Yello! The perfect greeting for this blog, since the portmanteau, parallels the fact that I spent today combining the suggestions I had gathered from my film review with revisions and additions of my own. The easiest choice my team and I made was the removal of our establishing shot, which saved us valuable time that we could use later on. Getting rid of this shot, in particular, was of no concern to us given that we never once made a reference to anything happening outside of the house and instead gave our sole focus on the interior of the subject's home. In doing so, we were also able to ramp up tensions because the audience and subject began to get the feeling that they are trapped in this house, the closet seeming to be the only means of escape, but as seen with our cliffhanger ending, it may instead open up its doors to more troublesome situations. When it came time for us cut down on other areas of our opening, we did choose to shred a few seconds off when our subject initially walks into what is now our first shot. While my groupmates and I were quite excited that we were able to use the places different people pointed out to us to cut down on time, we actually ended up needing to do the opposite after a while once we began to dwindle too far below, or rather an exact ten seconds under, the two-minute mark. While to most people, ten seconds may not seem like a lot, to us, making up for that time seemed to be an eternity. However, everything ended up working out in our favor. If you recall, in my film review blog I mentioned that a few people stated that they thought the "apple in the garbage can" shot was too short for them to read the electrical bill we had deliberately placed within it. Since we were now short on time, I lengthened the clip, which was a bit difficult since I needed to allow for it to look as natural as possible in terms of the amount of time it took for the apple to come into contact with the trashcan after our subject had thrown it. On the bright side, I was thankfully able to save myself from needing to refilm anything this late in the game, which I'd say is an absolute win!
Moving on, I would like to celebrate the fact that I happened upon a very important discovery today! After fiddling with my iPhone's features (some of which, despite having had the cellphone since December I am still unfamiliar with), I found a way to keep my shot focused on the film's title when our subject stands up from the dining room table in one of our scenes. By doing so, I was able to ensure that I provided my audience with an adequate amount of time to read and understand the title so that they would "get" its connection to our film later on (the flickering of the closet lights being a major plot point). Now, contrary to the statement I made in my first film review blog, I didn't actually end up shortening the stairs clip, as I drew it out instead. I did also end up muting that clip entirely, so that the ambient noise of our filming location would not overlap and shift the focus away from our film's non-diegetic music. It was as if luck was on my side because the music swelled at that exact moment, acting as a foreboding warning that paired nicely with the fact that the shot lingers a bit longer than it should, creating an eerie and perturbing feeling when both of said elements worked in conjunction with one another.
When it came to the more minute, but still bothersome inconsistencies (at least for me and a couple of the more attentive and critical people that watched over our film), such as the disconnectivity between the shots of the subject as they walked over the phone and the one facing them from outside of the closet, I ended up removing the "stepping over" part of the clip entirely. In lieu of this decision, I chose to follow along with what I deduced would have been the natural progression of his movement had the shot been continuous, which actually enhanced the quality of the shot overall. Furthermore, I did speed up the second pan to match the quickened pace that our subject was moving at so that the shots were better transitioned between and connected.
As much as it pains me to say it, from the looks of things right now, we will likely not be including our planned news anchor voice-over because of audio layering issues with the different programs we've tried, including ClipChamp, iMovie, and DaVinci Resolve 17, as well as difficulties with blurring out the television screen in the background (which we did purposefully as to make it look like there was actually a news reporting occurring). It took a bit of convincing for my groupmates to agree that it would be improbable for us to be able to incorporate that particular aspect into our film given the now limiting time constraints, but we decided that it was the best decision overall, since it would give me one less thing to worry about as I made my rounds and conducted my final touch-ups when editing. On the topic of audio, my group and I ended up deciding that it would be best not to drown out the cries of the subject at the end, but instead have the jarring, high-pitched, and quicker tempo non-diegetic music begin after the final call for his mother and the cut to black where the director's name is displayed. I'm not sure if you caught it, but I did indeed use the word "is." Aside from the editing that I conducted from what was laid out in my film review, I also got a jump start on the insertion of titles since it is likely to be a more time-consuming process being that I will need to create the titles on a separate file and transport them in, one-by-one, on Davinci Resolve 17.
I am actually so proud of myself for accomplishing the "daunting" feat that I have decided to include a picture of one of the many titles I put in today as a way to commemorate this milestone.
Anywho, I'd say that's as great of news as any because it can only mean one thing, that we're nearing the end. While I will say that this was probably my favorite project this year because everything was entirely our own (aside from the music that is), since we did not need to hinge on whether or not we appealed to our audience's material desires by applying overused commercial clichés, as we did with our advertisement, nor did we need to ground our film in the lyrics of a song as with our music video, I will not hide the fact that I am excited to see how all of our hard work will finally pay off once our final product is complete.
Of course, since our project is due this week, the only thing on my mind is that it's almost time to see how everything will come together, meaning that I can initiate my "final countdown(!)" (Europe 1986).
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