How To CCR: Possible Ideas

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Now that I have all the information from the CCR questions that I need in order to make my reflection videos, now I need to brainstorm how I could make these reflections so they are thorough and informative yet fun and entertaining. Here’s a couple ideas I came up with.

1. Interview format

Variety, "PBS SoCal Announce Lineup for Season 11 of ‘Variety Studio: Actors on Actors’"

Resembling numerous interviews with actors and directors, I will sit down and answer questions being asked by an interviewer. This a straightforward set up that allows me to have the questions asked and for me to answer them. I can even have my friend read the questions off a paper as if reading the scripted questions, making it easier on her as the interviewer.

2. Packing for College

Independent, "Booked your summer holiday? Here’s your ultimate packing list"

Using my film’s theme and genre, I can film a video of me pretending to pack for college, as my characters would do, and use props from the actual production as if they remind me of the process and creation of making the opening. This is a more creative and fun idea that also connects to the story of my film while also covering the necessary topics I need to talk about.

3. Podcast

Resonate, "Understanding What a Podcast is and How it Works"

Similar to the interview, podcasts allow for direct questioning by one person and straightforward answers for the person being interviewed—me. Sitting around my dining table or my kitchen table with someone else would allow for easy conversation while our voices are being recorded for the podcast qualities.

My favorite of these ideas are the first two since they are pretty creative and allow for a clear line of questioning and answering the questions that are necessary. I'm a big fan of the podcast option also because I think it'd be fun to create and watch, however I think that it is the more difficult of the three and I don't want to overcomplicate myself when I have such a short period of time to create and edit these reflections. 

CCRs: Research & Script pt. 4

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The final question I must answer as part of the CCRs of this project is "How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?" 

The short is answer is how didn't I? The majority of this project, from beginning to end, used some form of technology in one way or another. Really, the only part of this project that didn't integrate technology in some way was the storyboard process since it was all hand-drawn by me. 

We began the use of technology when making our props by doing some research online, mainly on the acceptance letters and packages given out by NYU and also by typing them out and printing them for that professional look we wanted. The filming was all done on my iPhone 16, with all the behind the scenes being filmed by Sofia on her Samsung. We used the video feature to record everything with the help of iPhone’s action mode in order to get more stable shots since we had a lot of movement, mainly in our biking montage. Because of this, we did not need a tripod or much any other equipment since we both needed and wanted the freedom of hand held shots.

For the editing process, we decided to use Adobe’s Premiere Pro software since it had so many features we could use to help make it more professional and detailed. We had used other simpler programs in the past, but we settled on this one for the level of dedication it could help us achieve. Though we both lacked editing experience, after watching a series of tutorials on YouTube on how to work with Premiere Pro, we managed to find our way through it and edit our project wonderfully.

The various uses of technologies throughout this project helped us reach that high quality production we wanted to create with an ease that made production simple yet intricate. It wouldn’t be the same film without all these different softwares and devices.

CCRs: Research & Script pt. 3

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Moving onto the 3rd of our CCR questions: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

And the answer is quite a long one.

Because of past courses I've had and lessons we've reviewed throughout this year, I had a fair amount of experience going into this project. However, I had never been in charge of such an important and serious production, so, even with some past experience, this felt like a brand new adventure to undertake. It involved so many small yet significant details to consider, and so many steps and tasks to complete that it felt like such an overwhelming project it was almost paralyzing. In the same way, other kinds of school projects do not usually allow students so much artistic and creative freedom in the way that basically creating your own film does, so it was pretty daunting approaching the idea of this project, at first. I mean, we had the opportunity to literally do whatever we wanted—as long as we followed the set expectations, of course—which gives you so many options, almost too many, even, so getting started was tough.

Still, once Sofia and I decided that we wanted to work together to make the project maybe a little more achievable—not to say it wasn't so by ourselves, but two brains think better than one after all—we started brainstorming possible ideas for what the plot of our film could be. We didn't have many ideas, story-wise, but we both agreed on the overall aesthetic that we wanted to go for, which narrowed down our options from anything to a singular genre, which was "coming-of-age." Though Sofia is not as much of a movie addict as I am, we have both watched a couple of movies that we adore that all dealt with growing up in some way and often feeling isolated throughout it or even in spite of tragic events, so we used this as our inspiration.

We decided to go the extra nostalgic route for this film and set it in the early 2000's as most of the coming-of-age films we love are from this time period, but this gave us an extra challenge that we had not thought about during the planning stage when actually producing it . This was the fact that we actually had to make it look like it was the 2000's, from hair, make up and costumes, to what we were able to show in the background such as any modern form of technology, like an Amazon Alexa, or newer cars, like a Tesla, which ended up with a lot of our shots needing to be adjusted, changed, or altogether scrapped. Costuming was also a very difficult endeavor since neither of our actors, Sofia, or I own any clothing that has that particular "2000's style," so we had to resort to some old clothes that Sofia's mother owned that she was about to give up as donations. This really helped to further teach me of all the details that go into filmmaking since I had not realized how difficult it was needing to be so specific and detailed about nearly every aspect of my film in order to have that professional look we wanted. 

Once we got to the actual filming time we began to run into a couple of different issues. The earliest problem we had was scheduling conflicts all throughout. Our actors both had different schedules, as did Sofia and I, and we even had to coordinate with Sofia's family as we needed the kitchen/living room area, where Sofia's mother works, and we needed her brother as another actor. Once we finally found some dates to work on, we stumbled onto the worst of our troubles—I got the flu the weekend before filming. Half-conscious and somewhat feverish, I put a mask on, took some Tylenol, and I managed to make it to filming, so we thankfully did not have to postpone anything. The last of our major issues was problems with weather and time. One of our days of filming we were hit with a cold front, making it difficult to film our outdoor scenes. Another day, there was a high probability of rain which meant we had to hurry and use up all the time sunny time we had, and, finally, on the last day, filming ran long and it got pretty dark outside resulting in some darker shots.

This production was a rollercoaster to create, from beginning to end. There were many doubts, problems, and disagreements, but there were also many positive experiences from which I learned a lot about the filmmaking industry. I am very glad to have had so many ups and downs because I can now confidently say that I created something I am very proud of despite all the challenges faced.

CCRs: Research & Script pt. 2

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As we slowly approach the final due date for this project, I must continue the planning for my CCR questions since we will soon begin the process of making these instead of the film opening. Question #2 asks "How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?" so let's write a little script in response to it.

When asked about audience engagement, my response would be the following.

Our film, When the White Seeds Fall, is a coming-of-age film we have been working on for the last couple of weeks. It follows two teenagers as they enjoy their last summer before college together while also preparing for the next step in their lives that they, luckily, get to experience together as they are both accepted into their dream school, NYU. Like with all coming-of-age films, this chapter of growing up is one that thousands of people have gone through, albeit all a little differently, so it is a film that audiences can relate to in a number of ways, regardless of age or gender.

Starting out with a montage of only the two girls biking and being excited over their admission, with a lot of natural light and upbeat music, we establish the lightheartedness and friendliness of the storyline. Quick cuts ranging form one girl to another to them together again emphasize that the very essence of this movie is the friendship between these two girls, they're together now and they always will be. The audience can connect to these characters emotionally since it is very likely that they've had a friend that they feel that kind of relationship with, allowing for the utter despair they may feel when they later discover all is not sunshine and rainbows with these friends. By the end of the opening, it is obvious that one of the girls—Lily—has some sort of medical issue of which her friend is unaware. As many people have dealt with some sort of medical problem and even loss, there is a further connection felt with these characters as the audience understand what they are going through, and worse, what will ultimately happen by the end of the film. The universality of these themes present in the story—friendship, growing up, struggle, loss—allows for a deep and personal connection between those watching the film and its characters, leaving the audience to hope for the happy ending they know is not coming.

When asked about its distribution, I will talk about the following points.

As a small, independent film that no one has heard of before, reaching said audience will be quite complicated. However, through the use of events like film festivals, which are largely hosted to allow independent filmmakers to show their work to large crowds and people working within the filmmaking industry, allowing great opportunities for filmmakers to make connections which could result in larger distribution outside of the festival, When the White Seeds Fall could gain great traction. Similarly, with today's growth of technology and online resources, there are many platforms that could accept my film for streaming online. Programs like Netflix, Hulu, or Prime Video have great reach, and would be great distributors for my film, but they come with great competition. As a back up in case these platforms don't take my film—and even if they do—there are other platforms that are more accessible to both me, as the creator, and the audience since they do not require subscriptions like the others do. Websites like YouTube and Tubi are completely free to viewers and are easy for creators to use, though they are more exposure than profit based.

Equally important to distribution, however, is the marketing of the film because how will people know they can watch the movie if they don't know about it? Once again using today's technologies, social media would be a great place to promote the release of my film. Platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and even YouTube itself would allow me to post the trailer, announcements, and maybe even small clips of the film to garner excitement from people. 

SOURCES: 

The Los Angeles Film School. (n.d.). Indie Film Distribution: The L.A. Film School. The Los Angeles Film School. https://www.lafilm.edu/blog/indie-film-distribution/

CCRs: Research & Script pt. 1

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The portfolio project that we have been working on for the past couple weeks is only partly comprised of the film opening I've been talking a lot about recently. The other part is the CCR's. CCR is short for Creative Critical Reflection and this is a moment where we, as the creators of our films, get the opportunity to reflect on what we have just created through four questions that have been provided to us.

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

On this blog post, however, I will only be concentrating on the first of these questions, and will then move onto the rest in future posts. So, "how does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?"

First, let's discuss what some conventions that are commonly used within the coming-of-age genre are. This type of story most often features teenaged characters, or characters that are on the brink of some sort of personal growth or other transitional period. They embark on a journey of self-discovery, overcome personal challenges, or confront social conflicts and uncertainty as they learn valuable life lessons that will help them to mature and grow into the person they will be in the future. Often, films will feature parent troubles, school life, first romances, and learning about our own identities and sense of self. 

Coming-of-age films often exemplify the emotional intensity of teenagers as they face the many challenges that come with growing up. This is largely done through a focus on characters and dialogue rather than dramatic actions, as many adventure movies do, but the characters' conflicts are largely dramatized so the audience can feel the importance of the situation as the characters themselves feel it. They tend to include elements such as comedy and music and will sometimes blend in other genres such as action or horror.

When creating our story's premise for our own film opening, we chose to use many of these genre conventions since we love classic coming-of-age films for their great representation of teenagers, which, as teenagers, we love to see. They are the type of movie that helps you feel seen as a person and they help you to understand the world and your place in it a little bit more than before watching it. Our story deals with the universal feeling of starting college or university and our characters are lucky enough that they, as best friends, can go onto this next chapter of their lives together. However, they soon learn that life isn't all roses and rainbows as they are hit with the harsh reality that sometimes plans don't work out as we want them to and there is nothing to do about it.

Our characters are faced with medical problems, but this can present itself in a variety of ways and everyone will experience it differently. Lily and Jackie will go from being the happy go-lucky teens that think they are ready to face the world, to people that have faced the world, and its cruelty, but come out on top regardless. Jackie will learn how to overcome Lily's death, and how to move past it to continue living her life without her best friend. Our film starts with our opening featuring both characters in their excitement of being accepted into the same college, emphasized by the bright lights and colors throughout as well as the upbeat music played in the background. However, the colors and the music fade and become more muted as there are hints to the troubles that will come from Lily's illness. Grief is one of the major themes in our opening, and it is such a universal feeling that is very on par with the coming-of-age genre as many teenagers may experience such a strong emotion so early on in their life. The pain of a loss as great as that of a best friend makes a huge impact on the development of a young adult such as Jackie in this film, which is the sort of feeling we are trying to evoke in our film so that the audience can relate to it, as they do with coming-of-age films.

SOURCES:
Gunn, N. (2025, January 10). Common Young Adult (YA) Fiction Conventions. Ooligan Press. https://www.ooliganpress.com/young-adult-conventions/

Coming-of-Age Movies: What is the Coming-of-Age Genre?. MasterClass. (2021, September 24). https://www.masterclass.com/articles/coming-of-age-movies

Quintanilla, E. (2021, March 6). What is a Coming-of-Age Movie?. Medium. https://medium.com/coming-of-age-with-film/what-is-a-coming-of-age-movie-7ebf1121ca1c

Kench, S. (2023, September 24). What is a Coming of Age Movie — Examples and Characteristics. StudioBinder. https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-coming-of-age-movie-definition/

Edits of the Fonts (Editing Part 2)

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Aside from the visual aesthetics and sound aspects that we have to edit for our film opening, we must also add our title and a credit sequence at some point throughout the opening. We want the credits to be scattered throughout the beginning montage and we actually have two options where we think that the title could be placed in. However, all this is for naught if we don't have good visuals with which to implement these credits, and, by this, I mean we need a good font.

Sofia last week took some time to scour through programs like Canva to find a font that she thought we could use for both the title and the credit sequence, and she found a lot of good options. In her own blog she talked about five specific fonts that she found and these were Alice, Della Respira, The Seasons, Amatic SC, and Sunday. After talking about it, we decided that Alice and Sunday were two of our favorites for this project. We thought that both of them were fun and quite whimsical for the teenage summer aesthetic we wanted, yet they still held some of the seriousness we are including in the themes of our film. Here are how Sofia tested them both out with the title of our film.

Alice                                                         Sunday

Since we had to decide between both of these, and we couldn't, we actually reached the conclusion that we didn't really need to pick between the two. Sunday looked much more like a font fit for a title—the uniformity of the capital letters, the uniqueness of the letters' serifs and spacings—while Alice keeps a little more to its seriousness and simplicity—the inclusion of lowercase letters and the simplicity of each character. It was because of this that we decided we'd stick with Sunday for the title then switch over to Alice for all the other credits, so that they'd be easier to read and they wouldn't be in the way or the first thing that draws your eye when they come on screen, allowing us to keep the focus on the scene happening at the moment.

With this decided we can now move forward to including them in our film opening as we continue to edit the project. This will begin happening next week as this week is almost over and we need to shoot some new scenes and re-shoot some of our poorer shots from this week during the weekend. It'll be very exciting to add all of our credit sequences since it will look all the more professional and I'm personally very excited for the title as it encompasses the entirety of this project.

Editing Part 1

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Now that we are largely done with filming, aside from only a couple of scenes we're looking to re-shoot on Sunday, it's time to put all of our individual clips together as part of the first step in editing. This is a very important part in editing because, not only am I making one singular, long video, I am ensuring continuity within the film. It connects each small video in one fluid story line, connecting every idea and finally starting to see our vision coming to life. 

It's been a pretty slow process to put all of our clips together because they have to be trimmed in such a meticulous and precise way that ensures a stray 'action' cannot be heard and that there is no hesitation from the actors waiting for a cue before they start acting. Sometimes they are trimmed too much and an action or a line is cut, and sometimes they weren't trimmed enough and the dialogue does not flow as seamlessly as possibly. Besides, the entire opening has to be around 2 minutes long so we also have to ensure that all these small little videos add up to that time frame and that we aren't ridiculously over or under that time. Regardless, though, it has been very fun to begin to see what the final product could be like. We are still some ways from being done, but, after weeks of planning and preparing, seeing the story in its entirety at last is quite satisfying for me and Sofia, and it only excites us even more to finish it all.

So far this week, aside from putting the individual videos together, we also began to play around with the way our music would play throughout the opening. Like I said in an earlier post, we are using StudioHeta's "This Is A Restart" to play through the beginning montage of the opening, so we had to see the volume at which it would play, as well as if it would fade in or out in certain moments or when it would end altogether. We are still unsure on how exactly we want it, but we will keep playing around with it as we continue to add other sounds and finish other edits. 

Editing this week has been very fun to do, and it only continues to excite me as we draw closer and closer to the end of this project in only a couple of weeks. We still have quite a bit of work left to do, but I think that it should all flow easier from here on out.

Here is a quick time lapse of the beginning process of editing this film opening.