Movie Opening post

        After nearly 2 months of work I am finally done with this project. Surprisingly enough the CCR proved to be harder to construct than the opening itself. I think I did well in creating this opening and I am proud of the result. Quick note is that all non actor names in the film are fake. I did this because I tried putting real names for the position of director, editor, cinematographer and Writer but it was just my name 4 times so it looked off compared to the film I watch which have multiple different names. I just when on a random name generator and got four names so that it looks more professional. Here is my Movie Opening.

Finally done with my CCR

         It took me eleven hours to complete, but I finally finished it. I am now almost done with this project. I think it came out well and I did my best on it so I am happy with the result.  Tomorrow I will upload my opening but for now here is my CCR. 

What I learned

        I am basically done editing my opening at this point, the only thing I have left to do is the names on the credits. My teacher said they can be random but some people I asked said they could only be random for the actors names, but the names of the directors, writers etc. would have to be real. Currently I have made up names for those positions as well so once I ask my teacher this question I will either change it to real people or just leave the fake names. This is my last blog post before the CCR and the actual opening so I think it would be cool to leave off on what I learned from this project.

        Initially, I absolutely despised this project. I mean I heard blog posts every week and a 2 minute film opening and just thought of how much work it was. I hated the idea of this project and was a little nervous as to whether I could keep up with the blog posts and make a competent movie. Turns out, it was much easier than I expected and I even enjoyed it a little. The blog posts were not hard at all and came naturally to me and did not even take me that much time. For the movie opening, getting the shots was much easier than I expected and the editing was also easier than I expected. The finished product was much better than I expected, now I do not know if it is up to Cambridge standards but it is definitely better than what I thought it was going to be on the first day this project was assigned. This taught me to go into things with a more open mind, I had already decided I hated this project before even starting it, so I did the first few blog posts and did not like it, but eventually I realized it was not bad at all and I tremendously overexaggerated the difficulty of this project.

        Another thing I learned was the practice of not procrastinating. This project was set up in way where you really could not procrastinate as you needed to do things every week. I finished my opening with there still to be a week for my CCR plus a long weekend. I did this whole thing stress free. Another important thing I learned is to plan. I asked my actors way beforehand about when we could meet just to make sure nothing would come up and it worked as filming day went by very smooth. Also, I learned that while it is important to plan, not everything will be exactly like you planned it. I had a script made, but when it turned time to film it was not feasible to do what I had put in the script. It turned out for the better though because it was much better in the new way. All in all I think it went pretty well.

  

Things to fix in my last cut of the movie.

         The first major issue with my opening is the length of it. The film is supposed to be 2 minutes max but my film is 2 minutes and 18 seconds. However, I do recall my teacher saying it could go to 2 minutes 20 seconds but I am not sure of this so I will ask her when I have the class again. If the max time is indeed 2 minutes I need to figure out a way to shave off 18 seconds. I do not even know where to start to do this. I am going to have to go through the film and see which scenes are absolutely necessary and the ones that are not I will cut off. I am hoping that the max is 2 minutes 20 seconds other wise I am going to have to think long and hard about what to cut off. This is something that I am a little worried about doing because most of the scenes in there were necessary, 

        I also sent this version of the film to one of the actors and they identified some possible issues with it. The first one was with the fonts of the words on the screen. These were there to list the people who worked on the project like director and cinematographer. I will need to look to find a better font than the one I used for that. I think this is a pretty easy fix so it really is nothing I am worried about at all. It is just going to take a quick Google search and me having to select which font I want to use on Shotcut. 

       

        Another issue with fonts that I did not even realize was they were in different colors when displaying the credits. This was actually completely unintentional and an accident but I did not even notice it when I rewatched the opening. This is also a very simple fix as I just have to go to shot cut and click on that scene and simply change the color from white to black. This is also another minor fix that I am not worried about at all. 

        Also I was informed the color filter I put over the character Bill Tyson in the second scene initially was not good. I put the filter over to try and mute the colors to make it seem like the character is sad and when he gets the text I switch the colors back to normal to make it seem like he is happier, but it did not have the intended effect I wanted to. I still want to put a color filter over that scene but I am going to need to try different ones before I find the right one. This is also a very quick fix and something I am not worried about.

        Some other very small stuff is some of the transitions did not look good so I am just going to have to switch them. It is only 2 transitions and they are both easy fixes. Another thing that needs fixing is in the scene after the trunk is closes, the music kind of just comes to an abrupt stop. I have seen some movies where that does happen but I am still deciding whether to keep it like that or to make it so that the music goes down bit by bit so that it is a smoother stop rather than a sudden one.

Editing

         I think I have finished editing for the most part. I will change up some things based on the feedback I get. I think it went as well as I could have expected. I did my best and that is good enough for me. It came out a little better than I expected it to. I did run into a couple of problems however, which I will quickly run through and at the end I will post the screenshots I took while I was editing the opening. All in all even if I do not get the best grade on the opening I think it was a good experience to have.

        The first issue I had is that me being stupid, in some critical shots my finger was over the camera. Luckily, it was like only 1 or 2 shots so I found a solution. The solution was to basically zoom in on something else in the shot. Also again me being lucky, the shots I had my thumb in also had the suitcase in it. This meant that I could just zoom in on the suitcase which saved me the pain of having to re record. As a matter of fact, I actually think this zooming in on the suitcase helped enhance the film. Initially, this was an issue but after I came up with a solution it really was not that big of a deal. 

        Another issue I ran into that also took up some time was the editing software. I know initially I said that I was going to use Shotcut(which I ended up using anyway), but I felt like I might want to use the extra features that Da Vinci Resolves gives. However, whenever I would upload a video onto it, the video would lag out like crazy. I spent a decent amount of time trying to figure this out before I just went back to Shotcut. Shotcut served me well and it was not complicated so perhaps I should have stuck with my initial decision anyway.

        Below I will just dump a couple of screenshots I took while I was editing on Shotcut. 

Filming

         I filmed the movie opening yesterday. There were a couple changes made to the film while I filmed. I think the filming went well and I got all the clips I wanted to get. However, the only way to tell truly how well the filming went is after I edit the clips. I filmed it on a phone and when watching the clips, the iPhone audio seemed like it picked up the audio pretty well so I did not need a mic or anything special to pick up audio which was one of my bigger concerns going in.

        As discussed, I had a couple changes made during filming. First was the location. Initially, I had a completely different location picked out. However, some of the people who I had asked to act in my film said they had a better location. This location was right outside of Weston Regional Park and it was a better location than the one I had initially selected. I think it helped my movie opening immensely because the overall aesthetic was much better in this new location and it allowed for my next change which I will talk about in the next paragraph. 

        This change was to the script of the movie. Initially the secret agent, Derek Johnson was supposed to be in the car, but now it was easier logistically for him to be walking around with the suitcase in a backpack. Henry Walker was going to be the one in the car and he called Derek over and when Derek came over, he knocked him out. In the original script Derek was supposed to be in the car and Henry would stop the car. However, it was very difficult to film this, so I decided that it was better to have Derek walking and trying to blend in. A decision was made that in order for Derek to blend in, the suitcase would be inside a backpack and when Henry knocks out Derek, he will take out the suitcase from the backpack to further signify the importance of the suitcase.

        For the future, I am very nervous about editing. I have one experience of editing before and I got a bad grade on the project so I am not very confident in my editing ability. I feel like I got the necessary clips but the editing might mess the whole thing up. I am hoping I quickly pick up the editing as I am editing and the opening looks good in the end. However, I do have major doubts about it.

Title Change

         As I discussed in my last blog I absolutely hated my title. The supreme suitcase sounded so lame and I just came up with it because I wanted a name on the script. First, I narrowed down the title to 3 names. Warrior Of Yesterday, Snake in the River and The comeback. I felt these three names really resonated with the plot of my movie. I had a hard time narrowing them down because each of them symbolized a part of the movie which I will explain below.

        Snake in the River was an intriguing title because the title is very catchy. It also has a deeper meaning behind it in relation to the movie. As I explained in the post about the plot, there was a spy in the ranks of US government which is why they came to Bill in the first place. Snake is a word for traitor and the river was meant to symbolize the US government, so essentially the title would foreshadow the traitor in the government. In the end, I decided against this name because I felt like it did not have enough to do with the main character of the movie.

        The Comeback was another one I considered. This one related to the main character Bill Tyson as he had been away from his job as a secret agent for a while, but he needs to make a comeback to stop a major harm from befalling upon the US. In the end, I decided against this title because it felt kind of cheesy and something that is super generic and overused. It also did not really have a deeper meaning or anything and just looked kind of plain to me.

        The one I finally decided on was Warrior Of Yesterday. The title itself looks intriguing and mystifying. Moreover it also has a deeper meaning. Bill used to be a secret agent and much of the plot is going to show how he struggled in his life between missions. He was clinging on to his heroism of the past. I think the title was best suited as it provides a mystifying hook as well as links in to the movie in a big way.