Editing is such a pain!

Now that I have some usable footage, I tried putting it together. I knew I had been using the old imovie software, s I decided to buy the latest on off the app store. There are many more features, however theres one big problem; the playback lags so much I can't edit properly! I've tried everything from cleaning my laptop out to restarting, but I guess my computer is too old to handle the software... This is very disappointing seeing that I had to pay for the latest imovie and I was going to rely on some of these features. It has become very annoying to try to edit, so I might just revert to the old imovie. In other news, as I sift through some of my footage, I realize I need smoother shots and more of them, so I scheduled to film tomorrow with my actress to see if maybe I can get all the footage I need. I am very lucky to have such a good friend as an actress because she is very willing to participate in the film, which is what is needed when on a deadline. I feel as though the thing I am going to struggle most with is sound, especially because my opening relies on the aspect of film so heavily. I need to record more sounds with the actress herself and just get the last shots. I still need the second part of the film, so I will also try to get this done tomorrow. Hopefully everything works out so that I do not have to call upon her again and I can just focus on editing and the looming critical reflection.

The hardest part begins.

I was able to find the actress I wanted and started filming the other day. The location I chose is hard to reach, so I had to make sure I was using my time wisely by filming exactly what I wanted. I've realized it is quite hard to communicate exactly what you want the actress to do, so perfect shots were a bit difficult, however, I like a challenge, so it is also fun. The trouble was getting the actress to act in a blind manner, even though she is not actually blind. There also needs to be a feeling of being lost and tired. I believe she did well though, and I am getting places.

Editing will also be very challenging since I need to focus on touch and sound, which the audience should pick up right away. I've always had a bit of a problem with keeping tightening up my shots, but hopefully I can fix that here. I have a lot of footage to work with, but I will probably try to film again later this week to get any shots I missed. I am missing the second part of the scene and a few shots from the first. Time to get working.

What would a blind person do?

Now that I have a solid idea of what I'm doing, I have to research the topic a bit more. I've basically been looking up what it's like to be blind, and what they have to go through. With this research, I am able to attempt to put myself in the mindset of somebody with this disability. First, I learned through aYoutube video by TommyEdisonXP, how blind people use guide canes. This is going to be necessary if I am going to make the main character use this device. The technique I learned is to put the stick out in front of you on the opposite side of whichever leg is stepping, then switch as you take another step. The stick stays moving side to side, and whenever it hits something, you move out of the way. Since my character is going to be walking through different paths in nature, this will be necessary to avoid any major obstacles in the way. I also learned through an article that many blind people do wear sunglasses, either to protect their eyes (since many times they are sensitive to light), and because some are self conscious of their eyes. These both work in my favor since my main character is going to be slightly introverted/insecure, and since my character does not have the coloration in the eyes that normal blind people have, I will be able to cover this up with the use of sunglasses. Lastly, I found little known facts about blind people that are actually quite helpful since they come from somebody that is actually blind. The most important facts I discovered were that, many times, even though others try to be respectful, many just come off as condescending when trying to help those with the disability. In addition, many blind people are skilled at mental mapping and have learned to focus their attention towards their other senses. This is useful because I need the main character to have a reason for her insecureness (condescending people) and be able to make her way around (with the use of mental mapping). The character is really starting to develop in my eyes, and I will begin filming next week.




TommyEdisonXP. "How Blind People Use A White Cane." YouTube. April 01, 2014. Accessed March 27, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoeUyyCpStA.
"Why Do Many Blind People Wear Dark Glasses?" Imponderably. March 27, 2011. Accessed March 27, 2016. https://adibzailan2011.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/why-do-many-blind-people-wear-dark-glasses/.
Fagan, Chelsea. "21 Questions You’ve Always Wanted To Ask A Blind Person (And Their Answers)." Thought Catalog. November 18, 2013. Accessed March 27, 2016. http://thoughtcatalog.com/chelsea-fagan/2013/11/21-questions-youve-always-wanted-to-ask-a-blind-person-and-their-answers/.

The train starts moving...

I've begun to start thinking of the shots I want to create now. I'm still going to incorporate many of the techniques I have previously mentioned such as the parallel editing, the use of silence, and very specific details such as framing and expression. I also am going use the first part of the scene to foreshadow as previously mentioned. I will be making the first half of the scene a flash forward to a situation occurring later in the movie. In this first half, it will be the main character walking in nature, still lost, hungry and tired. She will then take a rest and begin to hear the sounds around her. Now that she is finally taking them all in, they become a bit overwhelming and start increasing in intensity. The sounds she will be hearing are going to be ones from the first four shots of the opening, in which I will be inserting short cuts to establish a bit of the setting/surrounding and giving away a bit of her disability. I want to incorporate the framing used by directors like Lynne Ramsay, where a bit of the face is cut off. The part I will be cutting off at first will be the eyes, which helps get the audience to make the connections and come to the conclusion that she is blind. The sounds later in the scene when she is resting will increase to a point where they become overwhelming, and eventually will just be a very loud jumble/buzz of sounds. This is where parallel editing and a sound bridge of the girl will be used to transition the scene to the beginning of the story. The story will begin with the main character screaming out of frustration because her disability is hindering her from doing some mundane task in her house. The scene will then continue to show her struggle with living with this obstacle, and because of it, it has made her introverted and secluded. The idea of the first few cuts of scenes (close-ups) comes from the movie ROOM, where the movie begins with very short cuts to establish setting and situation. The parallelism comes from the Jurassic Park movie in which there is a sound bridge/graphic match of a lady screaming and a man yawning with a train screeching in the background. The framing comes from some films directed by Lynne Ramsey in which she cuts off parts of her characters' faces. Finally, the idea of a scene from later in the film being shown in the beginning of the film comes from the movie The Kings Of Summer. I am trying to incorporate techniques used by professional directors to make my opening look more professional and to intrigue my audience from the start. I began my storyboard and will continue to plan out the sequence. Here's a sample of the storyboard so far:

Back from the dead.

So, I've been on vacation this whole week without internet access, which is why I haven't been able to reach out and post anything. However, lucky for you, I've written a few blog posts that I've managed to save, and will be able to finally share them here. Here's the first of them:

So much pressure!

Time keeps moving forward, putting pressure on me to think of a solid idea, but with the help of friends and the environment I'm in, I know what my opening sequence is going to be about. My opening is going to be about a blind girl. The girl is very frustrated with her disability and doesn't understand why she was cursed with such a huge obstacle. In the movie, she somehow manages to get lost in the forest, and comes close to dying. However, she eventually learns to deal with her disability and finds a way to use her other senses to find her way out. This discovery not only helps her find her way out of the forest, but it helps her to realize that her blindness shouldn't have to be as big of an obstacle as she makes it out to be. She begins to appreciate her surroundings in a way she thought wasn't possible before, and through her journey in the forest, although starving, tired, and ill, she actually embraces the forces of nature and realizes the beauty of her situation.

I am currently staying in a villa out in the middle of the jungle in Puerto Rico, and although it is hard for me to work on this film while I am here, it has given me inspiration. There are so many different sounds (birds, frogs, dogs, wind, etc.) and beautiful views all around me that allowed me to come up with the topic of my film, and I am grateful. I am going to begin recording different sounds for the film that I could use and am going to explore the area a bit to get ideas for the specific shots I want.

New ideas. Also, Youtube isn't just cat videos.

My friend and I were talking about films recently, and he brought up the Youtube channel Every Frame A Painting. I had heard of it before, but had never truly checked it out. After a bit, I went online and watched some videos that are actually pretty useful. They gave me more ideas as to what I'd like to do and how I'd like to do it. I checked out two videos that I felt would help me through this process.

The first video is called Martin Scorsese - The Art of Silence, which you can check out below. It basically talks about how Scorsese uses silence as much as he does sound in his videos, and silence might be the more important aspect. He uses sound in a way that brings out the emotion of the scene, whether it be romantic or depressing or intense. This technique often makes the audience feel a bit on the edge because they might not be used to such silence, which helps them to pay attention even more, making the scene all the more powerful. Many times, he completely juxtaposes sounds, with the loudest scene being immediately followed by the most silent scene in the movie, which, again, just makes it even more powerful and helps the director make the audience feel a certain way. However, the silence often feels different each time because it is tied to a different scene or theme. Something great the video mentions is that if a movie is constantly loud, nothing will seem else will seem loud anymore because that is all that is heard, but if a movie uses silence, the audience knows which moments are truly loud or not. I'd really like to try to emulate this in my opening in some way to bring out the emotion.

The second video is called Lynne Ramsay - The Poetry of Details, which you can also check out below. Here the subject is about the details of a film, and how they can all come together to create poetry through sound and image. Ramsey is not extremely complicated in the way she creates her films, and often focuses on one detail in certain scenes to really put emphasis on it. There isn't any need for there to be excessive details in a single scene because the message/focus can be lost. She relies on the expression of a person's face heavily, and makes it so that that actor can express an idea or convey an emotion without having to say anything. I need an actor like this, because for my film, I don't think I am going to use much dialogue. Framing is also important because Ramsey sometimes frames the subject in a way that doesn't give away too much of the scene, and allows the audience to infer what is occurring. This implication she puts forth is noticeable throughout all her films because she creates them in a way that makes the audience have to work a bit to find certain connections and messages, even though the techniques are simple.

A key feature through these videos and techniques is the simplicity. There is no need for anything out of this world to portray the message you want, and I really like that. I'd like to use these techniques in my sequence, and I have another idea for my opening, but I don't want to give away too much yet. We'll see what ensues in the coming days.

Every Frame A Painting. "Martin Scorsese - The Art of Silence." YouTube. June 14, 2014. Accessed March 20, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUrTRjEXjSM.
Every Frame A Painting. "Lynne Ramsay - The Poetry of Details." YouTube. May 7, 2015. Accessed March 20, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjY9kf7TuUU.

I must become king.

So I just finished watching the movie The Kings of Summer in order to do some more research on film openings based around movies about nature. The movie is basically about these 3 kids that decide to move into the forest away from civilization because they didn't like the current situation they were in. They move to the forest and build a house there where they live for a month until eventually they go home. this is interesting because this might be a route I want to take, where somebody tires of their life at home and decide to dedicate their lives to nature. What makes it very interesting is that they do a similar opening to the one I would like to incorporate in my sequence, where the very first shot is one that gives a scene from later on in the movie, then flashes back to the very beginning where the whole story starts to develop. I'd like to incorporate this into the film because I believe it would help my audience to believe I really do have a clear idea of what the rest of the film would look like instead of just making an opening. Also, many openings start of quite slow and only really begins to develop later on, so I'd like to incorporate some of the action from later on in my film to make it more intense, therefore making the movie more fun to make and getting the audience intrigued. The filmmakers in the Kings Of Summer connect this future scene by creating a sound bridge between the music from the woods and the knocking of the main characters father on the door. These two scenes juxtapose each other and allow the audience to see the reality of the main character's situation. I'd also like to use this technique in my opening, except I'd use a graphic match instead of a sound bridge to connect the scenes, which I feel has an even bigger impact on the audience. This movie was a great tool in helping me to get more of an idea and visual of the scene I'd like to create. Now I just need to find a concrete plot in which I can create all of this around.

I am now completely stuck, but I might as well go Into The Wild.

I have recently been attempting to explain my idea for my opening to my fellow peers and professor, however, as they give me their feedback and their interpretation of what they believe the opening would look like, I am realizing I am not as fond of the idea as I thought I was. Everybody is interpreting the opening as one that focuses on a dystopian setting in the future. This is understandable due to the way I had thought of setting the sequence up, but this is not how I originally planned the opening to be. I wanted to focus on the ideas of an appreciation of nature, discovery, awareness, or even a suspenseful sequence. I find that now-a-days, dystopian-like films are very much overused, and me creating this opening would not be original, nor would it be something I am passionate about, which would be noticeable in the story. 

I have to keep searching for a subject I am passionate about, and I need to be quick about it. I still need to create my storyboard, and will soon need to begin filming, which will be hard since I am traveling to Puerto Rico for a week in a few days. I have been looking at films such as Into The Wild, which portrays 2 different versions of nature throughout the film, a peaceful side and a dangerous side. There is a presentation about the certain cinematographic techniques that make whatever situation the main character is in seem either calm or aggressive, which you can check out here. It basically states that slower, longer, more open and natural shots tend to give a sense of freedom in nature, which shows his appreciation for his environment (a route that I could go). Also, more rapid and closer shots create a sense of suspense and danger in nature (another route I could go). 

Not only are shots important, but music is extremely influential, making the scene more dramatic or slower. To help me brainstorm of the sequence I'd like to create, I've been listening to different music tracks made specifically for films on websites such as Bensound.com. Slower music with instruments such as guitar, piano, and violin impact the scene by making it more dramatic, while faster paced music, usually with drums, make the scene more suspenseful. These samples of tracks help me to create an image in my mind of what I would like to make in real life, but I have not yet thought of an amazing idea. Lastly, I visited one of the locations I had in mind for a short period of time on my bike to try to get some inspiration, but a solid idea has not come about yet. I love the location Yavin IV they used in Star Wars, with trees surrounding a temple and the light slightly shining through the trees, and I hope whatever direction my plot goes, I'll still be able to incorporate some location similar to this one.

Smith, Melanie. "Cinematography in 'Into the Wild'" Prezi.com. December 2, 2013. Accessed March 18, 2016. https://prezi.com/yxxrwxegtena/cinematography-in-into-the-wild/

 "ROYALTY FREE MUSIC by BENSOUND." Bensound. Accessed March 18, 2016. http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/cinematic?sort=p.date_added. 

 Wikipedia. Accessed March 18, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yavin.

I might've figured it out, finally.

As I had said previously, I wanted a story that had to do with nature, discovery and/or survival, but didn't have any clear ideas. What I've come to is this: the story I believe I'm going to create is one in which the setting takes place some time in the future, where everybody is so fixated on their phones that there is absolutely no human interaction. However, the first scene would take place even further in the future (foreshadowing) where the character in the story is somehow placed in one of the only areas with nature left in the world, and he is realizing what beauty there is in life outside technology. This scene from the future would actually occur later in the film, which gives away some of the plot in the opening. After realizing his surroundings and the uniqueness of the situation, I was thinking of using a parallelism editing technique, where the character would act in a certain way, and the scene cuts back to a scene of the "present" with the main character doing the same action so the scenes could connect. This editing technique is one of five editing techniques that are highly praised in the film industry. If you want to know more, check out the video on Vimeo.

Other than that parallelism technique, I have other shots in mind that I'd like to incorporate into my film opening. For the first shot, (after maybe the title) I was thinking of a black screen with a fade into only the eyes of the main character. He would then continue to begin to wake up and realize where he is. As he would look around, a point of view shot would be used as he's analyzing where he is, and the shots would be in shallow focus to indicate the confusion and the fact that he's just waking up. That's what I have so far, but I'll think of more shots I could incorporate later in the week. I hope to be finished with my storyboard by next week so I can get to filming! 

Exciting stuff soon to come.

Several ideas, all leaning towards a man in nature/survival theme.

I'm still in the process of figuring out my plot. Although I understand we're only creating a film opening, I believe it's necessary to go about the project as if one were creating a full fledged film, and this helps make everything clearer in my head. I know what shots I want to take, since I want my opening to be in nature, however what the story behind the main character is. I'm leaning towards the survival/nature theme due to the fact that most of the others around me are either creating a drama or horror, and I would like my project to stand out. I also believe I'd enjoy creating a film in nature more so than I would indoors. I have spoken to a few of my peers and have gotten some great idea, I just need to make a decision, and quick!

One of the ideas for the film is just simply a main character lost in nature trying to survive. Another idea is that the main character is running from some outside force, either human or fictional "creature," which would make the scene more intense. This leads into another branch, where maybe the character is from somewhere other than Earth, making the movie a bit more sci-fi. An idea that keeps running through my head as well is a man experiencing nature for the first time and what the world has to offer, which could be for three distinct reasons. 1. He is placed there or never grew up as humans traditionally do, which would lead to the sci-fi route. 2. He is just from a completely different part of Earth, where he has just never seen the forest (which is where the setting would be). Or 3. He was abused by whoever raised him and never got to see the outside world until now. The third reason seems to have a darker tone, however I would attempt to make it more light-hearted and positive by focusing on what the character is taking in now instead of the past. There have been past situations like this, but they turn very drastic and end up extremely negative, such as the story of Danielle, a child who was locked away in a room for much of her childhood, which you can see here:

Here the young girl ended up with psychological disabilities, but I would want to shape my story in a way where the character can understand whats occurring around him, it's just that everything would be very new, and the opening would revolve around the theme of discovery.

There are many themes and plots I would like to delve into, I just have to make up my mind and find out the plot so I can get started with the project.

Hey, my name is Issac Quevedo, and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my point. Here I am, supposed to be in the process of creating an amazing film opening for all of the world to see (well, maybe not ALL of the world), yet I don't even know where to start. There are some ideas of the types of shots I would create within certain genres, however I have not decided on the genre.  At the moment, I am thinking of creating either some sort of drama/love story or a survival story (which, I know, are two completely different genres), but this could all change as time goes on. I am also beginning to truly realize how many sub-genres there are, even just in the realm of drama and action. I mean, just look for yourself

I've also been looking at videos with examples of very well put together film openings, both with and without credits. At the moment, I'm leaning towards creating a film opening without credits for two reasons. One, I believe there aren't enough people in the process of creating this opening, and the credits would pretty much just be my name and the one or two actors I use, which, to me, isn't very realistic in the movie making world. Two, for the openings I have in mind, the credits would just distract the viewer from the message I am attempting to portray, therefore I would probably only have the title of the film in the opening, if even that. However, again, I understand all this could change as I keep thinking of more ideas.

Let's just hope all these ideas floating around eventually come together to form what I hope to be an impactful story.



Works Cited

"Infographic: The Complete List of Film Sub-Genres." December 26, 2011. Accessed March 09, 2016. http://tdylf.com/2011/12/26/infographic-the-complete-list-of-film-sub-genres/.