CCR planning

 In this blog post I'll be presenting my basic idea for the CCR. I have one which I really like, and I'll stick with it no matter what, while the other still needs to be developed and might change in the future as Im not completely convinced by it. 

GOOD IDEA 

This idea would be great. As it is has a creative format and I didn't see anything like it in the examples. The examples had a characteristic of having a really straightforward way of exposing the information. This more creative format would make it a little bit hard, as I have a cooking narrative. But with the idea that I describe of the match cuts, I would open a door to talkdirectly to the audience about the topic. 

I have to make a really good script but I believe both narratives can coexist and make each other better, in a really creative way that wont compromise the quality of the content. As it would be my priority in every moment. 

I would seek to constantly change to the western POV so I can develop deeper into answering my questions. And cooking part would work mainly as a bridge towards answering this questions. This way as mentioned before the content (answers to the questions) will have the importance they deserve. The cooking introduction would mainly be used as a comic resourse and an stylistic one. I would like to offer a big sense of contrast to enhace the change of scenarios and as well enhace the importance of the answers. As contrast generates focus. 

For this the cooking scenes would have a fancy look, and a warm illumination, while the western ones will be recorded outside  with natural light, and with a natural background. 

It is an ambitious idea but I'll talk to my teacher and I'll make it work. 

NOT REALLY GOOD IDEA 

I see a really funny sketch of this in my mind but I would really have to work on this script to make it work. It would be really like a shortfilm so really explain and expose the answers for my CCR might be too complicated. The examples I saw were really simple ones so I want to go with ambitious stuff but maybe this wont work. 

I want to change this idea in the future as the composition of it didn't flowed as natural in my head as the other one did. 

In search of diferent answers I explored diferent concepts. Finding one which I really like but another one that is a little pretencious considering what is asked. One can be really creative but has to take into account what are the basic requirements. I'll take this into account as I continue developing my CCR.

CCR first idea

 Hey, I just found out what a CCR was the on March 12. Scary. I wasn't at school when my teacher explained because I was in Tampa at STN. Lovely trip, but making up work sucks. Most when it is somenthing as important as this huge project that AICE media has. 

(little pic of y STN team)

I came up with an idea that could answer one of the questions really easily, and maybe another one. Its going to be a hard script to write but the creativity of it compensates it. My idea is doing a cooking/recipe video. 

Pretty weird idea but let me explain. The two questions i want to answer are: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? and How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text? The idea to answer this with a cooking video is to make a recepie that represents certain culture, a classical recepi. This with the idea of making a paralelism between it and the western, a classical american genre. The ingredients of the plate would be the conventions that we use, and a secret ingrdient would represent how we challenge convention. This works as our main element to challenge convention is that our main character is a woman. This ofocurse affects the piece in deeper levels, but in a basic one, it is just a single element.  

This is a really creative idea but in order to dive really deep into the answers I have to write a really good script. My idea to maybe make it more simple is to use match cuts, to transition between kitchen and western. I would for example cut somenthing with a knife in the kitchen and I would cut the same thing outside. I would tilt to me showing a change of outfit, from kitchen clothes to a western outift so I can adress the topic more directly, making it easier. I could use elements like idk the sauce its almost ready to cut back to the kitchen and keep both narratives at the same time. 

i really like this idea, and I believe it matches what I was explained. The main things I was asked to do was to make somenthing original. And my teacher said how eating food videos were not a good idea, so I thought on maybe cooking. And I also took it one step furder. So I believe this would be awesome. 

I have no clue what to to for the other one though. 

Group Meeting #2

We had our second grup meeting today, so we had the chance to see the work of other people of the class and talk about their progress. I always find this meetings really useful as talking to people outside of our teams makes the environment more "casual", allowing ideas to flow really easily. So lets dive into it. 

(team meeting pic) 

We are finally in the final stages of our project. Missing only color grading, credits and tittles. So I was able to show a really advanced edit of my project. I explained to the group how every shot looked really different from each other so it was of big importance to fix this. They agreed but in the first few shots they didn't noticed it. As we reached the mark of 1 minute the difference became more noticeable. This is somenthing my team and I are  aware of, as the final shots were takken at 12pm with the sun in a different position than the first few shots. 

(the diference is really noticeable in the color of the sky, and the color of the grass)

I also said how sometimes the color of our character looked really orange due to the colorgrading, but they thought it wasn't a big problem. I still believe we should fix it. The main issue is that we changed the overall temperature of the footage, affecting also skin color and elements like sky and grass. We should've changed color by color ussing adjustment layers. Making the process more clinical. 

Looking at the footage of other people was a really nice experience. An assignment with total freedom regarding what type of story we wanted to tell is really exciting to watch. As the diversity of stories is massive. It also made me feel really proud for the ambition of our project. But I also got to see some other ambitious projects, there was a person that also went to record outside, and made an apocalypse story. For this project I didn't had any negative feedback to give. To some extent because she didn't show the whole thing but also because it did look pretty good. The other members of the discussion were not able to show their projects as they didn't had their laptobs with them. But they were able to explain me about the CCR. Which was really useful as I missed the explanation at class because I was in a competition in Tampa. 

They explained me how we had to answer four different questions in at least two videos. Non of them really knew what they were going to do and I felt a little bit scared as I had even less time to think of this, BUT, (big but) I came with a really cool idea that I'll develope in a blogpost this week. 

To conclude. Pretty useful group meeting. It allowed me to see the strengths of my project, how to boost them and how to fix its weaknesses. Sharing this information with the group im working for my project will be useful as an outside opinion on it will make the points made on our weaknesses more valuable. 

EXTRA SHOTS

 As part of our post production process, we noticed that some shots didn't flowed as well as they should. We needed some extras shots to connect them. We also forgot to bring prop the first day. The prop was the picture of the me playing the son of the guy who was killed, being a really important point for our story. So yeah basically we we had to go for another shooting day. 

In our film opening we used diferent elements as transitions, all of them had intentions. Ofcourses fades between some shots to show the passing of time. Others we used a symbolic match cut. In which we transitioned from the crucifix to the cross that would be used as a tombstone. 

1.

2.

This is done to explore the christian values of our main character and how they connect to death. This is a important moment that can make use of a cut like this in order to reinforce its visual narrative. But the shots that lacked connection in our first edit were just sequences that showed actions just like walking. This shows that we needed a little bit more planning. The shots we got just connect this shots to make them flow better and don't disrupt with the pacing of the film opening. 

With the line edit pretty much done. Our next goal is make the sound design better and get into color grading as most of the shots look different from each other. 

This experience basically shows how planning is important. We did overshoot thhe first time. But even with this we had to go again. This beccause our planning wasn't as good as it should. So the overshooting couldn't fill every problem. As the problem was down in the structure. We had to plan more shots, and as we added some new shots during shooting the problems to be solved simply multiplied. I believe that the things we added to the script had a lot of value so I don't complain but we definitely need to make a stronger planning in orther to don't face this problems again. It is true that due to the lack of dialogue our film openning is a little bit harder to record as it solely depends on visual narrative, but just because of this our planning should be even better to enhace this visual story telling. 

EDITING: SOUND

 As an initial plan I thought of adding sound effects in post production. Both ambient sounds and ofcourse music. But I didn't knew one of my teammates had wireless mics which made posible to get some ambient audio. It was a really noisy environment so we used the noice cancelation, focusing in getting the most important sounds like the shovel, as well as the gasps when the shovel is being used. This wireless mics put the audio directly into the camera so it also makes the editing process fster. Allowing us to focus in other things like the music and try to edit to the beat. In a previous blog post I mentioned how I was trying to mix music to make a song from scratch for the film opening, but I stop this as we found a royalty free song that really matched what we had in mind. The main reason for making the music by myself was that it would make easier to match the video with the music, but due to the dramatic and slow pacing of the song it was easy to match. 

Another element from the sound that is important to highlight is the voice over. We only have a couple lines that serve the only purpose of adding some dramatism. We simply recorded the lines in voices memos on a phone and put them in the time line. Phones have really good quality this days and with the music as a constant background noice any problem with the audio wasn't almost noticeable.

The sound design still lacks complexity and deepness so we are going to go back to the place we recorded to record some extra sounds. And we'll also add some stock soundeffects like wind.

LINE EDIT

With our footage ready we started our line edit. The line edit mainly focuses on the pacing. By taking into account content and style. Affecting the lenght of the shots, their order and how are they transitioned. Our western line edit should focus in long shots regarding time. As well as show the passing of time. Enhacing a slow pacing that would affect our style and content. The passage of time is necessary as our main character is engaging in a long journey and she has walked a long way to reach the location we see in the film. Almost the first minute of the film opening shows part of this way she's walking. 

This long shots are incharged of stablishing a thone and pacing. Just by their composition they already inspire the sense of a long journey, but to enhace it the sequence of our first three long shots is 35 seconds total. And we also faded between them, enhacing the passing of time.

In our script a lot of actions are described, but we dont bother in getting a lot of inserts, as this would make us get a lot of cuts. We only got inserts for important elements. Repeting a formula of going wide start action and match cut to a dramatic element. We did this when she took her hat off, as well as when she looks at the picture of the son, and when she grabs the crucifix 

“What Is a Line Editor?” 90 Seconds, 4 Oct. 2023, 90seconds.com/what-is/line-editor/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

Did our footage match our expectations?

After all the process described in the past blogposts, our footage was the final outcome. Before diving deep into it I have to say Im really happy with how it went. As mentioned in the past posts, the footage has a lot of every member of the team. As all of us influenced in the final product. But the final product doesn't feel like a clash between everyones individuality, but a cooperation to preserve a specific aestetic. This was possible due to the deep research and understanding of the western genre of all of the members of the group. We all understood really important two aspects that our footage should have: dramatism, and transmit loneliness.

The dramatism would be transmited mainly through a slow movement in our main character. Which was achieved through direction and performance. It was easy in walking scenes, but for the shots in which our main character was diggging it was a little hard. And we had to play a lot with camera angles and several directions. In moments like this is where having the three of us directing to some extend was useful. As one approach towards the actor could be easier to replicate, allowing us to get in camera exactly what we wanted. 

The loneliness was portrayed through long shots, in which we engaged with making really visually appealing shots. So all of us worked together to preserve some rules of composition that will make this long shots where our subject couldn't be really appreciated into really appeling shots. Ofcourse the rule of thirds, designing through direction a route for our actress to follow and stay in the right third. And other rules like having the horizon either in the top or bottom third, so the audience can focus either on the ground or the sky. 

As I explained in past posts, our location planning wasn't the best, but our footage was able to be just as we wanted due to knowing what we wanted a deep understanding of composition. 

I think the shooting stage of our production hihglights how important the pre-production is in terms of recolecting information, knowing how to apply it on set. As it allowed us to cover any other problem in our pre-production by improvising on set and achieve our goal footage. 

Props

 Props in set where really useful, as we didn't shoot in a complete location that give away the western idea, we had to use useful props. The dressing being one of the most important ones. It quickly stablished time period and genre. To some extent it lso helped with our character's development and charcterization. As the hat and bandana helped hide, the genre of ou main character. Gender roles being an important topic in our piece. Costume design was a tool to enhace its importance. 

The shovel was another important prop as it was key to stablish the plot and tone. This through symbolism as it is usually asociated with death. The zack that has the body also helps with this. As it enhaces the idea of death. It also was used to craft another prop tht enhaces even more death. 

This propt came as an answer to the lack of dirt (another we used). We bought some dirt as we couldn't dig in the park we were shooting. So we could have a pile of dirt and throw the bag (body) behind it and prettend there was a hole, as the pile of dirt would hide the body. But we didn't had enough dirt for that, so we had to craft this cross to reinforce the idea that someone was burried. 

WESTERN COLORGRADING!!!!

Color is an additional process color correction, which makes your images look exactly like they appear in real life. Working as the base to later create a mood through a different color palette. Color grading involves the alteration of several variables, such as saturation, hue, lum, and more. As a base for our raw footage we changed a little bit the white balance giving the footage a more warm look. 

Normally If one wants to play a lot with colorgrading one would record in log. A format that has really unsaturated and gray colors. But stores a lot of information allowing to play with them in post po. We pre altered the footage a little bit just for efficienty matters. 

Our rae footage still sticks to the the basic description of the colors of wester films. Vibrancy is probably the thing that stands out the most. The clothing which has strong colors is highlighted by the vibrancy on the overall colorgrading. The vibrancy also is seen in natural environments through a bright blue sky and vegetable life like trees, and grass process a really strong color, that can take yellowish colors due to the stereotypicall yellowish colorgrading. Skin color is also affected by this, some highlights are a little bit orange in several western films. Our films thanks to the alterarion plus shooting with natural sunlight really has this highlishts present. 

Strange way of life (Pedro almodovar)

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Sergio Leone)

Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)

A common look for this films is the famouse orange and teal. The orange is present in the highlights and a blue/green color is present in the shadows. We already have the orange due to the white balance and the sunlight. For the shadows we would have to lower the blacks and shadows as they are a little washed out due to the strong sunlight. But after this we can apply the teal color to them. 

Filmakking as any other art has a lot of ways of achieving the same goal. One may be faster than the other. One may have a to some extent better outcome, but it is important to learn from every path. As these paths can be connected to enhace evolution of one's creations. 

Colorgrading low key scares me sometimes, as I fear not to match colors in each scene, so I really try to learn every time I can. 

Adobe. “What Is Color Grading and How Do I Use It? - Adobe.” Www.adobe.com, www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/hub/guides/what-is-color-grading-in-photography.html.

Eziedo, Israel . “ How to Get Cinematic Old Western Film Look | Davinci Resolve 16 Tutoria.” Youtu.be, 8 May 2020, youtu.be/32EF2roSNXE?si=7MIt5QO5_sesQJ-P. Accessed 27 Feb. 2025.

Directing

 For my second production post I'd like to talk about the process of directing. Our group is made out of four people, in which only one acted, and the rest were behind the camera. Our teacher warned us how each of us were individuals with strong ideas that may crash into each other during the project. This could be seen since one of the first bloggpostd in which I said how I wanted to do a Sci-Fi while another teammate wanted to do a western. The good part is that we all have experience working together and we are able to yield when necessary. I gave up the idea of making a sci-fi but in return I had complete freedom to write a western. And thats how the team worked previous to the recording of the film oppening, one yields but one later gains. During it the recording it was a little bit more wild. 

We had a script to follow but not the exact location on vista view park to follow it. So all of us constantly proposed ideas, and gave directions to our actress. To that point the three of us where directing. It was a little chaotic some times but overall It gave great results. As due to the lack of planning regarding the location several shots had to be to some extent improvissed or a deep level of thinking was required to be careful not to break any rule of filmmaking. 

It comes to my mind a shot where Emi is walking horizontally, and we wantedd to get a shot of her going up kind of diagonally. So due to the path the mountain had she would have to walk the opposite direction from the other shot, this would oppose to the idea of progressing. This was the dynamic, all of us working with the same goal of not letting any detail to ruin the film. Constant discussion was required but it is part of the process. 

Despite asigning roles at the begining, due to the size of the group everyone ended up engaging in each others job. Which would normally be not a great thing but due to the clash of our ideas and individualisms a project that all of us are proud of is possible. 

It is also important to highlight how some shots were new and improvised on set. This type of ideas wouldn't be so easy to perform if all the members of the group didn't get involved. As a writter I came with the idea for the final shot, but I needed that the person on camera was able to recreate what was on my head. 

(final shot)

It is true that shooting this way took us a little bit longer than it should. But the quality of the raw footage is one that we feel proud of and that is really really important. 

I hate shooting outdoors.

For the first production post I'll be talking about location in general. To be honest our location scouting was really vage. At the beginning we were really focused on it, mostly because we didn't had a script and the easiest way to portray western would be through location. Shooting in the ranches or somenthing, so we where looking for places and calling them. But once I wrote the script location was no longer a problem. As the character was in a really lonely place. We just thought of a place for long shots (it really worked) and as I've been there once as a group we never went together to pick a specific place to shoot in Vista View Park the place of our choice. We wen't confidently as I already had made a shortfilm there, but It would have been better to actually plan it better. I had to walk with a sack of dirt which was a lil heavy. 

Also we had to change shooting time almost the day before as vista park wasn't openned at that early in the morning. This wasn't actually that big of a deal, I would say it was actually a good thing. As we wanted to go for really wide shots, with a high F-stop and shooting early in the morning the shots would have been really dark. Using direct sunlight can be relly hard as you can't control it, and without a good camera the shots can be really really bad. 

Weather was hot and there was a lot of sun. Which usually makes shooting outside really hard but we had ND filters. ND stands for Neutral Density, refering to the blocking of light in a way that the colour of the light isn't changed. The ND filters where the key to exploit the place we where shooting. ANd open field with a lot of light. Resulting in some amazing shots. 

The first day of shooting showed us how planning is extremely important. As the different locations where one shots, have different conditions that may affect the process. 

“ND Filters – in Depth Guide for Beginners.” The School of Photography - Courses, Tutorials & Books, www.theschoolofphotography.com/tutorials/nd-filters-in-depth-guide-for-beginners.