Creative Critical Reflection!!

 Here is my CCR for my film opening, Thank you!

https://youtu.be/DHdDc5JaplM

Opening Link!!!!!!!!!!

 The time has come everyone!! Here is the link for my final project. Thank you guys!!!

https://youtu.be/0L5qpJy_A8o

Finished editing

 Hello everyone!! Today is a great day as I can finally say I finished my film opening. I have been planning this for so long that is is exciting to see the result. It has been a challenging journey but we made it to the end! After it was done I show it to my family and took their opinion to make a couple of final changes. 

The music was the final touch and I got it to be the exact time of the opening. I really enjoy the process and I think most part of it was because I choose a great theme that I am passioned about.

All that is left is to do my CCR which I will be doing shortly and uploading to you guys soon. 

Tomorrow is the day you all will be able to see it!

Editing Update

 Hello everybody I hope you all are having a fantastic day. After 2 days of editing, I have made a significant amount of progress in the completion of the project. I am about 75% done with the editing process and I am very excited because I think it's coming out great. 

The challenge here is to choose the videos and takes, we took so many and very long as well that I have to look at all and start choosing,  it's hard to fit it all into 2 minutes. I will love to do a longer version, maybe a will only for my use because I have so many cool shots, and it helps that I am very passioned with snowboarding.  

I will update you guys when I finish and soon you will all be able to see the final product!!!

Editing process

 Hello and good morning to you all! Today I will be starting the editing process for my film opening. The program I have decided to use after taking a good look at my options is iMovie. There really is no point in using adobe premiere in this situation because I don't need very complex forms of editing for this project. 

iMovie is a great program that is relatively simple to use and can do everything I want to for the opening. Another factor that has contributed to my decision is the fact that iMovie is free and adobe premiere is $20/month and I would rather not pay that money when I have a perfectly good program here on my computer at my disposal. 

I made some drafts yesterday and I think it going to turn out great, I have good ideas at least. My plan is to fit as many scenes as possible to end up with a very dynamic film of a lot of short takes and that could summarize the whole process, also iMovie has very cool features that I learned to use today, so exited!

Filming complete!!

 Hello everyone!! I have arrived home from the trip and I am proud to say we are completely done with filming! It was a lot easier than I expected and took much less time than anticipated. I'm glad I got to enjoy my trip without having to spend a crazy amount of time filming. 

Everything went very well with the production process besides the little hiccup we had with the GoPro that didn't really matter in the end because the videos on the iPhone looked and sounded great.

I end up doing the film mainly about me, my brother and my dad because I realized I was trying to get to many character and scenes in only 2 minutes. Only logistics were easier this way. 

Next week will be a hard week of editing and soon you all should be getting the final product!!

I also will be creating my CCR soon so stay tuned for that as well.

Filming pt.2

 Day 2 of filming is complete! Today was a very productive day for filming in general. Weather was great, sky was blue, temperature 40+ degrees and we decided to go up the mountain as a family (only us 4)  so we can take our time in getting the shots I need. I took 2 days to snowboard with my friends and now is time to get to work. 

The videos came out super cool but at the beginning we ran into a problem. When we stop for lunch and saw the first takes we realized the GoPro does not provide enough stability and the videos end up being very shaky, so we decided to use my moms phone which is new and takes great videos, she volunteer to film so we can be more precise, she does not snowboard so is easier for her to film in the skis.

I had to re-film some of the shots from the first day because we realized we did it vertical and we wanted to do a full horizontal screen but it was not trouble at all. 

I love what we have so far, we have a lot of takes, great quality and good material to choose from. 

Filming!!

 Hello everyone, I have safely landed in Denver, Colorado and I have already started the production process. So far I have filmed the airport scenes and rental scenes. I am so excited to continue filming on the actual mountain where the real fun stuff happens!!!

I has been a couple of snowing days and I don't think those are the best for filming up in the mountain because the visibility is not great so I want to wait until the blue sky is back again. 

Everything so far has gone smoothly. I have only filmed with my phone so far but this morning I mounted my GoPro onto my helmet and It is now ready to go! My mom has helped me a lot so far and I'm so excited for all of you to see the final product.

Lets go!

Final check

 It is almost time everyone. I'm leaving today and everything will soon go into motion. Everything I planned will finally happen and all the time I spent gathering everything will finally pay off.

I have done one final check of all my equipment and packed everything in my luggage to finally leave. I have a checklist written down on my phone just to make sure I get all the shots I need. My brother and my mother will be assisting me with the filming part of the project while I will take care of the technical and editing part.

I am beyond excited to not only film the opening but to share it to everyone reading this. I'm sure it will come out great! 

Order of shots

 Hello everyone, today I will be showing the planned order of the shots I mentioned in the previous post.

This will most likely be the final order in which the opening will be.

• Airport 
• Taking off
• Car views
• Vail town
• Our cabin
• Equipment
• Getting ready
• Walking to the slopes
• Gondola
• Securing the board
• Mountain top view
•  Snowboarding
• Taking a break for lunch
• Lift
• View from the lift
• Down the lift
• Snowboarding
• Back to the cabin
• Returning equipment
• Gondola after hours
• Back to Denver
• Landing

 

Shots

 Hello everyone, In this post, I will list the shots we want to get in Colorado. These will be the shots we are aiming to film, and if we cannot get any of these shots we will find a replacement to fill the gap:

Taking off and landing, car views and town, , our cabin, equipment rental, getting ready, lift and gondola, equipment rental, mountain views, walking to the slopes, signs.

I want to try and get the complete sequence from beginning to end because it is certainly a journey and not a short or easy one. The idea is after the 2 minutes opening, the viewer would have an idea of what it takes to snowboard in Colorado.

 

Final equipment

 Hello everyone. This is the final list of equipment. There are some things I could not get and here I will explain why.

 Have: 

- iPhone13

-GoPro

-Canon Camera

-Snowboard rental (board/boots)

-Snowboarding equipment (gloves, goggles, helmet, jacket, etc...)

-GoPro mount

-Friends 

-Ski lift ticket

-Laptop to upload 

-Selfie stick for iPhone to film 

Do not have:

- Camera gimble (too expensive to purchase)

- Waterproof case for iPhone(did not come in time for the trip)

Revision of plot

 Hello everyone. After further research and thought I have revised and thought it would be more convenient , easier to film, and more entertaining to make the opening like this. 

The opening is going to be more like a day in the life, or getting ready on a snowboarding vacation. There is a lot of people I know that have never seen snow in their life. I want to show these people how much of a hassle and how exhausting a snow trip really is. Getting ready to snowboard requires a lot of preparation and many layers of clothes before all the snowboarding gear. I want it to be realistic and really show the true difficulties of these types of vacations.

Also, not sure about the characters, 2 minutes is not a lot of time and I am thinking that I am trying to get a lot in that limited time, I will see and then report back.

I am not trying to portray it as a bad, or annoying trip to go on, but more the realistic aspect of it and what annoying little details you have to go through to enjoy these trips.

CCR

 Hello everyone, I am today writing about my plan on the CCR. I have not really thought about it much due to the planning of my opening. 

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or

issues?

 How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media

text?

- Here I could say that my opening give the viewers an insight of what it is to go on a vacation in the snow, because it is a lot more complicated than it seems.

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

- my production skills have massively improved because I have learned how to plan to film something correctly. I learned the basics of editing and movie production through online videos and lessons.

How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?'

- I am editing the opening through my computer and filming on my phone with a GoPro included.

These are my "rough draft" answers you could say to these questions that will be fully answered in the CCR.

2 weeks!

 Hello everyone and I hope you all are having a great day! There is only 2 weeks left until the trip and my production process to start. I have basically everything ready at this point, all I would like to get is a camera gimble to make the end product a lot smoother. Its not realistic but it would be a cool touch to the opening. What I am going to use these 2 weeks for is to get used to the editing software I am going to use to edit. I have watched many YouTube videos and consulted with some family members that work in the editing industry and can help me out. This is so when I finish my project after the break and can quickly put together a well edited piece and do well because after spring break I do not have the time to be wasting on learning how to edit.

Small changes to Character cast

 Hello everyone and good afternoon, There have been a few changes to the roster of people that are going to the trip and the character list has been cut short. In a previous post I showed the planned list that I had in mind with the people that were going to the trip. This list has been modified and looks a lot different to the rough draft of the list.

Here is the edited and final list that has been confirmed:

- Kenneth Mathison (main character)

- Roman Garcia (bestfriend)

- Andres Mathison (brother)

- Alberto De Veer (competitor/rival)

- Joann Mathison (mother)

- Kenneth Mathison Sr. (father)

-Nicole Pages (extra)

-Ana Garcia (extra)

This the Final and concluded list of people that will be included in the opening. They are all confirmed to be going and will have no issue helping me out. If for some reason, any of these characters get injured or are not able to film, I have backups in place to replace those people.

Delay of film opening production.

 Hello everyone. Today's post is more of an informational one as I will be explaining why I cannot start production during the intended weeks. There are 2 weeks left until spring break, and I want to plan ahead as much as I can to be completely ready for filming the second I have the ability to start. Since I have such a small period of time to film, I have to take every opportunity I can to make sure I have the perfect amount of backup plots and options just in case the conditions are not met. This is because if we mess up anything and we don't notice until after, it is not possible to just go back to Colorado. It seems pretty risky to xo this and this is why I have dedicated the last few weeks to plan everything ahead and make sure on proper planning so the execution of filming is simplified.

I hope you all understand that this weeks blog posts cannot be about production process.

Thank you so much!.

Filming/Editing Schedule

 Hello everybody, today I will be creating a rough idea for the editing and filming schedule for my film opening. 

I plan to film the entire opening during the span of my week long vacation to Colorado with my family. This will start the March 18th which is the day I land in Denver. During that week, I will be filming parts of my opening every day until I feel I have enough material to edit my opening. 

My editing schedule will start as soon as my vacation is over, we come back on March 26th, so I will start on the 27th, although I will start to choose the music and other items before leaving. 

I plan on using ADOBE to put all the clips together and edit them with the music and the sound, they have many options and I am in the process of figuring out which one I will use and if I can get for free with my student status or I need to buy it. 

Script develpoment

 Hello again. I am here to work on my scrip.

My plan is to document the journey from start to finish, I am thinking that I should start with a shot in the plane leaving Miami. It is certainly a long process from home to when I am actually in my snowboard having fun so I think it will be cool to show all of that in very quick shots. 

In my previous post I planned my shots and I have come up with new ones since then, like me renting the equipment which we always do the first day and a quick shot of downtown Denver in which I will stay for a night before heading to the mountains.

Since we are going with friends and family, it is a big group so I can add them to my opening in some shots, I think that will add value to it, although I will be the main character. 

As you can see this is one of my passions and I have done it several times so I am pretty sure I can come up with a lot of ideas before we live. I know my biggest challenge will be doing the opening in 2 minutes.

Shot list

  Hello everyone!, Today I will be presenting the shot list I planned to use in my opening:

 - Establishing shot,  to showcase the landscape of Colorado, I am thinking some views from the drive from Denver to Vail and the mountains when I get there and the entrance of my hotel.

- Following shot,  a shot of the camera following me while I snowboard, I will also try another shot from someone in front of me, waiting in the bottom of the mountain to shot another angle. I will like to include my friends in this shots, I think it will be more cool to feature other snowboarders than only me. 

- Standstill shot, to capture me getting on and off the ski lift, and adjusting the board before leaving the top of the mountain. 

- Close up shot, to show my equipment while I get ready and include the view from my window which is always spectacular. 

- Panning shot, To show angles of the scenery to large to fit in one frame

I am still working on the right track of the shots but I am exited and I can already see the opening in my mind.