CVTV: Documentary Update 1/30

Evaluation

For this week, I made an email to send out to the staff that I want to interview. My goal for this email was to get in touch with the staff member, explain what I am making, explain why I need the interviewee, and explain what I will be asking them. I wanted to make sure that everything I needed was in the email, so included with that I wanted to make sure like I wasn't imposing either. Lastly, I was also slightly worried that the people I was asking may have possibly not been people who would be able to answer my questions about the development of the Ninth Grade Academy or that they wouldn't want to do the interviews, so I asked as well to be directed to a different person that would also suffice for an interview on the subject.

Template Email

Dear Mr./Mrs./Dr.  ____

Hi! My name is Sean Hopkins. I am a senior in Mr. Bomboy’s CVTV Year 3 TV Production class, and I am producing a documentary about the creation of CV 9 as my year long independent project. As a part of my documentary, I’d like to interview a couple CV staff members of authority who had a part in the development of CV 9. Mr. Bomboy told me that you’d be a good resource for learning about CV 9, so I was wondering if you would be willing to do an hour-or-so interview with me sometime during late March (preferably after school? It would just be you answering some questions I have about the development and current status of CV 9. Listed below are the the questions I’d be asking:

1. Who are you and what is your current role in the school?

2. What role did you have in making CV 9?

3.What is the basic idea of a Ninth Grade Academy? 

    -This is just meant to be a simple question that establishes what a ninth grade academy is and why one should be implemented.

4. How did the idea arise to renovate Good Hope Middle School into the 9th grade academy?

    -Once again, this is not meant to be a very difficult question. I simply want you to explain why it was decided to renovate the old building and how it was a good idea to do so.

5. What were some difficulties that made planning and organizing CV 9 hard?

    -Example answers could be getting staff reorganized, new bus schedules, creating new/cutting old course options, etc.

6. Could you explain what was new with the CV 9 schedule compared to the current one?

    -Examples answers related to scheduling (when school starts/ends or the lunch periods)

7. What specifically had to happen to certain classes that had to be cut?

    - Some courses were simply taken away or you could mention how some were clustered together in some cases like ceramics and 2D art becoming just Visual Arts or how lifestyle and culinary classes simply became Essentials of FCS and Food and Nutrition.

8. What were some classes that only 9th graders can't take due to a lack of staff for too little students?

    -Examples answers include Film, Digital Modeling, Personal finance, Psychology classes, Yearbook

9. What kinds of concerns did people have in terms of the 9th graders being separated from the 10th-12th graders?

    -Essentially this is asking about what were concerns that people had about how 9th graders would be isolated. Would they be losing out on not having role models that upperclassmen could be? Would some 9th graders feel lonely because they can only interact with other people from their grade? Would the social development of 9th graders be hurt because they aren't surrounded by other grades to learn from?

10. Would you say the first week of CV 9 went smoothly? Why?

11. How has CV 9 ran over the last semester? Have things gone well?

So yeah! Would you be interested in doing an interview with me sometime in late March? If not, do you know by any chance who would be a good person to interview about the development and -to a lesser extent the current standings- of the Ninth Grade Academy?

Thanks in advance,

Sean Hopkins

While I'm Away Production Post

 

Review:

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with my footage. All of it was uniform, I have multiple takes of certain shots, and due to the nature of the film if certain shots don't end up well they can be easily replaced. My solo actor was able to capture the idea of what I wanted, and so filming went pretty quickly as well. The cinematography of this film was given a lot more attention than the last one, too, I would say. The main thing I am concerned for is the focus of these shots. Most of my footage was done in manual focus, so it's possible that some things are slightly out of focus. Also, some shots were not able to be done with a tripod, so I held the camera for them. This could mean possibly shaky shots as well, though I don't think they will be too much of a problem.

OTS Production Blog Post

 

Review:

I am very satisfied with a majority of what I got from my footage. I think the interviews went well, I have a variety of different shots, and also that variety of shots includes a nice range of good moments and good angles/movements. I will say, however, that I did end up having a pretty costly mistake. For my interview with Coach Chamberlain, we ended up messing up the recording of his interview. The person I had helping me accidently was recording before the interview, so when we wanted to record the interview he accidently turned off the recording. So, that's lost. It's not entirely bad though, because the answers the two players gave for their interviews should be more than enough for the audio side of the production.

MP 2 Reflection Post

MP 2 Peer Reflection

Zach Baughman - Time Flies

• The timer at the bottom of the screen is not just a static text. He had the colon (:) blinking to keep it as something that adds movement to it. It's a minor detail that adds something to keep attention (even if it's just to a small extent
• The placement of the title into the actual composition looks nice. For me I've always had the title of the film be in it's own composition, but seeing this helps me realize how stylistic having the title in my shot could look.
• The time is staying consistent in the shot with the watch. Nice details to canon/timeline.
• However later on he messes up the time on the computer versus the time on screen. It's important to be careful about the immersion of films with things like time. 

• When at the school, the character being alone along with no music or sounds outside of him walking adds to a sense of isolation. Even at a public setting with hundreds to thousands of people, he is alone.
• During the repetition of scenery (as that is the point of his film), it's important to know if you want to have variations of the same scenery to keep things interesting or to keep everything almost exactly the same. It deals with what kind of figurative meaning you want out of it. If it's completely the same, it drives home that idea of repetition. If it isn't completely the same, it doesn't drive home that idea as well but still keeps things interesting to watch.
• The transition from putting on the hat to after work is well done. It shows me that these kinds of transitions don't always look amateur.
• POV are actually able to communicate a lot with good composition still, something that I have found difficult to implement and have avoided in previous films for that reason. Perhaps I should try to use more POV shots in my films.

Makayla Forbes - Perfection

• I like her focus on composition. Even in her planning phase, she was focusing on sharpening her fundamentals by reinforcing her knowledge of composition and framing. While me and many others were trying to branch out with learning new skills, she made sure not to forget the foundation of what separates professionals from amateurs.

• It's also still important to make sure lighting is good. She seemed to have issues with exposure in a couple shots, specifically this one on the right. It serves as a reminder that even when it seems like a shot is set up perfectly (as in you really like how it looks), lighting is a make-it-or-break-it that can ruin it sometimes. I need to make sure my shots are lit correctly both in the actual setup of the scene but also in my camera's settings, as this can definitely be a problem in the future for me.
• With her title, Makayla elected to have her title be placed at the end of the film, making it what everything leads to and concludes with. She used her title drive home the idea of what she wanted the message of her film to be focused on.

I also like this shot because it accomplishes the idea of it being night out but also the use of that blue and purple colored lighting gives a surreal, dreamy atmosphere which conveys its own sort of meaning.

Noah Josef - Monkey Business 2

• I like the masking jobs done at the beginning and the end of the film. I think it adds a nice sense of professional style to the work that keeps it looking cool as well. Also, using different clips in the masks reminds me of Marvel trailers that get the audience hyped for what's to come.
• I think that this film probably had the best acting out of all of the ones I've seen, and it's helped me realize just how impactful good acting can have on the immersion and overall professionalism of an amateur work such as a student film. It really brings things together a lot better than I thought previously.
• The transition from the main character sleeping to waking up abruptly in a disturbingly lit area is very well done. It goes from a fade out to show him falling asleep, but instead of fading back in we have a sharp cut to the next scene, where he is waking up immediately confused and concerned.
• Also, the cinematography that can be found in one's house is plentiful. When I did a short film in my house last year, I was thinking that I really couldn't find good spaces for nice composition for shots. However, I'm starting to think that maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough. Shots like this one below show me that houses can be great locations for clean cinematography.

While I'm Away Pre-Production

Planning Process

The way that this film functions is that it is a phone call that voices over the visuals of the story, meaning that my script is just a script, with my storyboard taking over the visual planning of the production. It's hard to determine how long I'd want to have each shot take place for in relation to the script, so the durations of each shot will be determined during the editing phase (which was always my plan). The making of this pre-production took a lot longer than I had planned, as I was going to do a music video with my friends' band, but they ended up wanting to wait until next marking period to do it. So, I had to do a change of plans and came up with this idea of a teenager who's listening to the voicemail of his older brother. It's a story focused on loneliness, as the main character CJ wanders about his house, alone, listening to the final message his older brother Lucas had sent him. Lucas knows that CJ is unhappy and borderline depressed during the time that he sends the voicemail, so he tries to encourage CJ in his message. The actual story takes place a lot longer after then, suggesting that Lucas never came back, and that CJ is now a lot lonelier and sad than he used to be. He considers joining a voice call with his friends, but only after listening to his brother's call does he decide to actually do so (taking off the headphones he was using to listen to the voicemail and replacing them with new headphones to join the voice chat in a symbolic matter of moving on).

Storyboard

This is the storyboard I made that shows what I want out of every shot.

Script

As said previously, my script is almost entirely just the phone call that Lucas speaks. The monologue and the actions are taking place simultaneously so it is kind of weird to write out what is happening at exactly every time that he says something, so it was easier for me to wrap my head around to have the script be just the phone call and the storyboard show what is in the shots. Exact timings will be decided in post, once the audio and visuals are recorded and with that I'll have a better idea of how things flow (specifically with pacing).

CVTV: Documentary Update 1/23

 CV 9 Documentary: Week 1 Update Post

The Plan:

For this week of production, I had a simple task to be done. I needed to list out the questions that I was going to ask my interviewees during my documentary. I'll be interviewing two authoritative staff members within the high school that played major roles in the planning and release of the Cumberland Valley School District's Ninth Grade Academy. With these two interviews, I'll be generally asking them the same questions, as the nature of what their roles within the process along with higher amounts of unique answers that could be given will mean that asking the same questions will not lead to the same answers. With that, here is my list of questions that I will be giving to my interviewees. 

1. Who are you and what is your current role in the school?

2. What role did you have in making CV 9?

3.What is basic idea of a Ninth Grade Academy? 

    -This is just meant to be a simple question that establishes what a ninth grade academy is and why one be implemented.

4. How did the idea arise to renovate Good Hope Middle School into the 9th grade academy?

    -Once again, this is not meant to be a very difficult question. I simply want you to explain why it was decided to renovate the old and building and how it was a good idea to do so.

5. What were some difficulties that made planning and organizing CV 9 hard?

    -Example answers could be getting staff reorganized, new bus schedules, creating new/cutting old course options, etc.

6. Could you explain what was new with the CV 9 schedule?

    -Examples answers related to scheduling (when school starts/ends or the lunch periods)

7. What specifically had to happen to certain classes that had to be cut?

    -With classes you could relate it back to specific courses that were taken away or how they were clustered together in some cases like ceramics and 2D art into just Visual Arts

8. What were some classes that only 9th graders can't take?

    -Examples answers include Film, Digital Modeling, Personal finance, Psychology classes, Year Book

9. What kinds of concerns did people have in terms of the 9th graders being separated from the 10th-12th graders?

    -Essentially this is asking about what were concerns that people had about how 9th graders would be isolated. Would they be losing out on not having role models? Would some 9th graders feel lonely because they can only interact with other people from their grade? Would the social development of 9th graders be hurt because they aren't surrounded by other grades to learn from?

10. Would you say the first week of CV 9 went smoothly? Why?

11. How has CV 9 ran over the last semester? Have things went well?

Evaluation:

This was more difficult than I thought it was going to be. I ended up having a couple questions asking relatively the same thing, so I ended up changing them to focus in on specific answers that could be given. So, less broad answers, but more depth. With that being said, I am satisfied with the questions I have now. I think a couple of them could be a little difficult to answer due to the wording of the questions, but I could not think of better ways to ask them. I think the questions are good enough though, because they have explanations that give clarity as to what I'm asking.

MP 2 In Review

Intention Definition & Exploration of Ideas: 

At the beginning of the semester, I needed to decide what concept of art that I was going to focus on for the year. I had plenty to choose from, but I decided to make films about the internal feelings and struggles that are shared silently between everyone. After making that decision, I then chose to make a story about loss:

https://ct.counseling.org/2015/03/a-visual-picture-of-the-human-psyche/

"As I did last year, I would like the concept that I focus on for this year to be that of looking inwards into the human experience. Most of all in stories, I like how the sharing of life and hard to explain feelings and experiences are covered in films. As a viewer of films -both movies and shows- I gain experience and ideas of what life is like for others when I watch films that cover internal problems that are overcame or succumbed to. Watching the lives of characters in films is comparable to watching the lives of my friends when they have problems or something happening in their lives; both situations give me knowledge of what it means to live and how I can live with knowledge of how others live in both real life and in fiction. The lives of real people and the lives of characters are tantamount in my eyes when considering the worth of the life lessons or basic improvements in understanding that can be derived from witnessing them. So, as a creator of such media, I want to share life experiences that others can derive meaning or second-hand experience from as well. I want to make stories that not only entertain viewers and have them give emotional responses to my work, but also gives them something meaningful -no matter how small- that they can take with them outside of the story I make. Similar to what I want to make, my inspiration for how I want to make my own films is to strive for both entertainment and well thought out messages and themes that give people new perspectives the lives we live. A great example of this for me is the extremely long animated series Naruto. While it serves mainly as an action show, where characters use whatever special powers they have to fight each other in a world of ninjas, there is more than just action that takes place in the show. There are underlying themes about various ideas, ways of life, and philosophies that are explored in both smaller seasons and throughout the entire length of the series. Other examples of shows or movies that I've watched that have both directly stated and underlying themes about internal problems that we deal with along with how to overcome them include Avatar: The Last Airbender, One Piece and Star Wars the Original Trilogy.

https://www.creditonebank.com/articles/how-a-loved-ones-death-could-impact-you-financially

The first project I want to do this year is a look at how a character deals with loss of a close friend. The way that this connects to the theme is that mutual feeling of loss that everyone experiences at some point in their lives. Through the internal pain of a fictional person, viewers would ideally feel similar emotions. However, I would like the story to not just be loss, but rather be about loss instead. With that kind of story, depth is added. I want to write stories with depth, and stories that deal with the sometimes indescribable internal changes we deal with that focus on the human experience will be what I want to do projects on for now. The story will include the entertainment and sadness of watching a light hearted friendship develop and subsequently be taken away, but will also feature something more to be taken away as well. I want to attempt to discuss briefly how one would deal with grief in general, and that will be accomplished by means of the character overcoming their grief from the loss of a dear friend."

Planning: 

Planning for my film was a lot of scripting and storyboarding, however the main difficulty was considering what I wanted to do with my film in the first place. I went on for a while, trying to figure out what I wanted to create a story about, until I decided that I wanted to focus on the idea of loss and how one deals with it. I came up with an idea for a character that would start alone, meet someone who raises him up and teaches him what he needs to know, but then loses that same person later on. The character would need to then deal with that loss by implementing what he had learned from that friend, and goes onto cope with the loss by being for a new person what his friend was for him.

I then went on with my script to really flesh out what was going to happen.

And then I visualized my script into drawings to storyboard what I wanted to film and how.

Producing:

I recorded my audio

I recorded my footage at the same time

I edited it all together, and ended up with this as my final product

Evaluation

In terms of a Self-Reflection on what I've made, I'd say I'm not as satisfied as I had hoped to be when all was said and done. I think it's hard to say if the final product is good or not because a lot didn't go how I originally planned and as the creator of the film who spent over 20-30 hours total making it, I've spent a lot of time focusing on the imperfections of my film rather than what makes it good - there is bias in my opinions here then. I think what I really don't like about my film goes a lot about how I planned and executed it. That isn't to say that it was horribly planned and horribly executed, but just rather that I could have and should have done better. This was my first time picking back up a DSLR camera after about 9 months, my first time using audio equipment, and my first time writing a full on story that required planning around the schedules of multiple people. Because of that, there were some difficulties. I should have better formatted my storyboard because I ended up being inefficient with how long it took to set up scenes, I should have had scripts printed out for the actors to follow so that transitioning between shots would have been easier, and I should have planned an extra day to film for retakes. Along with that, the video quality in some shots were bad and it was too late by the time I noticed it. Not to mention, when I ended up filming a scene outside during a weekend when we had limited time to film, the batteries to both my zoom recorder and my camera both died and broke, so I had to end up holding my phone awkwardly for side angles (that the phone automatically color corrected poor during the recording multiple times) and use another phone for audio. I did however learn a lot from my experience filming this. I know now to plan better ahead of time on all accounts, how to set up quicker, and general experience using film equipment again. I think the majority of what I learned in this film was editing experience. I learned several techniques that I did not previously know to get certain shots the way I wanted them with moving assets that cut off or that stay bound to certain areas, etc. etc. As I rewatch the film I can see the difference in quality of what I edited when I started the post-production process versus later on in my process.

For my Self-Critique, here is a list of things I would like to mention about what I think I did good and bad:

• I think starting with an opener that introduces that topic is good, the music is good with it, and the transition is alright into the actual story

• The lighting for the first couple shots is poor

• I like the cut to black and audio with Ward talking for the first time

• The first shot Ward is actually in feels kind of weird and poorly paced

• I think a lot of the first scene before the montage is poorly paced

• Ward's transition from drawing to person feels too fast and once again poorly paced

• Dolly can be heard in the dolly shot

• All of the drawings are pretty good (though I didn't make them)

• Some drawings are very well edited in and cropped and others aren't and sometimes don't even attach correctly to the sticky note paper behind it

• Unfocused in one of the shots in the classroom during the montage

• I think the transition into the house and cut to black after seeing Nick is probably the best sequence in the film

• Shaky camera during the car scene (which is because I had to hold the camera as a phone with my arm extended from behind the seat because the camera was broken and we didn't have time to do it a different time)

• I think that the monologue from Ward is well spoken, but kind of comes out of nowhere

• The car coming in as a non-descript object kind of looks silly, and the car crash happening itself can be seen as kind of stupid too

• I don't know if I went too far with the blue color tint during the sad montage

• The foot of the drawing in the first part of the sad montage is poorly cropped

• The music in the sad montage is a good part of the atmosphere

• The transition from black to Thomas with the piano is good

• Camera movement from Thomas talking to the student for the first time is good

• Audio quality is pretty good throughout I think (except for maybe Ward's in the first scene)

• The last shot with Thomas learning to be happy again is too quickly brought on along with credits that end too quickly I think (both had to be edited that way because the final shot was recorded with too quick a zoom out and the song ends too quickly as well for longer credits)

I also have a few comments from peer-reviews, here is what was mentioned from those:

• The transitions between scenes were good

• Color grading was interesting

• The shot where the car pulled up to a stop was well done

• The way I had the car that crashed into the characters being an abstract object was interesting

• Mixed opinions on how the window pane cutting off characters makes it so we can't see as much but also that could be a good thing so that the characters aren't too well known

• The addition of animation in the film was cool

Integrating: 

As I said previously, I think my biggest shortcoming throughout all of my process was a lack of specific planning of what to do when and how. My storyboard and script were made, but I didn't think about how long certain shots would take or how they would actually be able to be done. Inexperience was the main problem with this lack of foreknowledge. My understanding of how long things would take, my ability to think about how I would shoot things, noticing smaller details that could lead to bigger problems -there were all these things that aren't huge problems on their own but become overwhelming when combined into a mess of problems. In the future, I'll know better what to spend more time planning ahead, and I'll be able to look out better for problems that I wouldn't have given caution previously. Also, I learned various editing techniques while making this. I learned how to use After Effects. how to get rid of grain in videos, and what was very useful was learning how to use the Nest function on Premiere Pro. All these little things that I've learned all will help contribute to an optimization of how I work in the future.