✩Momentum- CCR

Finally, here is my CCR.

Click here to watch!! Enjoy!!

And with that, Momentum is complete :) <3

(Sidenote- I have a few shoutouts to give!

Shoutout to Kevin Macleod. I couldn't have done this without your copyright-free music!!

Shoutout to Miranda and Sophia, thank you guys for helping me out on set, ily guys <3

Shoutout to Jake, my brother, for giving me incredible advice during the production period!

Shoutout to my parents and Sabrina for also helping me out and being good listeners :P

Shoutout to my media friends for bouncing ideas off of each other you guys are cool lol :D

Shoutout to Mrs. Stoklosa! I couldn't have done this without you (I mean yeah I wouldn't have learned how to use proper film techniques if I wasn't in your class lol) but still, I want to thank you!

And shoutout to those of you reading this, if anyone is, you've officially become cool. Congrats, you've made it hehe)

BYE!!!

✩Momentum- Film Opening

The moment we've all been waiting for: Momentum!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it :) 

✩WATCH HERE✩

Have a great day <3

✩Momentum- A Reflection

Alright, so we've reached the end of my journey with Momentum. Sad :((

I really enjoyed working on this project and all the challenges that came with it. From almost including another character, having to chop my screenplay in half, choosing entirely different actors than originally intended, whatever happened with the music, and needing 30 seconds worth of more footage, my opening has certainly come a long way.

The planning process, though arduous, was really fun. I loved exploring all the different pieces of media that I could take inspiration from and adapt into my overarching story. Not to mention, actually creating the story was a blast for me because I really enjoy crafting my own stories.

Actually filming Momentum was fun too, I got to implement all the techniques I've learned in this course and see it come together to create a cohesive story. Plus, it was nice to spend time with my actors.

I also really enjoyed editing, though it took forever to get it just the way I wanted. After countless little edits, adding the opening scene, and finding copyright-free music, I was able to export an opening I feel proud of.

And of course, my CCR. Though it took a long to write and my script and edit it to be creative and incorporate multiple different pieces of media (videos, audio, and photos), I'm super stoked about how it looks.

Well, thanks for following along on my journey, I can't wait to write more stories. And who knows, maybe this isn't the last we will see of Julia and 404.

See you soon <3

✩take this quick update

Hey, so, normally I make super long blog posts but I'm currently writing the script for my CCR. I have everything planned out that I need to say, so all I have to do is write the script and, you know, create the video haha. 

I have a few ideas on how I can creatively portray this, I could use little drawings of me like how many storytime animators do, I could make a PowerPoint, follow my brother's footsteps and show many different pieces of media but never the face, or get some talking head footage to slip in between the different pieces of media.

With my restricted time, I'm leaning more towards a talking-head style video, though who will stop me if I decide to throw in a few PowerPoint slides and multimedia throughout the CCR for some diversity. I just hope I have enough time to. 

ANYWAYS time to get back to writing, we're in this for the long haul.

See you soon! Have a fantastic time of day <3

✩finalizing my film (for the most part)

Since my film was only 1:23 and that’s wayyyyyyyy too short, I needed to go and grab some more footage. Throwback to this blog post where I spoke with my brother about my film opening and he gave me the idea to preview different locations that would later show up in the film. SO, in order to add some more time to the film, I drove around town to a few different places (town center, shopping plaza, park) to get some shots. I got shots such as cars passing by, a lake view, trees, and a coffee shop, all around 7 seconds long so that I could trim them to the desired length. On each shot I included my credits which (not in order) are as follows:

• Producer: Kailey Fretwell
• Editor: Kailey Fretwell
• Writer: Kailey Fretwell
• Director: Kailey Fretwell
• Filming: Kailey Fretwell
• Miranda Ferreira
• Sophia Magette

Very cool :) I also did some audio adjusting to try and get my film to sound cohesive. This includes muting the video audio and inserting a different clip’s audio that I didn’t use in the film in its place. Overall, a pretty tedious and exhausting process, but very worth it. I’m pretty happy with how the ambiance sounds on that front.


I also had to do some adjusting to one of Sophia’s (404’s) lines. This was a line I had her rerecord after the filming day because her line didn’t sound authentic after Miranda’s. Sophia recorded the line inside, meaning unlike her other lines, it didn’t have the outdoor background noise. In order to fix this, I took two other video audios, put the telephone audio filter on them, and slapped them underneath the second line. Bam! Problem solved.


One last thing, I showed what I had to my brother Jake, the one from the blog post I linked earlier, and he and his girlfriend gave me some advice. Both thought it would be nice to add some music into the background near the end of the opening to add some more drama and I completely agree. I didn’t want something with vocals but I knew I needed something ominous to fit the mood of the opening. So, I turned to an infamous instrumental artist to find a song I could use: Kevin MacLeod! Most famous for being the soundtrack of all those cringey 2012 YouTube videos, his songs like Sneaky Snitch, Monkeys Spinning Monkeys, and Fluffing a Duck. (Side note: I have Sneaky Snitch in multiple of my current playlists and it brings me so much joy to hear them, especially with other people who are instantly caught off guard by the song LOL). Anyways, I listened to many beginnings of MacLeod’s songs, and funny enough I found the track Spider Eyes from the same album as Sneaky Snitch, one track below it. It’s just the right mix of ominous and mystical that I added the track to my film opening during Miranda’s (Julia’s) last line. The timing was actually perfect! Something like bell chimes plays in a melody right when the title card comes up, making the notes appear to be a leitmotif throughout the movie which is super cool! It also reinforces the mystery and wonder of the opening which I find delicious.


Jake also recommended that some of the opening scenes were in reverse to emphasize the reverse timeline ideas. While I think this is a neat idea, I feel like it’ll be jarring to see a car drive in reverse and then see nothing else travel backward in the rest of the opening. Especially since the story is only following Julia who travels forwards. So, I opted not to make my most obvious opening shot (one focusing on a car driving across the screen) backward but made two other shots with cars in the background reverse. This way it’s very subtle but still might catch an observant viewer’s eye to implement the theme of time.


Phew! That was a lot of progress in the last few days. I think I’m pretty much done with editing my opening though, which is a scary thought. I might change some things if I go back and decide to alter some things, but definitely nothing major.


With that, I’m gonna blast, I’ve got a CCR to begin! Wish me luck ahhhhh!!

✩updates? yeah :D

Ok so, I thought all my filming and editing was pretty much completed, but since my opening is only 1:23 right now, I need some more stuff to fill the time. My teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, suggested that I include a credits scene before I get into the meat of the film. I like this, idea because then I can implement the idea that my brother gave me for the opening where I display multiple locations that will later be important to the film. I’m envisioning some shots of the park, a coffee shop, Julia picking up her phone, and things of the sort.


I have yet to decide if I need my actors to get that material (minus the Julia phone shot), simply because I’ll work much faster by myself, I don’t want to have to drag the girls--as much fun as we had together--out for more filming in the hot weather, and I’ve only got a week to finalize the opening. On top of that, I’ve got a CCR script to write, shots to make, and editing to perfect, and I start training for a job this Thursday. Yikes! I do tend to work well under pressure, so I think I can do it :)


With that said, I’ve begun writing my CCR script. I’ve got four questions I need to answer.

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
4. How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware, and online – in this project?

I want to take a deeper look into these questions and go over what specifically I want to talk about for each question.



NUMBER ONE: I need to address how my opening addresses the different conventions of my genre and how it discusses social groups and/or issues. Here, I’ll discuss how Julia both subverts and follows the typical tropes of a fantasy protagonist. Here I plan on discussing the Hero’s Journey, something touched on in my Deep Dive into Superhero Films blog post. I will also be referencing and getting information from this video from YouTuber tube creator Brian David Gilbert where he predicts the future of Kingdom Hearts—a video game with a notoriously convoluted plot—using this storytelling format. I’ll then branch off into how Julia is both a typical and unique main character since she falls into a group of people who aren’t usually seen as the protagonist. For social groups/issues, I want to touch on the TikTok trend where teens/young adults cast themself as a character in a movie. These ranging from the main character to comedic relief to background character.


NUMBER 2: In this question, I need to address the fantasy genre and my film’s target audience including age (13-24), gender (females), and some other facts about them (people who enjoy magic and believe they aren’t fit to be the protagonist). I’ll then discuss how I can distribute the opening as an amateur filmmaker. Essentially, how I share the film with people without the connections to streaming platforms and movie theatres.


NUMBER 3: Here I’ll need to be the most honest in my video because I’ll be discussing how my production skills developed throughout the creation of Momentum. I’ll go into detail with how I adapted to challenges that came my way throughout the process, and how I prepared for the project via all my planning.


NUMBER 4: The last question asks about which other sources I used to help me produce my film. This includes iMovie, StudioBinder, TikTok, and even Blogspot.


That's pretty much all the planning I have for the CCR, I just need to write my script, film it, and finalize editing.


This weekend is going to be a blast :)