Creative Critical Reflection

Final Project

There's only so many different ways I can say Hi and Welcome to my Blog and I've come to realize, as I approach my last few entries that the whole idea of trying to do it differently every time is kinda futile. regardless I'm back again with my first post since we finished filming.

Overall Not a lot has happened in the last few days, we originally had trouble attempting to change our files from the camera into MP4 but we quickly got that shorted out. So now begins the editing process. In the little time we've had we have already chosen which clips we've wanted to use for each shot and we've already assembled them in movie maker into a rough draft as you can see below.

 Obviously this is a very rough draft and we've done little to refine it so far. So for the next two days we're going to be busy editing it down to what we want and adding in things such as Foley sounds, title cards, and of course the music. Now sadly the music has been the least productive front in this entire project as nobody seems to want to email us back to even deny us use of their song. It would be a miracle if we were able to get written permission by the time we're done editing. Sadly I feel like we might have to resort to non copy right music. Ill have an update on our music acquiring and editing process tomorrow.  Hopefully everything we need resolved gets resolved by then. Ill see you all next time, for my final non titled blog post.

Welcome back viewers, this is probably going to be the most lengthy post I'll ever make on this Blog so be prepared. This post is on the on the events of our Sunday shooting.

So to start with I knew in advance that something would go wrong, something always does go wrong, and today was no exception. Two hours before filming I texted everyone involved to make sure they were ready to go, and right away we ran into our first dilemma, Darren responded with the words "I can't go, something came up". That's probably the worst phrase you could hear mourning of the only day you have to shoot a majority of your scenes, but regardless I stayed calm. Plenty of other people could push the Daly and so I asked my dad, who was already going to drop the device off for me at the filming location anyway, to help.
While my dad is on the way to our filming location, I stop by Kim's house and then my friends house to grab the camera and quickly toast the waffles, which was a lot harder than you would think. Before Sunday I had never had just a strong hate for any inanimate object but today i can say without a doubt toaster ovens are the most god awful invention on the planet. Toasting the waffles somehow took nearly 15 minutes and we were almost late to our own production.Sadly the stress didn't end there. Once we arrived to the restaurant we got settled in and waited. Before long it had already passed the agreed upon time we were suppose to start filming and restaurant wasn't even opened. Finally after 20 minutes awaiting Dario arrived and let us in and thankfully after that everything went smoothly.

   Everyone was extremely professional through the whole filming process, especially Yana who did an amazing job playing Jude. Even with the stress and time constraints placed on us I feel like everyone was able to put the right amount of dedication and energy into their role and because of that we managed to finish all of our shooting in that one day. Not everything was able to be done exactly how we wanted, for example we didn't get to do the trunk scene the same way I imagined it in the story board and we weren't able to do the window scene either due to the lighting outside but overall I liked what we did and I can say without a doubt I'm proud of the group as a whole.

Even though we were pressed on time we still had fun with filming and I don't think anyone ever allowed the stress to get to them. Since most of footage we took won't be seen in our final product I want to show you guys an outtake we had that makes me laugh every time I watch it.

Whats going on people, welcome back to my blog.

Over the weekend our group made a lot of progress so much so that I couldn't possibly fit it into one blog, so these next two blogs are going to focus on what happened on Saturday and Sunday Individually. Today's Blog will be about our preparations we made Saturday. 

Unlike most Saturdays I woke up very early with one goal in mind, get everything ready for tomorrow. So I met with Kim and a few friends who were willing to help us and I compiled a list of things we'd need for tomorrow.

Objects: 

two plates

two forks

two knives

two waffles

two sets of chicken

daly (I don't know how to spell that)

Camera (obviously)

SD card (32 gigs at least)

My car

People: 

Yana- Jude 

Nick- Alex

Sebastian- Pushes daly

Darren- Waiter

Kim- camera

Nick and Kim- Directing

Overall most of the stuff on the list was easily accessible or already on hand. The only thing I couldn't account for was the daly. Now in retrospect the daly wasn't necessary, some might say it was even useless, but at the time I believed that our first at last scene would be incomplete without it. Now obviously we couldn't buy a daly so we did the next best thing and decided to build one. Just a warning the video quality isn't the best here.  as shown in the video to build the daly we tapped a thick piece of wood and a few pcp pipes to hand truck in order to create a stable plat form for the camera operator that was also slim and mobile. the final product ended up  looking a lot like a U-haul storage cart. As you can see from the video the pcpc tubes and the handle were meant to help stabilize the camera as the daly moved. the video below shows this  process as the daly follows me.

like I said earlier the daly wasn't as useful as we intended it to be but i had a lot of fun making it and overall i liked the concept we had for it. 

Not like this.

Everything is all happening at once faster than I expected. Dario has contacted me and given me one day, or more accurately half an hour of one day to film our opening this sunday. Needless to say I'm thankful he's opened his restaurant to us but I'm also stressed on the time constraints. Dario isn't exactly a negotiating man so I have to work with what I'm given here so this is going to be stressful at the least, thankfully my cast is available for the our 10 am time slot so we have that going for us. The cast is finalized as of now as Yana playing the female lead Jude, Myself Playing the Male lead, Alex, Darren and Kim on Camera and direction, Me and Kim on editing. On top of all this we also have a finalized version of our script and we will be finished with the storyboard by today.

Script:

INT- A busy diner (bellini) in the early morning.

The camera follows the waiter of the diner as he walks to a table with food in hand. He places the food down on the table and walks away. As the fork and knife reaches for the first bite the camera moves from close shot of the food to a medium shot of the female character.

She picks up the food and bites into the waffle. She looks to the man across her and sees his distress.

Jude: (with a faint smile, offers a bit of her food) You want some?

Alex rejects the food and Jude retreats from her offer. She goes on speaking to fill the silence. She speaks with her mouth full.

Jude: To be honest (takes another bite of chicken) This isn’t the worst thing I’ve put in my mouth (faint smile trying to break tension).

Alex watches her chew, still irritated, he tells her how he feels about the situation.

Alex: (reacts to her ignorance) Why did we have to do this now?

Showing the profile of both characters and Jude being irritated.

Jude: What?

Alex: We had planned for a week, I had a car ready...In a WEEK.  

Jude slams her fork.

Jude: (Looks away from Alex, chewing and swallowing her chicken. She faintly whispers to herself) A week…(She looks to Alex) I couldn’t wait another week.

The shot shows Alex’s reaction to Jude’s outburst. He knows he’s awakened the Dragon.

Jude: You don’t understand what I have to go through...The troubles I have to face.

Alex struggles to be mad at Jude and looks down to the emptiness.

Jude: You think I enjoy having a father who doesn’t love me...Who prefers Jack Daniels over his own daughter.

Jude Begins to raise her voice making Alex feel like shit for putting her on the spot.

Jude: So I apologize if i needed to get out as fast as I could. I’m sorry I wanted to run away with the best thing that has ever happened to me...you. I didn’t mean to inconvenience you.  

Jude looks away from Alex, Hiding her face as Alex looks at Jude, wanting to fill the silence.

Alex: (nervously chuckles) (peers over to her and then looks down) So you think your dad is going to be looking for us?

Jude looks up with satisfaction knowing she has gotten what she wanted. Alex tries to get a straight answer.

Alex: Jude seriously, I need to know if he’s going to be looking for us.

Jude takes another piece from the food and is very excited.

Jude:Don’t worry...where we’re going...nobody will find us.

Alex looks blantly into Jude.

Jude:(leans close to Alex’s face) Even if they tried.

Alex: So what do you wanna do (grabs some of Jude’s food) When we get there.

Jude: What the keys? (grabs food) We can do whatever we want there...that's the whole point.

Alex: (Smiles) How long is that going to be?  

Although today has been a day full of progress, we still have a lot to plan and this saturday might just end up being the most Hectic day of my life. I have faith we can pull this off if we work diligently. However if we don't Im going to move to my second option for location.

Welcome back everyone todays Blog is going to be on getting the temporary rights to the Song Layla.

So far that process has been a mess. Finding the company that owned Layla took a bit of research but we eventually found Atlantic records, the original owners of the song. However we latter found out that warner Brothers had purchased the song so we emailed them this in the hopes of obtaining the rights.  We titled it to Atlantic records because their email redirects to Warner Brothers anyway.

Atlantic Records,

Good afternoon, My name is Darren Naville and I am contacting you in behalf of my AICE Media Studies group. I am emailing you to ask if I can use the song Layla, by Derek and the Dominos, for a non-profit school project. This project is for the AICE media studies class at Cypress Bay High school. I hope to use your song in our film introduction which is the main component of our assignment. We would like to obtain rights to use the song for this one time only, as it is the only way we can use this song for our project. This video is for educational purposes only and we have no means or intentions to make a profit off of it or the song, we hope to use. As a sincere fan of the song I hope you consider granting us written consent to use it in our assignment. The assignment will be turned into our teacher and the Cambridge board for grading and will not be sold for material gain. Once again I hope you consider granting us consent to use your music and I hope to hear from you soon.

Thank you for your time,

Darren Naville

Hopefully they'll get back to us soon. We received an automated response to the email so at least they got it. However I'm not entirely satisfied with just contacting the record company especially because of our time constraints so I decided to look for an alternative. So I decided to try and contact the band members themselves, even if they can't give me the rights they must directly be abel to contact the people who can.  

Unfortunately most of the members of Derek and the Dominos are dead or have disappeared and only two of them still have functioning websites, Eric Clapton and Bobby Whitlock.  Both of them have news letters that periodically send emails so I subscribed to both of them, but I feel like emailing a robot isn't going to get us anywhere so I went even further and Directly emailed Bobby Whitlock. I think at this point one of the entities we emailed will respond soon. Ill be back with more on that latter.