Group Meeting and Technical issues.

     Today, we met in groups once again to discuss and get feedback on our projects. It went very well! I told my group about my plan to do a director's commentary and a voice-over presentation, and they all liked it. We were even able to help one of my group members work through her idea for how she should approach a twist that appears in her opening. Overall, a very productive meeting I'd say.

Now as mentioned in the post's title, the technical issues. This morning I went to go open Premier Pro and the app just crashed and wouldn't respond no matter what I tried. The program ended up closing out and I decided to just come back to it later as I figured the internet was just bad. Well, after meeting with my group, I decided to open up Premier Pro to start putting the credits and film tittle on my film. Once I opened the program though, I realized I had lost a good portion of what I have done over the past few days. My stomach literally dropped when I first saw it because I didn't know JUST how much I lost.

  

    Thankfully, while I did lose quite a bit of work, it isn't anything that I can't easily re-do, especially now that I have a better grasp on Premier Pro. Moral of the story, always make sure to consistently hit save while editing and before closing out programs!

CCR Plan

     While I’m still in the process of my project, it's time to start planning what I will do for my CCR. I will do a voice-over presentation and a director's cut to answer the four questions. For the presentation, I plan on covering the questions of how "Short Story Lover" engages with audiences and how it will the distributed, and how it represents social groups and issues and challenges conventions. When it comes to the director's cut, I plan on covering how integrated technologies into my project, and how my production skills will develop throughout the project. 

    I decided to split up the questions like this because I feel like it will be the most effective way for me to tackle the questions, especially through the presentation and director's cut. This next week is going to be one wild ride as I finish out editing and create my CCR, but I am very confident in myself that this is going to end up being an awesome project.

Editing: Still Getting the Hang of Things

     Picture this: I'm sitting on my laptop finally figuring out how to put together the shots I got last week (the tutorials definitely helped, but I over estimated just how easy this would be even with tutorials). All is going smoothly. Then I realize I'm missing two or three shots in my files panel. No worries, I'll just find them in my documents. The only issue is, they aren't there. Not a big deal though, as I know for a fact that I put them up on my google drive. Luckily, the shots were in my drive, but this little incident made me realize I need to keep better track of my files and where I do or don't put them. 

    Besides that, however, editing has actually become a bit fun. I never thought of myself as someone who would like editing as I tend to get very impatient quickly, but I'm actually enjoying this part of the project a lot. I don't want to speak too soon as I'm still just beginning this, but who would've thought the one part of this project that I was worried about the most would turn out to be the one I find most enjoyable. 

Editing: Baby Steps

  Today I begin what is personally the most intimidating aspect of this project: editing. Aside from editing a few videos for fun on iMovie, I haven't done much editing at all. I don't know what I'm really doing, so this will be an extensive learning process for me (I guess that's the whole point of this course, haha). 

    I've done the beginning steps of what I have to do like downloading Premier Pro. I had to download it on my sister's computer since my computer is too slow to run it, it can barely run Google Drive half the time. Now that I'm able to work on a faster computer, it's probably best that I don't go straight into editing blind. I found a few tutorials on YouTube to help me get a bit familiar with Premier Pro before I start anything. 

    The video above was really helpful in that it just helped me familiarize myself with the software and know the basics of what everything does so that I wouldn't feel as overwhelmed going into editing. While I'm sure it doesn't cover every single feature that is available to me on Premier Pro, it does show me the basics like how to actually edit my clips together, how to use transitions and effects, how to edit sound, and even how to keep my files organized.

   This next video I also found extremely helpful, as it gives plenty of tricks and tips on how to make Premier Pro work a little better if you don't have the best computer out there. Now that I'm working on my sister's laptop, even just opening the app is a lot easier, but I wanted to make sure the computer and the app work as well as possible, so that the editing process may go as smoothly as possible. 

Filming: Day 2

 And just like that, filming for "Short Story Lover" has come to a close! Everything went fairly smoothly, and I'm excited to start the editing process! Big thanks to Ace who helped me get the shots I needed today.

Filming: Day 1

     Today was day 1 of 2 of filming for "Short Story Lover", and it went great! I was able to get every clip I needed of Roman, played by my incredible friend Nacho. We did hit a few bumps in terms of the picture that was supposed to go on the nightstand because we had originally planned to use a picture we took at school together, but when it printed and we put it in the frame Nacho's face was almost entirely cut off!

    Luckily, Nacho had a portable printer that we could use, so we took another picture and placed it on his nightstand for the film, and the second photo actually turned out a lot better than the first in my opinion!

    Once the photo dilemma was resolved, we were able to shoot without any issues. Here are two of my favorite shots that we got today.

Film Week!

     The week of filming is upon us! I film Roman's scenes on Thursday after school at my friend Nacho's house (Nacho will be playing Roman), and Ceciia's scenes will be filmed on Friday at my house.

    I had originally intended on setting up the room and decorations for Cecilia's scene between Thursday night and Friday morning, but my mom had told me and my sister to clean our room today, and I decided to take the opportunity and start setting up now since my room is freshly clean! I have to thank my little sister Mari for helping me set up a lot of the find decorations I'm using, she has great taste when it comes to decorating and helped me realize the exact look that I was looking for. All that is missing are the fairy lights which I will add on Friday when I am able to go out and get batteries for them.

{my sister trying to help me figure out where to put a jewelry box}

{me cleaning the desk mirror}

{the end result, plus me and my sister in the desk mirror :)}

   As you can see from the pictures some of the items got moved around a bit while we tried to figure out what looked best, but I think the end result is the perfect look I'm going for. I truthfully could have still waited till Thursday, or even tomorrow to begin setting up the decorations, but I am so excited to film this project that I couldn't wait!