A Little Blogspot🍡

Hypothetically, if we could have a perfect, high-caliber film with a huge budget, I'd like to discuss what I would do! oooo actors! Personally, this might be difficult for me, as I don't watch acted films as much as I do voice-acted films. However, I know that for the actor of my character, Ayo Edebri would be an almost immediate option. I just think she's crazy talented and also has a young face perfect for acting as a teenager. I also think the full film should include a strong mother character for the MC to rely on, and I think Angela Bass would be the perfect actor for such! Costumes: I would be hiring designers from all my favorite J-fashion brands. For example, I would need pieces from ACDC Rag, connection shops like Dreamy Bows, and stores in Shibuya 109 like Liz Lisa, Mars, and maybe even an expensive piece from "baby, the stars shine bright” or “angelic pretty!” Location: easy. Washington D.C. I want the characters to live in America but get a diverse metropo...

 Ok- so obviously we cant really use copyrighted music in this film, leading to some difficulties as I knew the perfect music for most of this!  I was most heavily inspired by Japanese music, especially the calming tunes by lamp- my personal favorite being their song Yume Utsusu. It took some time to find a replacement for such, so here's a few copyright free songs I considered to make up for it. (insert songs here) In addition, sound wise, I used a lot of foley for this project- recording loud bead noises, humming, etc and also a lot of inserted sounds such as door swinging and car pull ups. I got these resources from epidemic sound and free sound, including a few chimes  I made myself too through a dj app! that was fun, as despite being a creative I am not a single ounce of musically talented- maybe thats a new area for me to discover as I get older!  This project overall gave me an opening to new creative mediums to explore- so hopefully I can continue to do so!...

Tuyetnhi is still the main person working on editing at the moment, but I've had my hand in stuff too! Mainly handing resources (music, voiceover, foley work etc.) and showing her what shots and edits id like. My main hand in actual physical editing was with my phone, increasing the quality and overall look of our shots, and helping to give pointers as to where certain sounds and music will start.  Because of the difference from our original film camera shots to our phone camera shots especially with lighting) I may have to record an extra scene or two explaining the change in lighting. So far I've primarily been using capcut, i-movie, and google drive for uploading and working with the film footage, so hee are some pictures of  my work on that now!  

    While completing the last bit of editing, I contemplated a thing or two. My favorite part of the filming process were the shots and angles we took. We thought up a lot of our ideas on the spot, so I'm going to go through a few of them and what I enjoyed about them! Close-ups on the desk The close-ups towards the desk and props (for example, in this scene, a close-up towards the makeup) really established a clear idea of the characters personalities solely through the things they own and play around with. Hip-level shot A shot from shoulder level allows for a wide view of the overall scene and gets close to human view, allowing for a natural and homey feel as we establish the secondary characters existence. Ground-level shot A ground-level close-up of the shoes allows for a focus on a feature you typically wouldn’t be able to see, further characterizing the character’s actions and establishing the character’s view of time as they wait for their friend.

  In my last post, I spoke for a while about working, and I did notice quite a bit of burnout throughout this process. But hey, that isn’t so bad, is it? Last year, I moved schools as a nervous wreck and a bully victim. Within a little while, I had quite a few friends but felt kind of distant from everyone—that was until I started to share my art and interests. I enjoy being an artist and a creative so much because connections are necessary, and this project not only forged new relationships but also made existing ones a million times stronger. Through the burnout and stress of all the incoming tests and projects, I came through this project with new skills, new passions, and friendships I know will last a while. When it comes to our roles in this project, My lead role was acting- but I was also a huge part in concepts. I helped to draft the storyboard, set up (and owned) the set and props, and also did a lot of the camera work. Tuyetnhi acted too but I feel as if her main role was...

Ok, so, of everything this year, balancing my creativity and my work has been hard, especially since they're both heavy this year. I have high-level classes galore, but I also have two opportunities to get my art into a museum! It’s just really exciting, but also nerve-wracking. This project was a break of sorts for me—not in the sense that I was relaxing or anything, but in the sense that I was doing something completely different. It was way out of my comfort zone when it came to both art and academics. With this in mind, I felt like I really honed in as best I could on this project! But it definitely wasn't easy. There was an insane amount of stuff to do, and sometimes I crumbled under pressure, being behind on one thing or another or missing some things completely. Thankfully, with the help of my family and some friends, I've been doing better right before finals, so that's some good progress!

  Finally!!!! Ok. WERE DONE RECORDING!!!!! our final filming day was honestly far more relaxed than I expected. I was going up to orlando the next day so I thought it was going to be stressful, but instead I had a very relaxed enjoyable time. We spent a lot of our recording period just playing around and getting footage of that to help us establish the friendship between the main characters. For a little while we danced to “sunset road” by reiko takahaski, something about 80’s music just really uplifts my mood so that helped a lot. Alll of the scenes with tuyetnhi visible were recorded! we also did quite a few scenes to fit a match cut and such, so yeah- overall it was fun to record and I had a good time! I also recorded the title sequence! thought it would help to record some beads falling to make the whole thing tie in and look cute overall. Here are some stills from our time!

All of us in this project are huge fans of film, but specifically, we are huge fans of animated films. We were artists, so we wanted to figure out ways to translate our love for this form of art into another form that was just as good! Here's a specific film I enjoyed and features from it that I wanted to put in ours: Bee and Puppycat, which I talked about in a film study post a while ago! This is, honestly, my favorite show of all time. a coming-of-age calming comedy with subversive twists and turns, all about a girl and her pet traveling through space. I like the dialogue in this film and how it feels very natural despite being animated. The hints that little mundane things in this show elude to genuinely amaze me—I love it so much! For its implementation in our film, I decided on a voiceover with a dreamy feel and hinted at meanings through visuals due to this show. I hoped to make our focus on props similar to the show, establishing world-building and relationship-building!

No, not that type of focus—camera focus! Switching to more affordable methods absolutely made me spiral into a panic when it came to quality; a part of that was the focus. When I learned how it all works, especially rack focus, I thought it was the coolest thing on earth, so I scrambled to figure out how to translate it to traditional media somehow, and just like that, I learned about the world of AE/AF lock. Basically, it's a function that allows you to change the focus of the picture or video by touching the button in a specific way. Using that, I made some really nice scenes, especially with the prop focus in our film! heres some!

Welp-    Working with the new equipment (aka our phones) honestly wasn't so bad! I kind of enjoyed the whole process, honestly. Once we got everything set, things went pretty smoothly. Most of the recording was of me since we ended up having struggles with Tuyetnhis costume, but that was all fine! It allowed us to record pretty much the first half of our film with barely any struggle or difficulty.  Lighting was a bit of a problem, as it was raining that day, but we used the weather to our advantage to make it look like it was very early in the morning during those scenes.  Unfortunately, we had to scrap a lot of our work due to the lighting, but we had plenty from day one, especially for the intro sequence, so it was okay!  Here are some stills of our recording from that day!

  As stated in our previous post, this film is about friendship and losing it. We wanted to carefully reflect a decay in mental health near the end of the film without portraying it in a dangerous or humorous light, like I have seen many other shows do so before. Of course, I cannot speak for Tu or Bella’s point of view, but it's overall nice to create something where teens are just being silly and having fun, even if it's assumed to be childish. When discussing race, all 3 of us are women of color who are often portrayed in an icky light, to say the least. Personally, i’ve always felt semi-isolated by these stereotypes, especially as a more sensitive and quiet black girl. I remember being called whitewashed for my love of fashion, art, and music from other cultures. I wanted to be proud of that in this film. Not every black kid is the way they’re portrayed in films—not all of us are loud and “nasty talking,” and even if we are, so what? It's not always a bad thing. My cult...

  Ok. So now that were aware of what shots we can even complete, me and tuyetnhi are updating our storyboard! If you remember, since last time we’ve literally updated everything. The amount of characters, the overall story theme, etc! So I wrote down and made some dumb sketches of the extra scenes, and tuyetnhi wonderfully revised them. This story is about friendship, connection, and childhood, along with losing those aspects of your life. and I hope we’ve represented that well.

  Ok- So right now, we have new supplies- and They’re great! I set up the phone-stand first- worked pretty well despite the circumstances, but was a little flimsy if the camera was up too high. Not a bad thing though! I actually love the way this works. Heres a shot I took with it! To make things easier, theres a button to turn the recording on and off- making it substantially easier to take the photos i needed! Onto the light, It wasn’t as saturated as the one we used to have but its still really pretty to be honest- made some great lighting at times, the downside is its pretty small, but it projects from far away so it ends up a net positive.   With my phone, I made a few changes to make it easier to record professional quality! It was recommended to use 4K:24, and up the saturation to 0.3 a lot of this will improve on the editing front so i’m doing so soon! In addition, to make sure im following the ruse of 3rds, I have a grid set up. So yeah- overall progress is begin...

  Yeah, My group members are great… Not me though unfortunately. I believe the other two have been pulling their weight for sure! Bella hasn’t done any acting or prop set up but she helps greatly with transportation and planning, and of course will be recording more when we are able to. Tuyetnhi has been working really hard on the editing front, and of course is a fellow actor with me, working with me to make the prettiest storyboard ever!!! I want to thank my mom of course for her moral support, and supplying funding for materials! I guess my main focus has been creative decisions, providing the set and setting up. However, I just don’t feel as i’ve been doing enough. To make up for this of course, I’ve been attempting to solve the issue of prop difficulties, and doing the costuming as I have experience in fashion and makeup! So far it seems like we might be cutting it close, but things are majority working well, Ill speak on our updated materials and Storyboard in a future post! ...

  Oh god… Lighting…. Ok- so we HAD this all in plan. Our first recording session included the specific color grading we wanted, with some bright, warm colors, So I ended up messing with the controls until we got to a sunset pink at (insert gradient) You may be wondering: Doesn’t Tuyetnhis character not rlly work for this? Isnt she going to be wearing all black and white? Well thats the thing! This film is about friendship, and cool toned lighting is preserved for the loneliness at the end of the film. On that point, we want to keep it 3 point lighting to make everything feel warm and full, but i do want some heavy high key lighting and natural lighting here and there (though that depends on our recording time) and of course, low key lighting for the less happy scenes at the end to reflect my characters feelings of despair. SPEAKING OF DESPAIR THOUGH…. most of our process has been heavily set back by equipment. Our last recording time was basically ruined by being provided the wrong...

So, thankfully, I was not too involved in the “first” bits of editing, but I plan on doing a lot more of it in the future. Hopefully, it won't be as painful as this experience! So we were using Chipchamp, and I was doing some foley editing and such with Capcut. Weve been having a lot of difficulties recording, but thankfully we got enough shots in to be able to edit a decent sum of work! For transitions, we’ll be doing a lot of cuts, with some fades. Match cuts and cutaways are particularly important transitions in our work, so we’ll be honing into that a lot! Effects-wise, I think some color grade would help us with our previous lighting difficulties.

AUGHHHHHHHHHH Ok- now that ive gotten that out my system- equipment has been a problem lately. We’re gonna be on a pretty tight schedule here… last time we recorded literally nothing was working in our favor and we lost so much time because of it- so we need to talk about what to do now. Costuming is good, props are good, set needs a quick clean but thats not a problem…. but- what do I do about equipment? we’ve been using the beacon service but last time things weren’t working well and my upperclassmen members had to drive half an hour up and back to even get what we needed. It seems were in big need of a change. My mom has connections that could get us some equipment so maybe we should go for that- It would give us a resource we could borrow and keep at my place until were done. However, if we don’t have the resources we’ll have to make due with what we have.

So, as you could probably tell by me saying the name in the title, out updated film is called Rendezvous! The word is defined by Oxford as “ a meeting at an agreed time and place, typically between two people.” This is quite literally what us happening in our film, hence that title being official! We plan to make it seem like the hangout spot is a regular motif of the Implied completed film. So, when deciding on  title sequences, we wanted something that fit the whimsical vibe of the opening overall!  My personal idea was using beads; It adds to the charm but still looks cute and pretty. We tested this out for a while for different colors and were going to use it for opening credits, but not for the Final Title. Here’s a little example using the name Dick Gumshoe, a character from one me and Tuyetnhis favorite games! Now, In terms of the actual title, we decided on this gorgeous font, Which I think is really cute and also just fits the title itself; Its the perfect font for a...