Film Opening

This film opening has was an interesting experience for me. This is because I was actually allowed to film in a dentistry. It was very cool to work inside as a dentist and work the mechanics of the chair. As well as this I learned so much from making this film opening which works on my knowledge of Premiere. I could go on forever on how this project made me feel, but now you can see it for yourself!

Film Opening: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4e429StjMuOfkhBSkQwMGVhNHJkNmw0UUVONnFmazNsWm5oa1VRX00xUEhhOWdRWmltTlE?resourcekey=0-bBoGYyu3Y9S9EarxgLoJ4Q&usp=share_link 

Creative Critical Reflection

Its been a really fun journey working through these eight weeks. The hardships and new experiences have made me see how working on something for an extended period time has improved my skills and made my final production so much better. 

Here are the links to my two CCRs. 

Directors Commentary: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18uHN8t9_Usar90b4JUgomlY4eOyBz1wj?usp=share_link

Interview: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HPcJb4i-t1xbzY3_KTpn5xWyiDN9ho8o?usp=share_link 

Finishing Both CCRs

 These past few days have been quite eventful. In these two days, I have worked and finished both the CCRs. 

First I'll talk about the Director's Commentary. For this, I used my clips which I obtained from my Film Opening. Much of the Director's Commentary was piecing together the clips in order to make sense with what I am saying. As well as this, I used Keyframes in Premiere to "Animate" pictures such as the logos for Audacity, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop. This picture on the right shows an animated Audacity logo which flies across the screen to make a transition between videos. 

My Director's Commentary had lots to do with talking not just about my film itself, but the process. This is what I wanted the my commentary to differentiate from others. What helped me in order to do this was a tool called Free Cam 8. This tool allowed me to take recordings of my screen to really show the process and how I made The Smile Room video. On the left, the dotted frame shows what I am trying to record and the red button below allows me to start and stop the recording. Anything outside the box does not show. 

For the Director's Commentary, I used lots of my knowledge of Premiere to my advantage. Not only did I use Ultra Key to make a fast forward effect, but I also used the Ultra Key feature to add a play and stop button to my video. All of these features work to make the video much more engaging rather than the bland video that was made by Peele that only had the movie showing. 

For the Interview, I first set up an area which would look like a television set. My idea was that the Interview would first open with someone sitting down to watch it on their own TV. Then the camera would zoom in to show the interview. Then what I did was put together the clips. 

The first scene was taken around some plants and as such was rather shaky as the whole interview was shot by hand. Therefore, I used the Warp Stabilizer tool. While not a perfect fix to this solution, it removed much of the jittering. I really liked the shot composition as it shows the angle through the plants to look at the audience. 

Overall, now that most of the heavy lifting is complete, I can work to export the project to Google Drive and submitting it to the Blogs.

Bye for now!

Editing the Directors Commentary

To begin my director's commentary, I first recorded the audio component, the script. When I recorded the script the first time, it came to be around three minutes and thirty seconds. When I was listening back to my responses and thinking about the visual component, I believe that there is more to be said about the editing process and the technology section can be divided into three components. Upon noticing this, I improved upon my script. I liked the way I opened the commentary, but the meat and information could be much more in depth. The script is written below.

"The technology used are not all implemented for the same purposes. To me it makes the most sense to divide this section, this dentin, into three parts: hardware, software, and online. The moviemaking process first begins with the planning. As such, I will first expand on the online component. This included Blogger, the website where I posted during the eight weeks I worked on the production. Not only this, but it allowed me to gather my thoughts. At the very beginning of preproduction, I was unsure what story to fully flesh out, blogging helped me to decide. Secondly, the hardware. These included devices such as a mobile camera, microphone, and memory cards. The mobile camera I used was an iPhone 13 mini. This phone allowed me to blur and capture the story which I created. An additional bonus that only this phone could provide was higher resolution quality which I could not obtain without it. The microphone collected the background audio in the dentist office and was attached to the inside of the actors' shirts in order to obtain clearer audio. Memory cards helped to transfer the video and audio components to be losslessly compressed into the postproduction software. Software, in my opinion, is the most critical aspect of the technology. Software composed of Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Audacity. In Premiere Pro I was able to import and edit the video. The original, unedited clips had much potential which had to be refined through Premiere. This single executable numbed the cavities or roadblocks that I had to deal with. There were two of note: the overexposure of the clips and the lack of blood when the teeth were removed. The first problem was solved by working with the interpreter in Premiere to lower the exposure and make the clips much crisper. The tooth removal scene was rather lackluster without eye candy. Therefore, using Premiere, it allowed me to key in colors with the Color Replace feature and make the shots look much more vivid and harrowing. Photoshop helped with creating the Smile Room logo used at the end of the introduction which helps to establish the theme and has brand identity. Lastly, but not least, Audacity helped to record the audio recordings for the Foley sounds and recording over the video. This was used in the scene where the needle was unsheathed similarly to a sword. Lastly but not least, Audacity helped to make the puncturing needle sound. These two sound effects landed itself to a horror convention of making the audio have more of an unrealistic soundscape in order to instill fear.
The pulp is the most important part of the tooth, if the pulp has a cavity, then the entire tooth falls apart. Similarly, my production skills developing is a critical factor in this product. Not only did I learn how to manage such a large project with many parts, but my editing and filming skills also improved. When I started the project, I was at first unsure how to proceed with the mountain of work that had to be done in order to successfully complete the video. For me, it began with planning, so I did not fall behind, like I saw other producers when they let work surmount. As well as this, I learned what it meant to create a cohesive story. At the beginning of my career, I tried to bunch abstract ideas into one video, but this made it so that my ideas were not conveyed as I had hoped. Therefore, I went for a much simpler concept which I could master fully. Throughout my postproduction process, I learned more about software than I had known before. Even though I am certified in Premiere, this production allowed me to delve into more complex editing and Foley as well as using more utilities of Premiere like the Color Replace and the Interpreter. What I believe that I could improve upon given another chance is to work on the SFX Prosthetics which I was deterred from due to its complexity. As well as this, I would like to have more time and work better around the schedule of the dentistry in order to have more time to film. In the end, I am proud of the work that I have produced and will allow the content of my film to be figured out on an individual basis. I would like to see what the viewers think in the comments and want to see theories."

With this newly improved script, I was able to begin working on editing the video as I have all the clips I need. For this director's commentary I want it to stand differently from what Peele and others have created, making the video component more engaging rather than having simple linear edits. I want to make the video feel more accustomed to its platform, YouTube. This is why I wanted to add the pause resume feature to the video. In order to do this without using video from online, I went to a YouTube video with a green screen. Then I screen recorded the pause and resume animations from YouTube. Now when pasting it into my video I used a feature called the Ultra Key. This allowed me to remove the green screen background. In addition to this, I completed around 1/5 of the total video component for the first CCR. It begins with a simple screen with the Smile Room logo and begins with the ending music of the opening. Then, while the director is talking, the video plays in the background. I am still unsure of whether I want the music from the opening to play in the background or to find some other music, but this is something I will do last. 

While I was attempting to add the Smile Room Sequence into Premiere, I ran into a technical issue. This issue seems to be a redundancy error. When I added the Smile Room Sequence into a similarly named new sequence, it stated that there was an error with the renderer. After a few minutes of troubleshooting, I learned that you cannot place a sequence into another sequence with the same name or the video will not render or export. This seems to be something that would work on other editing platforms but is an issue with this software. 

This is what I have so far and I am going to continue working to make this commentary the best it can be! In the next post, I will likely have the commentary done and have started working more on the interview. 

From Podcast to Director's Commentary

After attempting to create a Podcast on Spotify, I learned that I need an RSS and would have to link this back to Spotify in some way. This would require that I make a Spotify account for Podcasters and would also require that I post publicly. This is not something that I had in mind for creating the Podcast. Therefore, I will have to backtrack a little bit. Looking at the two questions, the answers are very visual. Originally, I had planned that the video feed of the Podcast would help to provide an extra medium to give my answer, so I decided that a Directors Commentary would work. All the visual material is already to my disposal as I still have all the original and edited film. Furthermore, there are plenty of examples online such as the commentary for the movie Get Out (2018) by Jordan Peele. 

In Jordan Peele's commentary, the direction and what was spoken about felt on the spot and raw. Jordan
Peele did not have a script. While I will be using one, I will be seeing how Jordan Peele went from one topic to another. This medium is a bit different from the interview in the fact that questions cannot be asked and the answers to the CCR questions must come up more naturally. The commentary begins with a cover page of the movie. I can use the Title screen as my movie cover. While the cover is shown, Peele introduces himself to the viewers and states that there are many spoilers and some background music plays during this period. The director plays the video and pauses while explaining. When the video plays, the original audio of the movie plays. What I found to be quite jarring, however, is that there is no signal for the pausing and playing of the video. While this is a small feature, I will be adding it to differentiate from other Director Commentaries. 

After seeing this example, I will create my own script for the Director Commentary. The questions that I will be "indirectly" answering are as follows:

• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

• How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

Hey guys, this is Ryan Nadanam and I am the director of the film The Smile Room and we will be dissecting the movie opening. There are many spoilers here in this commentary, so I recommend that you pause this video in case you have yet to watch the movie. Of course this should not be your first viewing experience. This movie has many layers, much like teeth which have three layers, enamel, dentin, and pulp. This movie works on these three tiers which I will be showing you today. Enamel is the hardest and most outer level, it is the story on the surface about a Dentist who ruins peoples teeth. On the second level we have the dentin, the bulk of the teeth. This layer relates to the technologies which made the film possible. Lastly, but most importantly, we have the pulp. This layer relates what I learned through this process and how it impacted this film. Of course most people who watch the movie understand its outer layer. Today we are here to dive deeper. Lets begin with the dentin, the tech behind the film. 

While the technologies are all different in aspects such as Premiere Pro being software and Blogger being online, they worked together to create a cohesive project. Firstly, I used Blogger, the online site where I posted the blogs during the eight weeks. Not only this, but it allowed me to gather my thoughts. For the production process, I used an iPhone 13 mini. This phone allowed me to blur and capture the story which I created. An additional bonus that only this phone could provide was higher resolution quality which I could not obtain without it. Premiere, Photoshop, and Audacity all helped me during the post-production process. Premiere allowed me to edit the video. The original, unedited clips had much potential which had to be refined through Premiere. Photoshop allowed me to create the Smile Room logo which was used in the video. Lastly, but not least, Audacity helped to record the audio recordings for the Foley sounds and recording over the video. This was used in the scene where the needle was unsheathed similarly to a sword. Technology played a critical role in making the product more cohesive. 

The pulp is the most important part of the tooth, and as such my production skills developed so much throughout the course of this project. Not only did I learn how to manage such a large project with many parts, but my editing and filming skills also improved. When I started the project, I was at first unsure how to proceed with the mountain of work that had to be done in order to successfully complete the video. For me, it began with planning so I did not fall behind, like I saw other producers when they let work surmount. This ensured that I did not stack work for the following weeks. As well as this, I learned what it meant to create a cohesive story. At the beginning of my career, I tried to bunch abstract ideas into one video, but this made it so that my ideas were not conveyed as I had hoped. Therefore, I went for a much simpler concept which I could master fully. 

There really is so much that went into the production, but I am leaving the content of the film for you to theorize. Thank you for listening. 

This is what I have for my script, and I will work throughout the week to edit and record audio and video for the commentary. 

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG5uT00SWNA 

Working on the Interview

Today I will be working on my first CCR. For the interview, the host will first be shown sitting down and will announce me. A crowd will be heard clapping me to my seat where from offscreen I sit down into a chair on screen. I will be introduced as the creator and actor of the doctor in the hit Smile Room movie. 

The shows name will likely be "Guru named Muru." The image below is my script. 

I may have to shorten my script as the responses are quite long. Other than that, all I have to do for the interview is film and edit it. With the editing being much more linear and by the script, it should be done in no time.

Bye for now!

CCR Mediums

Today I decided for my CCR to do an interview surrounding the two most important questions listed. The questions are the following: 

• 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?

My first CCR posting will likely be an interview. After watching past CCR's this one appealed to me as it is both creative and can look professionally produced without having to edit too much. In the interview, I will likely take the persona of an eccentric creator who took up the role to play the dentist and is getting interviewed about my involvement in the movie. 

The interview will go as follows: I will sit down from offscreen, be introduced and greeted by the interviewer, and answer the questions that the interviewer has for me. I will state that I have little time for the interview and the interview will end with me leaving for the podcast that I have to create. 

In this way, both the Interview CCR and the Podcast CCR will both be interconnected in this universe that I have created. For the podcast, I will create an image on Spotify for the thumbnail and will record the questions with some Foley sounds to make the Podcast more dynamic. 

The Podcast CCR will have to do with the following questions: 

• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

• How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

These questions do not require as much imagery as the questions above and would work best in the Podcast setting. These questions are also more subjective as to how my skills developed and, therefore, lends itself to working well in a podcast. 

In the next post, I will be making the script for these two mediums and will be working on producing the two CCRs.