Quarantined

I previously talked about the panic of the Coronavirus in on of my previous blogs. Well this panic has become very real. Our spring break was supposed to offically start yesterday but due real life threat of

the spread of the virus. The closing of school has thrown me a little off balance. I have been on my game lately with all my school work and staying on top of my grades. I honestly didn’t think that they were going to close school as soon as they did because cases in our county didn’t seem to be growing.  It was really overnight that case multiplied. The first day of my self quarantine went pretty well, it felt like what I needed. School has me so stressed that I don’t realized that I’m stressed until I step back and take a breath. Well know that I’ve out of school I already miss it. I know that’s weird to hear from a student because who misses school but being cooped up in the house all day is worse than 6 hours of learning. The days are starting to mix in together. I cannot tell what day of quarantine I’m on or what day of the week it is. I went to the doctor and they told me I have a low White Blood Cell count so I have to be extra cautious when going outside. Honestly I’m ready for this covid-19 to disappear because if not I might gain 20 pounds and lose my mind.  

Reshoot

This blog was supposed to be posted a couple of days ago but I accidentally hit draft instead of publish... so let's go a couple days back. Today I went to Aldi without my group mates in order to re film some parts that needed to be re filmed. Before I went and I made sure  I talked with management before I did any filming on their property. I got the okay to film the mangers and started filming right away. Since I did not have my group mate with me I used my sister as my camera. I taught her all the basic movements that I would need her to do to capture my scene. I always joke that my sister was dropped on her head and is just sometimes a little delayed. However today she proved me wrong. She was catching onto all the movements and asking me questions about the different angles and how was I going to put all the videos. By the end of the filming day she said that this was a interesting class that she will take at her school next year. I was able to get all my re shoots done within 45 minutes since it wasn't too much to redo. This time I was able to do it without any complaints from costumers.  Once again like always I had the costumers ask to be apart of my "big movie" I think that has been my favorite part of this whole process. Hopefully this is my last time filming though it has not been enjoyable

Editing...again

Today I edited the rest of the film that we film over the past weekend. This time it was much easier than previously. I focused my time today on picking which takes to use. When I first tried to open the videos on my laptop it was not opening. I spent at least 10 minutes trying to open the videos before I went to my teacher. I admit I was starting to worried because I thought we were going to have a re-film everything we did on Friday. Most of what we filmed on Friday was a big chuck of our movie so it was worrisome. This part for me is the most time consuming because I have to watch four or five takes of the same scene. I was able to get some parts of the beginning scene cut. Most of what I have edited now is cut and ready for transitions and special effects. I admitted I was slightly distracted today because of the on-going Pandemic of the Coronavirus. Broward County so far has had 7 cases of people with the Coronavirus. The thing that is worrisome is that you do not who in the school could have had possible contact with these people. I’m worried that our test will get pushed back because school will get canceled out of caution. Since this course is mostly online in theory I would still be able completely my work. The only problem would be that pinnacle studios is only in the schools computer so I would not have access to it at home. I hope that it does not come to this but we can only hope.

Last day of filming...kinda

We had our last day of diluting finally after what seems to be like 3 months. I could not be more than excited to get this over with. We ran into a couple of problems filming that we didn’t on any other day. We get to Aldi’s and we realized it was going going to be harder since we both needed to be in the scene, but we had no one behind the camera. I usually am the one doing all the filming during our other projects so it was a big change for me. We get to Aldi’s and I try to position the camera in the position and we wanted. I had to position the camera multiple times especially with people bumping into the camera. I get most of my scenes done with fairly no complications. Once again we have people asking to be “stars” in our movie. Getting everything filmed was fairly easy, but we ran into real problems when we’re almost done. First we needed to film the scenes with angry customer. I originally was the angry, but since one of group mates couldn’t film I became one of THE main character. I decided that we could have one of the cashiers be angry that we were holding up the line. The first cashier I asked was really shy so she told us to another one. The other cashier was ringing up a line so we were waiting and one of the other employees came up to us and asked us to be careful when we were filming because people were complaining about the camera. I didn’t get frustrated right away so I just took the camera off the tripod. The cashier was finally done ringing up the line and I asked her if she can be apart of our movie, but she had a bit of an attitude and told us to ask the manager. I went up and asked the manager and she told us it was up to the employees. After that whole ordeal we just decided to use only us two in that scene and have the sister became frustrated that her sister was taking to long. Boom we got that scene down and the finally scene with the phone we needed to film outside. We packed our stuff and got ready to film the finally scene. As I am setting up the tripod a lady comes up to us and tells us we need permission from the manager to be filming otherwise it was illegal. This is when I started getting frustrated because she was in the parking harassing customers to buy her special juices and waters. However I am a respectful person so I told her we did have permission from management, which we did. Thankful after all this we were able to be done... for now. 

Peer Review

We had our peer reviews recently and to be quite honest I was scared of what people were going to think of my film. I was most excited though to be reviewing someone else film. I think this important because you get another pair of eyes outside your group who may see things different from you. The person I got made her film about an nuclear attack that was happening and someone trying to save the world. When watching it by myself I thought the movie was about an assassin out to do something. When talking with the person who made the film she then clarified what the movie was about, which brings me to my first point. The story behind the movie was very confusing for me, but not only for me but for the rest of my group. I turned to them after watching asking them what they thought the movie was about. What I came up with was obviously not the story behind the movie. I think what made the film unclear was that her sound was low. The dialogue that was playing in the back of the movie was difficult to hear; the noise coming from other classmates did not help either. There was a couple things that I really liked despite me not understanding the movie. She uses the angles and movements in a strategic way that makes the film flow together really well. The way she is able to capture her surroundings and the mood she needs while getting all the angles and movements was well done. My favorite part of her film is in one part there is a television that is on a news channel and in the middle of broadcasting the tv becomes static. Her being able to put that effect in was really neat to me. There was definitely that pull factor that made me want to continue watching more of the film. I overall liked her movie she just needs to fix the volume/dialogue issue in order to make her story understandable.

Editing...Kinda

We recently had our first day of editing. The other two projects we completed for class we we used the iMovie to edit because it was easier. The last film we did which was a music video our video came out grainy . I figured it was due to us not using the school camera and not using pinnacle studios. This time around we made sure to use the school camera. Well when the time camera around to edit it was pretty hard. We haven’t yet finished our whole film because we ended having to reshoot most the middle portion. We needed something edited for our peer review. I got to editing the next I got to school and I had to relearn how to use pinnacle studios. I ended up watching a YouTuber by the name of Pinnacle Studios Pro. It was honestly much easier to edit after watching his videos. One struggle of this whole editing process was feeling like I was doing the whole thing by myself. We usually do it as a team effort but this class is felt like I was left alone. I think it was mostly due to the fact that we didn’t know how to use pinnacle. I wasn’t able to get a whole lot edited but hopefully next class I am have more film to edit.