CCR - Creative Critical Reflection

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 back blurred out due to filming issue

4th & 5th scene: Dutch Angle / Canted Shot showcases instability, mental breakdown, camera movement goes from being smooth (in the first three scenes) to handheld, shaky, also signalling instability.

Representation: We did not make individual representation (who the actors are) a focus during our film. The reason for this is we wanted the viewer to focus on the content of the film instead of representation. As for genre representation, our film breaks the mold by utilizing the opposite of a jumpscare, getting scared by the absence of something (the passengers). Because of these two factors, we do not believe our film is stereotypical.

Audience Engagement: Tough to go into too much detail here because we did not fully plan out what a hypothetical full-length film would look like. However, we think that it could potentially gain traction if executed correctly because of the intrigue, mystery, and potential for adventure that may attract viewers. We also would have to analyze a hypothetical full-length film before making a decision as to the specific distributor, and we can't say for certain right now as there are many different directions that the movie could go in. Marketing would be very easy, even just based on the intro alone. The intro is very easy to make into a trailer with cuts and with the driver's shocked expression.

What I Learned: As chief editor, I learned how to use HitFilm Express and Audacity, spending hours learning technicalities in the software to best improve the film (ex: witness protection (blurring), variation in audio, exporting properly in best format). Other skills I learned were organization, carefully filming with camera, making multiple takes. Moreover, we also learned that we need to plan ahead better from the beginning, always having the final product in mind while filming. I also learned about the importance of storyboarding.

Technology that we used: Mainly HitFilm Express and Audacity for video editing and audio editing respectively. We also made use of our blogs, with blogspot and blogger. This allowed us to keep our thoughts down neatly and better organize and plan out how we would do things.

Thanks to Arturo and Alejandro, my team members, and also thanks to our teacher Mrs. Wozniak.