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.