Filming the Music Video

Filming

Over the weekend, me and group finally took the time to film for our project. Our main I guess ‘leader’ Emily was able to find us a really convenient location to film in. We ended up going to a middle school after our classes were over, since her mom works there and we were able to go inside and pretty much do whatever we needed to do. We all got together after school and had our older group member pull up in her car, so that we could just skip everything and go straight to the location. After all, some of us had to be home by certain times and it was already nearly 3 PM, so it was about time to just get things done. With a few... minor scares in traffic we managed to make it completely unscathed. We accidentally went through some random hallway instead of the actual main entrance since some kid let us in through the doors. Now that I think about it... that definitely isn’t safe. But all that really matters is that we got in. We immediately made way to the cafeteria, since the auditorium is really just a tiny black stage placed in the cafeteria.

Dance classes were about to pick up soon so we had to film really hastily. Me and the other actress, Andrea, had to basically put on these dresses that Emily had brought for us and somehow take off our original clothes from under them. She showed us them earlier that morning, probably like 5 of them so we were able to choose our favorites. We didn’t want to change in the bathrooms because public bathrooms are kind of nasty so we just went with the old fashioned way. Right after, we got up on stage and had Emily go through the storyboard to tell us what to do. We filmed the second shot, the slow dance, on that stage. We opened up by walking through the curtains and striking a little pose, before coming together to dance. Now I will admit, I do dance a lot in my free time but slow dancing just isn’t my strongest suit. If I end up looking really awkward in my footage, we all know why. We also filmed us running down the stairs on the side of the stage, making sure to have Andrea in front of me holding my hand to lead me forward. 

Once we were finished with the indoors part, we left our things inside and went out into something like a ‘commons’ area? Basically just trees and benches where kids probably hang out during passing time. We did a few takes of some random running shots, honestly not sure why but I haven’t looked at the storyboard in a while. It’s probably in there somewhere.. us frolicking in fields or something. We also did a cute little scene of us hiding behind a tree and smiling at each other when we come around, just basic things to go with the soft song. We moved to our final spot, a little nook type area that had small wooden benches and a chalkboard. The final takes were done there, of me and Andrea from behind holding hands. Also the shot of the sun that will eventually be in the film, and so on. We faked conversation for a lot of it since we didn’t need real dialogue for what we were planning. Once everything was done, we packed up our stuff and got picked up by our rides and went home. Anything we didn’t finish was eventually fixed up by Emily at her own house.

Music Video Storyboarding

Storyboarding

So, this is what me and my group have come up with for the storyboard. We originally made it a bit different, but when Emily showed it to our teacher he said it was a bit short. We had to extend it by throwing in a few bits of cute clips or something just to meet the minimum/maximum or somewhere in between. The music video will begin with a shot of a music player, and a hand will come up, pretending to press play. The song will then begin playing at this moment, cutting to the first scene of the two actresses. A wide shot of a stage, closed off by curtains will be shown, then the two characters will come out together and do a pose with their arms out. They will begin to slow dance, maybe do a few spins or something like that so it isn't just awkward footwork and laughing. We'll probably do about two to three takes, so if necessary, there will be some jump cuts just to make it flow better by then. Once they're done, a close up of their hands will show, and then show them running away off the stage with the camera tilted, following them. This will segway into the next scene, another where they hide behind a tree together. Slowly inching closer, they have their heads come around the tree and they smile at each other when their eyes meet. Afterwards it will jump cut to the actresses running around in nature, spinning around or skipping. The video will then cut to them sitting on a bench in a little nook area. There will be a wide angle showing the entire location off just to show the aesthetic of the shot. They'll be holding hands, having some sort of conversation or smiling to each other before looking up to the sky. The video will cut to a shot of the sky as an eye-line match, before coming back to the actresses, now from behind. Still holding hands, they make sure they're visible for the camera as the camera slowly tilts up to the sky once more. The camera will zoom into the sun, getting a small little solar flare in the shot as it fades to black, finishing off the video. The entire thing will be in black and white.

Planning the Music Video

Planning the Music Video

So, I've already got the beginning of this video planned out. At least of course, for the day that we end up filming. We have to create our storyboards in just a second, but that'll be shown elsewhere. For now we just wanted to figure out where we're going, since we can't film this video on our school's campus this time. We have to be outside of school, basically anywhere else. It doesn't matter-- we could go to the beach, the park, Disney or something if we really felt like it. I got a general idea of what we're going to be doing, but I won't be in charge of much besides acting and editing since I know i'm not the most creative person. At least, out of everybody in my group, I know my ideas will probably lack in depth than compared to those of others. On the bright side, I have a lot of a technological skill, so my role will come in later on in the project. Once we get the storyboard done, i'll basically be set since that's like the entire video put on a piece of paper for me to form together. Well.. at least better than I did during the commercial project. I think everything will be at least somewhat cohesive this time.  I know for sure that we have a way to get to whatever destination we need to go to, since one of us has a car. As long as we end up going somewhere after school we can all just run over to the parking lot and jump in the car and go somewhere random. We might be able to use a stage at another school, which should work since it technically isn't at OUR campus, no? Emily's mom works at a middle school so we can probably take advantage of that.

Our full schedule is: 

1. Plan, make the storyboard. 11/18
2. We only have access to the setting for a day, because of the fact that we can only go since Emily's mom works there. We're going to film early to do it all in that time period. Emily will check out the camera and everything and we'll head straight over. 11/19
3. Complete/start on blogs so that we can be ahead and not swamped with work later on. 11/20
4. Figure out music and timing of sounds so that we can match it all together with the film. We don't want an audio mishaps this time. 11/21
5. Discuss minor details and flow just in case we want to add anything. Relax, it's the weekend. 11/22
6. Edit the film blogs on the off-chance that we made any last minute decisions. Be ready to finish up soon. 11/25
7. Finish our last filming blog. 12/2
8. D-Day, submit the video. 12/9
9. Submit CCR to my teacher's email. Writing this will probably take a while, so I might end up starting early. The first/second question can sometimes be answered before the completion of the project. 12/11

Intro to New Project

Music Video

The commercial project is finally over. After weeks of trials and tribulations, it's submitted and I can forget that ever happened. Well... not forget, but at the very least, pretend. I don't think I did the best I could've done, but it seems that that's in the past now. I'm officially moving on with my group onto my next project, a music video. After going through the whole process of making a commercial, I've definitely found a new level of appreciation for it. I had a very good storyboard, basically as detailed as I could possibly make it, but some things went wrong later on in filming. Although everything was planned out perfectly on my storyboard, me and my group kind of forgot to film a few things. Either that, or we didn't do enough takes, so we ended up with footage that I wasn't very proud of. I hope filming will go better this time, especially since I have the ability to film this outside of school instead of just being on the track. I'll probably go to the mall or somewhere romantic so that I can fit the vibe of the song I choose. Also, editing should go smoother this time around since I won't rely so heavily on it if I just get better footage. Rather than just trying to cut things together and force them to work, I should have footage that actually just works. 

The song me and my group have chosen is 'Fly Me To The Moon' by Frank Sinatra. It's romantic, jazzy, nice and slow. Basically everything somebody could want in a cheesy love song. It's almost like something that you could serenade someone with, since a lot of songs from that time era were like that. Frank Sinatra is a classic singer, one of the most famous of his time, so choosing him was easy to think of. We wanted something that could be romantic and soft for our video, since we want our video to have a love story. The song is about 2 minutes long, but we'll shorten it down for our video since it has a lot of instrumentals without lyrics. If we do have to keep any instrumentals in for the time limits though, we might make a small little choreography or something to keep it interesting. It'll be fun to use such an old song, especially because a lot more can be done with it that will be more special than just a regular modern music video. 

Jazz music videos and songs are normally about love, hidden love, anything to do with romance as said before. It's going to have a very soft vibe so that we can do everything we want with it.

1. For costumes, my group mate Emily we be finding outfits since she has family members that are costume designers and things like that. She has a lot of knowledge on history, so she knows what was 'in' fashion-wise during the time period of when our video is going to be set. 
2. Lighting is mostly going to be natural from our locations that we use, outside when our characters walk around. Or if we end up putting our characters in a restaurant in any scene, maybe somewhere that's more dimly lit. However, the video will all be in black and white to pay homage to the 50's and 60's black/white films.
3. Our actors are most likely going to be 2 women acting as lover. It's a bit of a comment on what life was like back in the 50's and 60's, since homophobia was really big. We'll have them interact romantically, going out on dates and all that.
4. Makeup won't play a very large part of the video, we may just have light makeup on our actresses inspired by famous looks. Red lipstick, eyeliner, light blush, overall a classic look. Honestly, we may not have it at all.
5. Our props are going to be part of the dance theme and whatever happens with the script, so it's a bit undecided at the moment. 
6. Scenery will be very beautiful and soft, in nature with wind blowing through the actors faces. Maybe trees, pretty flowers and things like that. Keep it simple. 

Actually Editing the Commercial

Actually Editing the Commercial

This time, we actually got to edit everything. The footage was put together well, but it isn't everything that I really wanted it to be. There were a million tiny problems that I had with it. For one thing, we decided to split our editing workload, but I ended up being home and sleeping in bed because I got really sick and needed to be out of school just for the day. Emily was gone too due to the passing of one of her relatives. Jaheim and Andrea ended up having to work together to put the commercial together the best they could. It probably was pretty tedious, I feel kind of bad for not being able to be there to help work like I said I would. But I guess you can't exactly postpone a sickness, and I didn't want to spread it to anyone else. Jaheim later told me over text in the group chat that him and Andrea were able to filter through all of our takes and pick the best ones. We had about thirty of them, but they chose seven good ones. The takes themselves, i'm sure, weren't exactly very good. We messed up a lot on the filming day and forgot a lot of bits. Plus we ended up taking forever and we almost ran out of time while filming since we have really bad time management. The seven we ended up using were just better than the other more weak links. 

Another problem we ended up struggling with in the end was the amount of technical difficulties we faced. There was a problem with our file type so there was trouble when actually trying to import the files into the editing software. To our dismay, nobody really knew how to fix it so we just had to use a different program besides Pinnacle Studios. We tried to just keep going with Pinnacle while also using the other software, but our ordered footage made Pinnacle crash. I'm not sure how, perhaps Pinnacle's auto save feature kicked in at the perfect moment, but our files started actually working again until just when we were going to finalize it and save it. We tried to put the video onto one of our Google Drive accounts, this time it was Jaheim's, but there was an issue. It was saved as a .axp file which basically can't be opened unless you're specifically opening it with Pinnacle. Second of all, it somehow became an audio file rather than a video file. So we have no option but to leave it on the computer and save it and just hope for the best. 
On the bright side, for the second day of editing I was able to actually be there in class to pull some of my weight. The big problem me and Jaheim found was that the transitions between the shots we had were really awkward. We had too many different angles and the timing was just off in general so it was hard to get it to be  smooth without it looking super weird. We had to put together shots from before that we initially didn't want to use just so that we could get it to work. The film itself also is a bit weird. It feels short even though it's in the time frame we were told to do, but I think it's because of our story. Maybe we didn't have enough to it, or it was just literally rushed from us panicking when we looked at the clock. But I guess we all are trying our best, and none of us including myself have ever made videos before. I've only ever made casual edits for things on social media and all that. This is okay for a first try.

(Not) Editing the Commercial

(Not) Editing the Commercial

When filming day came to an end, we dumped all of our footage onto a computer so that we could get ready to edit next class. I got to the class earlier than usual so that we could get onto our computer, but there seems to be a bit of a problem. Apparently, our editing software doesn't work on most of the computers within the classroom. This wasn't exactly what we anticipated.. so now we're stuck with not much to do. When we sat down, our teachers informed us that Pinnacle Studios is malfunctioning. To put it simply, we can't open it. And because of that, we can't edit our video today. I'm not exactly sure what we'll do next class, after all we can't postpone the turn-in date by too much. But it seems that at least for today we're just blogging and chatting while our teachers try to fix the problem. We were supposed to edit everything today, but it seems that that's going to be pushed back a bit until we find some sort of solution. 

Our teachers instructed us to get all of our footage off of the desktop and onto some other platform. I'm assuming maybe because we might have to go to another class to use computers, but that's just my guess. I mean.. it makes the most sense to me unless they somehow fix these ones fast enough by Wednesday. But knowing our school, I highly doubt it'll be done in time. I ended up putting everything from the folder into my Google Drive. That way, if i'm given the task to use another computer, i'll still be able to access everything. It's saved onto my account of course, so I basically can't miss school or we're done for. Even so, i'm the one that's actually going to be doing the manual editing. Everyone else is just going to be instructing me on what to do. We'll have someone read the storyboard off for me, and we'll talk it out together to see how we want to cut it together.

My friend Emily will be our main director, which is basically code for she's the one that'll be breathing down my shoulder the entire time telling me what to do. Honestly, i'm a bit nervous to get this part done. I've only ever edited something together once, but that was for a final in AICE Euro last year. But.. all I had to do for that project was cut out parts that I messed up from when I voice-over'd some diary entries I wrote. I've never done something like a full blown project before, and I think there's a lot more involved this time. Plus this isn't just for me anymore. It's for everyone in my group, all four of us together. So if it doesn't come out good i'll seriously be worried for my grade. But I guess I shouldn't speak such things into existence. I should just focus on the task at hand and prepare to actually edit (hopefully) next class. Let's hope this comes out good for everyone's sake.

Filming Day

Filming

October 24th, 2019, me and my group filmed our first ever project together. We went out to our school's track alongside a few other groups of kids and got set up quickly. Unfortunately, we did end up getting stuck from a few things for a moment, like costume difficulties and our missing piece to attack the camera to the tripod. Honestly, by the time we started, we only had about 20-30 minutes to film before we had to get back to the classroom. Of course, I didn't tell my group that.. I was afraid they would start panicking. Let's just say this: I know these people very well, and they're horrible workers under pressure. It was much better for me to keep my mouth closed and to just let the alarm go off for when we had to leave. Our class periods may be an hour and a half long, but we only got to spend a third of that time on the actual task since we were so busy waiting to get everything set up. Not only that, it gets worse, it took us so many tries to get our scenes right without laughing. I think I finally understand the life of an actor-- at least somewhat. Maybe an actor without the fame, or the money.

In all honesty, the majority of our footage is probably taken up by really awful bloopers. But still, it was really fun to do since we were able to let loose and look a little stupid, especially since we knew we were just going to edit it out later. We spent such a long time trying to figure out simple scenes, mostly because of the fact that we kept arguing over what camera angles we were going to use (even though we wrote right on the storyboard what angles we were using). It got a bit overwhelming, but at least our camera guy was the only person with any brain cells at all, so he did most of the talking. I think he got sick of our messing around, so he eventually started doing takes when we didn't even know. Perhaps that would be interesting for raw footage at least. Or just scenes of us looking really stupid. Either way.. I think it'll be a treat to see when we start editing. It's surprising we even managed to finish filming in time. 

After we finished figuring everything out (that took way too long), we got everything done. We did mess up a bit by forgetting a certain part of our video, but i'm confident enough in what we have that we'll be able to make something good regardless. I'm not sure if it'll be a masterpiece, if anything I doubt it. After all, none of us had ever filmed a video before, and none of us have edited video clips together before. But that seems to be the purpose of this course, doing new things and expressing yourself. I just hope that this comes out well so that our first try at a video project is satisfying. I'm a very nit-picky person, so i'm really critical of myself when it comes to doing things more on the creative side. If this doesn't come out right, i'm sure i'll beat myself up over it for a good month or two. I would be lying if I said i'm fully confident, but I guess it's now or never since we only have a single class period to edit our commercials. Honestly though, it could've gone much worse for us; it could've rained and we would've been stuck with plan B, we could've forgotten the donuts entirely, and so on. At least we filmed something interesting, and I got to eat a really good double chocolate donut when all was said and done.

Commercial Storyboarding

Storyboards

For the past few days or so, me and my group have been working together on a detailed storyboard for our commercial project. Together with one of my partners, I wrote a really specific script so that we could be ready to film in a week. I included camera angles, all the dialogue, camera movements, sound, and so on. That way, it wouldn't be too difficult to make our storyboard. We gave the responsibility mainly to Jaheim, since his main role in our group is being the camera man and main artist. After about one and a half class periods, the storyboard was completed quickly in about two template pages. Of course.. we also had to make another one for our back-up plan in case of there being any weather issues on our filming day, which is probably why it took us so long to finish up the art. If it weren't for that, our time spent on it most likely would've been cut in half, but I guess it is necessary that we have a blueprint for our plan B just so that we can visualize it. Just the period before, we all met up together and realized that we completely forgot to finish one part. Unfortunately, we did forget to color the storyboards, so we had to rush and just use bits of green pen for the grass, red for the color of our track, and so on. Luckily for us, we ended up having some time in class afterwards to finish up our pages to show to our teacher. We actually started on the storyboard much earlier than we were meant to, so besides the coloring aspect, we literally had nothing left to do and we ended up just working on other assignments that were going to be due later in the day. Before the bell rang, we went up to our teacher and asked for approval of our storyboard just so that we could know if it was okay or not. If he didn't approve, it would've been pretty awkward considering the fact that if there happened to be a problem with your storyboard, you wouldn't be able to film until the moment you fixed it. If you still don't have it fixed then, it's likely that you won't be getting a very good grade for the project. On the bright side, we got approved immediately, and our teacher even went so far as to say that it was one of the best storyboards hes ever seen! At least... for a group of people who had never done it before. We all had a mini celebration together, and now we're just preparing for our filming time next class. 

Editing Blog Lesson

Editing Blog Lesson

Today, the whole class sat down to watch a simple editing lesson from one of our teachers. She took us through the process of checking out equipment, to how to use the equipment, and how to manage our shots afterwards. We’re most likely going to check out everything besides and SD card, since one of my group’s members already bought one for us to use on our own, just so that it’d be easier later. We’re gonna make use of the tripod a lot because there’s going to be a lot of walking around in our commercial, but we don’t want our cameraman’s hands to be shaky and mess up the footage. We learned the basics— how to use the camera, tripod, the basics that (hopefully) we all knew before, but it was still nice to have the refresher since I honestly haven’t used a conventional camera in long time. How to manage the viewfinder, how to charge the camera, and how to attach it to the tripod. She showed us the program we’re going to be using, Pinnacle Studios. It looks pretty simple to me, but maybe that’s just because I had to edit a video for a final last year in a different class. She also demonstrated how to dump footage on the computer so that we don’t have to keep using our SD card any time we want to edit in the future. From what she said, we just have to put the card into the computer, look for the DCIM folder, find the folder with our takes in it. If all else fails, go through the private folder, and once you find everything then dump it onto the desktop and take out the card.

It’s recommended to us that we make a separate folder on the desktop itself so that we can keep everything organized (and so we don’t delete it by accident), and to always use the same login. Of course if we were to use a different login on the computer, obviously the file wouldn’t be there and we’d probably lose it. Next step is to open the software and import our movie files in. Unfortunately the program is a bit buggy sometimes, it tends to freeze and crash the computers a lot, but it should be fine as long as we give it time to load everything. Once everything is finally on, we get to the bread and butter of the project— editing everything together. This is where we cut the parts we don’t like, anything that doesn’t flow together smoothly gets taken out. We’ll add our voice over in this phase, our titles, anything else that’s really important to the commercial. Put our movie on AV track 2, title on 1, and our voiceover/music files on 3. Skip around and make sure everything is smooth by just dragging around the play bar, and fix anything that isn’t perfect. Add transitions, filters, and make sure the movie autosaves.

Now that we’ve taken our raw footage and turned it into one cohesive piece, it’s time to export. We select the export button right next to where we imported earlier. Make sure the file is set to MP4 so that it’s actually a movie file, otherwise it could be set on MP3– that could accidentally just turn it into audio. Basically.. if we accidentally select MP3, it’ll just be an audio file and everything will be ruined. Also make sure that Full Side SD is selected so that the best quality possible is shown for the movie once we publish it. We start the export, let everything render together. All the little gaps between each cut will smooth together, as well as the film as a whole. Everything should turn into one full piece at this point. Save it as the name of whatever you wish for your file, and leave it inside of your folder you made earlier when you dumped your files. When the day comes, it’s time to publish and pray your teacher likes it. 

Planning the Commercial

Planning For The Commercial

It's officially day one of planning for my commercial project, with eleven days left until filming day. Today me, Emily, Jaheim, and Andrea sat down in a circle to brainstorm everything we needed. The main idea is that we're going to film on a field, the employee actor will hand the tired student a coffee and a donut. The student will sigh as the employee walks up and says "It looks like you need a pick-me-up". The student will proceed to drink the coffee, and appear again in their second costume as a runner. They will move on the track to stand alongside another runner, and the employee will suddenly blow a whistle as if they're starting a race. With the help of the coffee, the protagonist will end up outrunning the other runner and win the race. Everybody will celebrate together with donuts. The protagonist will look at the employee and say: "How did you do that?" and the employee will follow up with "Don't you know? America runs on Dunkin'." The commercial will close.

• Props: We've decided that we're going to have the regular cup of coffee from Dunkin' (empty, of course) alongside a bag which is gonna have some kind of donut in it. Not exactly sure what, maybe something really aesthetically pleasing so that it can draw the attention of the audience to look straight towards it rather than the actress. We'll use a whistle to commence a race, and bring a dozen donuts in a large box as well. These will be part of the commercial alongside all the other food containers.. but admittedly we'll get to eat these donuts once everything is said and done. All of these things will come into play over the course of the 30 seconds. 
• Costumes: One of us will have an apron with the company logo on it, and a standard work uniform. The main actor will have track gear on, since their main purpose is to start running at a certain point in the commercial. Before that actress puts on the track gear though, she'll have pajamas on because it's important for the plot. The main characters will be a (very tired) student/runner, a Dunkin' donuts employee, and another runner acting as a side character for the main character to beat.
• Schedule: Each class has a different goal starting today. The planning phase takes place now, then next week on the 14th we'll create our storyboards so that we can have a more vivid perspective of our idea. We'll present our storyboard to our teacher and have it approved and then move to the next phase. We film on the 21st, bringing all of our equipment and grabbing our camera. We only have one chance to film, so we're gonna have to squeeze it all in by the time the class period ends, and hopefully no unexpected weather comes. Finally, on the 23rd we'll edit the film in class as we envisioned and turn in our project. 
• Location: We have to film this at school, so we're going to do it on the track field. Because it's a field to run on, it'll kind of be a play on the whole "American RUNS on Dunkin'" joke. The lighting is mainly going to be natural, so hopefully the sunlight will set the way we need it to so that the contrast can show up properly onto our objects and our actor's faces.
• Back-up Plan: If the weather fails, we'll do a school setting. Student #1 will be walking down by the stairs close to our library, looking visibly tired. The bell will ring and the student will be startled, accidentally tripping and falling. They'll fall in slow motion and a pillow will be placed (very conveniently) for their head to fall on. The camera will cut to their face laying on the pillow, and a hand will come into the shot holding a bag with a donut inside. The smell will wake the student up, and then the hand will offer them a cup of coffee. This is the part where we say "You look like you could use a pick-me-up". The camera will then show the two walking away together, laughing happily. 

Research Conventions and Codes

Researching Dunkin' Donuts

Today, October 7th, 2019, me and a few partners were assigned a short commercial project as our first project in my AICE Media class. Based off the list of options we were given, we eventually came to the conclusion that we were going to be making a mock Dunkin' Donuts commercial, and we began our research in class. Here are my findings, at least, so far after watching about 12 commercials: 

The main things i've found that are common in DD commercials are of course, the setting, which mostly takes place in random areas of the world. Offices, the beach, inside of Dunkin' Donut's establishments, even in regular people's homes. The color scheme is kept mainly orange and pink to reflect the colors of the company's logo, and a worker (not sure if it's an actor or someone who really works there) is shown talking to a customer or something along those lines. Either that, or it's just regular people at work or outside, being offered coffee. In DD and fast food commercials in general, donuts or whatever food product is being advertised is flashed all over the screen. A close up is done of the product, showing it off as if they were saying "Look! Imagine eating this right now, it looks amazing, doesn't it?". The name of the product is also shown next to it or straight on top of it, just to make the name obvious to whoever the audience may be.

Many of the DD commercials i've watched show a dramatic shot of coffee beans falling down or being thrown out of a bag. Steam coming off of that fresh, hot cup of coffee that was just made seconds ago. Sometimes even a coffee machine is shown pouring the coffee if it's advertising something like the Keurig cup pods DD offers. It shows someone drinking it, probably surrounded by a smiling group of people all enjoying their drinks together, to try and make the audience feel as if they were there with the people in the commercial. Of course, DD doesn't only sell coffee, they literally have 'Donuts' as part of their name, but coffee has always been one of their biggest selling points. Even out of personal experience, i've heard about DD's coffee countless times in my life, either that or they get associated with other coffee places like Starbucks (or Tim Horton's if you live in Canada). I plan on featuring coffee AND donuts as part of my project, so I figured I should also find a few old ad's for their donut specials. 

In terms of donuts, Dunkin' is actually the place I like to get my own donuts from (double chocolate or glazed donuts), and I know that's easily their biggest money maker. Teachers bring in Dunkin' for their classes as rewards, bosses bring in Dunkin' for their employees sometimes as a celebration, and some people just like to eat them alone. But in general, most people don't just order one donut, they order a box of 6 or of a dozen to bring around to friends or family. Because of this, many commercial's made for DD's end up also including big flashing letters on the screen about deals or sales on their donuts, like 2 for $5 or the free donut they let you have on National Donut Day. They always show a very large array of donuts, like the ones covered in sprinkles and frosting, or the one full of jelly inside. Powdered donuts, one's dunked and entirely made of chocolate, even special seasonal ones end up being extremely popular because of the advertisements they put out. For the holidays, they sometimes put out little pink ones for Valentine's Day, or ones with purple/orange/black frosting for Halloween. All of their commercials typically include some kind of deal or very dramaticized showing of the product. Either that, or an actor's reaction to it. 

Introductory

Introducing, me.

   

Hi, i'm Victoria, a junior attending Fort Lauderdale High School for the last 3 years. I'm currently chasing after my AICE diploma, hoping to finish it by the end of this year by passing all of my classes, including the one i'll be blogging about for the rest of the year (AICE media). I'm really interested in film, not exactly for a career but just because I absolutely love going to the movies, or even watching movies at home. I've been like this since I was a kid; even when I may not have a lot of time to watch every new movie coming out, I still try to watch things when I can. I was obsessed with the stereotypical movies little girls always love when I was younger, you know, the Disney princess movies and all the crazy Pixar movies like Monsters Inc. My main hobbies growing up were reading, and watching movies. Luckily for me, sometimes those things got to tie together whenever film adaptations were made of things I read. Hunger Games, Coraline, Percy Jackson, they all ended up getting movies as time went on (but the book is always better than the movie). But movies aren't the only thing i'm interested in, as i've grown up i've become really passionate about a few other things. 

I'm 16 years old, turning 17 in July 2020 but sometimes I feel like i'm a million years old and I can't seem to get out of a time loop. It kind of reminds me of those things like in movies where people just get stuck inside of a certain time period and can't get out of it for what feels like decades. Unfortunately for me, just because I feel old, doesn't mean I am old. If anything, i'm rather unaccomplished besides the fact that i've somehow managed to make it through high school so far. I still don't have my drivers license, I don't have a car, I don't have a job, and in general I don't think I do a lot of interesting things. So yeah, my life can get a little bit boring sometimes, but that's okay. At least with a lot of time to spend indoors, I get to play video games. Or watch countless hours of TV shows I got recommended on Netflix. I just recently finished Orange Is The New Black after the final season came out-- I highly recommend it. 

Besides that though, the main hobby I have that I actually care about is my love for video games. I've loved them since my childhood, playing MMORPGS's like Wizard101 and World of Warcraft, and it seems to be something that's followed me (but also come to haunt me) in the later years of my life. It's a bit of an issue now since I have a terrible habit of procrastinating because I tell myself  "one more round" and it ends up turning into 3 more, but I think soon i'll have it down. If i'm honest, I don't think i'm very put together. I take a very long time to do things, unless i'm forced to do it or it's 5 minutes before the deadline, but I hope at least once I get to college i'll get better at it. Like most things though, I just want to get better at everything I do. The last few years of my life i've been trying my hardest to improve on myself, after recovering from some hardships and a few personal issues of my own. Ever since then though, I've spent a lot of my time trying to live life happily rather than enslaved by work. Yes, that does sometimes reflect on reports of mine, and my struggle is evident but it feels a little better at least knowing that I'm happy. At least, for the most part. 

I only hope to get even better, and maybe get more in touch with myself as I spend this school year making these short videos.