Abdullah's Film Blog

It's been a long road to get here, but we finally have it! The final product: Hope you all enjoy!

This is my Creative Critical Reflection (Length 11:44): NOTE: THERE IS AN ERROR AT 2:03 - I say "DIEGETIC SOUND" when I mean to say "NON-DIEGETIC SOUND". Summary: Overall, it was a great experience working on this project. The film overall is a horror / adventure film about someone who "loses" some of his friends while driving without any explanation or reason. This causes him to have a mental breakdown, serving as the intro to our movie "Search", which will presumably be about the driver searching for his friends. Analyzation: 1st scene: Color is utilized to symbolize future and foreshadowing; Non-diegetic Sound is not used to keep tone neutral 2nd scene: Could potentially be improved; we did not give anyone dialogue to use Transition from 2nd to 3rd scene: Could potentially be improved; There is a problem in that some viewers may think a significant amount of time is passing between the two scenes. 3rd scene: Moment of shock for driver; area in...

     Now that the project is pretty much done, there's a lot I can say about how it's gone. It really was a great experience, even though it had its ups and downs, it's amazing to see how far we've come. At the beginning of the year when I first heard about the end-of-year project for this class, I was a little worried and had no idea how I'd go about with the project, considering it nearly impossible. However, as the days have passed, it has turned out to be far easier than I ever could've imagined.     There's no doubt this has all been far more enjoyable with the help of  Alejandro and Arturo, two people who while I didn't know at the beginning of the year, now consider good friends. They made the project far easier than it ever would've been alone and working with them gave me the motivation to do my best on the film.     I also gotta say that's true about this class in general, although difficult at times, has turned out to be far more inter...

    We wrapped up our editing and exported our film today, and as our project is coming to a close, I'll look over some of the last few changes and improvements our video oversaw before we finished the job. You can see the back driver-side window blurred out in the top-right, while the layout of the video editor shows the true intricacy of this part of the intro     First of all building straight off the last editing post, I did find a good solution to the abrupt blur issue we had. I made the effect fade in and out, and it worked wonders, now it looks much more smooth, and even less noticeable than it had been prior to this. However, I had to use some creativity for this. The way I did it was I removed the effect from being directly on top of the third scene's video segment and added another exact frame of the same exact video on top of it that I conducted the effect on and faded in and out. This process was repeated many times for different windows, but with this, I...

-PICTURE OF US THREE-     The way a group functions is very salient in how a project will go. Luckily our group had no issues really, in fact, it was a great experience working with Alejandro and Arturo. We evenly divided the work from the beginning, with all of us having a say while we were in coming up with the actual idea for our project, and all of us had ideas to add into the mix.      After this, we continued to work together but narrowed our focuses a little bit. Arturo specialized in the technical details, costuming, dialogue, and props, Alejandro did some great camerawork and videography, while I focused on the editing. We all helped each other and oversaw each other's parts, as I know firsthand. All the while as I edited Arturo and Alejandro both were incredibly important with their help, and they always had something useful to say about any of the changes I made to the video     I have nothing but good things to say about our team and the wa...

     A few weeks back, I made a post  regarding our original storyboard, which was the first time when we had laid out our plan for our final project. Now that we actually have the final product in front of us, what would a revised storyboard based on the real thing look like, and how does it compare with what we had a few months ago?     There were many things that did not go fully to plan in our film, either due to logistical issues or because we changed our mind. Some of these turned out to be negative and a few others turned out to be positive. It all depends on perspective as to how well you think certain aspects of the intro are.     This is what our initial storyboard looked like, for reference:     This is what the revised storyboard (when taking into account what actually happened) looks like: -TBD-     Here are some of the more notable differences, in short form: The addition of a fifth scene just before the fina...

    Representation, no matter what form, is often a facet that is taken into account by film creators. On an individual level pertaining to the actors, we did not follow this, and it was a very minor thought while filming. We just got whatever actors were available and happy to help out, and things worked great. We'd rather our viewers focus on the content of our film rather than individual representation, as horror, fear, and isolation are universal themes anyone can understand.     On the other hand, as for genre representation, our horror trope I don't feel is very cliché and it is a unique idea. Even though jump-scares are usually utilized in most horror flicks, we made use of the opposite effect. Getting scared by the absence of something (the passengers). I think this somewhat breaks the mold of your average horror film. Overall, we don't think this intro to a film is very stereotypical.

    Lighting is essential while filmmaking, setting the tone for every scene. Furthermore, it also is chiefly crucial in the horror genre as a whole, with darkness and light having different meanings. Dark can shroud things in the unknown or it can protect a character from prying eyes. Lighting also plays a pivotal role in our own movie, especially as we weren't able to access an actual overpass for the moment between the second and third scenes. Because of this, we had to make our own darkness.     In order to implement the shading in between the second and third scenes (when the passengers disappear), we had to consider many factors. Since we lacked flow and continuity between the dialogue of the second scene and the third scene, I went into HitFilm Express and made the second scene slowly fade out over a period of five seconds, then a black screen for two seconds, then the third scene slowly shifting into focus. Our editing with the audio in this section was simil...

      Color is an extraordinarily major aspect of a film that must be considered in production. In our project, we sparingly made adjustments to color while editing. This adds to a sense of realism and mundanity that makes the viewer feel at home and safe. Moreover, it is easy for a zero-budget production crew such as ourselves to conduct.     The one place where we did make a focus on color is the costuming, where we had the driver wearing a white shirt while the passengers all wore black (or other dark colors). This both qualifies as foreshadowing and symbolism, as to show the grim fate of the passengers of the car. While not much focus is displayed on this, it can be easily identified just by the contrast between the driver and everyone else, and it also emphasizes the driver's worry being to a much stronger degree than the passengers (while they still are in the car). Daniel, the driver stands out from the rest of the crowd, emphasizing his importance.

Blurring out our faces when we show up in the third scene     We have continued to edit our video over the last few days and have made numerous improvements. The major issues also have largely been solved, but there's no doubt much more work remains to be done before we have our final product. Here are some of the changes we have made:     One of our biggest problems occurs during the third scene, while Daniel drives alone. As he talks to himself, he drives right past the rest of the cast, who all show up clearly in the driver's-side window. This was an issue we did not originally anticipate, and is relatively noticeable, as when we initially showed our clips to the cast, they immediately noticed the problem. I took care of this problem in HitFilm Express by using the Witness Protection tool, which creates a smearing filter over an oval-shaped area.           I stacked multiple of these over the windshield of the driver-side window in or...

The title of the film, as well as the names of the co-directors, are displayed at the end of our intro       Sometimes, the styling of a title of a film is so well known it can continue to act as a symbol for years afterwards (for example the Harry Potter series or the Godfather). As for our title, though, we decided to keep it simple. The font we used is Eras Bold ITC, and we colored it in yellow (with a brown outline) in order to make it stand out from the surroundings. We displayed it in the sky at the very end as well in order for the viewer to fully understand what our film is about. We also named ourselves co-directors, all having a pretty equal role in the creation of the idea and project, and all having added in our visions for what our final film would look like.     Our credits to our five starring actors (Aldana, Bloomfield, Guerrero, Jimenez, and Montserrate) followed the same pattern, while being noticeable, not distracting to the events being shown...

A close-up of the camera of an iPhone 13 Pro     The equipment someone uses can have a massive effect on the quality or character of their film. For us, though, since we weren't shooting something extremely opulent or extravagant, we went simple, and this resulted in keeping a more genuine and realistic feel for our project.     The camera that we used was that of an iPhone 13 Pro that belonged to our team member Alejandro, who was taking care of the technical details regarding the camera movements and handling. He mounted the camera while recording the second scene (where the passengers and driver were both inside the car) and utilized a handheld approach during all the other scenes. This helped to illustrate the uneasiness and instability of the last few scenes in particular, and also added a sense of realism.     On the other hand, the editing largely took place on my PC, where I made use of the applications HitFilm Express and Audacity in order to take ...

     As anyone knows, sound and audio are some of the most important aspects of any film. Sometimes, simply replacing a bad musical score with a good one can turn box office bombs into masterpieces, and since sound is half of what enters the viewer's brain, it is imperative to make it appealing to any watcher. As I was the main editor, I was mainly taking care of adding the sound, and came across many issues while going through the footage that I tried to improve.     Although our group reviewed the footage in class numerous times and tried to find a good background music piece to place behind the five scenes of our film, we struggled hard at it and had a tough time finding the audio that was just right, so we left that for last. We may go over this more in other posts to our blogs (or may simply leave it be alone).     Just because we didn't pick out specific musical tracks though doesn't mean we didn't have issues with our soundtrack that we needed t...

I closely listen to and review the footage, looking for appropriate places to make cuts      Due to the extreme restrictions placed on the length of the final product and the fact that we didn't take very many takes of each scene, we never had much flexibility in the exact parts of our film to use. The first part of our editing, of course, involved looking through the footage in a more detailed way (than we did outside, deciding which exact takes to use, and stacking them together in order to check their length and making sure that they were OK to use in our final film (mainly that they could fit within the very specific 1:55 to 2:00). As I am the main one tasked with editing the film, most of the responsibility for this part fell in my hands and I have the most things to say about the process, but Arturo and Alejandro both played an instrumental role in editing as well as they provided numerous suggestions and they reviewed the process often in order to check to see if t...

In an image still from our fourth scene, Daniel opens the trunk of the car      While we were reshooting, we decided to add another scene to our film. While this change may be abrupt and unexpected, we are sure that it is for the better and that it adds to the story, improving the film and making it more realistic and enjoyable to watch. The scene was inserted after the third and before the fourth scenes in our storyboard, and it consists of an increasingly aggravated and worried driver looking through the car after he stops it.     He gets out of the car on the driver's side, and opens each of the doors and the trunk, travelling clockwise, while calling out for his friends. When he gets to the front passenger seat, instead of proceeding further forward, he goes through the car looking for traces of the people behind him, realizing that it isn't a prank. The way we've filmed this, the third, fourth, and fifth scenes transition almost perfectly into each other. W...

     Today, on March 09, 2022, we reshot our scenes for our film "Search" and fortunately, it was a huge success. We had enough people that it wasn't a problem looking for people to fill up the conversation, and were more prepared this time as opposed to last time, already having gone through the filming process once before, and having written down notes of aspects of our previous film to be improved as well as also having down certain pieces of dialogue to help the conversation along.     We met up after school earlier today in our school's parking lot to film and got a total of seven people to come: Alejandro and I, who are a part of the media studies class itself, as well as actors Daniel Aldana (the driver), Alexander Guerrero, Noah Bloomfield, Hugo Montserrate, and Jason Jimenez. So many people came that we didn't even get to act ourselves because we couldn't fit everyone in the car. Maybe is the way it's supposed to be, professionals don't act in...

The student parking lot of Everglades High School as per Google Maps, this is where we plan to reshoot our scenes      So we've decided that we're going to be reshooting tomorrow: March 9, 2022. This time, though, we're going in more prepared and we'll have more people. The reason that we're reshooting is that we didn't have enough high-quality conversation footage for the second scene of our film (which is also the longest scene that takes up the most time and provides the most background). We didn't go in on the first day prepared, so after we had reviewed the footage of the first day, it was tough to squeeze out enough usable conversation that didn't have one of us laughing, looking at the camera directly, or fumbling over words for too long.     This time we'll try to go in knowing exactly what we're gonna talk about, how we'll carry out our scenes, and how to execute the filming. To top it off, another advantage of refilming is now that ...

 What Hitfilm Express looks like      Editing is of course an immensely important part of the filmmaking process, and this is where the magic really happens. The storyline is made out in this section, all the sound effects and special effects will be added, and the video and audio is adjusted just to fit the story's needs. It helps the viewer feel connected to the film and makes sure that they can fully immerse themselves in the film, and feel what is happening. So a large part of our process is going to be focused on the editing.      The program that we mainly plan to use as we edit is Hitfilm Express, which is a free video editing program that has high functionality, especially when compared to other products its price. Although we still may end up filming another day due to the choppiness of the conversation we had in Scene 2 and how that negatively impacts the entire film, it still is of course good to start editing now.     Not only is ...