Editing from scratch

     Due to the very serious situations that took place in my last blog, I decided Mariapaula should not stress herself as much as she was. I told her that the rest of the group and I would be handling the rest of the editing. There was a problem with this because of how she had began to compile the scenes together on iMovie. iMovie is an editing software which is only on Apple devices. Rafael was the main editor in the last two projects that he was apart of. Darwin was the editor for his past groups too, however, I feel he does not do well with responsibility. Because of these circumstances I told Mariapaula to send all the footage to Rafael. I would have edited the footage if I had any type of editing software or a computer. Rafael doesn’t have an Apple computer and he uses Sony Vegas Pro so he had to start the entire film from scratch because the softwares aren’t compatible. This didn’t make me feel bad or mad because I knew it was for the good of Mariapaula. This was a group project after all and we had to share the workload. However, I honestly don’t think we intentionally pushed the work on Mariapaula at all. At the end of the day she had put herself under a lot of stress on her own will and did things before the rest of us had a chance to. What I’ve just said may have sounded a bit aggressive but I’ve been in her shoes before and I didn’t mind taking her out of the whole she had dug herself in. I’m not saying I’m angry with her for voluntarily taking on most of the workload, but I wish she hadn’t done it and had thought about herself a bit more. At the end of the day, we don’t have control over everything in our lives and have to learn our limits. I believe Mariapaula has now learned hers and in the future she can learn from this experience. Returning to the main subject of this video, after Rafael compiled all the scenes together the film was way too long. It was roughly 3 minutes long. This began the process of trimming what we have and making big cuts. However, the scene that we had lost didn’t seem significant anymore and Mariapaula was doing much better. I am glad she has now relaxed and is in a much better place. The stress school causes can be a bit much, in the end I hope she will continue to feel better and is in a good mental place.

Editing: the big mistake

     After the last day of filming, it was then time to add on all the scenes to the film. Mariapaula started this process when we all left her house. I wasn’t much help in that case. However, when I was home I received a FaceTime call from her; which I felt was weird because she knows I don’t really like to FaceTime. When I answered she seemed quite stressed out and upset. She proceeded to tell me that she had accidentally erased footage that we were going to use. While she was selecting the extra footage that we weren’t going to need she forgot to deselect the scene of Darwin driving away in the house. This scene had taken quite a while because we had to refilm it on the second day because of the car availability. I tried comforting her by saying it happens, it was a mistake, it’s okay. She continued to tell me that she tried telling Darwin we might need another day of filming. I feel that all of us were tired of having to go to Mariapaula’s house because it was inconvenient and after the very busy school week I didn’t want to spend the time I had off to film. I know what I said sounds quite bad but it is how I felt. I did tell her that if we had to film again I would go because getting our film done was more important. She said that Darwin had told her that filming was a waste of his time and she was very upset about it. She then asked me to try to convince him. I didn’t really think I could, but I tried anyways. I texted him trying to be nice but he never replied to what I said and instead ignored it and ignored the subject. I didn’t want to argue so I just let him be and went back to Mariapaula, who was trying to find alternative methods to recovering the scene. I tried looking up methods of recovering as well but all required payments. I told her that if that’s what it would take, I would pay for it and to go ahead and do it. However, she decided not to, she said she wasn’t sure it would work anyways. So I started to think about more ways to solve this problem without another day of filming. I said to Mariapaula “Do we even need the scene?” She seemed a bit hesitant but I told her it wouldn’t affect the fluidity of the film. She still seemed quite stressed and was blaming herself so I told her to stop stressing and that the rest of the group members and I would do the rest. I continued on the call with her and eventually got her to cheer up.

Filming again and again

     I know I said the filming at Mariapaula’s house was done. However, the filming my group and I did at the different location was far from done. In fact, we had to do all of it. After finishing up the scenes at Mariapaula’s house she drove us to the other location. On our way there I could tell she was quite stressed out because the sun was setting and we were running out of daylight. The first scene I shot at the next location was the establishing shot of the other house. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a tripod with me and it was somewhat windy that day so the establishing shot ended up shaky. Next, I filmed the car pulling up to the house. This surprisingly took many, many shots. I’ve said this multiple times now, but Darwin is not a good actor. He drives extremely slow in some of the shots and sometimes drives too far or not far enough. Backing up to the stop sign was also pretty time consuming. After I finally got a good shot of him driving up to the house, I filmed Mariapaula walking up to the car. It wasn’t a difficult task for Mariapaula, but for me however it was pretty hard to follow her without being too shaky or seemingly too unsteady. Next, came a dialogue scene. For this Mariapaula and I decided that I should film each person talking all in the same shot. I got in the car and filmed Mariapaula saying her lines first, one after the other, and then filmed Darwin. This got done quite quickly because Darwin only had about two very short lines. However, while I was filming Mariapaula, Darwin and Macy kept talking in the front seat and I had to constantly ask them to be quiet because I was going to film. I could tell this bothered Mariapaula, just like it bothered me. After this scene, we were pretty tired and were glad to be nearly done. All I had to do after was film Darwin driving away and we were finally done. 

Filming again

     My group and I held another day of filming to finish up what we needed. To begin with, the first thing we filmed was the scene of Darwin in the bathroom, again. The scene we filmed the first time wasn’t good enough. It was also too long and when Darwin is walking away he basically waddles. This scene took us a while but not as long as the first time we filmed it. I feel like I’ve stated this before but Darwin isn’t the best actor. We then filmed the scene of Darwin putting in the materials into the car again. The last time we filmed it, it was too long and also took place in a different car. Speaking of different cars, we had to refilm certain shots because the car we used last time was not available. Mariapaula filmed this scene so I wasn’t really needed. I sat on the sidelines, watched the whole process, and provided any criticism. This scene itself also took quite a while. I’m going to repeat this again because it’s honestly very true, Darwin is not a very good actor. He walks pretty slow from the garage to the trunk of the car for some reason. Next, came the trunk shot. This scene didn’t take nearly as long time as the others, in a couple takes it was done. However, then came the most problematic scene we filmed. I will be talking about this scene later on because of what happened after we filmed it. This is is the scene where Darwin drives away in his character’s car. To begin with, this scene had already been filmed but we had to film it again because of the car availability. Secondly, Darwin kept driving off too slowly. Lastly, it accidentally got deleted later on in the day. While it was being filmed I was standing right behind Mariapaula (the person filming), watching the screen the whole time. After this scene, it was my turn to film. At Mariapaula’s house, in her room, I had to re-record the scene where she’s talking to “her mother”. This took quite a couple shots, but less than the last time. I didn’t have as much trouble with the camera or moving it around and Mariapaula didn’t have as much trouble reciting her lines. This scene concluded the last of the filming done at Mariapaula’s house (for now). 

The First Peer Review

     In AICE Media class we participated in a peer review. The pictures above show what I spotted and didn't see in this groups rough draft. Their video does need some improvement. However, I would like to talk about what I did like about their opening scene. All throughout their film the lighting is pretty good. It was bright, sunny and although it doesn’t exactly match their plot it makes everything very easy to see; there is no blurriness. The camera quality of the scenes is good as well. One of the first scenes was probably my favorite. Two boys are looking at this girl through bookshelves and I think it was kind of different. Most scenes that're filmed by high school students, such as myself, are quite generic. Although, I have seen scenes like this before it wasn’t as generic as what I usually see. It might sound a bit harsh but I did feel a bit of the other scenes were a little too common and a tad bit confusing. Returning to the library scene the lighting in it is pretty good, especially for a library, it was bright but not dull. The scenes where the kidnappers are in the car is also very well lit; the colors in the background are very bright and add some depth to the clips. 

    This leads me into what I feel this group should improve on. They definitely have to link their scenes better. The transitions from scene to scene are quite choppy, they might want to include fade in and outs. This choppiness might be due to the fact that they haven’t had much time to edit their clips so they were probably planning to fix this despite of this feedback. I feel that a better blend in between scenes would improve the film as a whole. There is another improvement I would suggest but I feel that it’s too harsh, I shouldn’t be too critical of theirs and make sure mine is ready to go instead. I do hope they fix this however, and look forward to getting feedback on my own film very soon.