See See Are

 Me on camera? Preposterous! 

(This joke is in reference to my history of on camera presence :) )

The CCR presents a pretty unique way of answering questions, one that I haven’t really explored. I’ll probably make a fairly dramatic video answering the question, with intense music and an overly edited style. Why not challenge myself. In preparation, let’s go over the first question I have to answer. 

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

Our story is all about challenging societal norms. In the film, we follow a Cowgirl who disguises herself as a cowboy to be taken seriously amongst others. In our research, almost every Western we found starred a man. There were female cowboys in the old west, they just never got representation in media. 

A female Cowboy (Cowgirl)

We thought presenting a woman as the lead in our Western would provide a unique challenge to the genre. 

It also helps provide a commentary on todays social climate. By presenting a woman in such a powerful, lead role, and having her hide away her femininity to be respected, it mirrors today’s contemporary society, one that sees femininity as a sign of weakness. We hope to challenge these standards, and show them as something outdated and dangerous. 

oh right... i actually have to do work

 hahahahahahhahahahaahaha

Its not funny. I am tired. 

I have so much make-up work from all the time I missed, but here I am, writing a blog for you, England. 

Let's go over editing. 

For the past week or so, I've been tinkering with the perfect sequence for the film opening. With the absence of a few shots, I think I've got it. However, color grading is a different beast.

Before 

After

Basic settings

Because the sun refused to go away, a lot of our shots were more blown out than Lincoln at Ford's theater (are Lincoln jokes cool now? idk). I had to contrast most of the shots to hell, and play with shadows and highlights until I got a pretty cool look. But these shots were the easier ones to color. 

Before

After

For these shots, I again had to contrast it a lot, but I also had to make the shadows blue because the red vest was making the shot look much more red than it should've been. It took me a while to get the look right, and I'm still trying to fix some of the aspects of it. 

The hardest part of the whole color grading process was matching the scenes as the lighting changed.

Still from the first half of the sequence

Still from the back half

The lighting changed a lot between these scenes, and it took a lot of curves and adjustments to make them look similar. While they don't perfectly match, they both have the same red hue that we're looking for. In other words, it gets the job done. 

I hear.... therefore I am Pt2

Music in my opening. 

Music... in my opening

Music in my... opening

(I couldn't think of a title)

The process of picking music for the opening was actually surprisingly easier than I thought. I went to one of my favorite websites for copyright free music called bulletproofbear.com, typed in "Western Music" and I listened to a couple tracks. One that stood out to me was "Gunfire at Sundown". I'm not sure exactly what made it so appealing to me. Maybe it was the harmonious strings in the background that many of my researched Western's incorporated. Maybe it was the slow start and quick ending, matching the vibe of our opening. Or, more likely, it was the cool ending note that really signified something big was bound to happen. 

After I downloaded it, I plugged it into my Premiere Pro timeline and it actually fit fairly well.

Video I took to send to my group immediately after I put it in premiere

The consensus around it was that it fit. And Renn, ever the researcher, confirmed that it did in fact align with many of the Westerns we scouted. 

I had to edit the song a bit because it was a bit shy of our runtime, so I spliced it where there were repeating notes, copied it, and overlayed it on itself to continue it. I stretched it out so we could have the final note I loved so much act as a closer for the video on screen. My words don't do it justice so here's what I'm talking about. 

Impressive, I know.

CALL THE CHIROPRACTER... im back :)

I'm back from Tampa with a trophy. I won first place directing Crazy 8 Vertical Short Film, and I broke down in tears. 

Me with my first-place trophy :)

After that insane high, I remembered I actually had work to do, so here I am writing my blog post on the bus ride home. 

For my last production post, let's talk about some of the stuff we forgot to film :(

Picture of Nico (so handsome)

When we filmed for the first time about 2 weeks ago, I forgot to print this out, so now there is a big gap in my beautiful line edit holding space (that's my line 💚) for a shot where Emi is holding this picture. 

I am not a religious person so perhaps it was my subconscious speaking to me when we forgot to get a shot of Emi twisting the cross around her neck. In the shot, Emi grabs the necklace and contemplates her own morals and ethics (because she just killed a guy). 

Another shot we forgot to get was Emi walking to plant the cross in the ground. As of now, it's a pretty rough cut from the making of the cross to the planting of it, so we need a shot of Emi actually walking to plant it. 

Maybe it's because I'm in the middle of nowhere Florida on a bus next to one of my besties Aneesa who is sound asleep, or because I just experienced one of the best moments of my life in directing the best vertical short film in the country, but I really want to go take a nap, so bye. 😘 

adapting a storyboard

 A storyboard can only take you so far. After all, it’s whole purpose is to be a stepping stone for a larger production, and that never to goes. So let’s take a look at some of the changes we made while filming.

First, the wide shots of Emi walking took up far too much time. Those were scenes we filmed but ultimately cut in post. It flows much better with just a couple seconds of walking rather than a whole minute and a half. 

Next, we changed the order of some of the shots. We had Emi take off her hate before she wiped the sweat instead of before. We felt it’d make more sense for her to take off her hate before digging, and it’d show more of a passage of time. 

Finally, we changed the shots where the body is seen. We made the mistake of not buying enough dirt, so we couldn’t cover the body bag at the park.

We had to shot around that and change up some shots to better fit what we had. This was done using force perspective. We put the camera right up against the dirt, and made it seems like there was depth to the pile. It  thought it cleverly masked our lack of dirt, and even looks better than what was on the storyboard.

Why is this public park filled with people

 During filming, another one of the problems we faced was the volume of people on a run that would interrupt our shot. As a stylistic western that does not include bystanders in the background, we waited a painstakingly long time for each runner to pass, filming in between the gaps in their runs.

Some of the runners we had to wait for

It took us a lot longer than we first planned to film for. We originally slotted 8-11 to film, but we finished around 1 because of how often we had to stop and wait for people to pass. I’m actually kind of glad we had to wait, because it forced us to think about some of the decisions we were making. It led to a better final product, and our film is better for it. 

problems during production

 I’m in Tampa, but let’s talk about one issue we had trying to be historically accurate while filming. 

Nowhere in our research did it say anything about old west cowboys having purple nails, so when Emi showed up to film with the brightest purple nails possible, we knew we have failed in that regard. We first tried scraping them off, but that got us nowhere.

We then had to resort to trying to get shots that worked around Emi’s nails. This included Renn acting as Emi’s hands for a shot. 

With some clever camera tricks and a few workarounds, we were able to successfully hide her nails, and keep the illusion of an old west woman alive.