Senior Final

Senior Section 

Each take away from the guarantees have improved the way I work with school. Communication skills and getting my opinion out there regardless if its not what everyone wants to hear. Leadership I used just to get the project done and solve problems. Project management recently has been a problem with our documentary. I was constantly busy with soccer or graduation stuff. Like going to Tulsa multiple times to help my brother move. On top of all that I was sick a lot and puking so I couldn't do much there. It's not really an excuse it's just hard to do at the moment, but we plan on getting it done before the school year ends. My greatest strength would be to communicate with others. Ive always been pretty good at voicing my opinions eventually. Weakness would be project management just getting all my work laid out and complete it. Im going to take what I learned most of all is collaborating with others in order to get an end result that everyone is happy with. Theres not really anything that I would like to change. Conclusion, I can't wait for high school to be over with.

Commercial 

The first assignment we had in this class was to create a commercial. This took about 2 weeks to complete. Our commercial idea was the big mac from McDonald's. Some challenges we faced really came to shooting the video. People had to work and also had other activities to do outside of school. Another trouble we had was in the editing process. The sound wasn't there and then all of a sudden appeared so that was a little off. Along the way I realized that even if you are assigned a job you can still help other people in completing their job if they need some help so they are able to learn what to do the next time they are having troubles. Feedback I was given was definitely work on lighting. It was hard to get good lighting just because of all the glares from windows but also the light inside our location was very orange to begin with. I would change the music in the back just so it would flow a lot better and look less low budget if that makes sense. Overall I would use this as a learning opportunity to do better in upcoming projects.

Music Video

Our next assignment was our music video. This project took roughly 3 weeks to complete. Some challenges we faced really was in our actors. We weren't able to find a male actor who would fit the role of our vision and ultimately changed the way we wanted the video to turn out. All the way I learned that communicating really helps. When we thought our project was over, we put our heads together and knew that we couldn't give up. Feedback we were given was to make our story more clear. It was confusing to some audience what we were trying to portray. Originally, we were going to have it a guy and a girl falling in love and have the guy cheat on her, but we had to change it because our actor didn't work out, so we had to shoot it from the guys POV. My overall opinion was that this was the most fun video that I have ever created and it made me fall back in love with creating films again.

Short film

Our latest assignment was to create a short film. What our idea that we had was great. It did however take us way longer than we expected and wanted it to. We faced many challenges along the way. Our major challenge was our lives outside of school. Many of the crew had other things to do like work, sports, family, etc... We did have a male actor to play the part, but when it came down to it he wasn't very reliable and we ended up cutting him from our film. With that we tried to change the story to be sisters because we were able to find another girl actor and was able to change the script to make it all work. That all came back to our lives out of school and the time limit we were given to complete this project. Our teacher however gave us a new assignment to do and for that I am so grateful. I was able to put everyone I loved in one video. I am going to make that better probably over break and turn it in again. I learned to make time and be thankful for people even in stressed out situations. Feedback was to do better on it and show it to people who are in the video. I changed the assignment. Overall I am excited to make it better.

Time management

I used my time in class to the best of my ability. I finished pre-production right away with our group and even came in for lunch to discuss and make the film better outside of class. When that was finished, I did however got off track and did my own thing because all we had to do was go out and shoot at that point. After we shot, I did give input to my editors, but then went own to doing my own thing again. Outside of class me and Fran spent a whole day working on completing storyboards so that we would have them for the next day to discuss to our group in class. 

Strengths 

My strengths came in at pre-production. I was really focused with the ideas that we all put together and got people on track on what they should be doing in the time they should have it finished by. I was good at taking control and calming people down and giving people in my group options. I maximized my strengths and tried my best to make people relax.

Improvement

An improvement to make would be to create more bonds with people. I feel like I don't go out of my box to meet new people and if I did that it would help me being less shy and all of that

Feature Film Role

My production roll was PA. I didn't really do much because of soccer, but when I could I would go on set and help them out. Outside of filming, I also didn't do much, no one really asked me to do anything so I was straight chilling.

Summary

I loved doing the music videos the most this semester. I love music and listen to it 25/8 so it did change my perspective on film. I think that if I did this as a career it would be for music and or forensic science. I think it'd be cool to use my skills in video and mash in what I learn in college and help the criminal justice system. I'd change/ do differently and have people do what kind of film they want to do. Like don't have an assigned project. Give them an option to create a commercial, music video, or a short film. That way, students can have more of a passion to create what they want and have time to focus and have the best version of the video they want to create. Overall I'd take communication skills with me. In years past, I would be very to myself and whatever people in my group would want to do I'd roll with it. This year however, I put in my input and help others with the stress that comes with creating a video. A goal next year would to do good in college and use the 5 guarantees skills that I learned here to the outside world. I want Mrs. Smith to know that I appreciate all the love that she shows each student.  Final thoughts is that I'm glad High School is over

PSA- Human Trafficking

The concept my group wanted to share is how many people are affected in todays society with human trafficking. We also wanted to show that it is not only females who go through this, but it is also males, any age, any color, and any religion.

The process our group first came up of was the topic. From there, we explained our vision and what we all wanted to accomplish. As soon as we finished that we did production roles and started working on story boards, location, actors, and etc... We didn't really have in mind a set day we were going to film, because of our busy schedules, but once we figured it out, it went smoothly from there. During our editing stage, everyone in the group sat around the computer and we were able to come up with a video that everyone liked by voicing our opinions while the editing process was happening.

My role was director and editor. I learned that even though we got the film in on time we could have done more with the footage and got more shots. In editing I learned how to make the film look as if it was being played on someone's screen as if someone was watching it. The song choice that we used, I thought was really cool because of the fact that its a happy up beat song kinda like the peoples souls would be before this happened to them.

Technically wise, we didn't have any problems. We used premiere pro to edit and youtube to turn it in. If we had a question on how to do a certain editing thing to our video and didn't know how to do it, we would simply look up the video on how and was able to apply it to ours.

Technical skills worked out well seeing as we knew for the majority what we were doing and how we wanted it to look. Communication we used in seeing who all can show up on given days because of our lives outside of school with work, sports, and etc... Leadership wise while we were filming, we didn't get too off topic. This was because we knew we needed to get done and that this was a serious topic that we were doing. Collaboration with one another really came in the most during the editing phase. Each person was listened to and agreed on. Project management could have been better even though the film was turned in on time.

Differently I would carve out more time to film instead of doing the filming over two days. I'd do that so myself and the group members can be more relaxed Also I would add more actors. The same, I would say to keep the actors that we had before and the music and the way we edited the video. Experiences I took was to stick with a plan the first time and go from there. I had a lot of fun with my friends creating this.

Winter Final

This semester I created 3 films. A commercial, music video, and a short film.

Commercial 

The first assignment we had in this class was to create a commercial. This took about 2 weeks to complete. Our commercial idea was the big mac from McDonald's. Some challenges we faced really came to shooting the video. People had to work and also had other activities to do outside of school. Another trouble we had was in the editing process. The sound wasn't there and then all of a sudden appeared so that was a little off. Along the way I realized that even if you are assigned a job you can still help other people in completing their job if they need some help so they are able to learn what to do the next time they are having troubles. Feedback I was given was definitely work on lighting. It was hard to get good lighting just because of all the glares from windows but also the light inside our location was very orange to begin with. I would change the music in the back just so it would flow a lot better and look less low budget if that makes sense. Overall I would use this as a learning opportunity to do better in upcoming projects.

Music Video

Our next assignment was our music video. This project took roughly 3 weeks to complete. Some challenges we faced really was in our actors. We weren't able to find a male actor who would fit the role of our vision and ultimately changed the way we wanted the video to turn out. All the way I learned that communicating really helps. When we thought our project was over, we put our heads together and knew that we couldn't give up. Feedback we were given was to make our story more clear. It was confusing to some audience what we were trying to portray. Originally, we were going to have it a guy and a girl falling in love and have the guy cheat on her, but we had to change it because our actor didn't work out, so we had to shoot it from the guys POV. My overall opinion was that this was the most fun video that I have ever created and it made me fall back in love with creating films again.

Short film

Our latest assignment was to create a short film. What our idea that we had was great. It did however take us way longer than we expected and wanted it to. We faced many challenges along the way. Our major challenge was our lives outside of school. Many of the crew had other things to do like work, sports, family, etc... We did have a male actor to play the part, but when it came down to it he wasn't very reliable and we ended up cutting him from our film. With that we tried to change the story to be sisters because we were able to find another girl actor and was able to change the script to make it all work. That all came back to our lives out of school and the time limit we were given to complete this project. Our teacher however gave us a new assignment to do and for that I am so grateful. I was able to put everyone I loved in one video. I am going to make that better probably over break and turn it in again. I learned to make time and be thankful for people even in stressed out situations. Feedback was to do better on it and show it to people who are in the video. I changed the assignment. Overall I am excited to make it better.

Time management

I used my time in class to the best of my ability. I finished pre-production right away with our group and even came in for lunch to discuss and make the film better outside of class. When that was finished, I did however got off track and did my own thing because all we had to do was go out and shoot at that point. After we shot, I did give input to my editors, but then went own to doing my own thing again. Outside of class me and Fran spent a whole day working on completing storyboards so that we would have them for the next day to discuss to our group in class. 

Strengths 

My strengths came in at pre-production. I was really focused with the ideas that we all put together and got people on track on what they should be doing in the time they should have it finished by. I was good at taking control and calming people down and giving people in my group options. I maximized my strengths and tried my best to make people relax.

Improvement

One thing I could do is show more respect to my teacher. I'd get to working on my assignment or talk to my friends when she is trying to do bell work. I guess to me it's just hard when she's talking about colleges when 1. I know I don't want to do film for the rest of my life and 2. I am already committed to a college. I will however improve and give her my full attention that she deserves and I am sorry for the way I have acted when I do have a lot of respect and love for her. 

Guest speakers

I was here for two of the guest speakers that or class had. The first guest speaker I was able to learn from was Brandon Priest. I learned from him that your job can actually be fun and you can travel a lot and get paid which to me was really cool. I learned that if you have an idea and you set your mid to it you can create it and it can happen if you're really committed to doing so. I learned that things don't come exactly easy in the world, but if you have that passion for any job for that matter you can usually complete the "dream". The next speaker we had was Drew Connors. I basically learned about video and animation in one and how things are getting better and better. For example a video game looking more and more realistic. I learned that in college he learned a lot of cool things and that he was able to focus on his area that he wanted to learn about. 

Feature film role

My role this year is the PA. I will have to go on set and help with whatever basically needs to be done and or gotten for our film. It will be some what hard to complete because of soccer, but I do plan on going to all of the sets that I am able to where ever they are. I can somewhat give ideas I guess, but we'll see how this goes. 

Summary

I loved doing the music videos the most this semester. I love music and listen to it 25/8 so it did change my perspective on film. I think that if I did this as a career it would be for music and or forensic science. I think it'd be cool to use my skills in video and mash in what I learn in college and help the criminal justice system. I'd change/ do differently and have people do what kind of film they want to do. Like don't have an assigned project. Give them an option to create a commercial, music video, or a short film. That way, students can have more of a passion to create what they want and have time to focus and have the best version of the video they want to create. Overall I'd take communication skills with me. In years past, I would be very to myself and whatever people in my group would want to do I'd roll with it. This year however, I put in my input and help others with the stress that comes with creating a video. A goal next year would to do good and college and use the 5 guarantees skills that I learned here to the outside world. Final thoughts I don't really have, but have a nice winter break!!! 

Short film

For my short film my group had a lot of trouble. Our actors weren't able to film most days and when they were our film crew was busy with work and other outside activities. Our teacher was generous enough to give us a new assignment and for that I am very grateful.

The video I created was on an editing app that I really had no control because of the app that I used. I do however, plan on re-editing it on my other laptop once my laptop charger comes in. I used clips from videos that I have took on snapchat  in the past year. This video meant a lot to me because each person that is in it, I have a lot of love for and I couldn't picture my life with out them.

I was able to use my collaboration skills and get peoples ideas on how to make this video better and I really want to make it look good and be able to show the people who's in it and show them that I really want to be able to show them with my work how much I appreciate them.

The most time on this video was looking for a song to use. I wanted to match the song with the videos that was included. I finally came across good ol times with macklemole.  With everything finally put together the last night it was due it ended up coming out better than I thought it would.

Next time I would definitely edit it  lot better and focus on how I want the final project to end up and I'm excited to see the final product

Music Video Professional Project Review Blog Post

I believed initially that the song was about a man who loved a woman, yet did not want her to love him back, believing that he was not enough for her. He loved her so much that when she asked him to stay over, he told her to get some rest. This implies he did not sleep with her, though he may have stuck around her house to ensure she was safe or something along those lines


An element that we could use is the filters and lighting. An element that we used was the filters and also having leaves on top of a person, but still being able to see that person.


The creator did well in explaining the story to the audience and tugging on heart strings to get people to listen to the meaning and what the artist is trying to explain and his feelings on how he got there. I believe they could have used some color instead of making the whole thing black and white specifically when the guy is saying to the girl that she lit him up.


https://genius.com/James-arthur-say-you-wont-let-go-lyrics
This is what the lyrics mean if you wanted to get a better understanding of what the artist is trying to express with each line that he is singing.

K. CAS Music Video

The concept of this music video was to show a guy replaying his emotions and what he remembers about this girl throughout their relationship before everything goes wrong and they get in a fight. The song we used was "K." by CAS.




Pre pro- Our group and I first decided to come up with a song that we all wanted to do. After we picked the song, we looked at each line and saw how the story came along. Once we did that we wrote down ideas that we envisioned and put it all together. By doing that, that is where we found our locations and decided that we wanted the video to be almost all down town for the affect that we were trying to achieve. Then came story boards which came easy to us since we already had a step by step plan that we wanted to create.




Production- We decided to use a girl who was already in our group to be the main actor since she fit the role perfectly. With the locations, we decided to scope it out in pre production and so when we were there we had so much extra time to think of new ideas along with our old on the fly.




Post Pro- editing went smoothly. We ended up reediting it 4 times to make sure it was perfect ad listened to each and every ones input to make our video that much better.




Along the way I learned that trying to capture a sunset is extremely hard when you're in rush hour. I also learned that it goes by fast and you have more fun when you're in a group of people you enjoy being around.


5 guarantees- We used collaboration a lot to change how we wanted our video to be. Project management we used as a key and got everything turned in and filmed by the given deadlines. Leadership skills is the most important one. With out this our group would run out of daylight in time to film for this.


What I would do different is add a guy actor because it would have more of an affect that the story would have


What I would do the same is still have the locations that our group used because it ended up looking very nice.


Experiences would be to work with the people you are comfortable with and know every ones strengths and weaknesses.


General thoughts- I was lacking the passion with video and anything for awhile and by doing this project made me have a new love for film and to be passionate about something again.

McDonalds Experience

Product

The product my group and I decided to chose was the "Big Mac". The concept a guy that comes in with his friends and looks over at a “girl” and gets excited while looking in her direction. The guy walks over to her and she turns around and the she ends up being a guy. The guy says something to him and grabs the big mac and takes a big bite.

Process 

First we had to come up with multiple ideas on what we wanted our commercial to be. We finally, as a group, decided to go with the Big Mac. After that, we figured out what exactly we wanted to achieve in the story and so that became writing our script. While we were writing our script we were also drawling out our storyboards with each scene that we wanted to do. Then came acting, but that part was pretty easy since we were able to have the people in our group be our actors. Then we had to scope out and call our local McDonalds to ask if we could film there. One of them said no, so we had to ask our next closest one and they ended up saying yes. The next couple days our group went over all the details like costumes and what time we would all be arriving and things like that. When we got there, my role ended up changing to the DP. We filmed for about 2 hours and we were able to have fun, but still be serious about the film that we were creating. We finished filming and the remainder of the days we helped our editors with ideas to make our commercial better.

Roles

My role was DP and along the way I learned that not every shot will be perfect, but the more you shoot different shots the more ways you can go back and edit later. In other words, it gave the editor more of a variety to use later. 

Professionally 

In our group, the most technical skills that we used was communication. We talked a lot and each and everyone was listened to and respected with the ideas that they had to make the film better. Project management wasn't our fault with being that our editor did not have the software at home, but came in everyday to work on it. Also, wasn't able to stay after one day because the sub went home early. 

Different 

What I would do differently would probably pick a new product to show and produce. The lighting and it being McDonalds wasn't what I was trying to achieve, but my group all wanted it and so I went with it. 

The Same

What I would do the same would be to collaborate more.

Objectives 

We all focused on what needed to be done with these. Lighting most definitely should and could have been better. Audio wise there was a lot of nat noise which that could have been fixed in order to have a better out play on our commercial. Editing was interesting because like I said before he was limited on the amount of time he could come in and approve this. I think we kinda rushed to get this done and if we really took our time we'd be able to make it look more professionally done. 

Conclusion 

I'm excited to work on other projects to better myself.