Creative Critical Reflection

Mood: Reflective

Alright, alright, this is OFFICIALLY my last post. Here is my CCR for Z:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53-pY3zYtEM 
Thank you for everything!
Chey :)

All the Goods

Mood: Ecstatic

Well, you've waited long enough, and here it is: our 5-minute documentary extract, poster, and website! Hope you enjoy!

Documentary Extract:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMtJD18GhN4&feature=youtu.be

Final Poster:

Final Website:
wearegenzproject.weebly.com


Sincerely, a less amateur filmmaker,
Chey :)

Final Farewell

Mood:


Hey there... the editing is finally done, and this is my final blog posting before y'all get the chance to feast your eyes on our amazing project. There have been many challenges in the creation of my final portfolio: iMovie being psycho, Kass and I being out of town on opposite weekends, having no storage space on my laptop, having no storage space on iMovie, having no storage space on my USB, BASICALLY HAVING NO STORAGE SPACE ANYWHERE AT ALL, etc.

However, completing my portfolio project was one of the most educational and rewarding experiences that I've ever had in my life. I've learned so much information this school year throughout the course, and much through this project. I challenged myself to be creative and risky, starting with the documentary idea. I have never created such an abstract project, much more one that focused on me. It was extremely challenging for Kass and I to plan it out but now that we've got this experience under our belt, we'll be much better next time.

Originally, I thought it would be difficult to work with my best friend on this type of project, and it was... JUST KIDDING!! It was actually super interesting to work with her because we think and learn in different ways. She thinks out loud while I think in writing, so she says a bunch of stuff and I write down a bunch of stuff related to her stuff, and it just works!

Overall, I can't wait to show off our project because we've put so much work into it, and we really think that it is a cool piece for us to have created. No matter what grade I receive, it cannot compare to the learning value that came with it. I hope you can see at least of portion of how much I've gained from research, production, and post-production through my blog, and I thank you for joining me during this great experience. I'm sad that it's over, but I'm ready to take on larger and even more weird projects in the future.

Gen Z rocks!
Chey :D

The Best Day EVER

Mood: Jocular

Editing:
Ha ha.. so guess what happened to me today? As I was editing, iMovie thought it would be the best idea ever to unexpectedly quit and delete all of my media and movies. My entire edited project? *Poof* I immediately googled how to remedy this issue and went digging through the deepest folders of my computer that I didn't know existed to fix it. I found this lifesaving help thread that suggested duplicating the file I had previously (that showed as inactive when I clicked "file info"), and creating a new library on iMovie. The only issue was that my startup disk was out of space, so I couldn't duplicate the enormous file! I spent 2 hours transferring pictures, videos, and documents to Google Photos, Google Drive, and several USBs until I could finally copy the file, and the doc came back! However, none of my other projects did, but oh well. That's a later problem.

Anyhow, after that rough point, I got back to editing. Kass helped add some of the new shots we had taken a few days prior for B-roll, going through to find what was useable. She also found some good music called "North" that fit for the end of the doc, as the new music I found, "Always Hopeful," did not fit well through the entire second segment. Again, we used Youtube's Audio Library (my go-to) for this copyright free music. The music works really well together to switch tones with the narration, and I'm layering the end and beginning of each song on top of each other while fading them in/out, respectively, to allow for a smooth transition. 

Editing has been extremely hard for me with this project because the shots are abstract, and it's hard for me to figure out what matches different parts of the narrative. I have all of the useable shots (every useable piece extracted from larger clips with random shaking/blip trimmed out) in my editing doc, but ordering them to line up with the narration has been messy. I've had to split parts of the narration to link them to different visuals, which I learned the hard way, otherwise the narration would be disjointed and out of order every time I delete or move a shot. Anyhow, I've gotten the hang of it and go through it second by second; I've familiarized myself with all of the shots I have to work with, so now I put a shot or black background where I feel necessary, the background there to hold a space for a possible shot. As of now, the doc is projected to end at around 5 minutes and 4ish seconds.

Website:
As for our progress with the website, Kass has been doing tons of research and writing for it. She told me about this cool thing called the "Street Team" that Fueled By Ramen uses to promote their bands, and she suggested we create our own to promote our doc, as well as encourage Gen Zers to be themselves and get involved in their communities. We took turns editing each other's stuff for the website, but Kass worked more with the site and had a better grasp over how Weebly worked, so she did a lot of formatting for the images and text. By the way, we changed our link to wearegenzproject.weebly.com and changed this on our movie poster as well. We felt that it was better than the previous link because before it sounded like We Are Gen Z was our doc title. This way, it shows that we have a cause and our doc is just one part of it all.

See ya soon with our final products!!
Chey :)

AGHHHHHH

Mood: IRRITATED... ha ha ha

Okay, so, there's this girl named Cheyenne who is just not that great at graphic design, and she attempts to create a film poster for her documentary. Also, she has this super great and fun idea that would look totally great if she could get it going, yet life isn't feeeeling that right now. Let's just say this girl searched tirelessly, for hours, how to use a basic program like Microsoft Word to put text inside of a large letter made from WordArt.

She's got this letter:

And this text:

AND NO WAY TO PUT THEM TOGETHER. This is what the fantastic Microsoft Office gave me instead:

Honestly, not seeing how this would be useful to me in any way, but oh well. It would be problematic because the text would distract and take away from the title and the other information we would add (such as director, release date, etc). I tried this link, and this one, and this one, and oh yeah, this one... plus, I tried to use A TON of word cloud sites, but it wouldn't let me change the shape for a lot of them, so it didn't help.

Finally, by some miracle, I decided to use Pages for my endeavor. To my pleasure, I had the chance to draw my own shape (the beautiful "Z" seen below), and I was able to fill it with a screenshot I had taken of the text. What a great discovery and I didn't even need a tutorial!! #proud Usually Pages isn't helpful when I do these sorts of projects because it has a lot less features than other programs, but Pages is redeemed in my heart. Here is what I was able to create:

Isn't it beautiful :'). Originally, I had screenshotted the "Z" to use an online template for creating the movie poster, but that didn't work out because the background was white for the "Z", and I couldn't remove it without some sort of Photoshop tool. So, I decided to play around with canva because it was easier to use overall, and it gave me more options. I decided to send the "Z" to Kass's laptop so that she could use mine to edit while I designed the poster, and I transferred it directly from Pages (and the background became transparent)!!! It was great because now I know how to do that if I need to. Also, I was able to use backgrounds for the poster.

One our inspirations for movie posters was That Awkward Moment because we found it to be fun, colorful, and similar to our idea for our own. Since we changed the title of our film from We Are Not Who You Think We Are to Z, we wanted to use our original idea as a slogan, which That Awkward Moment also has. When I discussed the poster ideas with Kass, we both agreed that we wanted a color in the background that would pop with the white Z, and as a huge fan of the color blue, I immediately went for it. We found kind of a gradient background that darkens as it goes down, and it definitely makes the title stand out. 

That's all for now,

Chey :)

Movie Poster Brainstorm!

Mood: Contemplative 
(with a hint of indecisiveness)

Okay, so, Kass and I have gone through SO many ideas for our documentary poster. We thought about using a bajilion people to create a Z -- OH WAIT, UPDATE! After some long, deep reflection, we have decided to change our title to Z. Okay, hear me out: We liked We Are Not Who You Think We Are, but we felt that it was too long of a title and looked off when we added it in our doc as a title slide. Also, it was hard to maintain cohesion with our production and social campaign because it was too long (like I said previously, there's no way our website would be called wearenotwhoyouthinkweare.weebly.com because yikes, what a mouthful). Additionally, we felt that Z was simple, yet it could be extremely powerful if we went about it in the right way. The simplicity of the title will add an element of mystery when people hear it - "What the heck is that new doc Z about? I'd better check it out hmmm." <---- You see! It's great.

Okay, back to the poster ideas, I got a bit sidetracked!! Basically, Kass and I did some heavy brainstorming to try and come up with ideas for it. We thought about using different people's arms to construct a "Z" which we thought would show togetherness, diversity, and the title (whoo). Another idea was to use several people and lie them down to create a "Z". As for backgrounds, we like the sky for the first idea because it represents openness and that's why birds fly in freedom. I love symbolism :'). Another idea was to go the computer-designed way. We would create a "Z" with a bold outline and use the inside to fill it with words that describe Gen Zers. 

We also tried this (see left) with a photo editing app and, honestly, it didn't come out too cute. We had to scrap it so quickly because we were slightly terrified of what we had produced... lol. What a great concept, but we didn't like our version. The idea we did use? Hehe, well that's to be revealed soon. 

Also, some editing issues parte dos:
I loathe the "but they're wrong" audio clips. Yes, I know, I was just praising them a few posts ago because they are great in theory; in practice however, they completely disrupt the flow of the doc and instead of creating a shift in tone, they just make me uncomfortable because they sound SO wrong. Sigh. I'm currently trying to figure out how to remedy this and bridge the two sections of the intro together. They are both complete, and I changed the colors of the first part ("they call us...") to be colder and more blue, while the second set of shots are warmer and more yellow, so this is the only part that needs fixing. 

Stay tuned,
Chey :)

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

Mood: Definitely Working Hard

Hey there! It's been an extremely productive day, and Kass and I met up (finally!) so that we could discuss our website and poster ideas that we had come up with previously. Now we just have to agree on some things and then finish creating the products. 

Like I said a few posts ago, I did begin the website on weebly.com and chose a URL and template. When Kass and I met up, she said she liked the layout, and we went to work. We checked out a few websites for inspiration and found Lana Del Rey, Melanie Martinez, and Miss Representation to have the best sites.

The Miss Representation site was super cool and helpful, especially because it's a documentary that also concerns representation, only with women in the media. Here are some images of the home page on the website:

They include their logo, as well as social media links and various tabs to explain their cause and promote their doc. 

Here, they provide a short explanation of the issue on the home page, which is a great way to promote people to explore it in more depth after being exposed to the information.

These two sections of the home page also encourage people to more deeply explore the website and get involved by viewing the documentary and then participating in the social movement to speak out against negative representations of women in the media.

We decided to have several sections of our website such as (obviously) the home page, as well as a few others:
1) Why Gen Z? - An explanation for how wechose what to explore and portray in our documentary as well as information about the Generation as a whole. We will discuss problems with our representation, as well as what we believe to be accurate.
2) Merch - Money from this store will go to support our future filmmaking costs)
3) #WeAreGenZ - Our social media campaign that will involve and inspire members of Gen Z to be great and interact with our content and productions
4) The Creators - All about Kass and I whoooo
5) See The Film - This tab was on the Miss Representation website, and it's extremely important because we need to offer our audience ways to view the documentary and places it will be shown

For #WeAreGenZ, Kass and I decided that by creating a hashtag to associate with our productions, we would generate more buzz for the documentary, as well as engage and build a foundation for potential viewers, both currently and in the future. Members of Generation Z are digital natives, so it's best to gain their attention with this hashtag through social networking platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. To further engage with them, part of our social campaign will include targeting them on Snapchat. According to one Forbes article, members of Gen Z enjoy posting for their friends rather than publicly, which is why Snapchat is a great platform; they can share information with their friends by holding down the screen for a few seconds and pressing send, a quick and easy process that will make info about our doc spread more easily. 

As for our Merch tab, Kass had some fun designing shirts, hats, and tanks to preview in our store. The items are available to males and females in varying sizes and colors, and word-of-mouth is another great way to publicize our documentary. There are arrows on the side to switch between products, as well as a button to easily access the store for purchase. Here is an image of our cool store:

Alright, I'm going to get back to work and will update soon about the poster and editing, too!
Chey :)

Can't Stop, Won't Stop (Editing)

Mood: Persevering

Hey! Just a little update on my editing last night, which went on for quite a while. I used Quicktime to make a screen recording of my editing process (a cool feature I discovered doing my project last year, but I recently started using it). Here's a little video (thanks to a 15000% speed increase) of my editing:

Again, I worked on cropping shots, fixing headroom, matching the background color of various shots, organizing the order of shots for maximum flow, etc. I also delved into the sound portion of editing, which I also used iMovie for. Basically, for the sound, Kass recorded each of our subjects saying the following 3 things:

#1: They call us lazy. They call us ignorant. They call us dependent. They call us superficial. They call us irresponsible. They call us spoiled. They call us self-absorbed. They call us apathetic.
#2: But they're wrong.
#3: We are innovators. We are caring. We are special. We are valuable. We are respectable. We are intelligent. We are involved. We are the future. We are Generation Z, and we are not who you think we are.

For ease, each number is its own recording so that in editing, they are easy to separate and use. The plan was to use all of our subjects voices throughout the intro, and to use the best recorded words/phrases for each person. For #2, we decided that the best voice would be used because the line is extremely important in shifting the tone of our piece. The talented winner is -- drumroll please -- Pedro! I felt that his recording was the strongest and he said it at a nice speed, one that can be easily worked with. Here it is:

Glorious, isn't is? :D Anyhow, I will be back in no time to give some further updates on my individual progress and how the doc overall is coming together. It's an exciting time, so I'll keep ya posted!

Chey :)

Fix It, Change It, Rearrange It

Mood: Nitpicky

Hey there! I've been editing up a storm for the past few days, as well as finalizing the script and working on the website. It's been SUPER busy for me, as I know there's a lot to get done. Kass and I will go over everything we have when she gets back from her trip, and all we'll need to do is finish up some last-minute scenes (which won't be bad - we know what we want now). 

So, editing. Here are a few things I've noticed:
1. The projector decided to be funny and change the color of our slide throughout our filming day, so I've been editing each video on iMovie to fix this problem. I'm very proud to say that I learned how to match the color of the videos to one another all by myself, no tutorial needed! I've come a long way :')
DO YOU SEE THIS MAGIC!!!!

2. The head room for each subject is a little different each time, as we filmed our subjects at different times and moved the camera around for different angles. Therefore, the compositions are not the same for them all, and the head room is a little much for some of the shorter subjects. I realized this problem during filming, as the words were projected differently on each subject due to height differences, and I tried to remedy that by adjusting the projector's height (stacking yearbook on top of yearbook, I knew they were good for something)! Alas, the differences prevail, so I'm just cropping the videos to lessen the visual disconnect between shots and amount of head room.

Now, about the website:
I have no idea what to make the URL because, and I don't know if it's just me, but wearenotwhoyouthinkweare.weebly.com seems like a bit much... plus, I don't think anyone would remember the URL WANWYTWA.weebly.com either, so I think the winner is WeAreGenZ.weebly.com. Short and sweet.

Anyhow, I'll update you soon on how the design/layout is going, but I'm definitely putting the most important content on the home page for easy access!

And by the way, I'm totally loving the music with all of our shots!! That's a great sign because music is such an integral part of creating a tone for our piece, so I'm happy. :)

Finallllly Filming!

Mood: AHHHAHBFESHJFKEJ

Progress:
Hiiii!!! I'm so hyper and excited right now! Kass and I just finished an AWESOME filming day. It was super cool to use the projector for filming, and we got some pretty nice shots. Sigh, filming is always such an interesting and fun time with all of my friends. Basically, this is how it went down:

First, we dragged our subjects (at their previously organized appointment time.. we're amazing) into our secret, dark filming lair.
Then, we never let them leave. You can never have too much footage... Just kidding!! We kept everyone for about 30ish minutes and filmed their dejected and empowered scenes, and then recorded their voices for the narration portion of the doc. Instead of pre-dividing who would say what lines, Kass and I decided to just record everyone saying all of the lines ("They call us... but they're wrong... we are..."). We decided to do it this way so that we could pick out the best voice for each segment so that those lines would sound powerful.

Let me introduce our subjects (a special thanks to them, please):

#1: Laurel Vernon

#2: Marina Maldonado

#3: Pedro Salom

#4: Mason Eiss

#5: Dani Altamiranda

Up next:
I still have to go through a TON of the footage to see what we can use, as we JUST filmed, and I can't wait to see what we've got.

We ended up having a ton of cancellations, as some last-minute issues came up with some of our friends; however, we planned for this problem by asking like 13 people to help us out, so we got the 5 that we did need! Worst case scenario, we can film an extra person or two on another day if we're missing any shots.

By the way, here is a picture of the slide Kass made to use for these projector scenes:

See ya next time!
Chey :)

I'm Just A Little Bit Caught in the Middle

Mood: Irritated

Hey there! I'm working on finalizing the script for my part in the extract, but I'm having some trouble making the final touches. I want the script to switch between being abstract and concrete throughout the piece, and it has been interesting trying to write in this way; however, it seems to be working! One issue that I am facing though is that my script keeps trying to end on me. By that, I mean that I keep writing a beginning, middle, and end that would fit into about a 4-5 minute time slot. Because the episodes will be longer than that, I don't want the extract to gloss over my story, as that is not how the actual episode would be. I am having a difficult time in extending the middle content because I don't want the extract to end on a weird note, so I'll have to plan that out. I am working diligently to resolve this issue, and the script should be completed by the end of this week. 

Also, there was almost a MAJOR problem that was narrowly avoided today. Our project is due April 16th, and Kass and I have planned out what portions of the project we need to get completed by certain dates. We have a week of spring break (I'm not going anywhere so I have TONS of time to work work work), but we still need to do many parts of this project together. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Kass and I are using her house to film the intro to our doc in which we are using several of our friends as subjects. We have scheduled them for varying times tomorrow, almost like everyone has their own appointment times (we are very proud of ourselves for managing this). I have the projector packed and ready to go for tomorrow's fun day of filming that will (hopefully) go well! The problem was that Kass's boss told her TODAY that she has to attend some sort of workshop straight after school tomorrow, which is when our filming begins. Apparently, it's a mandatory thing, but Kass was able to get out of it by some miracle THANK GOODNESS. I don't know what we would have done, as many of our friends are leaving for spring break to various places, and Kass is even going to be gone for the first few days of it.

During school on Monday, Kass and I tried to shoot a bit around the courtyard of our school and see if we could manipulative our basic phones into producing some interesting shots. My phone is horrible at focusing, so I figured I could use that to my advantage to try and make some shots look like I'm intentionally doing focus pulls... hehe. We were just playing around and seeing what we could do in preparation for B-roll filming. I did get one cool little tester shot that I found to be superrr pretty:

I thought it would be super cool to get this dust from the ground to blow into the frame of our shot, as it would make it look abstract n stuff, but all that we ended up with was dirt in our faces, so... that was a no-go. I did get this cool chains shot though:

Anyhow, you'll definitely be hearing from me soon with updates on our filming and editing progress. See you then!

The accidental dust-inhaler,
Chey

"Filming"

Mood: Energetic

Hey there!!

Kass and I planned to start filming on Friday, and we actually have an 8 minute video of me making random facial expressions to go along with the narration (that we had not completely finished). Basically, we got ready to film the content for the 5 minute extract that involved me and set up a whole thingy for optimal lighting and filming, and then we realized how difficult it was to film without following a script completely. So, that led me to scripting for a good portion of the night, but it was super productive!! After writing the script, I timed and recorded it to see if it would work with our doc. It was about 3 minutes and 45 seconds, and the narration sounds really cool! I spaced out the words while I was speaking to create a more intense and dramatic tone for the doc, and I like it!! This is a small little excerpt from that script that shows the creative twist on my personal story: Muscles ignore pleads to rise from my haven of warmth, eyes shut tight to shield my heart from the realities of the world, dreams dance upon my eyelids, begging to see the light of day. I grant that wish.

Also, I found some awesome music from YouTube's Audio Library, a great source for music that I found last year, called "Their Story, They Seeing" that is copyright free (one of my favorite phrases, yay for free stuff)! I searched for "dramatic" music, and I found this amazing song. It will definitely add to our doc and maintain that same tonality created through the narration and followed by the visuals.

Going back to that failed filming attempt, Kass and I created the ULTIMATE set for filming. We wanted a plain background for our subject (me) where I am the sole focus of the shot, as well as the room we filmed in to be dark. So, we had to create that whole setup, which was super funny... just look at the pic below (that is, indeed, a phone flashlight inside of a jewelry box drawer, on top of a shoebox, resting on quite a few textbooks that happen to be atop of a nice set of drawers... lol). I also included a little clip of what the lighting looks like yayyy. Kass and I have recruited a good number of friends to record for our intro this Thursday, and we will pick the best 5 or 6 subjects and their shots for the doc. I'm excited for the filming and editing portion of this project, as everything will start to come together!

The beautiful and innovative lighting set up.

**A little side note, this dude Phil is my new best friend. In an article by SFGate, a few classes of high school teens were asked if the media portrays teens as they really are. My bffl Phil said "we cannot be represented by a stereotype. We are deciding our own identity," which I felt was a great statement that truly encompasses why we are making this documentary. We want to give people a glimpse into the lives of a few that make up Generation Z, people who make it great.

Until next time!
Chey :)