Creative Critical Reflection

 Here is a link to my first CCR. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ze2B4ddLIPe2KcHR_S-aFuVXDBm2N1Na/view?usp=drivesdk

Here is a link to my second CCR. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UpKsgUAQcLbqUEAWLePpV0G4D4NB8KF9/view?usp=drivesdk

Film Opening

 Here is a link to my film opening, Unpacking. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ao_5olt2j753scPwYA3-gWH36vXkY0qa/view?usp=drivesdk

Yours (for now),

Clover Fields

Reflecting (questions 1 and 2)

I decided to do a "director's cut" style interview video for my first and second reflection questions in the making of Unpacking. I asked my partner, Foutch, who was also an assistant cinematographer for Days 2 and 3 of filming, to assist me in the production.

The two questions I sought to answer during the making of this installment of my CCR were questions 1 and 2. To begin with question 1: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

From my script:

"Unpacking utilizes aspects of the teen drama and coming-of-age film genres, to represent the marginalized intersection between racial minorities, homeless youth, and queer teens in America. The themes of identity, authority vs. autonomy, and alienation, as well as a heavy focus on music to convey emotion, were features of the teen dramas I studied in my research for this production- films like Lady Bird by Greta Gerwig, The Half of It by Alice Wu. A lot of teen dramas are about this kind of- finding yourself- and conflicts between teenagers and their parents because of a critical split in ideology. That disparity between young and old- it's so often highlighted by other barriers in the real world, like socioeconomic status, cultural status, racial status, and being a displaced minority trying to fit into a household really fits into that teenage question of- what is my place in the world?"

Then, question 2: "How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?"

"Unpacking, as an amateur indie film, will be distributed primarily virtually. I chose YouTube as my primary method of distribution, because of its low cost, high accessibility, and compatibility with any marketing or advertisement done in the online sphere like Instagram or TikTok posts. Also, since my production appeals to teenagers, I decided to use a platform that the vast majority of teenagers are highly active on. In fact, about three-quarters of teenagers like us use YouTube every day. But I also plan to distribute to audiences who are highly invested in the drama genre and the indie film scene at film festivals like the Miami film festival and my school's own film festival. So- don't worry. There's plenty of ways to see Unpacking on any size of screen, almost anywhere in the world."

The end is nigh! Soon... soon...

Yours (for now),

Clover Fields

Reflecting (slideshow edition)

I have decided (see here) to split my CCR in half, rather neatly. For questions 3 and 4- “How did your production skills develop throughout this project?” and “How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?” I decided upon a slideshow format. At first, I formatted it on Google Slides, since I'm more comfortable and familiar with the Google suite than, say, Microsoft 365. (You can find my original presentation slides here.) However, after doing some research on how to record a presentation with audio and timed slide transitions (How-to Geek's article here), it seemed like Microsoft PowerPoint was going to be a better bet for what I needed. With some help from my partner, I was able to record my second CCR as a video file.

We're getting close.

Yours (for now),

Clover Fields

Sources:

Gunnell, M. (n.d.). How to Add Audio to Google Slides. How-to Geek. Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://www.howtogeek.com/757376/how-to-add-audio-to-google-slides/

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Editing (with iMovie and Premiere Rush)- Day 2

 Here it is, friends. The long-awaited second (and third, and fourth) day of editing. Strap yourselves in, this one's going to be a doozy.

On day 2 of editing, I finally bit the bullet and attempted to conquer the beast, as it were. Rather mythical and knightly of me; if only I were trying to understand a dragon, a unicorn, or even a horse- not Adobe Premiere Pro. But, while I'm still not 100% familiar with it, these Adobe tutorials (included with my school-sponsored subscription) really helped. 

I had to do some research to find software that would allow me to download Isolated by Kevin Macleod. Upon seeing this blog post by Techradar, I decided 4K Video Downloader (here) would be my best option. After copying and pasting the link to the music, I had an mp3 file ready to go.

However, even after I started getting more comfortable with the interface of Premiere Pro, I realized that something weird was happening. My footage was seriously glitching. After doing some research (here), I realized that my iPhone had encoded my footage with a variable frame rate rather than a constant frame rate; so I was getting rectangular glitches around any of my shots where the ~30 fps frame rate couldn't accommodate the motion- like doors opening or even Bia's hair moving. 

After agonizing over the issue, I tried to fix it by rendering and replacing my clips, and when that didn't work, re-encoding my footage with a constant frame rate. Using Handbrake, which was recommended on the Adobe Community threads, I processed my footage to a constant frame rate of 30 fps. But when I played it back using the Adobe Premiere Pro Source Panel, I still saw that same visual glitch. So, back to iMovie I went.

This time, I was really strapped for time, since I'd already done some finer cuts in Adobe Premiere Pro that I liked. My main goal, however, was to create a shot/countershot in iMovie, and create a comprehensive soundscape- mostly focused on the intro song, "Isolated" by Kevin Macleod. I'd already decided on a different take of the bedroom conversation that I wanted to cut to as the countershot- one angled towards Bia. Then, another two problems became apparent: my artsy quote from Richard Siken's The Worm King's Lullaby (here) was something I'd need to format and produce; and a lot of the environmental sound I'd captured on set was staticky or distracting. But no matter; as a placeholder for the quote, I found a 10 second black screen video that I cut down to 5 seconds (here, downloaded using 4K Video Downloader again), and I went through and muted a lot of the clips.

Then, for the entryway scene and for Charlie coming down the stairs, I recorded a simple door foley in two parts: an open and a close. I ended up using the opening twice, and the close once.

I did run into another problem: the credits' pacing was off. However, I really liked the natural fade-out of the piece as Charlie closed the door about a minute in; so I couldn't figure out a way to re-pace the credits without disturbing that.

Going back to the artsy quote, though- I decided on FontBase (after reading this ranking). Upon opening the program, I found myself staring at a myriad of fonts. I had a few immediate thoughts, though; I knew that I wanted a serif font, similar to the font at the start of Lady Bird- read my review here- but that I wanted the author's name and source of the quote to be in the same font.

A few styles immediately jumped out at me.

I then hopped over to Canva, which I'd heard good things about for making all sorts of visual media from friends, peers, and classmates. Although I don't consider myself particularly tech-savvy, I found myself on the "Document" option/template. But when I tried to change the background color to black, Canva had some kind of tech error. Thankfully, when I repeated the process with the "Video" option/template, I was able to see which of the Cormorant Garamond fonts was the most legible and proportional at the scale I wanted it.

Finally, all that was left was to use iMovie's Detach option and Fade in and Fade out tools to smooth out my audio transitions between the Foley sound I added and the environmental sound recorded on set.

Big things are happening soon. 

Yours always,

Clover Fields

Sources:

How to create a video project. (n.d.). Helpx.adobe.com. https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/how-to/create-project-import-media.html?playlist=/services/playlist.helpx/products:SG_PREMIEREPRO_1_1/learn-path:get-started/set-header:ccx-designer/playlist:ccl-get-started-1/en_us.json&ref=helpx.adobe.com

updated, S. W.-W. last. (2021, December 17). 4K Video Downloader review. TechRadar. https://www.techradar.com/reviews/4k-video-downloader

Media, O. (n.d.). 4K Download – Free and useful applications for PC, Mac and Linux. 4K Download. Retrieved March 30, 2023, from https://www.4kdownload.com/38

Isolated | YouTube Audio Library. (n.d.). Www.youtube.com. Retrieved March 30, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1mtJ4YirEw&list=PL93uzrz9f1_RBdYVSY9QTSUo4faT6WRRX&index=4

G2. (2023, April 1). Best Font Management Software [Review of Best Font Management Software]. Https://Www.g2.com/. https://www.g2.com/categories/font-management

Premiere Pro Glitching Videos in Preview and Export - Source Footage Fine. (2019, August 6). Https://Community.adobe.com. https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/premiere-pro-glitching-videos-in-preview-and-export-source-footage-fine/m-p/10563336

HandBrake: Open Source Video Transcoder. (n.d.). Handbrake.fr. https://handbrake.fr/

FontBase — a Free, Beautiful, and Fast Font Manager. (n.d.). FontBase. https://fontba.se/

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Target audience research

The major advantage, I feel, of being a teenager producing a film for teenagers is that I have a rather innate and contemporary understanding of modern youth. However, I did run into some process issues while conducting my research. Friends, this genre research post has been in the making for nearly as long as Unpacking has. Let me tell you why.

I started my genre research long before any of my script and storyboard came to be. Part of it was my existing knowledge as a consumer of films and other productions aimed towards teenagers. I knew I wanted to research coming-of-age films, teen films, and teen drama films. That part is unexplainable; the creative bug often doesn't naturally lend itself to description, I feel. But after that, actually finding research statistics for the teen drama or coming-of-age genres was very difficult.

To begin with, my preliminary searches- on both Google and Ecosia- turned up a surprising dearth of categorization in the teen drama or coming-of-age genres. Most of the information on Wikipedia was incomplete, didn't provide statistics or characteristics, or didn't apply to anything produced in the film medium in the last 10-20 years. However, this writers' blog (here) provided some useful information to me. The main elements of a modern teen drama have to do with intensifying and making relatable the feelings of alienation, self-exploration, peer pressure, and pressure/anxiety of growing up in general that all teenagers often face. Also, since the rise of the Internet, they often deal with the fast pace the Web has enabled bullying and harsh criticism to take. 

Overall, while drafting Unpacking, I knew that some of the themes of emotional instability, existential angst, and the confusing boundaries of friendship vs. love vs. family often present in the lives of teenagers (I should know; again, I am one) were things I could express through different elements of my production. But- this research is, finally, available to your eyes- and not just in my brain.

Yours always,

Clover Fields

P.S. I hope you miss that outro. We're getting pretty near to the point where it's stopped feeling like an "always" and started feeling like a "for now". That's a different story, though. This story is still mine.

Sources:

Scripts, I. (2022, April 22). How Do You Write BRILLIANT and ALTERNATIVE Teen Drama? Industrial Scripts®. https://industrialscripts.com/teen-drama/

Wikipedia Contributors. (2023, February 25). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drama_(film_and_television)#Teen_drama

Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, April 11). . Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_film

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Editing (with iMovie)- Day 1

Friends, readers, countrymen, I have begun the editing/post-production process for Unpacking. Admittedly, this was something I was a little terrified of; I don't have much experience with editing. In fact, aside from a fever-dream project in the seventh grade for Civics class, of which I only remember snatches and flashes, and a TikTok video I filmed for this course, I had never edited a video, or anything visually narrative. But I buckled down and started it- and that's the hardest part, right? Right?

To begin with, there were some things I put in place during production to make my life easier during post-production. I organized all my footage (shot on my iPhone 12) on my iCloud Photos account, in two separate albums for the two halves of production- day 1 and days 2/3- and stored everything in labeled folders in my Google Drive, within my Portfolio Project folder. 

Where needed, I also downloaded photos and videos onto either my laptop, or either of my partner's laptops, both of which I sometimes use. However, I tried to stay away from only having a hard copy of my footage on one computer. Not only was I afraid of any kind of malfunction leading to me losing all my hard work from shooting, I also like to be able to work anywhere I am with whatever equipment I have with me. Since my laptop is old, loud, overheats easily, and doesn't fit in my backpack, I tend to be very spotty with what computer I use; I often use school laptops from whatever teacher's classroom I'm in, or my partner's computers. Also, after downloading and labeling all of my day 1 footage in an early attempt at editing, I aborted the process. I tend to take long videos- not moving or cutting the camera feed between takes- because of inexperience, both my own and that of my crew. After trying to edit clips on Premiere Pro, I quickly backed out of the process altogether; here, you can see the thought process and research that led me to iMovie.

Having set myself up for success (hopefully), I began roughly cutting individual takes out of each longer video file using the iCloud Photos tools. This was a really laborious process, and it was easy to miss whether I'd already cut out a particular take. In the future, to make this easier, I want to use an industry-style clapperboard (if I can) to label my footage. I then watched all the different takes for each scene, decided on elements of my favorites, and roughly put them in order on the iMovie timeline. At this point, I was worried about going overtime; I think once I had all the clips uploaded, I was at nearly 5 minutes. But I knew that there was a lot of downtime to be cut out. Still, I think planning each shot more intensely before shooting and following a more organized approach to takes would have reduced the uncertainty I had.

I also ran into another problem at this juncture: the zoom effect I'd intended to use for the very first shot, the Ken Burns effect, wasn't available on iMovie for videos; only photos. It also wasn't available on Premiere Rush for videos. I'll tell you how I got over this after day 2 of editing is up; but- hint- I may have to brave Premiere Pro after all. But I only discovered this (in my opinion, rather serious) defect of Premiere Rush (a shame, I really liked the simplicity of the interface) after day 1, with my future-Clover brain. Let's finish chronicling what I did in editing.

My biggest challenge was the credits. I had to speed up and slow down the pacing of the credits a lot to make sure the timing of the reveals was consistent as the boxes panned; I also had to cut out a lot of transition time. In the future, it would've been helpful to film with a more standardized credit length in mind- and my musician's brain can't help but think I should've used a metronome. I also completely zoomed in and out on a lot of shots, especially those of me and Bia taking out our individual actor credits from the trunk. I did this for two reasons: it made those shots more cohesive with the rest of the credits, and it also prevented an early reveal of credits that weren't supposed to be as in the frame. Although it made it kind of grainy, I think I might try to add a similar grain effect on the rest of the credits to pull it together. 

Day 1 was definitely not the end; after reviewing that first cut with Bia's eyes to help me, I realize there were some rough patches on the transition at the stairs and the walking into the bedroom scene, as well as a real need for a zoom-in on the bedroom scene so that I could successfully pull off the shot/countershot with our earlier footage. Also, there was lots of static on most of the audio recorded in the entryway of my home and the car, because of (respectively) the hard-surface-high-ceiling combination and the running engine before Bia turns it off. I'm definitely excited to continue with Day 2 of editing, and as soon as I'm done, I'll see you on the flip side.

Yours always,

Clover Fields