Wednesday, April 09, 2025

DONE!!

 GOODNIGHT.

A BEAUTIFUL LINK TO EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT

https://www.instagram.com/thedivinesynthetic?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=

ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

YouTube below incase anything happens (quality is worse on there tho)



Back

Front


AND THAT IS ALL BLOG!! In all honesty, this has been really fun and I enjoyed it so much, I just wish I didn't procrastinate!!!!!!!
Also, for some reason we got copyright when we posted on YouTube, but it wasn't even the audio we used in our film, it copyrighted us for a different song, so that was weird but oh well! Just incase it's suspicious, the audio I used was found on PIXABAY, link provided and it is called Inspiring Cinematic Ambient :)


Critical Reflections

    The short film, "The Divine Synthetic" was a sci-fi/dystopian film born from a collection of media theories, personal values, and stylistic choices. While creating this film, we wanted to spread the representation of humanity by doing so with a false world and the matter of 'what could be' when it comes to place with advanced technology. 

    Once our idea was birthed, we spent around two weeks adding additional plot twists and amending characters to keep a clear and concise point of view from the audience throughout the film. The plot centers around Subject #67 who is part of an experiment to recreate human emotion through AI robots in order to restore the dwindling population around the world. The tragedy of the story is that although the robot can comprehend the concept of love and emotions, he cannot feel them, so he opts for the path of self destruction at the end of the film. We knew we had to create an eerie sense of silence to indicate something was off throughout the production, and this is where my research came into handy. 

I watched many short films on YouTube, but the two that stood out to me were "Model Citizen" and "Manspread". The former really exemplified the unsettlement through dialogue and visual affects, and it did so within the dystopian genre we were aiming for. I was very engaged throughout this production and I found the story was brilliant throughout it. Additionally, in "Manspread", I found that the colouring throughout the production was beautiful and fit the storyline perfectly. Additionally, the shots told so much while also saying so little. Both of these inspired me heavily within the storytelling aspects. As for filming techniques, I took inspiration from the short film "The Loop". The audio, camera shots, and editing technique in this production was so engaging for me and it really took me into the mindset of the character being portrayed in this story. It emphasized emotion and stress throughout it, which was one of my main goals for our own film. The Sci-Fi Dystopian genre usually consists of human life suppression through natural disasters or human ignorance that led the world to degenerate. We incorporated genre conventions by emphasizing the surveillance, loss of independence, and dehumanization of the subject through the story. Some specific readings from this genre that inspired me were "There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury and "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison. All of this research really gave me a guideline for how I wanted to tell the story, pace it, edit it, and adhere the best I could to the genre. It also kept me within a parameter of where to go with this conventions regarding the sound, editing, shots, and lighting. 

If I am being completely honest, I wish our product engaged a little more with the audience throughout our social media platform. Our main audience goal differed slightly from the average dystopian genre, which is very broad, our film appealed mostly towards young adults and late teens, any gender, and specifically those with certain strong views about technology and how they are shaping our world. (Those who may dislike AI). Because of the age of our target audience, I thought it would be best to market this on Instagram. Not only do a hefty amount of Gen Z kids use Instagram, but it also allows us to post stories, posts, and reels, all including many different media forms on top of this. We could also link our other component which was our YouTube distribution technique, this is an easy way for those who see it on socials to simply just click on a button and be taken to watch the film, which is the simplest and most affective way to get Gen Z to watch something. Finally, I would consider our postcard as the last engaging component as it can be handed out amongst the street, the engaging visuals on the back designed by Daniela can capture your attention and really interest you about all the films components. I really do wish we incorporated more engaging sections through Instagram, such as more polls, Q&A's, and maybe even the beginning of a website or a game to create a more widespread sell of our brand idea. 

Speaking of our brand idea, we wanted to create something that brings attention to technology advances while also highlighting small student made productions. We also incorporated younger generation humor within our lighthearted social media posts to draw in our target audience too. Overall, our brand was designed to be though provoking and it's meant to make you think and question how our current world is being played out. As mentioned before, our social media, print component, and actual film all work together to fully get our brand's message across to our audience and spread a general message of humanization . Our social media does so by creating the overall 'aesthetic' of the brand and how it is designed to convey very specific points toward technology and people. It is shown many times with the certain drawings I made and points of emphasis in certain thumbnail postings. Our film itself is rather self explanatory, it highlights the representation of humanity and how it is dire to us humans. Not only does it show a subtle message on the former topic, but visually it represents the merging between the human race and robots through prop design and acting. Finally our print really embodies our brand by showing all of our visuals that best communicate what our production is about while not actually giving it away. It not only creates a clean cut sense with the font and designing, but it also draws attention with the merging of humans and robots in both visual logos on the front and back of the postcard. I truly believe our brand can be improved by tenfold, and this could be done with more continuity and planning on the social media posts. We could have created post's with specific philosophy quotes in relation to the message our brand sends out while also capturing attention with the posts that should stand our from average dystopian postings. I do additionally wish we worked on coloring more with the actual film, specifically matching it will the postcard and social media look. I do believe this is good to keep in mind for the future, as I need to plan way more in advance than I did with this project, and more planning means greater margin for success. 

We strived to represent the beauty of humanity and how it cannot be replaced with robotic creations. Although our main character was void of most emotion and lacked just the very thing we were representing, doing this showed the importance of humanity, and I believe it is conveyed when compared to the other character in the film, the engineer. The difference in emotion when they speak tells volumes to the flaws within the robot and how he cannot fully embrace human emotions. Additionally, the montage placed in the middle of the film with older clips is meant to show the beauty of human life. It shows laughter, love, friendship, beauty, and nature, which is everything lacking within the robots life. His growing jealousy of these memory clips fuels his resentment for being create due to the lack of opportunity he has to feel these emotions. By creating this point of view with the robot, we represent the importance of humanity and how it shapes the world. I believe we we're successful in developing our representation goals as it was a part of the film we really thought through at the beginning. We wanted to stray from a romance trope and really focus on the point of making it so that the robot could NOT integrate into human society. I believe we communicated this throughout our production and showed our point as well. I do believe we could have been more clear when it comes to structure and shooting of our film, but I am very proud of how it all came out. 

To top it all off, I really think reflecting on my project in this way, planning out all the points I want to make and how there's so many different components that work together to build our production up really shows how much thought and effort is needed to create works like this. It's made me realize that I need to double the amount of effort I put in this time to create a work that can truly represent the idea's I have in my head. I do believe I could have benefitted from more planning and thought with certain things like social media and pre-production planning, but overall I think me and Daniela handled our production really well with the circumstances we came across throughout the process, and we made something that I am very proud of and hope people will enjoy. 



Haha...

no.


I really need to reconsider my life if I continue my procrastination like I did on this project... BUT IT'S DONE!!

I actually am somewhat happy with how it all came out, and I could've DEFINETLY done better on so many things, but I am way happier with this one compared to last years one! I think I could've been more creative on my social media page 100% and I wish I was here for my Spring Break so we spent more time on filming. I also REALLY wanted a drama kid actor but oh well! Mariano worked (sorry mariano...)

I also wish I spent more time with the editing because I feel like we could've really elevated it if we had the right clips and time to edit, but overall I do think what we produced and posted is a lot cleaner than I expected it all to be, I also really like the whole look o our brand too!

As much as I love AICE Media... I cannot be happier that my portfolio is DONE. Love you blog!! I will always remember this trauma its rooted deep within my heart!! 

Editing

 So...

Me and Daniela have been locking in on the editing and I made the montage for our film while she created the line edit and added in sounds and more. For my montage, I basically sifted through ALL my videos back from 2020... then put them all together! I wanted a vintage and nostalgic vibe to the whole montage, so I found this color grading video that I abused and changed the coloring of all the clips...


And then I wanted to find audio, first of all I knew I always wanted to BAWL from nostalgia when I hear that morning dove coo noise, it basically embodies childhood feelings so I found a clip of that on Pixabay (ily pixabay) ALSO I LITERALLY FOUND THE MOST AMAZING PERFECT AUDIO EVER I LOVE MY LIFE !!!! (lie)

SO I really wanted something similar to Bliss by KLSR, linked here.



 It is SUCH a beautiful song and its so like... aura and electro, but I literally could not find anything remotely similar and I was getting depressed, but than Pixabay once again called my beautiful name and thrust this gem of an audio in my face, and me and Daniela went ham on it. It's really the only music in our film, and I thought the build of it was BEAUTIFUL.

Anyways, here is my final montage clip for those interested....





Sunday, April 06, 2025

Filming pt 2...

 WE FINALLY FILMED!!!

Honestly, the day went pretty well, and we finished filming around 3:30 pm which in my books is a success especially after last time...

So basically, Daniela and Mariano were meant to come around 8:30, and Daniela arrived around 9, which is a blessing because I was running off of 3 hours of sleep and needed my coffee and breakfast...

Then Mariano had a little late night situation and some alarms didn't go off, so we had to take a detour at 10 to go wake him up. We got breakfast and started production around noon!

Instead of superglue this time, I bought some fabric double sided tape and it worked MUCH better this time as well. 

This is pretty much how we all felt the whole day...

But we got some cool BTS of everything that went on today!

Drawing shoots

Max being a tripod

Daniela!

Diabolical clip...


All we filmed this day, was the first dialogue and then all the daily routines as well as the end scenes. We were VERY efficient and we've started editing everything already.. so we're hoping to be done by Tuesday!


Thursday, April 03, 2025

Socials

 Coming up to the final days of this project, I've started to wrap up the social media pages, and we're going to have 18 posts total! We posted a small teaser, and then attempted those cool title split up posts...


She's chopped....
BUT IT'S OKAY!! 
It was the best I could do because every time I tried to cut it some other way they wouldn't align with each other. I really have no idea how some social media managers do it so perfectly...

For the last week, we are going to post two countdown days and then the actual post with a link to the video as our final post. Additionally, on Sunday I am going to send out a Q&A on the story to create some 'audience interaction' within the social media page. I think it's going to spread more information about the whole production as well as letting the target audience get to know more personal things about the directors and how the film was made.

I'm pretty positive that it's just going to be me and Daniela sending in our own questions and answering them... but that's okay! I think it will still be good to make and develop this part of the social media portion so that I can get to know and think about my project deeper to further develop my CR as well


Tuesday, April 01, 2025

Postcard + drawing

 So the last drawing I was working on was still going well but it just was never sitting right with me, so as Daniela was designing the post card we came up with a different thing that would be much easier for me to draw! It included the Da Vinci anatomy circle as well as some robotic weapons! Here was my light sketch


Then all I had to do was alpha lock the layer and turn it all white


I REALLY liked how it came out, but I thought it was missing something. On procreate you have the ability to do a bunch of different effects to your drawing and one of them is called chromatic aberration, so I messed around with layered and intensity of it all... and here's how it all came out!





Me and Daniela's favorite is the last one here, as it keeps the design and only has a slight show of the aberration which I think is really cool!

We're planning on putting this on the front of the postcard in black with the title on the front
Then on the back we're planning on putting this image onto it. 


I like how this is shot, especially with the wires in sight and The Subjects center of attention alert, I think its eye catching and intriguing as it makes you wonder where his attention is being pulled to. (PS... its a freezeframe from a blooper)

Anyways, Daniela is putting the lot of it together and I'm helping with the font designing and whatnot! I actually really like this part of our portfolio, it's very fun to design and I think it's one of the easier aspects for me as well. 




















Sunday, March 30, 2025

CCR Notes and planning (help)

    So with Daniela's computer decimated and Mariano being the busiest man on the planet, I would like to curl up into a ball and cry! But what I CAN do is be somewhat productive (gaslighting myself here) and make sure I absolutely COOK on my critical reflections this year... unlike last year!! (haha... sorry to whoever graded those). I'm currently at the airport waiting for my connection flight from Atlanta, but it got delayed until midnight, so I'm studying my notes!!

    We did have an attempt earlier on this year of course with the documentary, and I also still have my notes from then, but there's certain things I think I can definitely improve on especially with this being a much bigger production as well!

    These are my notes from earlier this year:


    I'm planning on separating each of the questions and breaking them down into three parts, answering with topic sentences and then elaborating on each part when I sit down and fully write it! I think I can really nail this CCR if I sit down and plan, so that is exactly what I'm going to do!!

(UPDATE: waited in airport until 1 am, flight got cancelled so we rented a car at 1 am and drove 9 hours to home !!! but i DID get a lot of brainstorming done at least!)



Thursday, March 27, 2025

Social media bloops

So after throwing a line edit together, I figured I might as well also get a jump start on editing some social media posts, and I made a cute little bloopers reel! You can watch it here or below in the embedded video.


I really wanted to a make a look-a-like low budget YouTube fan page blooper reel because I feel like it embodies our production the most especially with our target audience. I got all my sound effects from Pixabay and for the glitch shots I just made a really fast drawing similar to the other ones on my iPad, its actually SO easy! You basically create a grid that is unproportionally stable, like a glitch screen, and then color it in whatever neon colors look best, then you make one or two smears with the smear brush, then finally add a glitch effect! I wasn't sure if we had to make one or could just take one but I made it anyways, it only took a few minutes regardless!

Here's a few YouTube vids I was inspired from for the bloopers...
Not all of these videos ARE bloopers but the comments, the cuts, and the way they're edited is what I was aiming for!




Definitely exposing myself with these videos... but I lived off of them in COVID and for some reason watched it all religiously everyday!

I do actually really enjoy making the social media posts and I think I might look into the marketing side of that in future which is super cool! Overall, I need to step on it making all of these things, especially with Daniela's computer being MIA (r.i.p)






Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Editing... (kinda)

 SPRING BREAKKK!!

My family took a trip to the Westcoast of the U.S., and we're hitting Vegas (in Nevada), and then driving through Utah and Arizona! Its is GORGEOUS so far! We originally booked it as a hiking trip but because I crippled myself in January, I get to edit on the balcony (joy) and ice my knee! (acl and mensicus tears SUCK) Honestly, I'm not complaining THAT much because LOOK at this view...





Some insane flicks so far...





Anyways, we only have the clips from all the dialogue scenes, but I put them all together and we have about 4:45 TRT... which is actually really good! We should only need to get 1-2 minutes of filler clips which we HOPE to film Monday (I know it's getting cut WAY to close I am so sorry), we got an all clear for the camera but now we're waiting to see if Mariano is doing anything. But I cut down a lot of white noise in it and sent it over to Daniela, who watched on her phone. She said she was feeling upset she couldn't do much so she was going to make a list of all the cuts we should insert and notes on what to color grade and more! I think if we have that, editing will be an absolute breeze (plsplspls) and it should run pretty smoothly. I'm happy that we thought that out but I am feeling stressed about the due dates of course. Part of me wishes I was at home so I could really work on this, but I live to travel, so I'm definitely soaking in as much of the West as I can! Also, here's a pic of the line edit...



Saturday, March 22, 2025

Filming day one

FILMING DAYY!!

So... this day was something out of hell unfortunately, but we got a lot done!!
I picked up Daniela at 6:55 AM.... (i know)

Me with the body mirror we never used at 6:55 AM!!!

Then I went to pickup Mariano at his house, and he brought a couple outfits out for us to look at. Then we took a little field trip to Publix as we had to get the plant for the film (as well as sustenance for the morning, aka a whole box of croissants + redbull)
We then got to work setting up, I was doing Mariano's makeup and costume while Dani was setting up lighting and cameras. 
One main issue we ran into was how to connect the technical device onto him, and uhm....
this was our solution 
I'm so sorry Mariano 
(he gave consent we promise)


...so we eventually got it on!! And we only had to reapply like 3 times throughout the 12 hours which is a win in my books. Also, he got a free waxing at the end!!!

Next we tried filming the opening and only got so far before Mia came around and we had to start on filming the engineer portions. This took a pretty long time as we had to learn ALL the lines and do a million thousand reshoot whenever something went wrong (which happened a lot)

Mia and Mariano

Mariano learning final monologue

Finally, we finished the engineer parts and Mia left around 5pm... so I started on Mariano's makeup for the end scene where he dies. Honestly... I COOKED. I use some facial putty and my bruise kit from last year with fake blood, it came out pretty good!



Finally, here's just a few of the behind the camera pictures that we took to show the quality!

 



Despite the absolute chaos and trauma endured throughout this production time, we did get quite a chunk of work done and I'm really happy about that! We're going to finish filming as soon as I get back from my travels and in the meantime, I'm going to edit a bunch of the clips together as a mini line edit!!
BTW- We literally finished filming around 7:15... 12 HOURS FOR LIKE 4 MINUTES??? goodbye...

 

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Second group meeting!

 Today we had a second group meeting and it was really helpful with finalizing things before we film! I got some feedback on how to create more diverse shots and keep the audience engaged, but mainly everybody liked the plot and our idea. 

Here’s some of my notes: 

-Watch THE WHALE 

-Play with the colors 

-Maybe create seasons throughout the production

    -Winter = death?

    -Calendar establishes time?

-Camera shots

    -Handheld

    -Close ups


I really like the idea of the camera shots becoming increasingly more close and shaky as it goes on, but I wasn't sure about the season's idea as we'd have to refilm the whole thing...


Also, Dani came over to check out the filming location and we set up the lighting to see how everything could look on camera! 

Here is some BTS...









Monday, March 17, 2025

Equipment + scouting

 So we finally get out equipment tomorrow! We are renting from BEACON TV (thank god for being a cbtv kid) and here's a list of everything we're panned out to get! 

- Sony ZV-10 with a 30 mm lens








- RGB lightkit

- Boom Mic

- Tripod

I'm super happy we got our hands on this equipment because the quality produced from this camera is pretty nice, and mixed with the lighting I think it's gonna look SO good. 

Again, the light kit is pretty essential to our production because the lighting in my guest room is pretty sucky at times, also if we want to convey the colors this is the best way to do that for sure. 

But I think getting this equipment is going to elevate everything within our production as in audio and visual quality. Also if we want to submit this to film festivals and enter it in competitions this is pretty much a necessity for that as well! 

Anyways I'm super excited to film and cannot WAIT to see how things look!!


Sunday, March 16, 2025

Social media + drawing update

 So... this is really just an overall update post on everything!!!


1. NOBODY sent in an audition :D (im at my last straw)

2. Mariano (our classmate) offered to act in our film!! (bless his soul)

3. I restarted half of my drawing

    Everything kept looking really wrong and I didn't like how the hand was layed out. Mrs. Stoklosa and a few other friends agreed that something was off, and I finally decided it was the positioning of the hand. I'm to lazy to change details so I restarted the right hand fully. It looks a LOT better but I now have to decide which parts to make mechanic. I also did a little more shading on the left hand and restarted the mechanic part because it wasn't shading as realistic as I wanted it to. I really like most of the detailing on the left hand, but I haven't gotten to the finger nails as you can tell in the picture. Here is the work so far.. 



4. We made some social media posts to go out later tonight

    We decided on some meet the director posts, and eventually we're going to come out with a meet the actor one once we have our shit together a little more. But here is the layout, I think they look super cute! We're going with a navy hue to most of the posts, especially on the color grading for the BTS and sneak peak posts. Here's our layout for the director posts! (I'll put in photos of each of us later before post)

5. I made a planning sheet! (kinda)

This helped me pan out what needs to get done and the weeks I have to do it all as well!

I also realized I NEED to step up on social media soon or we may be in trouble...

Here it is:

1. Filming 

-Shot list planning 

-Finish script 

-Film 

-Organize costume 

-Organize makeup/props 

-Make drawings of body anatomy  

2. Print 

-Create layout 

-Plan photos 

3. Social Media 

-Week 5 

-Two Meet the Director posts 

-Week 6 

-Meet the Actor 

-BTS 

-Title graphic 

-Week 7  

-Hopefully have drawing done 

-Sneak peaks 

-BTS 

-Week 8  

-Cast/Director funny vids 

-Bloopers 

-Teaser 

 

 Honestly I really accomplished a lot with all of this planning and I feel a lot more relaxed about how everything is going now! Even though there's still a lot to do, I'm more organized with my thoughts and I can think clearly about what to do. 

 

 

 

 

DONE!!

 GOODNIGHT. A BEAUTIFUL LINK TO EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT https://www.instagram.com/thedivinesynthetic?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet...