CCR

Here's the link to my CCR:

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/Ux9vf2QNL60

GOOGLE DRIVE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17jPjddZe8hGpGaJ5Er5z9UJk8hWzeF60/view?usp=sharing

Valedictorian

Website:

https://luislageyreedu.wixsite.com/stokhigh

Postcard Art:

(FRONT): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wO2sA0iRAdGqW-urGiPvVCUHXMD9nXPj/view
(BACK): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d9T-r68OuO6n1miEcmoZPLsuqlgLZ_Xz/view

FILM:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tuj2zLRlaF27pbfzu-pi3qag9wdrEoNa/view

Reflection (I need a tissue)

The week after we submitted our AS level project, Jake and I walked to the science building as we often did, we stood outside the room of who would become the sponsor to the club that we would start together and imagined what we would do for our A level project. Valedictorian is nothing like what we imagined we would do then, it’s better. This film represents much more to me than just the message it conveys, it represents hard work, imagination, and friendship; our friendship.

From the moment Jake and I first sat down to talk about our ideas, our minds went wild; creating and developing ideas in a perfectly synchronized dance. We created a story that tackles something we both care about, something that has -to a degree- personally affected us both (me certainly), and something that we know takes a toll on the mental health and education of our peers. A number or a title on a piece of paper doesn’t determine your self worth and shouldn’t be the cause for disrupting anxiety and poor mental health practices.

Because we were telling a story about modern students, we had to make sure that is exactly what we were seeing on screen, a modern representation of high school, not something based on stereotypes created in the late 80s with the rise of teen culture because culture changes. This project was the perfect opportunity to people watch, to pay attention to the world around us, to interpret it, and try our best to represent that on screen. And that’s what we did. We are proud to have created characters that, we believe, represent a portion of our peers accurately and we are even more proud to have had the opportunity to work with a cast just as diverse in personality and other traits. Something truly representative of the most diverse generation in history.

The production of valedictorian was a memorable one, full of great memories with friends and lots of inside jokes that will bring clever laughter to all of us for years to come. The opportunity to make a project like this is so scarce in education that I am so humbled and thankful to have been able to partake in something like it. This project has provided me with the opportunity to understand the production process on a much deeper level, and I will forever be grateful for the knowledge I've acquired, keeping it at the forefront as I begin my journey in the mass media industry.

Thankfully, due to the excitement Jake and I had about starting to work on valedictorian, we were able to complete much of the production before this unfortunate global pandemic. However, it was an interesting experience to undergo the post-production process completely virtually. I believe that I developed a lot of new skills due to this challenge and I look forward to implementing them in the future, not out of necessity, but in a spirit of innovation! In some way, this project has helped me cope with this pandemic situation; it has been a great distraction from the overwhelming nature of what's going on out there. I’m also grateful to have had Jake as a partner because I believe it would've been impossible to pull it off the way we have without a partner who you can rely on, trust, and share a vision with.

And that brings me to Jake. There is no one I would have rather done this with than him. Although we met in 8th grade (Yes, yes we did Jacob.. sorry it’s an ongoing argument), our friendship started in our AS level media class. I know they often say to not work with friends but to that I say: (1) he’s my best friend and (2) we make a heck of a team. We have an exciting journey ahead of us in college, and I can't wait to see what sort of crazy fun and deeply fulfilling adventures we embark on. I am extremely proud of what we have created and I couldn't have asked for a more awesome senior experience. I hope we made Tina proud dude.

Boy oh boy! It’s hard to believe that this journey has come to an end. As I sit here writing this post, I struggle to type every word, in many ways I don’t want it to be over, saying goodbye to what has been the highlight of my semester feels like saying goodbye to my senior year and saying goodbye to the class and the teacher that has put a smile on my face every single day for two years. This wasn’t an assignment for me, I don’t care for my grade, I set out to have fun and make a film with my best friend and that’s exactly what I did.

Here’s to my coffee-filled, detail-oriented, media adventure!

Tina, thank you.

For the last time…

Signing off,

"Valedictorian" Focus Group

Today we shared our film with other people for the first time. Over the years working in different projects I realize the immense importance of audience feedback and how we can greatly benefit the final product; it is something that is commonly used throughout the industry to I'm sure that film will be enticing for their intended audiences. Last year I sent my AS level project to a focus group so that they could provide some feedback, this year Jake and I decided that it would be a good idea to do the same.

Earlier today I texted multiple individuals within our age group (which is our intended target audience) with the following message:

“Hey [Name]!”

“I hope all is well and that you're family and you are safe and healthy!”

“As you know, Jake and I have spent the last 5 months working on our short film "Valedictorian" and we would like for you to participate in a small focus group which will be among the first people ever to watch the director's cut and giving us some feedback. Would you be interested in participating?”

The response from everyone I texted it was a resounding yes! Our sample was made up of sophomores through seniors in high school attending school from the west to the east coast and ranging in media knowledge. The sample was also diverse which is important because it should represent Gen Z which is the most diverse generation in history.

Thankfully, we received a lot of great feedback! Some participants did not respond at all and others responded with a wealth of feedback which was extremely valuable I'm going back to revise the project one last time. There was a lot of good technical feedback from fellow AICE media students and CBtv members, but there was also valuable feedback about the content of the story and the messages it conveyed from fellow high school students (some all the way in California and Australia).

I took a lot of the most detailed feedback (Shout out to Gus and Alexa) and decided to do one more run of editing fixing up quick things like audio matching and volume. This time around I also decided to apply the “stabilizer” function on the video, a BETA effect still in testing which helps make the shots more stable through the use of software.

The focus group also provided very valuable insight into how the website help them understand and develop the story in their own heads. They were all blown away by how immersive the site was and how it enriched their overall experience of the film! That's exactly the result we were looking for! Making the website like that had its potential risks (there's always the possibility that it's confusing or that the audience simply won't get it), but thankfully we had a great response to the concept!  I'm glad that gamble paid off well!

Finally, after running it through our focus group we are finalized “Valedictorian” once and for all! I am so excited to share the results!

Coming soon!

Signing off,

Final Editing Post [I Hope] (Post-production day #10)

Today my focus in editing went to three specific areas: joining the film together, revising the sound effects, and one final check on all audios.

Jake and I edited every scene of the film separate from each other, in the same editing timeline but with black space in the middle so that we could focus completely on one scene at a time without worrying about how every little edit we made along the way would affect the positioning of everything else in the timeline. After making sure we were satisfied with how everything has turned out I went over all of them once more before beginning the process of joining them together. I selected everything that belonged to a specific scene and dragged it to the place that it’s meant to go in all as a group. From a conversation with Tina, our lovely Cambridge instructor, we decided that we wanted to fade to white between scenes to mark the transition between virtual worlds. Without a fade to black would be too basic and not really appropriate in the context of the film, instead, we utilize afraid to wait while they were in the simulation and one single fade to black when we're back in the real world to mark the end of an entire sequence and the beginning of the resolution.

Once I was enjoying all the seams together I decided that it would be smart to include a motif that acted like an audio bridge between all of those fades to white. For that, I decided on the sound effect that we had previously used to mark the beginning of an announcement in the first scene. So I found a different sound effect the use in its place and decided to use that sound effect to create a motif that is broken once we transition into the real world. I want to take this opportunity to quickly go over and revise all the side effects that we have included to make sure that their audio levels were proper.

Lastly, I probably watch the film another seven times completely and possibly 15 times in fragment to try and catch small audio mistakes that could be easily fixed. One of the things that worked best in order to do this was actually to export the film as an audio file and just listen to it. I think I caught all the mistakes and we are all good when it comes to our audio and our soundscapes!

This is it! Hopefully, it is my last editing post! This project has been tough to edit, I have had nightmares, long nights, and spent countless hours sitting in front of a screen, but when I look at what we have created I would do it all over again and I'm proud to have done it.

Signing off,

Revising Scene One (Post-Production day #9)

As we get closer and closer to finishing the thumb completely, I decided to revisit scene one so that I could apply what I have learned and audio leveling since then and hopefully make it better than what it was. The scene wasn't bad, the audio was edited correctly for the most part and it was a really tough seem to edit dialogue for because there is so much emotion in the dialogue at certain points in time. .So I wasn't concerned for it, but it was a little rough around the edges and I wanted to fix it up a little; I didn't one scene one to look too rough compared to the audio later on in the film.

There were some rough cuts and some bad fades that were a quick fix, take a look at this example where I present a before and after this editing session:

See? Nothing too huge but noticeable! These are the kind of edits that I went back to do for scene one. I spent a good chunk of time detailedly going back through the scene to catch little mistakes I have made previously during editing or things that could have been improved. When I was done I moved on to integrate special effect sounds and stings. The beach scene does a great job utilizing stings and sound effects to build the tone of the scene and help it flow, knowing that there was a big intense point early in seen one I wanted to go back and make sure we have backings stings that reinforced the tension and intensity of that sequence.

Believe it or not, we video has some hidden gems in its audio library, they can be quite useful and in our case, there were some audios that we are a good fit for the film. So I found this thing and matched the editing to it which was only off by a few frames so it wasn't too much trouble. Take a look:

Great difference! I also worked on the sound effects that led to the first announcement, to make sure that they also were good. Jake and I tried very hard at the beginning to include music after Garrett's elimination for seen one since virtually every other scene except for the real world have music or some sort of background soundscape. Nonetheless, none of the music that Jake found really fitted the scene, and after carefully reviewing it we decided it would be best to include any music in it.
This also parallels the real world being at the first challenge both the audience and the competitors should be somewhat confused about their setting. But after Garrett's elimination, it should be clearer that they are in some sort of simulation.

This editing session went really well, I'm very happy with the results, and I can't wait to finish!

Signing off,

Distribution

Making a film is fun but it's pointless if nobody watches the film. If you have no audience you have no one to deliver your message to, so I wanted to take time to make this post to address potential distribution strategies for our short film.

The first and possibly the most obvious distribution method for our short film is our website. We

already have the infrastructure to promote our short film in the form of a website, viewing options could be easily added to the website enabling visitors to watch the short film on the films page and still retain the engaging and interactive experience of having an immersive site. One of the advantages of this potential distribution method is retaining the right to distribute the film and retain a lot of creative control over the distribution strategy. Nonetheless, there are great disadvantages to this strategy such as website traffic and convenience. It takes the average person about 12 seconds to decide whether they will remain on a website or whether the exit, it is unlikely that people would go out of their way to view the film by visiting the site.

The second and relatively easy distribution method is to release it to social media (like Instagram TV) and other video streaming platforms such as YouTube. Most of these platforms are extremely creator-friendly and make it easy to upload, view, and promote content. Content can be easily shared making distribution organic and requiring little effort of promotion (most sentences were this happened it is referred to as "going viral”) many short films have opted for this option and have found great success in doing so. By combining this method with the first method I mention and utilizing aggressive marketing techniques, we can successfully distribute our film to a wide variety of audiences. 


Of course, as Broward county students we have the ability to submit our short film to BECON TV,
which is a TV station owned and operated by Broward County Public schools. A short film could be aired on TV and thus reach the general public. Jake and I plan on pursuing this option soon. 

Likewise, there are many short film festivals in South Florida and virtual festivals given the current situation which we could submit our work to in the hopes that it is viewed by a larger audience. There are also numerous websites for short films that we can submit our work to. Unlike a movie, there is no need for a third person distributor to take over this task, as it is something that we can do ourselves especially with the knowledge we have gained from this course and our understanding of Gen Z media trends. 

Excited to show you the final product!

Signing off,

Letting go of perfectionism (Post-Production Day #8)

I don't know why I thought that editing the sound for the scene would be any different than editing the sign for literally every other scene in the short film. Like always I started off very optimistic about my ability to quickly edit the audio levels; there was enough wind like to hide transitions and the audio picked up by the internal mic of the camera was very decent, pretty good odds in my eyes! However things turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected, the mic picked up the audio differently because of the positioning of the camera (which is common sense) so it made it really hard to match the audio levels to sound cohesive. I thought of an easy fix for the switch was just use the external recordings like I did for the beach scene, the problem was that most of the recordings were messed up or missing because Jakoob (Bryce) didn't know how to operate the boom. He was kind enough to volunteer to record the sound while Jake was acting, but there was little I can do with the final audio product. 

I started doing the best that I could of fading the audios together so that they sounded more cohesive. In order to properly do that, I had to change some of the shots that Jake had chosen for the scene and I had to replace some of the audios with the few external audios

that came out good. I went from my frame and repeated sentences and words hundreds of times to ensure everything lined up properly and the flow of the scene and the dialogue was right. I have listened to this dialogue enough times for it to be torture. No joke, I have literally had nightmares with this scene; I've gone to sleep and dreamt of this scene. But that's what it takes sometimes to make sure everything is the best I can be. 

My next step was to build the soundscape composed of background noises that are appropriate to the situation. My hope with the soundscape was not only to increase the

realism of the scene but also to add a consistent element that could trick the audience into thinking the audio is more cohesive than it probably is. For the soundscapes, I used the sound of kids talking in the schoolyard and nature Sounds because they're outside. The sounds game starts prominent and then just completely fades in order to show movement from the crowd is that it doesn't feel like time is frozen; things are happening around them people are moving they're not alone in the courtyard. 

I had to get really creative with the audio leveling the same, and it's nowhere near where I would like it to be, but I also recognize that we're not working with professional equipment and that it's hard for it to be the quality I'd like just through editing. And that realization is a big step for me, as a perfectionist I always want everything to be just right, so recognizing that it's good but that there are clear problems with it still is out of my comfort zone. 

I’ll continue working on this scene whenever I have a bit of free time to see how I can improve it further, but I'm glad to have finished editing it for the most part. 

Signing off, 

Postcard Update

At last defeated… 

As you read from my post yesterday, Tina sided with Jake on the post card’s design disagreement. She too thinks it’s too busy. Welp! Time to change it! I know what you’re thinking… “really? It was that easy to change your mind?” Why yes, yes, it was! Jake and I agreed to take Tina’s recommendation as direction and Tina thought the same as Jake so I changed my stance and re-edited it. 

One thing Tina did point out that neither Jake nor I had thought about because we were to busy talking about the back is that the front looked too simple, it wasn’t engaging enough. Jake and I were quick to agree, if the front wasn’t engaging, people wouldn’t even turn to see the back where the information was. So following Tina’s recommendation, I added a picture to the front. I made the picture the background and added the heavy purple filter that can also be seen through the website to develop a sense of branding across all the products of the project. The filter also allowed to see the writing and the logo clearly while still maintaining the engaging nature of a photograph in the background. 

Unable to decide which photo worked best, I made 6 different versions and sent them to Jake so that we could discuss them. 

We both agreed that our production pictures looked a bit off in the context of the invitation and we didn’t want to recycle content we already heavily used on the site. So instead, we both liked the background of the graduation hat. The film’s site uses a similar picture in one of the pages so the branding stays consistent, but it also helps establish what the film is about even before the viewer sees the tittle or reads the synopsis on the back. 

Speaking of the back, it was an easy fix! I just moved the big bold font and rearranged some stuff. I made the logo bigger and center it, right under it I put the synopsis and under that, I used the same font that I removed from the upper left corner but smaller to name the film festival the screening would be playing in. I also eliminated the “popcorn | Q&A Session” lines at the Botton of the address information due to spacing. It took all of 5 minutes and to be honest, I do like it quite a lot, it looks great! 

Well, that’s it for today! We have edits to make this weekend, I’m hoping it’ll all be smooth sailing but I’m ready to put up a fight in case editing the last scene gets a bit rocky. 

Signing off, 

The website... It's, it's, it's LIVE! [Cue Frankenstein music]

Finally, after many hours of work, the website is done and it’s live! As you saw on my last website update, I was incredibly detailed when building this site, we carefully considered what to include so that it would feel like a real functioning school site and yet still acted like promotional material for the film. It was thanks to this great level of detail that the site achieved its original mission immersing visitors into the story and expanding the universe Jake and I created for the short film. However, it became apparent to me that there had to be a page that explained that purpose, otherwise the website was only meaningful and useful to the audience after they have watched the film, which is a problem because it is meant to serve as a way to promote the film. Simply put, I got carried away a little with the fictional school site. Thankfully it was a relatively quick fix!

I made a page dedicated to the film which follows the traditional conventions of film websites. I took inspiration from other short film websites like shortoftheweek.com and early websites for films like the Hunger Games and Ready Player to design the film landing page. I primarily looked at what they included ion their site, not necessarily their design as I knew that I wanted something distinctively different than the rest of the website and yet something that still developed a sense of branding.

After I was done designing the film landing page and adding things like synopsis, credits, a link to our media blogs, and space for reviews. I went through every page in the school’s website and linked every non-essential button originally placed for aesthetics to the film landing page (including the school logo) so that a site visitor can’t navigate the website without ending up in the film’s landing page and learning about the film and the purpose being the fake school site.

This site was extremely fun to work on because Jake and I got to come up with a lot of cool easter eggs and interesting details to place throughout the site! I’m pretty proud of my design and the functionally of it and even though it definitely took some time to get right, I’m so glad we went this route (and that I had the site-building experience to pull it off because it could have been more challenging otherwise). 

We have scheduled a meeting with Tina tomorrow to look over what we have done since the last time we met with her (which is quite a lot thankfully!). Oh! I almost forgot, here’s the link to the short film’s website: https://luislageyreedu.wixsite.com/stokhigh

Signing off, 

Postcard Design

Happy Monday!

Today marked the start of an important week, there's lots to be done and if we are smart and productive about the way we go about completing those things, we’ll be in pretty good shape for the rest of the project’s duration! Today was a great start to that as we decided…or well, kind of decided… on our postcard!

Jake and I had talked about what we wanted the postcard to look like since we were filming the short film. For the front we thought it would be perfect to have it read like an invitation from the school, to stay consistent with the sense of branding and the concept we decided to pursue on our website. On the back of the postcard, it would read all the information for a special screening in our home town of Weston with the link to the website and the film’s social media handles. Simple enough right!? So I sat down on my computer, opened canva.com and design a mock-up for Jake and me to judge. I tried a couple of different ideas and designs (which you can see below), some using our original design idea and some using a mix of that and a template. 

Ultimately I ended up going with a simple purple background and a golden frame around the postcard with white-colored letters. I changed the logo of Stok High to fit the color scheme of the postcard by creating contrast, making the boxes white and the letters purple and matching the name to the boxes. For the back, I used a variety of fonts in different sizes and bolden levels to draw attention and provide the screening info. When I was done, it was looking pretty dang good! I sent it to Jake thinking that would be the final product; nonetheless, it wasn’t.  

Jake and I don’t have many disagreements, both in our creative works and in our personal lives, but we disagreed on the design of the postcard’s back. Jake thinks it seems too busy and I think that it’s fine. The things that the bold font that I used for “Special screening” competes with the attention of the short film’s logo, I disagree, I think that it draws attention very quickly and informs what it is the postcard is about whilst the logo is safeguarded because of its olive branches, I think they do a good job of breaking the design up. 

We both decided to deal with it later as we have editing and other things to get to this week. We’re hoping to meet with Tina, our Cambridge instructor, later this week so that will provide an opportunity for her to perhaps give us some feedback on the first draft design which will give me some sense of direction of what to go back and fix (or not). 

Signing off, 

Life is a beach -_- 🏖(Post-Production Day #7)

I truly don’t know why I don’t listen to Sebastian The Crab and go live “Under The Sea” as well. You know the one, “Up on the shore they work all day. Out in the sun they slave away. While we devotin’. Full time to floatin’. Under the sea.” Yeah, when a talking crab tells you things via the tv, you better listen because “the human world is a mess” (Ok I’m done with the little mermaid references). You see, I’ve been editing this scene for 3 days or is it 4? I can’t remember, it’s just on repeat in my head. Time is meaningless. I hear it when I’m in the shower, I see it in my dreams. It’s just great.

As you may recall, I thought that this scene was going to be hard to piece together and it was. Then I thought it was going to be difficult to level, and then it wasn’t! Actually, leveling this scene was quite enjoyable! So what’s so bad? ONE AUDIO CLIP. ONE SINGLE AUDIO CLIP! This clip probably contains the most important line in the whole scene and it’s lost, buried under sounds of wind and waves crashing. And it is driving me insane. So in order to avoid pushing a hole through the wall, let’s talk about the mixing and leveling thing.

As I expressed, I thought this was going to be difficult, in fact, it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be! Since all the audio was recorded with the same mic, in the same environment, and about the same proximity to the actors, the audios were pretty to level with few exceptions here and there. The waves and wind, which I thought was going to be a pain, has been my holy grail! The white noise hides the transitions in audio beautifully ( with little exceptions). Because the audios are also separate from the videos, there were a lot of gaps of silence in between them, I fix these pretty quickly by adding what I call “patches”.

“Patches” are basically audio clips of white noise taken from an actual audio from that day, making it usually constant thought all audios. As long as the patch is faded in and out it is almost unnoticeable! Here’s an example, see if you catch the patch!

Anyways, back to the vein of my existence. This audio clip is crucial for storytelling pursues and the progression of the plot. Amazingly there is just ONE TAKE of this. I don’t know how this happened; Jake had headphones on so he had to hear the wind, it would certainly have been helpful to redo it again. However, what’s done is done and now it’s our job to work with what we’ve got:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFTAhy8zZx_i3lUKtEk1oFvSIuUxNDsE/view?usp=sharing

I tried putting the audio through pitch filters, which made it sound really odd and muffled. I’ve watched 5 YouTube videos on the matter to see if anyone has an answer to our problem; however, it seems like there is no easy course of action. I’ll keep playing around with it for the time being but I have to move on. Jake has to piece together the last part of the scene and we have to keep working to meet our deadlines.

Signing off,