Creative Critical Reflection

Please enjoy the last part of my production, my Creative Critical Reflection. 

Click here to listen to my CCR podcast for Feel Again. 

Thank you all so much, hope you enjoy it! 

-Taylor 

Feeling It

Happy Birthday to me!!! The time has finally come for me to reveal to all of you my production. I think it shows how much I love this project to be excited to write to you today and upload my production. Our movie theater trailer, our social media trailer, our website and our film poster has all been completed and ready to shine on it's own. Asher and I have used Youtube to upload our trailers so that all spectrums of our audience can be subjected to it. Of course, we will be distributing our production across various platforms as we previously mentioned, but Youtube is a great place to showcase them all at once. 

Now, it is with my great pleasure to introduce to you all- Feel Again. 

Trailer #1: 

Trailer #2: 

Link to website: Feel Again 

Movie Poster: 

I hope all of you enjoy every part of our project and all aspects of the production. 

Thank you all for going through this journey with Asher and I, it's been a great one! Enjoy! 

- Taylor 

Farewells

I didn't think ending this project would be so emotional. I have never been upset to finish a project, only excited that its over. While I am thrilled to finally show everyone my production, I am more excited for everyone else to see it than I am to let it go. After working on something for over seven weeks and seeing all of your visions become implemented and get created, you grow a serious attachment to it all, one that is harder to let go than you would have imagined. 

It's probably so difficult because I had so much fun creating all of it and working with one of my best friends Asher throughout the entire process. He was absolutely amazing to collaborate with. Not once did we fight or stay in a deadlock; we figured everything out and compromised. It was so refreshing not to stress over what someone else might think or say, or whether or not he or she dislikes it and puts your idea down. Asher and I had complete and utter trust in one another and felt 100% comfortable sharing or voicing any opinion or idea. Sure, did we not agree on somethings, but it never once turned into a fight and it ended up with us agreeing with whatever we were discussing. Asher and I got so much closer by doing this project than I would have even imagined. The project being over just symbolizes the many more things coming to an end at a very rapid pace. 

It was also such a joy to work with Megan. She was a great sport about anything. She did not care what we told her, as an amazing actress that she is, she did whatever we needed without hesitation. She made the time for us because she was contributed and appreciating art and the media. I also got much closer to her, and I feel like I know her and Nora separately, it's crazy. Nora became real to me and Asher and we referred to her like she is somebody that we actually know. We started this whole project by creating her first and we formed new ideas based off of who we made her, her characteristics and her personality. I've watched interviews with directors, producers, and actors before and always found it strange when they talk about the characters like they know them in real life. They refer to their struggles and hardships like it's their own and they talk about them like they are in another room. This project made me understand why. They have become so passionate about their ideas, that they tell the stories with such passion because they have become emotionally involved, just like Asher and I did with Nora. 

I was severely attached to Decadence, my food magazine last year, and didn't want to let it go. Well, it has happened again. This project has become my baby yet again and it's time to say goodbye. However, we are very excited now to finally be able to show off what we made and receive our peers feedback. 

Asher and I are very proud of what we created and no matter what anyone tells us, we know how hard we worked and how much effort we put into making it, and that's all that really matters in the end. I hope that everyone appreciates and respects the work we have put in and ultimately, I hope that you all love our products. 

Thanks for making this process so enjoyable to document and record. 

With much love, 

- Taylor 

P.S. Tomorrow is my birthday, so my gift to you all is revealing Feel Again! 

Feel Again Poster

The other two portions of this project include creating a Film Poster and a Website for our film. Since me and Asher are working on this together and trust each other's opinions, we decided to split the minor tasks. We figured that working with our strong suits and deciphering who has stronger skills in certain areas, it is a good idea we take on different tasks. 

Asher calls me a photoshop Goddess and many people have told me they think my work is pretty amazing, I try to stay humble about it, but the truth is I am really good at creating and editing graphic designs. I have always loved creating things and it has become quite a hobby of mine in the last few years. I discovered this online software called Canva in my freshman year, and it has become one of my most valuable tools in my high school career, especially in AICE Media Studies. I really love using this site because first of all, it's free, and second of all they give me so many options and choices I can choose from. So with that being said, I have taken on the film poster task. 

For starters I like to come up with my color scheme to use. I wanted to use natural earth tones because I wanted to capture the essence of our film and since these colors went well with many of our scenes, I chose to do them. 

I made certain colors richer than others, and lightened up some of the tones. Color is very important to a film poster and cover and while some many not think so, there are many psychological drives that come with choosing color schemes. I also incorporated some blues into the film poster, since that is also considered an Earth tone but is just not shown on this palate. 

Here is an infographic I found very useful in creating the film poster: 

I found this very helpful in directing my mindset and staying on track to always focus on the mood of our film. For instance, the green of course signifies nature, but it also portrays feelings of darkness and danger. Blue represents feeling of isolation and melancholiness; tones of yellow shows madness, sickness, and insecurity. These colors all played a part in the film poster, whether or not it was the exact colors, or tones of it, they all integrated mixed feeling to set the goal of one overall mood. 

Another trend I noticed when researching film posters for dramas was the technique of using transparency in the upper half of the poster. For instance:

I will be incorporating transparent elements into the film poster and it is going to signify many of the issues in our film. 

I had to be wise about choosing colors because I was cautious about how they will appear throughout different platforms. For example, for our film to be marketing in movie theaters, I need to design it to stand out an to pop out at people as they walk past to go to see their movie. So after researching, movie theaters are often very dark; they either have dark purple walls, red, and even sometimes black. I suppose they have a stereotypical ambiance they want to follow which is good for film graphic designers because then they know which colors to choose. I figured my color scheme will contrast the darkness and go great with whichever the movie theater theme is. They also usually present the film poster in a white or black frame, so these colors will go just fine, since they are mostly natural earth based tones. I also want to market with one of those huge cardboard cutouts that are shown inside of movie theaters and in film festivals so that it literally pops out at people. Again, these color schemes are easy to manipulate to go with anything!

I am so eager to show you all the film poster I have created, but to keep that element of surprise, I am going to hold off a little while longer on showing it to to all of you. 

Until next time!

Editing in Progress

With all of our footage captured, we are prepared to create our trailers. In one of my previous posts I discussed how difficult it was to find sound to put into our trailers, however, with the determined search I was on, I found something I liked and that will fit the description we have been looking for. 

Asher and I will be utilizing iMovie to put our trailers together because we prefer to use Apple products since we are more comfortable with them, and we like the software's features.

We will be preparing each trailer differently. The first trailer is going to be longer with more emotion attached to it and have a mix of conventional dramatic shots and nonconventional shots. We also used more than one soundtrack in this trailer. In the first portion we used music Asher found and it is a little more upbeat and sort of techno, while the rest of the music is what I found and it is a sad piano piece that is soft in the beginning, but picks up in the middle for more intensity. 

The second trailer we are editing together is shorter for social media and it is much more intense with fast paced editing and bursts of short shots. We are using this to grasp the audiences attention since they usually have a shorter attention span and since we don't have that much time to show it on a social media platform. We will also be utilizing the sad piano soundtrack that I found because we felt it was more suitable for our audience. 

Again, much of our inspiration came from the Nocturnal Animals trailers. Asher also recommended we watch a short Snapchat version of the Ghost in a Shell preview because it embodied the characteristics we were looking to recreate. 


As we are very hard at work, I will gladly show you the trailers when the whole project is finished! I can't wait for you all to see it! 

Filming: Take 3

Asher and I shot what was the last and final day of filming. It was a bittersweet moment because as we were excited to finish, we were sad because we knew this was going to be the last time we would film for our senior year. 

We finished in our last location: Cypress Bay. We shot various scenes in the classroom and in the hallways. We thought that this would be one of the easier locations, which is why we saved it for last. However, this provided us some of the most difficult and interrupting film challenges. 

Our biggest obstacle to overcome was the sound issues. This was a huge problem we didn't face in our other locations because we didn't have other people around or had to deal with at all. But in school, people are everywhere. We needed to shoot in class to make it seem realistic, but teachers do not like to be interrupted, which is completely understandable, so we thought of a solution: film during a teacher's study hall. This way we didn't disrupt class and we still had students to work with. Well, these students were not all great to work with. They were loud and obnoxious so to keep down the noise, we asked them if they wanted to be in our film and they said yes. We really didn't need them to be in our film, and we aren't going to be using that footage anyways, but it was helpful because it kept the noise down. 

Another challenge that involved sound was all of the people in the hallways. You don't realize how busy they are until you're sitting there trying to shoot a conversation. The doors constantly opening and closing, people wondering aimlessly in front of the camera, and even the conversations down the hallway were too much background noise. We found a crevasse in the hallway that was not as populated as the rest so it worked out. 

Another issue we kept running into was security. Even though Megan signed in and our teacher gave her the okay to the front office, we still ran into problems. They didn't care if they yelled in the middle of our shot to ask where we were supposed to be, or who was Megan and why she was in "there" school. So it was frustrating, but we had to have the patience to explain that we were just filming for our class and we showed them her pass, but you'd think they'd all communicate that one they already asked us, and not three. 

However, our shots came out really great and I was so proud of the work that Asher and I, and Megan too, conducted. 

Here are some sneak peaks of the day of filming: 

Write to you all soon! 

Filming: Take Two

After such an amazing day (and night) we had filming, we were all so pumped to continue the footage. We were especially excited because we got to go on a little adventure and film at Markham Park! 

This park is beautiful and it has so many unique settings to film in. I am very familiar with the park, as well as Megan, but this was Asher's first time going so I was very happy I got to experience that with him. Asher and I arrived a bit earlier than Megan, so we took the liberty of location scouting specific areas by driving around the entire park. We narrowed our choices down to four different parts of the park that were very aesthetically pleasing and great to film at. Here is a little sneak peak of some of the shots we took at the park: 

Woods

Nora sitting in the woods

Nora walking trail

Megan behind the scenes on wobbly dock

We shot in the woods, that may or may not have had a "No Trespassing" sign before the trail. I did not know about this spot until Megan suggested we utilize it and she took us there, and me and Asher fell in love. Don't worry though, nothing happened; we captured amazing footage and left. 

We also went to various areas with bodies of water. One of them was a nice manmade lake that had sand, and with a tight enough shot, one might think it was at the beach. We also filmed at this area with an extremely wobbly dock, that I refused to go on because it was over a very dirty canal that had actual alligators in it. I advised that we just go to another location because I didn't think it was safe to walk on it, considering there was mesh construction wrap around some of the wood poles. I thought it was sketchy and didn't want to do it but Asher persisted and him and Megan went on it. I stayed back and took some long shots and some stills of Megan on the dock to possibly utilize for our film poster. But after seeing that nothing was happening to them while they were on it, I decided to walk the dock and capture some footage, then quickly ran off. 

So an adventure you could say this day was, but it was so worth it because we captured beautiful shots. I am so proud of the work Asher and I have done so far and so grateful of Megan for doing this for us. 

Next we film in school for the scenes on a high school campus.

Until next time!