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 :)