Day 32: Oh, how close we are to the end...

Hello hello hello! Today I'll be researching question #1 in preparation for my CCR!! Wow, I legit cannot believe how close we are to the end of the project, but I can't relax yet because there is still more work to be done. 

If you don't already know, here is the actual question:

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

To start, I should discuss the conventions of the COA genre and which conventions I used in my opening (which I have already researched on day 10 and basically just need to pull my information from there).

First of all, what is a COA film? 

A COA film usually explores themes of self-discovery and not fitting in. Main characters in this genre are generally teenagers who are trying to figure out their life in some sort of way. COA films also commonly used voice overs as their narration style to create a more intimate bond between the character and audience. It can also highlight the character's personality over their actions. 

Examples (that you might know!):

Ex: Charlie - The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
(Not fitting in)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010)
(Voice over)

My product uses the COA conventions such as not fitting in and voice over. In the opening, it is revealed that Maia actually gets bullied, because of her child-like character, which is why she doesn't fit in. I also utilize voice over as the main auditory technique to develop intimacy between the audience and Maia. 

My product challenges the conventions of a COA film because the main characters are usually not portrayed as childish as mine. Teens in COA films are usually seen going to parties and trying to be adults, whereas Maia is not. She is just trying to discover who she is as she goes through high school.

Though I challenge the conventions of a COA film there are also some conventions that I specifically chose to stick to because they are key features of films in this genre. The key conventions I'm referring to are voice overs and the theme of not fitting in. When audience members watch a COA film, they usually expect the main character to not be "normal", which is why the film is about that character. Maia is "different" because of how childish she is, though she is already in 10th grade. I also chose to stick mainly with voice over because I want the audience to connect and sympathize with Maia's character.

Finally, how does my product represent social groups? 

Well, my opening represents teenagers as a very broad group, through relatable experiences like sleeping a lot and getting bullied (which I hope is not a relatable experience for many). 

My opening also represents a certain group of teens that are more energetic and like to be creative. Through my set and costume design, I fully present Maia's personality of being bright, bubbly and still a little bit childish. There are many bright colors, fun shapes and a ton of stuffed animals throughout her bedroom which directly translates to her personality. Her phone case also represents her creativity and enjoyment of being happy. 

Thank you so much for reading and I'll catch you on the next one for week 6? (I've already lost count at this point...) Bye!!

Sources:

Heller-Nicholas, A. (2020, December 31). What is a coming-of-age movie? No Film School. https://nofilmschool.com/what-is-coming-of-age-movie

The Screen Academy. (n.d.). Teen movies genre. https://www.thescreenacademy.com/knowledge/genre/teen-movies-genre

Day 31: Flashback (OoOOOoooOOO)

Hi hello! Today I'm continuing to edit my project. As you hopefully remember, there is a flashback to Maia getting bullied. For that scene I was thinking about putting a filter over it and either making it black and white or just darker to represent the dark time. You can see the original below.

I ended up putting the "Ink" filter (on intensity 45) that Canva offers over both shots and here is how it looks:

I really like how it contrasts with the bright colors of the room to really signify the dark time and feelings that Maia has towards that moment. 

I also like that I v/o the "You will never amount to anything" instead of having the voice of the bully because I think it sounds better and makes it more convincing overall. I tried using the sound from the original bullying shots, but in the second shot, there was background noise. So, I tried muting that shot and extracting the audio from the first, but it made this weird echo-ey sound and I was not a fan. I'm just going to keep it like this for now, unless I can figure out another way to fix it.

Thanks for tuning in today and I'll catch ya on the next one!!

Day 30: Editing!! Yay!!

Hi again!! I hope you are doing fantastic today as I am beginning to edit!!

As I started editing, I realized that overlaying my title over the running shot might not be the best idea because it is SUPER busy and honestly hard to look at (as you can see below).

Because of this, I have to figure out a way to make it pop. I think that "Unfiltered" looks perfectly fine because there is a solid color behind it, but "Maia" doesn't make as much of a contrast as I thought it would. I thought of overlaying the title card on top of a drawing of a computer to match the blog vibe. But I just could not get it to look quite right at all. 

So, I went back to the drawing board and was just messing around with the placement of the title, without the computer drawing. I finally realized that I could just move the title down a bit so that the darkness of my hair contrasts with the hot pink of the "Maia", which looks like this:

I'm gonna be honest, I still don't fully like how it looks and I think something is just off and I can't quite put my finger on it. Tomorrow I have AICE Media Studies, so I'll ask my teacher what she thinks of it then.

Once I talked to her, she suggested that I put a black background under the title and then cut to the first shot. I tried it, but for some reason I didn't like it.

So then I tried a white background and still didn't like it.

The next suggestion that my teacher had was to have the actual blog of "Maia: Unfiltered" up and have that be the title card. I really liked the idea and created the blog, which you can view here. I pretty much just copied and pasted the script into the blog for the first post, and this is what the shot looks like:

I honestly really like this, so this is my updated title card!! Thank you so much for sticking with me through this long journey of creating the title... I hope to see you on the next one!

Day 29: Let's make some noise!!

Hello hello hello!! Today I'll be working on recording my piano piece for the non-diegetic/diegetic sound as well as creating a voice over. Thankfully, my congestion has disappeared and I can record my voice over today. It is critical that I record my voice over TODAY because I need to start editing this week. 

According to my schedule, I should have already edited and should have been revising this week. I'm so glad that I decided to add a buffer week into my schedule in case of something like this. 

As a refresher, here is the link to the voice over that I'm scrapping. You can read day 27 as well to understand a bit better why I'll be re-recording. In today's session, I'll be focusing on making my voice over sound calm, smooth, and make it roll off the tongue a bit better. In my last voice over, you can hear me trip over my words once or twice and it infuriates me to re-record, but I have to in order to create a project I'm proud of.

Here is my final voice over!! 

Next, I'll be recording my piano piece, and I've decided to play Waltz in A minor by Chopin. Feel free to listen to it below. 

 

 

I chose this piece because it's one of my favorite ones that I've been learning recently and isn't too difficult for me to record perfectly. It also isn't too long, but I think it will end up being cut off at the end of the 2 minutes.

I was recording at my piano with just my phone microphone and below, you can see my setup. 

After a few tries, I was successfully able to record my piece with no mistakes. You can listen to it here!!

Obviously, I'll be extracting the audio from both the voice over and the piano and lay it onto my project. With the voice over and piano being done, I am so relieved. I am so much happier with my voice over result compared to last weekend's result. I feel like it has more emotion and I wasn't tripping over my words at all.

The next steps that I need to take are to find sound effects for both the phone alarm and keyboard clicking. Earlier in the year, we had to create a soundscape project, and I mainly used Pixabay to find sound effects.

I decided to use my actual phone alarm sound because I could not find a good one for the life of me. I tried to screen record it from my phone, but it didn't pick up the sound, so I found it on Voicemod Tuna. This is the "Chime Time" alarm clock from Samsung.

Because this one is less specific, I was able to find the keyboard clicking sound on Pixabay. Here is the link in case this video does not work.

Last but definitely not least, I need to record my mom saying "Hurry up Maia!! We have to go!!" 

With all of my audio pieces ready to go, I'm (finally) ready to start editing!! I'm so glad I'm back on track and I'll hopefully be done editing by the end of the week. I hope to catch ya on the next one!!

Day 28: Group Meeting #2

Hi there! Welcome to week 6 of my portfolio project! I can't believe we're so close to the end of the project, because it feels like I've only been working on it for a week. Sadly, I'm not on schedule because I am not at all happy with my voice over, so I wasn't able to work on editing this past week. In the next post you'll see my final voice over, but that's not the topic of today.

Today in class we had our second group meeting!! This one was focusing on anything we can improve on with our projects and ideas for our CCRs. We weren't with the same group as last time but I did have Luke and some of the partners of other group members from last time. I got to learn a bit more about other projects as well as follow up with others.

(Left to right) Me, Amanda, Noah, Jade, Luke and Brennan

Brennan started and he's in Vanessa's group from the last meeting. Their story changed a little, as now, instead of being bullied, the main character is working on a project with another kid who doesn't show up on presentation day. Because of this, the main character decides to murder the other. 

Brennan was playing the main character and his group had just filmed this past weekend and he is going to be Adobe Premier Pro certified hopefully soon and will be able to  use many different effects. 

He was filming at a nearby park and said that if it was too windy in their shots that they would voice over the dialouge, if needed.

For his CCR he had a great idea, which was to be "in prison" as the main character and answer the questions as if he was being interrogated.

Luke went next, and I finally see the bigger picture of his opening now. Basically, there are two opposite best friends. The introverted one will be sleeping and woken up by his friend's call. The friend asks if the other wants to hangout and the answer was "No." Next thing we see is that the second friend was waiting outside the first's house hoping for a "Yes!" and leaves a note on the floor.

His film is called "To: Will" and I suggested that in his CCR he could be unboxing fan mail, like an example that we've seen in class, and the fan mail could be the CCR questions. The fans could also be offering their interpretations of what the contents of the letter is, because it isn't revealed in the film.

Moving on to Jade, who was in Emma's group from last meeting. She revealed that the girl in the mental asylum is there for an unknown reason, but we do know that her best friend died. Because they weren't about to go film in a prison, they created a jail cell in Emma's room. They had a dog cage and used that as the prison cell and also used slate grey backdrops. I thought that they solved this problem so well and the setting looks SO believable in the shots that I saw. Their film is called "Static" because of how unstable the main character is. 

Next up was Noah. His film is called "Straight-A's" and introduces us to a boy named Oliver who is basically two-faced. Oliver comes from a rich family and his family views him as the perfect child with straight-A's, kind, caring and all of the things, when really he's a bully who smokes (essentially the bad boy) and has straight-F's. 

He had this really cool idea that when Oliver is in his room, there would be chaotic music playing, like rock or something and as soon as he steps out of his room, there would be an immediate contrast with classical music. I think that it would be awesome if they did that because it really just re-enforces the idea of his contrasting personalities.

For his CCR, the group suggested that he could have a double-sided conversation with one of the personalities of Oliver interviewing the other.

Now onto Amanda! Though I wasn't in Amanda's group last time, because we are pretty good friends, I knew mostly what her film was about. She is also doing a film about taekwondo where the main character, Allie, sprains her ankle while doing a round-off back-handspring. Amanda actually does these kinds of things in taekwondo, so she will be using a bunch of action matches to make it seem like she's getting hurt when she actually isn't.

The name of her film is very clever, "Mind over Mat", like the saying "Mind over matter". We use mats on the taekwondo dojang floor to protect ourselves because we don't wear shoes. In her film opening, she has a stuffed animal named Lamby that represents the soft side to the hardcore sport. I suggested that for her CCR, she could be interviewed by Lamby and Luke added onto that by saying that Amanda could essentially use Lamby as a puppet.

Last but not least, I explained my film and showed some of my favorite shots from filming. I didn't get much feedback on my opening, which was fine because I haven't started editing yet, but I did get some good feedback on my CCR idea.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in a past post, but Mia gave me the idea of doing 4 of Maia's hobbies while answering questions, like a Vouge 73 questions video. Amanda suggested doing something related to a blog, but we couldn't really work it out, so I think I'll go with the Vouge 73 questions idea.

Please feel free to check out everyone's blogs here and see what cool things they're doing!!

Brennan

Luke

Jade

Noah

Amanda

Overall, I think that today's group meeting was helpful and I really enjoyed hearing about everyone's ideas. I'm gonna be honest, I think that the last one was more helpful (and needed) because it was much earlier in the planning process. I think that if I was actually on schedule, I could have gotten better feedback on the editing of my opening, but that is completely my fault. 

Thank you for reading and I'll catch you on the next one!!

Day 27: Houston, we have a problem.

Hello hello hello!! Unfortunately, I've run into my first road bump, which I'm surprised happened so late in the game. 

Last week, I recorded my voice over, which you can listen to here as a refresher, but as I was starting to edit, I realized that I actually hate the way that it sounds. Here are a few of my problems with this version:

1. I feel like I'm rushing through the script and keep tripping over my words.
2. I think the mic might be a bit too close to my mouth.
3. I do not like the way I'm saying the script because it sounds too rigid if that makes sense.

Now, you might be asking yourself, "Maia why is this a problem? Just re-record it."

Well, theoretically that would work... if I wasn't congested and I sound like I'm sick. I don't want to re-record my voice over until my congestion is gone, as I don't want to sound sick in my opening. I also think that it's best to edit to the voice over so that I have the right timing for my shots. 

What can I do at this moment? Instead of editing this week, I can sift through my shots and choose the ones I'll actually be using so that it saves me time during editing. Instead of taking hours looking through each shot, I can simply just import the one that I had chosen. I'll insert a few of my favorites down below!!

page 1

page 2

I've also uploaded my story board so that I can reference each shot easily. I'll be referencing each shot chronologically starting after the production logo. For example, page 1 shot 3 would be the tight closeup.

page 1 shot 3

page 1 shot 5

(This one was the best bullying shot that we got because I wasn't smiling at the end and I really liked the angle.)

page 2 shots 1 and 2 (matchcut)

I'm actually pretty satisfied with the shots that I got and I think this has a lot of potential for a good opening. Hopefully my congestion goes away this week and I'll be able to film a voice over that I'm actually happy with, but in the meantime, thank you so much for reading today and I'll catch you on the next one!!

Day 26: And that's wraps!

Hi there! Welcome back to my journey of Maia: Unfiltered! This past weekend I finished filming and I'll start to edit later this week. 

I filmed on Wednesday (2/11), Sunday (2/15) and Monday (2/16). 

On Wednesday, I filmed at my taekwondo dojang, and Mia (you can check out her blog and project out here!!) came with her camera and helped me as well. I set up all of the shots that I wanted, but she just pressed the record button. On this day, we were only filming 2 shots which were the bullying ones. 

In many of the over-the-shoulder shots that we took, you could tell that I was laughing and smiling because you could see the side of my cheek curling into a smile near the end of the shot (which you can see an example of below). Thankfully, I won't be using the entire shot, but I hope I don't have to re-shoot.

As you can see, I ended up casting another character who is essentially one of the bully's minions to reinforce the fact that they are really bullying Maia hard. Though they don't look THAT intimidating, these were the most intimidating guys in my dojang, so they were pretty much my only options.

I also want to thank Mia for letting me borrow her wonderful Canon Rebel and tripod. She was an absolute angel sent from heaven for letting me borrow it for the past weekend, though she was very nervous about me damaging it. I, in fact, kept the camera in perfect condition to return to Mia the other day and she saved me from using my crappy phone camera. 

Using Mia's Canon Rebel really made this whole production start to feel more real because I had an actual camera in hand. When I was shooting with the camera, I felt like a professional and got even more excited about this project.

Thankfully, I don't have to worry too much about the audio quality on the camera because I'm mostly focusing on voice over. I'll be recording my piano piece hopefully this coming weekend to use as non-diegetic sound that turns into diegetic sound during the piano scene.

Remember the two shots from Killing Eve and Juno that I wanted to re-create for my opening? Well here are my versions!!

Killing Eve (2018)

Maia: Unfiltered (2026)

Juno (2007)

Maia: Unfiltered (2026)

I do wish that I got the tight closeup (second shot) a bit closer, but I think I can fix that while editing, which I'll start later this week. For editing my opening, I'll be using Canva's video creation tool because I'm the most comfortable using it out of all of the editing software I've tried throughout the year. I've used Adobe Premier, ClipChamp (Microsoft's editing software) and Canva. I actually use Canva quite often and I think it will be beneficial for me to use an app that I am comfortable with. Because Canva also has a huge variety of fonts (because I was provided with premium from my teacher) I think it's just going to be the easiest tool for me.

On Sunday and Monday, I was filming at my house with the help of Emma, my best friend. Similar to Mia's job, Emma helped me press the record button (and also to throw a plushie soccer ball at my head). Sunday was mostly focusing on the shots in my room and Monday we did all of the other shots (outside and with my younger brother).

Overall, I had a very smooth filming process, and I think I have some good shots to work with. Thank you so much for reading and I'll catch you on the next one!