The Santi Show (CCR)

 Hi guys it's me Santi,

I want to talk about another part of the project that I need to complete which is the CCR (Creative Critical Reflection). This is a video I’ll make after the project, where I explain my thought process and how everything came together, and basically it answers four questions:

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

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

We have to present the CCR in a creative way (as the name suggests), so I’m thinking of doing something like a talk show where I interview myself! It’s simple, can be done quickly, and leaves room for humor if I want to add some (i want to add some). Plus, I love late-night talk shows, so I’ll probably take inspiration from that.

what i'm envisioning (except for the complex set because I have no money)

For the first question about how we challenge conventions and represent social issues I think our film opening definitely touches on important themes, particularly teenage depression. The story highlights the importance of having someone to rely on, but we express this in a nontraditional way by incorporating a massive planet and sci-fi elements, as they serve as a symbolic representation of how Halley feels, like her world is falling apart.

It’s not that her world is literally ending, but rather that she feels powerless, like nothing she does matters, and after experiencing a traumatic event, she loses all motivation to care about her remaining time. That’s why we introduce this other character to challenge her mindset and give her someone to lean on, and by blending sci-fi elements with a very personal struggle, we’re taking a different approach to representing this issue.

Until next time, Santi :)

We'll fix it in post...

 Hi guys it's me Santi,

Something we just realized during editing is that many of our shots include the branding of the gas station where we filmed and since it’s a real brand, it doesn’t quite fit the look we’re going for in the opening, and we also didn’t get explicit permission to feature their logo but just to film outside the station, so we might have to replace the logo. Thankfully, it’s an easy fix, and I’ve done it before, so we don't have to reshoot or anything along those lines.

Now we just need to come up with a name for our gas station! it won't be anything crazy, it'll probably be something simple like just "Gas Station," which might sound silly, but plenty of movies have done similar things. For example, "The Substance" had a talk show in the film literally called "The Show", so keeping it generic wouldn’t be too out of place. 

In other news, our team has been working on color grading! One of my team members shared some preview images, and the graded footage is looking great. The main challenge is balancing the lighting, since we shot over an extended period, and it got darker as the day went on, so we’ll need to adjust for that in the color grade, but overall, things are going well!

Some roughly color-graded footage.

Until next time, Santi :)

Edit time (for one half)

Hi guys it's me Santi,

We’re now starting the editing process, at least for the outdoor scenes, since we still haven’t filmed the indoor scenes due to the issues I mentioned in my previous post. Rather than waiting until everything is shot, we decided to begin editing the outdoor footage and working on the effects for those scenes, this way, once we finally film the indoor portion, we can simply add it in, making the process much more efficient.

Part of the line edit from another team member.

Right now, two of my team members are working on the line edit and color grading, while I’m focused on the VFX for the planet. I’ll go into more detail about that in future posts, but I’m really hoping it turns out well, i’ll be using Adobe After Effects and Blender to make the planet look realistic and like it's integrated into the scene. It’s definitely going to be a lot of trial and error, but I think I can pull it off.

For now, I’m diving into the VFX work while my team continues editing and color grading the shots that don’t require the effects, once we have the indoor scene filmed, we’ll bring everything together and finalize the edit!

Until next time, Santi :)

Katty I will find you

 Hi guys it's me Santi,

For the past few weeks, I’ve been calling different stores, trying to find one that would allow us to film inside, and the store where we shot the exterior scene wouldn’t let us film inside that day because the manager wasn’t there, and they needed approval. I asked for a contact number to reach the manager directly, but they couldn’t provide one, however, they told me the manager’s name was Katty and told me to ask for her the next time I called or visited.

The outside of the store as seen in the opening.

So, I started calling multiple times, but each time, I got mixed responses, some employees said they didn’t know a Katty, while others said she wasn’t there, so all of that has made it difficult to secure the location, and we’re still searching for an indoor space to film. It’s a bit stressful since we’re pretty far into production, but thankfully, this scene is only the first 15 to 20 seconds of the opening, so it shouldn’t take too long to shoot once we have a location.

In the meantime, the team is making progress in other areas! we’ve started working on the visual effects for the planet (which I’ll go into more detail about in a later blog post), and the line edit is underway with other members of my team, so overall, we’re still on track with our schedule, and I’m confident we’ll get everything done in time (hopefully)

Until next time, Santi :)

A changed scene from filming!

Hi guys it's me Santi,

A still from the recorded shot (not color graded)

So day 1 of filming is done, as outlined before, and we made some changes to a scene! Originally we had this scene where Halley, our main character, just connects her phone to the car after one radio channel plays stuff about the rogue planet, but we scrapped that and changed it a little bit, so now she’s flipping through a bunch of radio channels, all of them covering the planet that’s gone off course, and it's upcoming impact, and she’s getting very annoyed and clicks the radio off. It’s longer than the old version and we’re all liking how it’s turning out, plus we even got some extra takes of her reacting to the static and voices, so we’ve got a lot of shots to play with in the edit.

The only thing was we spent so much time tweaking that scene that we were rushing with the outdoor shots, like I said last time, we wanted to shoot during dusk but ended up with night shots, so we’ll be color-grading most of the later shots to make it look seamless, but I think it’ll be worth it.

Until next time, Santi :

First Day of Filming Done!

Hi guys it's me Santi,

We just finished our first day of filming!

Like I talked about in a previous blog, we had to split the day into two, but what we DID end up filming ended up being pretty great! We got the shots that were in our shot list, and much more! We even got more shots than we needed, so it'll be easier when we edit since we overshot.

Our shot list

An issue we started having was that we originally wanted to film during dusk, but dusk only lasts so long, so by the time we were done filming it was fully night time, so during the edit we'll probably have to color-grade darker shots so that it all looks like it's happening within 5-10 minutes in the context of the film opening.



Since we're not filming the indoor parts for a bit, we'll begin a line edit (and VFX of the planet!) through the following week or so before continuing with the indoor scenes, as me and my team will be out of town this week so we can't film the indoor scenes.

Until next time, Santi :)

LET ME INNNN (the gas station)

 Hi guys it's me Santi,

So we recently tried to film the opening, and it was actually looking pretty good! (more on that in another post.) But we ran into a small problem. We first filmed the outside footage first, and then we were planing on going inside the gas station and asking for permission to film inside for a short while. You're probably asking "why didn't you call beforehand?"
We thought asking for permission in person would make it more likely for us to actually get the go-ahead to film there, since they can see that we're technically just a bunch of kids who want to do a project. The ladies in the gas station were actually really sweet but they said they couldn't do anything because their manager wasn't working during that time, and they couldn't call her. This left us with two options: record the rest of the opening in another gas station, or try again another day, which would end up splitting filming into two separate days.

We still had a lot to film, so we ended up deciding on doing the indoor shots another day, which would in turn give us more time to film outside, and give us extra shots in case we need more shots for the edit. For the rest of the shots, we're aiming to film around March 9th, which cuts into our post-production time, but most of the post-production (and the film opening) is the outside shots, so we should be fine.
I think.

Until next time, Santi :)