AICE Media Studies

 This is my finished opening sequence for my 'movie' which I titled  Guiltless Growing . I feel content that I chose the coming-of-age genre because I believe it gave the opening a down-to-earth feeling since I have gone through the same things my character has. Now that I have seen the finished product, I am able to see how I used my time to edit, film, and prepare. 

 After going through all of my filming, I am now ready to work on my post-production. I will be using the software Clipchamp on my laptop to edit. I have learned through previous projects that everything that I need to do for my videos can be done on this software. This includes transitions, special effects, and sound effects. Knowing that I have gained knowledge about Clipchamp, I feel confident that the final opening sequence will turn out how I envisioned. Since it's been a while since I last edited, it took me some experimenting to ground myself again and become aware of my surroundings. As I was nearing the end of my basic editing, I began wanting to add certain visual effects. For this, I remembered there was a built-in visual effects feature that I had used previously. For the mall scenes, I decided on the filmic filter. This made it seem as if Annie and Cece were filming on a cheaper make of camera. For the pov shots, the filmic filter will be turned off to exhibit that the...

Today was spent entirely filming the 'vlogging' sections of the opening sequence. These are the parts where Annie is talking directly to the camera, and therefore talking to the audience. Since Annie has no budget as a middle schooler, her backdrop for this is a blanket sheet hung over a clothing rack. In turn, this will create a sense of rawness and relatability for our protagonist. In these scenes, we will see every emotion for Annie from immense confidence to undeniable awkwardness. These narrations will also continue over shots of Annie going throughout her daily life. I will use this to my advantage to instill humor into the project, in the sense that if Annie is saying something funny there will be something more serious shown. My inspiration for this derives from the movie Eighth Grade , where the main character attempts to seem confident on the internet, but is really a nervous wreck. Before I could start filming, I had to decide if it was a better idea to shoot standin...

 There are a few characters that don't include Cece or me in the opening sequence. These include Annie's grandma, her guidance counselor, her dad, and her relative. The actors that will play these characters have been pre-casted as members of my family. I figured this would be the easiest thing, since it would be difficult, not to mention weird, to source other adults that would act for me. My mom will be playing the guidance counselor, my brother will play the relative, and my dad & grandma will be playing themselves. The only person who knows they will be acting is my mom, and that's only because I had to do her makeup for the makeup blog. The first person I was able to film was my grandma, who upon hearing she would be acting in my film started to complain that her hair wasn't done right. After I assured her that she wouldn't be in it for long and she can wear her hat if she wanted to, she was okay with my idea. I sat her down on the couch with the large shaw...

In a very last-minute call, I asked my best friend to play herself in my opening. She was more than happy to be at the mall, even if it was just to film. The night before we met, I sent her the script for the mall scenes and what to wear. Even though she didn't have any of her clothes from middle school, she wore an outfit she bought in 9th grade. On our way to the mall, I showed her the inspiration for this scene from the movie Eighth Grade , which I've referenced in previous blogs.  Our first stop in the mall was in the Claire's store. I felt relieved that there was a decent amount of foot traffic in there since I thought people wouldn't pay much attention to us. Turned out, I was wrong. There were a few wide-eyed curious kids that watched Cece and I film, so naturally, their parents watched us too. The previous projects had me adapt to being in front of the camera, but now I had to act and project in a crowd all while wearing clothes that I no longer felt comfortable...