This is my creative critical reflection for my opening scene, "The Amulet Path". This finally marks the end of the Cambridge Portfolio and I am glad I got the opportunity to participate in something like this.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ReaD7qxVT3sbLXxJ_yAAxaWrPfbDi0m_/view?usp=sharing
This is the final video for my opening scene, "The Amulet Path". During the production of the film, I had a great time with my friends and I learned a lot about the whole production process and everything that it really entails. The making of this film was very fun and I'm glad I was given this opportunity to improve upon my film-making skills. For some reason, the film automatically plays in the quality of 360p, so if the shots look blurry, you just have to change the quality to 720p.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16zhXotKHusIj8BTEW5bLdmdQR5PPtmuB/view?usp=sharing
As the due date for the project approaches, I wanted to give a little reflection of how everything went. I made a couple of changes to my original idea of the film. I originally had wanted to do a voiceover with some sort of insight into what the plot would've been along with a continuous shot in nature, however, I felt like this was not adventurous enough for an adventure film and it was also difficult for me to get to the location, which is why I decided to change it to the chase scene. Another change that I had to make was my film crew. The original people which I had asked to help me with filming were not the most reliable, so I had to switch crews. My favorite part of the entire process was filming the chase scene with my friends. It was really fun and we had a lot of laughs and it was overall a great time. The most challenging parts of the production process were editing and making sure that the camera operator wasn't in any shots. Both problems were solved by doing a little bit of research. The making of this project taught me a lot about filming, directing, and editing and it definitely helped me improve my skills in film making.
Today I got the majority of what was left of the filming needed to do in my house. I had one of my friends come over to help me with the filming. There wasn't too much filming that needed to be done in the house, however, I did come across one main problem. My siblings were home and my mom was busy so she couldn't take them anywhere. So, while filming I had to make sure they were quiet while we were taking a shot so that they wouldn't be included in the audio clip. This problem is what caused the longest setbacks, but it was overcome. Another problem we had which I had discussed before was that it was difficult to make sure the cameraman wasn't reflected in any mirrors or seen in a shadow. I will continue the filming of this part of the scene in the next couple of days.
Today I did a quick rough edit of the opening scene just so I could see what all the clips put together looked like. After putting all the clips together and watching it, I was pretty happy with how the shots had turned out as well as how they flowed from cut to cut. I still have a lot of editing to do but I wanted to have this done so that I could have an idea of what the final product was going to look like as well as so that I could ask people's opinions on it. I showed a couple of my friends and family members the rough edit of the film and asked them what they thought about it. Overall, the majority thought the piece was looking pretty good so I was happy with that as well as with the little bit of criticism I got because that way I can take it into consideration and fix it before submitting the final piece.
Today, I got the rest of the outdoor filming done with my crew. We went at around the same time that we had gone the other days so that the lighting would be about the same. The filming went down pretty smoothly with no real setbacks and we were able to get the shots we needed pretty quickly. One thing I wish that I could have used was a better camera. Though my phone camera isn't bad, I would have liked a better camera so that the video looked better. So far, I think the film opening is going in the direction I was hoping for. I plan on starting the editing process soon, but I am again going to freshen up on a couple of skills before I really begin. I'm also going to start looking for what background music to use during the opening. I have a general idea of what I want, but it may prove itself a bit more difficult to find the right one.
Today, my crew and I went to go filming again at the location since we were all available for filming today. We continued and redid some of the shots which we had done yesterday and tried to fix up a couple of things that we had noticed we needed to fix. One of these things included continuity errors in which one of the actors had a beanie on which showed a design and then switched it so the design wasn't visible, so we had to fix up the shot we had in which the design showed. The filming process was quite fun today and we had a fun time goofing around a bit with each other as well as laughing at when we would mess up takes. We got a good amount of the filming which needs to be done at this location done today, but we are going to go one more time to finish up the shots as well as fix up a couple things that I realized needed to be done. For example, I wanted to get another take of a specific shot I took which originally I thought looked good, but I feel like it may need something such as a different angle. Overall, the filming went well today other than the couple of cuts I got from all the vegetation.
