to film only during our meetups to maximize time, and then editing our respective portions on our own.

On a different note that I forgot to mention in prior postings, getting the violent shots out in public will be difficult considering the time and the place. Having a "beat up" near a road could raise questions from near passerbys, so we will have to find a way to notify people nearby that it is a film. Additionally, we could inform the police that are stationed near in order to avoid any future confrontation. When the date of our filming approaches, we will figure out the logistics of the plan. But until then, likely next Thursday due to the unavailability of both Bailey and I over the break, we will just edit the footage that we have recorded and make a general plan to be as prepared as possible.