Creative Critical Reflections

 FINALLY!!!

https://youtu.be/BvqK1c4k140?si=1ujtEn2_DutddG4I

https://youtu.be/n8Ef7SXkLq8?si=05f_KFE7T71AfARw

Film Opening

 ENJOY!!

https://youtu.be/zbGdhIBUSLs

Final reflection

 This project was really one of the most enjoyable yet stressful things I've ever had to do. I loved all the creative freedom I could run with on it, and I liked the pacing of the project too.

I have learnt so much, and taken into consideration how much time simply just planning something can take! I now know, that to film smoothest and best, to make very long plans and have everything planned out word for word!

Additionally, I really learnt a lot through my editing even though it wasn't perfect... I really enjoyed how everything turned out apart from a few things here and there that I definitely need to work on... but overall, I learnt a lot about reverb and the colour editing through adobe premiere, even after getting certified in it, I keep learning! I can't wait to use these skills in my future projects to make them even better!

Thank you for following my long and hardworking journey on Kalopsia!

CCR Script

CCR script

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

"So I immediately knew the genre I wanted to develop right from the start! Psychological thriller's had always captured my attention, especially those that develop an eerie mental illness with the main character. Parts of this genre include a lot of plot twists and tangled story telling's. The pacing is much more measured throughout it, creating the intense buildup which helps add to the suspense. The tone created in these movies is very chilling and edgy. It is made to disturb and unsettle the audience. In Kalopsia, the ending contrasts the beginning so intensely, yet the change is very gradual. In the first two minutes, it opens with simple shots of creating a bagel and putting cookies into an oven. The quicker cuts yet slow actions pair together to make it seem much more tame and domestic. The clips build up through the piano scene, which is meant to give insight to the main characters past. The reverb added to the sound is meant to give the eerie tonal change to the clips as well. After the piano scene, the sound of a ticking timer is meant to build the suspense of the person entering the house, the sound getting louder is meant to show how this new character causes alarm and distress, the quicker cuts building a quicker and more stressful suspense to relate to the characters feeling. I didn't challenge any of these conventions due to them working in my favor. The whole plot has mixes of action and psychological components in it, and they do actually relate to each other. The mental illness development is meant to be gradual just as the pacing is. 

The representation in my main character is to highlight women. Despite the lacerations shown when her face is first revealed, there is purposefully no emphasis through the camera on the wounds to show how it is normalized in the perspective of the character. The costuming of the character in the first scene, she is wearing light pink and purple PJ pants, the coloring indicates her femineity along with her hair being down. The connection between the main character and in the flash back scenes is also the color of the pants. Although the audience isn't meant to know at the start, it is the same person due to the coloring of the pink pants. The opponent is in all black to indicate they are the enemy in this battle. This takes part in the fighting side of the story, where woman are represented in fighting. Despite her feminine features and costume design, she still takes part in the violent actions, which show deeper meaning towards the end of the film."

https://www.toledolibrary.org/blog/psychological-suspense#:~:text=Storylines%20are%20layered%20with%20frequent,%2C%20moody%2C%20ominous%20and%20foreboding.

• How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

"The target audience for this film is 21 and up, due to the female protagonist and the mental aspect of the movie, it would appeal more to woman than man, yet the fighting action side of the movie captures the attention of men as well. It is really directed at the mentally ill target audience, bringing a not well known syndrome to life. The slow development of the mental health aspect develops stronger throughout the film as the character participates in more fights. The faster paced and more engaging fight scenes can attract the audiences through the grungy type of settings that capture the interest of people. 

Kalopsia will be distributed through Hulu from a collaboration I organized with them. I chose Hulu to use for distribution as its a very accessible with a simple subscription that most people have. It is mainly accommodated to older audiences on the platform as well. Additionally, my movie will be premiered to the public at Miami film festival the day before it comes to streaming services on April 19th!" 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34033319/#:~:text=Capgras%20syndrome%20%28CS%29%2C%20or,inanimate%20object%20or%20an%20animal.

• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

"It all started with the song Claire de Lune, I read a book where they had the song in the playlist for the book, and I loved the buildup throughout the song, I wish I could've had more of it incorporated to build up in the opening. I got the idea of a psychological thriller through the film fight club. I loved the development of personality disorder throughout that film, and the incorporation of action throughout it really pieces it all together at the end of the film. I took this idea and began to research the mental illness that develops throughout the film. After I began my research on how sound affects film and changes the tone, and research on psychological thrillers, I began to develop the plot, story board, and the script. It took a while to develop all of these aspects, but just simply taking my time and thinking, I planned out everything I wanted to have incorporated over the process of multiple weeks. I began to find my setting at that has all the props I wanted to use and I organized my actor coming into film. We used different locations for the fight scene and the house scenes that were filmed about a week apart. The editing process was rather hefty with the different issues that were encountered throughout it. In the end, using different perspectives and advice really brought it to its best look!"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34033319/#:~:text=Capgras%20syndrome%20%28CS%29%2C%20or,inanimate%20object%20or%20an%20animal.

• How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

To set and plan out my ideas, I used blogger to create a mini mind map for myself, putting it down in writing to confirm my thoughts and plan them out the best I could. For script writing I used another online app, Celtix. It was a very good website that walked me through each and every step for the script writing process. Additionally, I got my music from Freesound website which provides copyright sound effects and music for public use. The editing software used was Adobe Premiere Pro, it's an app I've been using for a longer period of time and have a certificate in. (put in the screenshot) During filming, I used an iPhone stand and a rolling table with stacks of books to help elevate the camera level. The iPhone 14 camera app was my camera for this film, capturing all of the sound raw from the actual phone microphone. There were quite a few obstacles with the filming, getting the different angles, and a lot of the shots were not used with the phone stand we had. We used lots of different resources to help stabilize the camera like propping it up or stacking things underneath the iPhone. During my editing process, I got recommended to use reverb to mix the audio better, and I was shown how to mix audios despite not using it for my film. I think this really is gonna come into handy after I start messing around with mixing and editing audios instead of using the raw audio. 

 

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CCR Plan

 CCR's

I have been very focused on my film project, but now that I have 98% finished it, I want to finalize the thoughts and idea's I have had about my CCR planning. 

Video 1

• How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
• How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

    For these two questions, they will be in my first video which is a "Most asked questions" style of YouTube video! I am going to incorporate different overlays of all my clips and scenes layed over it to help capture audiences attention and not be a "talking head". The background of this will be fairly plain as I am going to rely heavily on outside clips to take the audiences attention while changing between the talking head clips. 

Video 2

• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
• How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

For my second video, I wanted to do an interview, or a "behind the scenes" with different "crew members" of the production to show how each specific area of the film was developed. It would all be clips of me, just in different costumes and hairstyles to help change the continuity to indicate its a different person each time. This will also have overlays and voiceovers to help engage the audience. The setting will be in a "film studio" type of location, which is really just my guest room with gray and red decorations with some movie posters hung up. I will film this in cinematic mode on my iPhone so the background is visible but blurred as to not be distracting.

Planning all of this out has been somewhat helpful because I now I can have different set ups, and begin my filming right after I make talking points for each CCR! I want to develop a clean and engaging CCR, because I cannot do a lot movement wise in my video without distracting myself, so I am relying heavily on the edited in clips! Knowing my own strengths and weaknesses in filming myself can help make my process much smoother and less of a drawn out process!!

End of editing!

 I think we're pretty much finished with my final! I am going to sleep on my decision and see how it is tomorrow, after I am going to show it to my family and see if they have any tips for me!

It was frustrating throughout parts of this editing process because although it didn't ever look or sound BAD, it wasn't perfect. I struggled a lot with this thought, and although it's still not perfect, I think I've tried to the best of my ability to make it closest to the vision I had in my brain. 

For this part of the editing, the sound effects on the imported audio clip during the piano scene drove me crazy! I managed to line up all the clips into synchronizing with the audio. While filming, I played the music in the background, so although my actor doesn't know how to play piano, she could at least hit the keys on beat. What the issue was, was when the audio did not sound diegetic. I wanted it to echo and reverberate just as all the other audios did in the film. I realized I had to mix my audio with a reverb effect. For the piano playing clips, I used a regular reverb, but for the memories, I added a different type which made the audio sound like it was coming from another room. I was really happy with this outcome, and finding out about all the different effects and even maybe mixing a certain sound on a different app, this can help my editing in the future to make everything seem even more realistic. 

This was the second most tricky part about editing... The flickering clips in the face still don't sit right with me, but I can't figure out any other way to make it look better. I changed the pacing of it to start slow so you could see what is happening briefly, and than it picks up pace with the ticking audio to build the proper suspense. 

I think despite these struggles in editing driving me up the wall, I learnt loads about sound editing and I think it's going to come really handy in my future projects for when I have to layer audio again to fix an issue that happened in beforehand filming!!

Filming the fight scene

 This was actually very fun to do!!

We had a very grungy dark garage with bits of sand about the place, the walls were cracked and pieces were missing from it too! The only thing I could complain about was the quality in my camera... when the lighting dims in the room, my iPhone camera becomes very grainy and not as high quality as before on the 4k 60 fps setting... 

I think I’ve fixed it with messing around on the adjustment settings on the iPhone editing app. I have lowered the black point and brightness along with adding saturation to highlight the costume choices.

I used pink sweatpants for the main character, despite the audience not seeing her face (as it’s not my main actor 🤫) you can tell the character is female due to the feminine pink pants. Additionally the white shoes sway the audience towards this character as white represents the purity of that character. The sleeves pulled over the females hands is to show her size, how she is much smaller in comparison to her opponent. This is additionally an indicator to illegal fighting as in legal fighting, they are matched by their weight. 

Filming this was relatively quick, as the shots are very tight and cannot reveal much, but as I messed with the lighting on the effects side of the videos, I realized it’s easy to conceal the characters faces with their hoods up and the black point lowered.. 

This specific lighting can show the opponents animosity, also creating an “evil” effect on the character, as they end up winning the fight in the end.

This overall discovery of editing the lighting through my iPhone before even putting it into my computer has helped me so much in use of future projects, it can change the entire tone of a clip and the delivery of it! 

Thanks to the quick fixes, I can now create the contrast I need between the piano clips and the darker more serious fighting clips to create that confusing contrast I’m looking for in my film!!