Lights things

 Saturation and color in films 

Hey, guys so for our film we are planning on editing the saturation of many of the clips given that we weren't able to control much of the lighting during filming. We filmed in a public gymnastic gym which limited the variables we could control for this film. Some of the things, we couldn't control were lighting as the gym is kept in a certain bright light all throughout the day during classes. 

Our solution for this problem is to play with the saturation of the clips during editing this way we can enhance certain feelings we want to provoke from the scenes. Our plan is to decrease the saturation of the clips as we go through the movie. As our character grows up the scenes start to get more muted to reflect the feeling she has as she grows up in the sport. 

I also did some research on the effects of doing this, editing the saturation in films. I looked at Learn About Color: and color theory. In both articles, I focused more on the information about muting colors given that it will do for most of the film. Our plan is to start taking away saturation once she goes from young to middle age, given that in the storyline, this age is when things start getting hard. We would do it gradually as time passes in the short film. Our goal is for when she is in the older stage to be in full black and white. 

The article, it talked about how shifting the saturation of an image changes the emotions that are emphasized. In our case, a lower saturation would convey more somber or constrained emotions. Whereas a higher saturation connotes extreme feelings and passion. Something we were considering was starting the film with higher saturation than the footage normally had. This would help emphasize the young passion the main character has for gymnastics. When we start editing, which would be very soon, we'll see how it looks if we do this because we want to make sure it does looks too obvious when the saturation is changed. Our aim for this is to slightly change the saturation throughout the short film, so much so the audience would realize it until the film turns black and white.  

Another thing we were considering was adding a color filter over the scenes, maybe slightly blue or red, colors that would emphasize the emotions the main character feels. as she, in the end, feels saddened and angry at herself for not being able to do the skills correctly. After I watched the video I linked, it showed how adding a color filter could make the audience focus on certain colors. Doing this could also be a successful way to make the audience the audience feel what the main character feels. 

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Group meeting Pt2

 Group Meeting 

Today in class we had a short meeting where we could discuss where we are in our project, how it's going, and what we plan to do next. In my group, there was Alex, Martina, logan, and me. We were all able to talk about our projects and receive feedback on where we are doing right now. We looked through all of each other's blogs and looked through the details of the projects, which were all very interesting.  

When it was my turn I started talking about how we have filmed, and done the print component. I talked about the difficulties of both, like for the print component how we had a few different ideas so we ended up creating two very different ones. We still aren't sure which to pick, or just keep them both. The group meeting also helps me with some audio problems, given that we weren't able to acquire a microphone for the filming time. Which makes much of the dialogue hard to understand or interrupted by background noises. 

For my issues, they recommended I use the editing tool that Adobe Premier has given that they have a few tools that are able t remove background noises and make the sound cohesive. I will 100% use this recommendation given that I'm not even sure how to fully fix the audio. Though I did learn how to a few months ago, I am not sure how to make it sound right for the short film, given that the last time I tried the audio sounded borderline robotic.  

I'm really excited cause soon we are going to start editing, most likely this week or the beginning of next. I want to see how everything we have filmed comes together and forms the short film. 

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Our Postcard

 Postcard ideas

My group and I started doing a few postcards for the print component. We were all excited to make them given that we enjoy making things like this and already had ideas for them. We made two postcards in total, eugenia and Sasha both started different ones and I added the information. They both turned out really good which makes it hard to pick which one to use. 

Postcard 1-

(back)

This one was the postcard that Sasha did, I added and organized all the information in the back. For this one we decided to keep the front with the least information possible, simultaneously giving the reader the information needed to find the film. The front picture was chosen to outline the title (reaching the bar) which in the image the girl is literally doing what it says. This postcard has a constant color scheme of black and red so it emphasized the darker side of the film. This plus the image used in the back makes the postcard focused more on the depressive side of the film.  In the back, we included credits of the movies as well as contact information and a small sentence that summarizes the short film. 

Postcard 2- 

(back)

 

This one is the one eugenia designed, and I added the information in the back and front. For this one, we decided to have a brighter look at the movie. we decided to stick with a blue, white, red, and black color scheme as it's the colors most prominent in the gym. In the front we included a similar image as the first one, holding the bar, but double, making the front more interesting for viewer. In the front we also decided to include the film festival used, the date of released and nomination of awards we are aiming for (still not sure if we are keeping it though). In the back there's a lot more information like the credits, and contact information as well as the tittle again (in the same font as the front so its cohesive) and the small summarized sentence. For the images in the back I decided to combine two of the girls' putting on her gloves, blurring them out to have more similarities from the front and back (two images). I also added a small outline of a gymnast to tell the audience its a short film about gymnastics. 

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Day 3 of filming

  More filming

Eugenia was also able to film more another day during her time in practice, again as before we weren't able to be there because of spring break trips. This day she was able to get more B-side shots that emphasized the skill difference between the main character and her friends, and some dialogue between the middle actors and our older actor. 

While eugenia was filming she did come into some trouble. So first the microphone problem which made it hard to capture a clear recoding of audio in a busy, gym. On top of that, there was music playing in the gym, which made it 10X harder to record. However she was able to get a few dialogues, that was short sentences. 

For our next group meeting, we are going to tackle editing and postcard discussions as we need to get on top of these two things to have a great project. 

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Day 2 filming

More filming

Heyy guys, So eugenia was able to film some of the scenes with our littles. Sasha and I weren't able to be there because it was during spring break and practice during competition prep, which last time we went during one of us the environment was the best. However, we were able to communicate to make sure the shots came out all right. We also made sure to get the parent consent for their children o be filmed given that they are 10 years old. 

Here is what she was able to film which was a small dialogue part and some videos showing their individual skills according to the character. This part of the film is trying to show the difference between the main character and her fellow classmates in gymnastics and how she is better than most at her level at a young age. 

We thought that having the smaller version be naturally good in the begging skills would help us into the transition character of the older version of the main character feeling bad about her technique later on. 

Yes, we do realize that some of the audio in the videos is hard to hear because eugenia didn't have a mic in hand and our sector didn't want to speak louder. We will try to fix it during editing if not we still have time to reshoot if needed given it's a small scene and not most of the film. 

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Social Media

I wanted to share with you guys how our social media account has been looking. As for right now, we have been focused more on Instagram and this upcoming week would be Tik Tok, given that for Tik Tok we wanted to use trends and challenges that are currently in the app and for that we need to meet with the cast. For Instagram, we decided to post more skill-related content, that was previously filmed for the short film. 

In the video above you can see how the pictures are all organized in the account, our bio (that includes a small summary of the movie), and the profile pic is our movie logo. most of our posts consist of small teasers edited to post on Instagram. Also, short videos of the actors showing their gymnastic skills. 

In all our videos we include captions that interact with the audience, ask them questions about the post, and inform them about what they are seeing. Additionally, every post includes hashtags related to the post like #gymnastics, #shortfilm, etc., which help boost our content to different people that are interested in this type of thing.  
 

We also like to post a few stories that ask the audience about various things, and also tell them about upcoming events. For example, our most recent was a poll about keeping a straight face while acting and viewers were able to select yes (if they are able to keep a straight face) or no. We really want to focus on interacting with our audience as it helps gain more attention if we seem more reachable. 

For the future, we definitely want to post more BTS, cast content, and countdowns for upcoming things, which will all help inform the audience and boost our page to more people. 

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A look into our thought process

Raw footage

I did want to show some of our thought processes for what are we filming and why are we filming it this way, given that some of our scenes are inspired by other scenes from gymnastics movies. For this specific example, we wanted to somewhat recreate the scene from the movie "Stick It", where there's a scene the main character is falling over and over from the beam. We all thought it look really cool and it was a nice way to represent the frustration and dedication the main character in our short film has for the sport. 

For reference, this is the footage we got, and it's the main character falling over and over from the beam. This is the rough footage of it but after editing it would much look cleaner. With this we wanted to create the frustration that the main character feels because she isn't able to get the skill right even after trying over and over again. 

Here is the clip we took inspiration from, as it does a great job of showing the frustration the main character feels when she can't get the skill right. How she keeps on failing it over and over again.  We feel like doing this is a great way to emphasize the feelings of frustration and anger our main character is feeling. 

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