Without Sin

Honestly, after working on this for so long, sharing it with everyone feels as exposing as sharing my diary.  So, without much further ado, I hope you enjoy this small piece of me.  Now introducing:  Without Sin, a dramatic slice-of-life queer film, with some different conventions.

Creative Critical Reflection

Here she is, in all her glory!  I will admit, it is quite long.  However, I'm so happy with what I was able to accomplish, and if you watch it for anything, do it for my dad's incredible acting (and yes, the chapstick in the back is a paid actor).

That's a Wrap

 Finally, finally, after 10 long weeks of hard work (or should I say, 9 weeks of planning and one long week of anxiety-inducing pain), I can now proudly say that I am done.  My film opening, as well as the Creative Critical Reflection that goes along with it, are safely exported and now residing in my OneDrive and YouTube accounts.  Sure, I did go to sleep at 9 AM today (in all fairness, though, I did pass out and sleep until 2 PM), but I actually really enjoyed this entire process.

All my life, I have struggled with finishing passion projects.  I always start off determined, certain that this time it'll be different, but inevitably lose interest halfway through.  This project, and the amount of stress that I was under to complete it, have made me realize how capable I truly am to create something good when I simply put my mind to it.  This has been a huge learning process, and the experience I have gained from this is almost on par with the good times I had.

Being able to work alongside friends like Ren, Joey, and Ale, and being able to gain input and have meaningful conversations with the people I value most has been truly invaluable.

My project went through a lot of ups and downs.  Although I always knew that I wanted my film opening to follow a Christian boy struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality, the plot itself went through several different stages.  In writing this, I was able to communicate with friends, teachers, and my own family to discuss topics regarding religion, acceptance, and social ostracism.  If anything, I feel like these conversations were what I valued most about the project.

Filming alongside my friends and family, although at times stressful, was a great experience as well.  People like Lauren, Joey, and my own dad - who never fail to make me laugh - were always so comforting to be around.  Although at times I felt I could be a little demanding or nitpicky, they were always patient and eager to help.  Here's a behind the scenes of filming:

As for the CCR, which was a great source of stress for me, I'm extremely happy with what I have.  Upon examining the first draft, I was immediately overcome with the feeling that I had irreversibly f-ed up.  The whole thing, which I couldn't cut down to less than 12 minutes, was insufferably boring and long.  At this point (which was about 1 AM), I was feeling lost and disappointed.  Realizing that I was running out of time and was forced to work with what I had, I thought, "screw it man, lemme make this more me."

I found some silly music on YouTube Audio Library, gathered some goofy audience sound effects on FreeSound, found some funny emojis online, and got to work.  The final draft is what I can only describe as reminiscent of those really stimulating Cocomelon toddler videos.  Regardless, I think that this definitely accomplished the job of keeping the audience's attention.

To wrap everything up, I'm actually really glad that I took this class.  Despite really doubting myself at various points, I'm surprised at how good my final project came out.  I'm posting everything later today, so keep an eye out!

One Last Thing...

God, this weekend has been stressful.  After spending Friday, Saturday, and all of today bent over my computer screen working on editing the intro, writing my script for the CCR, and then finally shooting said CCR... I'm definitely tired.  No joke, I went to sleep at 5 AM last night... Media Studies might be a free course, but we pay in other ways.

In a bit of good news though, I'm finally done editing my intro!  This is a huge relief, but also a huge accomplishment.  It being my first (real) media production, I honestly need to take a step back and admire how far I've come.  Was it easy?  Definitely not.  Did I spend way too much time editing useless things in? Most certainly.  But was it rewarding? 100%.

However, as I wrapped up this portion of the project, I knew that I know had to face the much dreaded Creative Critical Reflection before I could truly clean my hands of this monstrosity.  The Creative Critical Reflection, or CCR for short, is an approximately 7-minute-long video where I am to discuss all aspects of my production in detail, basing my responses on these 4 questions:

1. How does your production use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
4. How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online - in this project?

These questions, which are tricky enough to answer in it of themselves, must be presented in a creative fashion.  In examples we saw in class, I noticed a pattern of kids sitting down in front of a camera, answering the questions, and later editing them with cool and alluring visuals and audio.  This was definitely an option that I considered, but, telling as I'm a little camera shy, it was something my teacher mentioned that stuck with me: "Some kids have turned in late-night show-type concepts..."

Upon hearing her say this, I knew immediately what I wanted to do.  Having gone through my own (quite frankly embarrassing) celebrity obsessions, late-night shows were something of an area of expertise for me.  Therefore, I drew from my own experience in watching these shows to create a script for what I needed.

Finally, I cleared an area of my house that I knew would make a good backdrop, added the necessary props and ornaments, told my dad that he had full creative liberty as a talk-show host, and got to work.  Upon finishing the script (which was to be more of an outline, yet ended up being read basically word-for-word), I called Ren last-minute and got her to come over and help me film.  Honestly, huge shout-out to Lauren Moise, I would probably be dead in a ditch without her.

After filming all my footage, I went out to Virginia's house for the SD card adaptor, imported all of my footage, took a quick pit-stop to Publix for some energy drinks, and that led me back to my desk where I sit now, writing this blog post.

As I began the editing process for my CCR, my first setback was the fact that I had recorded audio using lauvs (the microphones that you attach to your clothes), and needed to synch that audio to the video.  This was actually pretty easy, as the common practice is to clap on screen and then use that as a reference point.  Once that was accomplished, I had to play back about 30 minutes' worth of footage in order to grab the actual speaking parts that I needed.  This definitely wasn't difficult, just tedious.

Finally, the most impressive part for me was color-correcting.  I had filmed in a corner of my house that was lit up by filament lamps, which left the video looking piss-yellow.  I added an adjustment layer (see, I am learning) and managed to fix it perfectly.  See for yourselves:

Before

After

Now, as I sit here editing, I know that I'm about to have the most painful 24 hours before the submission date is finally upon us.  Regardless, I'm caffeinated, on a sugar high, and powered by Fleetwood Mac; I'm essentially unstoppable.  Sure, I probably won't get any sleep tonight.  And sure, I definitely will not be enjoying myself.  But I have determination and pride, and that's probably enough.

Finishing up!

 2 days until the due date.  I'm cutting it close, aren't I?  Still, progress has definitely been made.  Plus, I work better under pressure anyway.  

As of now, I can finally say that my production is a solid 98% done, all thanks to the last-minute decision to film yesterday.  The process was in no way easygoing, but the sloppy-made plans ended up working in my favor.  Let me paint a picture of my Friday afternoon, as I believe that this detailed timeline is the only way I can truly explain my situation: Friday.  2:42 PM.  The dismissal bell has just rung.  Upon leaving my classroom, I flee to my school's TV production classroom, where I meet Ren in a last-ditch effort to rent equipment.  After a few wasted minutes and conversations with people I didn't know, the task was done and we left, now having two more microphones than we did before.  2:53 PM.  We walk out to the dismissal area, rush to collect the assortment of friends I was driving home (Joey and Mica), and hurried to my car, which I conveniently parked 8 minutes away.

Once seated and secured (remember to wear your seatbelts), we began the grueling process of leaving the school as all 5,000 students are desperate to leave along with us.  This would have been tough enough if we only had to make it to my house, but there was one last pit stop I had to make before we could head home: this was the house of my good friend Virginia, who was the only person in possession of the equipment that we desperately needed.  3:30 PM.  As we begin to enter Vir's neighborhood, it becomes apparent to me that my visitor's pass has been thrown out, most likely by my innocent parents in an attempt to clean out the car.  Not a big deal, I think, but definitely could have saved us some more time.  Now we're outside her door.  We get the equipment, stick it in the back, and rush out of there.  3:50 PM.

By 4:05 PM, we'd finally gotten to my house.  By this point, we're all complaining about hunger and the heat, but time is running short as I need to be out of my house by 5 o'clock to make it to my shift on time.  Ren and I begin setting up the camera, all the while Joey is desperately trying to order pizza.  Now, I can't even begin to explain why calling Papa John's for a large cheese pizza took as long as it did, but the conversation ended approximately 15 minutes later... It was 4:23 when we began to film.  The shots were easy enough to get, but setting up the camera using this chunky and extremely complicated tripod was definitely time-consuming.

After filming the first scene, which we finished around 4:45, we took a short break as Joey and Mica recorded some of the shots he was missing for his own production.  Meanwhile, I pulled a random white button-up from my parent's closet, forced Joey to change into it, and instructed my dad to dress up in the pre-planned priest uniform.  It was around this time that we got a call from the gate, which I assumed was the pizza, but inconveniently turned out to be Joey's mom, who had come to pick him up... As you can assume, this did nothing to calm my ever-growing anxiety.

Now rushing at a speed faster than light, I set up the tripod downstairs, filmed some scenes of Joseph looking nervous as he awaited his meeting with Father Peter, and got ready for the big finale: the meeting itself.  For this scene, which was the only one in the whole production that required on-screen dialogue, Ren helped me plug in a boom (similar to the one pictured below) to the camera so that the audio would be synched.

Boom microphone

By this point, I was sweating profusely (both from the stress and the ever-persistent heat of Florida spring), but the scene went perfectly.  This was my dad's acting debut for the production, and his fit of uncontrollable giggling helped alleviate the tension.  I managed to get a few takes of this, some of which went by better than others, and I was insanely satisfied with the outcome.  Although you can see some defining characteristics of the room behind him (which aren't compatible with those of an office setting), I feel like they don't take away too much from the effect on the audience.  I would love nothing more than to link them here, but unfortunately, they exceed the maximum file size.

It's now 5:03 PM.  Having finally wrapped up filming and having received the pizza, we sat down for a very rushed and very well-deserved snack.  I sped upstairs to get dressed for work, said a hurried goodbye to my friends as they came to get picked up, and managed to clock into my shift only 8 minutes late.

Behind the Scenes

Upon leaving my shift, I finished the day off by having Ren come over to collect the equipment we hadn't had a chance to put away before, and then promptly driving back to Vir's to drop it all off.  We ended up staying there for about an hour, where I had the chance to import all the footage (including these sick thumbnails), and begin editing them into the final project.  This yielded mostly no real progress, although my two more experienced friends did teach me a little about Premiere that I hadn't known before.  Mainly, they taught me how to full-screen tabs (yeah, I know, I probably should have known this already...), and they taught me how to add constant power to my audio.  This was undoubtedly some of the best advice I could have received, as the seamless transitions that this provided me with enhanced the entire production.

As of now, I'm nearly done with editing, and nearly done writing the script for my Creative Critical Reflection (CCR), where I discuss my production in detail.  I'm filming the footage for the CCR tomorrow, and I intend on spending all of the day editing that together.  My final takeaway?  I probably should have done this all sooner...  Regardless, I'm extremely satisfied with what I have thus far and I know that the hard work I put in will be reflected in my final score.  This is where I leave you now, as I must go and edit.  Until next time!