editing part two

 this whole blog will be dedicated to the atrocity that properly mixing the audio to the videos was. It was honestly so tiring and difficult to get this part right because trying to perfectly sink the videos with the platform I used for editing cost  money so I had to go and do it myself manually I had to personally go and stretch the audio bar so far to the point where I could find where they would connect it was honestly just such a dreadfull process but we got it done.

Apart from that I also added some text to the music video to make it seem less bland which was honestly the main issue of the project. But adding the text also helped connect to the digi pack which is good. Overall this part of editing was not to long but it did for sure have its issues I do wish that there would have been a better way to prevent the whole audio issue without having to pay for some dumb membership (aka fix my laptop so my editing software works) but hey what can I do.

Welp this is pretty much the end of the music video since I now finished production and editing which is good one thing I will say is that I do wish there could have been different ways to go along the editing process so that not only would it have been easier but also would have had better results overall thats pretty much it for this short blog. See you guys next time!

Critical Reflection research

 So now is the time to start stressing about the critical reflection honestly my main concern is I will procrasinate and not get it done in time which wont happen but I still worry. So to begin this part of the project I decided to go and look at past critical reflections through the public project postings. I went in and researched about 5 past project creative reflections and used them to gather information about how I will write my personal one.

Doing the research for this part of the project was a good idea I found that most students started off and ended the same they made sure to stay in topic and tried to find ways to talk about random part of their projects to answer the specific questions. Viweing multiple creative reflections also allowed me to reflect on my personal project and understand how I can or how I will reflect and answer the questions when in regards to my project. My main concer is after reading the project of others was that mine might get to repetitive since my music video and the song used follow a very specific theme. Hopefully I find a way to not get stuck in a cycle and instead just continue figuring out how I can reflect the questions properly and attach multiple ideas from my project. 

The main goal for now is to make a bit of planning for the critical reflection so that when it does come to making it It will be easier for me. But overall researching some other reflections helped understand how I should go about the creative reflection and gave me ideas as to ways I can attach my personal project to some of the questions without making it seem super repetitive. Honestly dreading the day of submission and it has been very stressing. But thats all for now see you guys next time!

actual photo of me knowing Its almost submission day

Production part five

 Hi guys todays blog is dedicated all to the digipack and to the cover for the song itself. I decided to do the vinyl since I love vinyls with every single inch of my soul so I though it would be cool to do the vinyl. Honestly there is not much to talk about expect how much fun this process was. The way it started was by taking photos for the original album cover which is the same photos and design I wanted to use for the vinyl since thats usually what artisits do. This part was super fun to do and honestly was very simple and just entertaining here are all the producs of this part

Album cover and front of vinyl

Back of Vinyl 

Poster (vinyl content)

Production part four

 So this is the first day of editing. Now I am seperating the editing into two blog posts the first one being the actual cutting of the videos because that was such a long process. For this part of editing what I did was put all the videos into my editing software (Sadly Capcut because mine is not working) and placed them into the editing bar. 

the first thing I did was watch each video and select the clips I liked from those videos cut them and then pasted them into a seperate section so that I could like I said before pick and choose which parts I liked. The annoying part about this is that I had realized I made some mistakes in some parts of filming. I should have probably made a better attemp at filming and even gone back to film a third day. Anyway no time to feel sad about the past. I continued to pick and choose clips it took me about only a billion times of watching the multiple videos to figure out which ones I liked.

The next thing I did was grab some of the clips I liked from filming and started randomly mixing them to see how they would look as an actual music video. Now I kid you not this was horrible...I am a very indecisive person so I did not know which one of all of them I liked the most it took me at least three hours to actually go ahead and choose which one I liked Honeslty horrible but whatever. I honestly just need to lock in and actually commit to this.

At the end though I found one which I thought was good mixed all the clips together and called it quits because editing felt like an eternity and I am not even done so in the mean time we are done with that. I  will make a second blog for the second day of filming but for now that is all no  more editing please. Anwyay see you guys next time and here is some pics of how I did the whole process.

Group meeting part two

 So I did not think this was gonna be something we did but I am sure glad that Mrs. Stoklosa made us do this. We had ANOTHER group meeting. I honestly really enjoy these group meetings and do think that they help since we are getting others perspective and help and it is also just super cool to see what others are working on.

Anyway as what we talked about im going to section it into four different parts starting with

Nathaniels Project- For nathaniels project we mostly talked about his social media. He showed us all the stuff hes done and how his project is coming along for now which in my opinion is coming out very well I do think his idea is pretty funny as well. He also did inspire me to see what I would make for my social media posts and overall did not have much issues he did mention though that his audio needs some work so hopefully he finds a way to fix that. He also told us he has someone making original music for his film which is super cool. Overall though it seems his project is going well and hopefully he figures out the whole audio issue thing.

Me- We did not really talk much for mine since there was nothing to talk about we did talk about how I do plan to actually make a vinyl using the cover and backpart of the digipack just for self pleassure I even though of buying one for my teacher but well see if I can even do that before graduation. One critique I did get was to make a fake social media because the one issue we had was that we did not want to get the project one confused with the artists actual one so I will be working on making fake posts through canva and then sharing the file in the final project so that it can be graded. I do wish that this was not what I had to do but due to scheduling issues and the whole getting mixed up thing I wil be having to go through this path.

Mahatee- Mahatee only had issues regarding her social media. She did not really know what to do or what to post so what we mostly talked about was some ideas as to what she could do for the social media part of the project. We gave her ideas like meet the cast or meet the director which was what most people doing the short film were doing. And we also had sugested to use a symbol of some sort to tease the film. Honestly that was pretty much all though there was not much to talk about except social media post ideas.

Juan- For juan we mostly talked about his social media as well. Same as Mahatee we gave those same ideas and even added he should use memes. One thing we also talked about was the music in his film. I had suggested they should find a way to make original music for the film and use that so hopefully he does go trought with that plan so I feel cool. That was all we talked about and it was just a fun day.

I really enjoyed this day since we got to see our friends creative process hopefully they all do good with their projects and use the ideas we gave I know I will be using some. 

Production part three

 So this is the second day that I film and it also went well so thats good. Today we filmed the four other locations in the same park and it all went well.

One thing is that I do not think I will be using one of the shots because I honestly did just not like how it came out. It looked odd and it did not feel like it fit the overall idea we had for the music video but apart from that it all went well.

The first place we shot at was in one of the trial areas near the other spot in which we had filmed. This part was just for the extreme close up shots I will be using in the video and also as a just in case background parts for the video. The only issue I had was mantaining the camera stable and making sure that the video did not look shacky. Sadly I do not own or can borrow a tripod or stablizer so I gotta try and just be stable myself.

As for the second location in which we did filming it was this very interesting spot. It was a set of stairs and ramps in which the artist himself thought doing a couple tracking shots would come out cool for some parts of the video and I totally agree it took a couple tries because we wanted to execute this part right but in the end it came out exactly how we wanted and so thats good. I will say my camera management skills do need some work though.

The last location we used was a part next to this lake. I am not really sure wether I want to use this or not but I will be using a photo that I took in that same place as part of the digipack which is the next thing I will probably work on before editing. But overall the reason why I might not use this specific area is becuse I found that the idea of a long shot or extreme long shot did not look good in most parts of the song itself and just did not properly match so for now I have to wait and see if I will use it or not when It comes down to editing. 

Overall though filming went great today I really liked how some of the shots came out and I am already starting to picture how the music video will come together but filming today was fun and well see if any changes are made later on.

Here is an example of the shots. Thats all for now bye guys!!!

Production part two

 So today we did the first part of filming. For both days of filming we are going to markham park since I went by myself to see some potential filming locations and just found the place to be nice. I did originally have planned to just film everthing in one day but sadly it started raining and we did not want to get the camera wet.

So for the first day of filming we got to record only 2 scenes ONLY 2 I wanna cry. But it's ok I just have to make sure that the next day goes well.

To explain what we filmed I want to mention the process we are using we decided it would be best if I filmed the singer Martin performing the whole song in multiple places so that I could then pick and choose which parts would look good and would end up forming the music video my only worry about this was the syniching the video to the actual song but to solve that we are just playing the song and I have to  manually go in and edit it (sigh). But its ok anyway for this day of filming we shot two out six filming locations we shot in this forest type of area that has a trail near a shooting range so not gonna lie I was scared. But it all went well. The reason why I really liked this specific loction is because I thought it would fit the video very well and honestly I love how it came out but that went well.

The second place we filmed at which honestly I did not like how it came out but oh well was in this small section next to a lake. Its not that I did not like the location itself I just did not like how I filmed it but oh  well. There could have been way better angles in which I could have done this part which would have made the video come out way better but for now there is nothing I can really do so.

Anyway here are some photos from the filming process of today hope the next day goes well.

Conversation with artist

 I was not really planning on making this an individual blog post but I though it was necessary. Me and the artist got together to develop some new ideas. And we have decided on various things the first thing that we have decided is to make the vinyl color green since the main color of focus on the video is supposed to a dark green or a forest green. The next thing that we also had talked about was production. We were supposed to begin the filming this saturday but we both ran into personal issues and so we were not able to actually film so we decided to start filming this following week on thursday saturday and Maybe sunday. The reason I say maybe sunday is because I actually plan to attend the artist to his chosen church to see what his passion is about. I want to connect more with the artist and see the main intention on his song. So for this I want to make a connection blog and will include this bonding process with the artist in a production blog. 

Overall we just mostly went over the scheduling and ideas we also did come up with some ideas as to what would go inside the print project. The idea I came up with was to include some sort of qr code or connection to a bible verse that we had talked about in the first conversation we had had and I chose to do this because the said bible verse has a connection to the song and so I though it would be a cool idea to include the verse which will also be seen IN the music video to allow people to read the full thing. The next idea we also had was to make a sticker sheet. This idea came from an example my teacher had showed us and I though it was a good idea for the type of artist I am working with. The last idea was to make a poster like Hozier did for the his album I showed last blog. We also did design some ideas as to the actual cover for the vinyl buy I want to get to that in the future. 

Overall this conversation was really useful and it helped me understand what me and the artist wanted to work with. We also were finally able to establish film dates and found a way to connect so I can understand the purpose better! I am really exited to start filming and probably will extend one of my blogs since I did have to focus on this one because I thought the conversation we had was important to the project. But for now that is all we came up with ideas for the print, made space for filming, and found a way to connect. We also made costume design but I do not wanna show that just yet. See you guys next week!

here is a pic of us talking

Print research

Hey guys I am back. So today in class we talked about the print part of the project and I was presented with the requirements and ideas that I could use for my digipack. The lessons was pretty helpful because I was very confused about what I was going to do regarding the digipack since I honestly though it would be very difficult to do but after seeing some samples that my teacher showed I noticed it should not be to hard to actually do this part and it will be a fun process.

So for the research of the digipack I decided to look into some of the print components of artists similar to the artists I am working with. The first example which I have used for the past research on different topics was Hozier. His very unique folklore type of music also offers very unique vinyl's the design for his Unreal Unearth Unending deluxe companion Black vinyl came with such interesting design and look that it really caught my eye. I think I want to try and get that same sense of interest from the Vinyl which is what I have chosen to do because as soon as I saw the vinyl it just looked really nice and I even almost purchased it!!! So here is a photo of the vinyl I am talking about

As you can see the vinyl offers a very interesting color wave with using a mix of black and gold to capture the eye. I also really liked the poster that was included with the vinyl the edited photo is really eye capturing and would be something cool to collect if you are a big fan of Hozier. The vinyl also has a list of lyrics for the songs. There is also another version of this vinyl in which the vinyl it self is gold instead of black which I though was even more eye capturing and would be super cool to purchase. But yea this vinyl does exactly what it should do it markets the artists and plays to the mind of consumers like myself. But that's all for Hozier's Vinyl 

The next artist who's print I researched was the artist Noah Kahan who is also a very similar artist to the artist I am working with. He also had a very similar style to that of Hozier's he also uses cold toned colors with a little of warmth and brings an earthy vibe with that alternative look to his vinyl's. I also really liked how he made his and most of them included the Vinyl in a different color than black I do not really have much to say about this certain artist but what I do know is that he made me notice the people involved in the genre which I have chosen seem to have similar ideas. Anyway here is a photo of Noah Kahan's Vinyl

So to conclude I am for sure set on making the print part of the project a Vinyl and I have come up with some ideas as to the design of the vinyl will be I will be including the actual ideas in a future blog post on production but for now the next blog post will probably be on this conversation I had with the artist but I am not sure yet anyway see you guys next time.

Production part one (Location Scouting)

 Hey guys, so in todays blog I decided to focus on the location scouting for the forest part of my music video. There has been various locations that I have found interesting that could work in my favor to make sure that the music video comes out as planned. One of the main reasons why I want to find the PERFECT location for the music video. Is because I want to capture that sense of nature and connection with the environment that the artist who made the songs wants. That was the first and main thing that we conversated about and I though that it would also be very important to bring the meaning of the song to life.

So now as for the actual Locations that I found would work.

This past weekend I went to the Miami Beach Botanical Garden. The garden was honestly just so beautiful and I just though that it would be a really cool location to film. I also did ask one of their board members if this was possible and they said that they love the idea. Here are some photos from the Botanical Garden. 

So yea this is the botanical garden for now it is my favorite location so far but the one issue with it is that it is far from where me and the artist live it is about an hour away not counting the Miami traffic. So if I find a way to make sure we can get there then I will probably choose this location. 

The next location that I had though of is closer to me and the singers homes and it is Markham Park this park is one of the main Florida Parks and it offers various beautiful sights and fun activities. It is actually located next to the everglades which is pretty cool. Here are some photos of the park.

This park would help with the part of the music video in which different individuals walk a different path towards the singer. There are various ideas I have with this park and this will probably be not the main option but the second filming location. I will probably use this for different scenes to bring different locations to the video I really hope this location comes out as expected.

The last location that for now has caught my eye is another location I had used in a past project. It is a private area behind a park but luckily I know the owner and frequently fish and just hang out there with him. So this location would actually be pretty cool it is also near the everglades and has a very nice atmosphere with it having various green paths that are just stunning. There is also a canal next to it which would look cool in the video since it is next to a path so for now this is the third location which I most likely will be using in the music video I currently do not have a photo but when I make another blog I will show what the place looks like.

Anyway that is all for the location scouting for now I might end up using all of the above which would be really fun to do but well see how it goes in the future see you guys next time!!!

Group discussion

 Hey guys, so this days blog will be a little different. So last class we had a conversation in groups about our blogs and I got to hear about the projects of some of my classmates. Overall the conversation was really cool and I was able to get new ideas as to what I wanted to do. The first thing that I found Very helpful that they had told me was to make sure my locations were easy to film in or had permission. 

This was very helpful because it made me realise that locations are gonna be a very important part of the music Video since not only will they place the actual vibe of the video but will be the most important thing visualy that will create the sense of unity that I hope to reach. So with this I decided to contact friends who work in certain religious areas and to ask them for permission to film in the places where they work. For now 2/3 have said yes and so thats a good thing. The next step to this was to find locations so this weekend I went out with friends to find random "earthy" locations and found a couple cool places. But I still will have to look around more since only one of them truly caught my eye and it was not close enough for frequent filming.

The next thing that the group I was with helped me realise is that I should probably try and make the meaning more prominent. What I mean by this is that I should probably make sure that the viewer understands the true meaning of the music video. So with this I want to make sure I highlight properly the fact that the video wants to stand up against toxic religious groups. I planned some ways to achieve this and though that including a couple more individuals as actors being shun by their peers due to certain ideas or looks would work out very well since it would show the toxic stereotype that people in religion are toxic and instead welcome the idea of unity.

The last thing I wanted to mention in this blog is that it is amazing the work my classmates make. One of my classmates is somehow managing to make a movie about someone having to go to the bathroom which was super funny to me. And another one is making a short film about some type of AI take over. I really do appriciate the creative people in my class because they push me to do better with my projects and to truly be creative myself.

But overall This group discussion was super fun and Im glad our teacher made us do it since it has helped me understand what concepts and changes need to be made to my story and overall the music video to make sure that it comes out perfect. I also got some other advice like to make sure audio matches the scene and stuff like that but my project's conversation was a little short since they thought I was well planned. But thats all for now see you guys next week!

Planning part 4 (editing schedule)

 So for the last blog I should have probably made a schedule for the actual filming so I will be updating that blog but for now I decided to make a simple editing schedule. The reason I chose this is because last time my editing came out really poor and so this time I want to try and be more prepared and make it better.So here is the schdule I made.

Day 1: 

Edit Opening Scene & Verse 1

put first clips together for the first scene

Edit the flashback scenes with the people to make it look better

Add aduio

Sync the music with the opening and Verse 1.

Day 2: 

Edit Chorus 1

Cut together the first chorus and focus on timing and transitions so that the video comes out smooth.

Edit Verse 2 & Bridge

Edit the second verse with the people in the forest.

Focus on the singer’s "moment"

Edit Chorus 2

Assemble the shots for the second chorus

Day 3

Complete the ending scene where the group leaves the forest.

Review and Make Changes

Watch through the entire video see what to fix.

Make necessary adjustments..

Last part

any sound effects, color correction, titles, and credits.

Export the final version 

So yea this is pretty much all the editing schedule. To be honest I dont know much about the editing process so I will have to do research on it to make it better but for now this is the best I can do. I did ask one of my friends for help making it since like I said I had zero clue where to start. But he competes in film stuff so he Helped me out. Overall This part should help me organize my planning better so I do not have any sort of issues with the projects editing part.

• • • 
      

Planning part 3 (shot list)

Hi guys I'm back. For this next part I decided to continue on with the planninig and decided to create a shot list for the music video. This part took way longer than I orginally had anticipated but either way here are the results of what I came up with

Opening Scene

1. Shot 1: Wide shot of a sunlit forest.
2. Shot 2: Medium shot of the singer walking through the woods.
3. Shot 3: Close-up of the singer’s face
4. Shot 4: Wide shot of a water with singer walking next to it

5. Shot 5: Flashback - close-up of judgmental faces
6. Shot 6: Medium shot of people pointing and looking disapprovingly.
7. Shot 7: Medium shot of judged person

8. Shot 8: Close-up of the singer being lonely
9. Shot 9: Medium shot of the singer surrounded by trees singing

10. Shot 10: Wide shot of different individuals drawn to the music, walking through the forest.
11. Shot 11: Close-ups of each individual becoming happpier

12. Shot 12: Wide shot of the singer standing alone.
13. Shot 13: Close-up of the singer’s hands.

14. Shot 14: Medium shot of the group joining the singer
15. Shot 15: Overhead shot of hands joined together

16. Shot 16: Wide shot of the group happily walking out of the forest together.

This is not even half of the shots I came up with and there will most likely be changes but overall I really hope that I do not confuse myself like last time and actually try to follow this guideline I created. I do want to find more shots that would work because the difficult part was understanding what shots would actually work but overall I like the list and will be adding to it. I will also update this blog with an actual list very soon.

16. Shot 17: Final close-up of smiling faces, emphasizing connection.