(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.