Affects that COVID-19 has on our editing process

     
       Like stated in the last blog, COVID-19 has been a real struggle worldwide. This virus has affected everything from schools to big movie productions. And while these aren't the only things affected, these things heavily impact our final task. From filming to editing all aspects of our film have been affected. Filming has been affected because we can't get together to film. This is because of social distancing, which has been put in place to reduce the spread of the virus. But now editing is harder and not as ideal. The ideal form of editing is that my group and I would meet up and discuss editing and do so together. My group and I would do this for every project we had and it seemed to be the best approach. But now with COVID-19 extra measures have to be taken.
        My group and I must now take a different approach to editing. This is a very difficult and different situation. And because of this we had to find another approach. We would now only be able to edit off of someones laptop and nobody else would be able to see it or make changes. And because of the editing software we use we aren't able to share the movie or allow other people to make changes to it. So we had to have only one person mainly edit the movie. Then we could collaborate on video call. But the other group mates couldn't see what the person editing is doing and they would have to describe it. The hardest part of this new way of editing due to COVID-19 is not being able to come together and edit together. It is much harder and doesn't allow for the whole group to give their input.



   

Affects that COVID-19 has on our filming schedule

        COVID-19 is a world wide pandemic. This virus has spread from China to every continent except Antartica. This virus is now in all 50 states in the U.S. This of course comes with its troubles. All schools have closed until April 15th and some have even closed until the end of the year. This means that every student in America will be doing online school until they re-open Schools. This virus has shut down beaches and malls and many restaurants. The virus has also wiped almost every essential off of the shelves of supermarkets. Huge movie productions have had to stop filming at first, and now they can't even relocate because the virus has reached every possible filming area. My group and I can relate because this virus has of course brought and will continue to bring problems to our filming. But we have to find a way to solve these problems and make the best of our situation.
       Thankfully, we have a finished final project. We felt that it would be better to film and edit the whole movie and have it for the peer review so we can receive more feedback. However, we were hoping to re-film a scene or two of our movie. But, because of COVID-19 we aren't able to do so. One reason is social distancing. This virus is heavily contagious and is airborne , meaning it can travel through the air. Because of this the government said that everyone should be practicing social distancing. This means no hanging out in groups and staying 3-6 feet away from people. We of course cannot re-film because we are suppose to be keeping our distance and even though nobody in my group has the virus, we can still be carriers of it and not know. It wouldn't be safe or morally right of my group and I to get together to re-film. This is because we could give it to each other and even though we might not know it we could give it to other people or elderly family members.

Editing Blog : Making changes

         The last time I blogged I talked about starting the editing process. I also spoke on how the footage of my title sequence changed from what we originally planned it to be. And that when it came to editing this sequence,  I had to change up the things that looked out of place. The first thing that I changed were the fonts. For the original titles, we wanted it to take on a scary/creepy vibe. The color was going to be black and the titles would match with the horror conventions. But last minute my group and I changed the footage and the font and color changed with it. We were originally going to film the friends coming in and greeting the main character and we would add the scary looking titles in to foreshadow something going wrong. But our change in footage didn't fit this font because of the new feel of the clips.
        We instead decided to go with a lighter feel. We felt that this would help the horror and suspense come out of nowhere. This would shock the audience and give an element of surprise. We decided on a getting ready title sequence. The main character is shown cleaning up the house to prepare for company and fixing her appearance. Once we played the sequence back we saw that the footage didn't have the horror vibe to it and once we placed the original fonts this became more apparent. So, I went back and changed the fonts to a more soft feel. Once this was implanted, everything went a lot better and made a lot more sense. After this was added we had to work on cutting the footage because we had over 2 minutes. We also had to add sounds and music.

     

Editing Blog: The start of editing

       For the peer review we had to have a completed movie. So we had to start editing. The first thing that we did was pick which clips we wanted to use. We had many different ones from all of our takes, so we had to decide. We went through all of our clips and made our decisions on which clips looked better for each scene. Once this was done we were able to place our footage into iMovie. iMovie is the editing software that we are using. We have used this software on our other projects so we were confident in it. So we imported all of the clips into the software. Once they were in we had to make sure they were in the correct order.
    This part was a bit challenging since a lot of the dialogue clips looked fairly similar. So for a lot we had to go into each clip and see which was which. This part was mostly done by my group mate Katia. She did this part in our other projects so naturally it was done here. While Katia finished this part up I planned out the title sequence. I did pre-plan the titles, but we changed up the footage for our title sequence. Since the footage changed many other aspects did as well. I didn't know what would change so I did the title sequence the way it was planned before. I did this so I could go back and see what did and didn't fit with the mood of the new footage. Lots of things looked out of place and didn't go with the look of our new footage, so I got to work.

Peer Review Blog

 

        My group and I peer reviewed another group last class. I was really happy to be doing this activity because I feel that getting feedback from other students that are doing the same project, would be very beneficial. The group we peer reviewed did not have a finished project. They had around a minute and twenty seconds with no title sequence. But the plot of the story was still present and understandable. The one thing my group and I really liked about the film was the scary creatures acting. The creature was suppose to be portrayed as a scary and creepy being, and this was done very well. The movement that the person acting as the creature did was perfect and truly added that extra horror feel to the film. We felt that since the creature was the focus point of the film, that the acting and demeanor of the creature was very important and was done very well.
        While we did enjoy the creatures acting and the plot of the story, there were some notes that we would give the group to improve their film. The main thing we noted was the lighting of the film. Trough most of the film the lighting was not good. I could see that they might've wanted dark light to add to the conventions of the horror genre, but this could've been slowly integrated into the film. So we noted that they should reshoot the film and use natural or artificial lighting. We explained how better lighting would completely change the movie for the better by allowing the audience to see the movements more clear and facial expressions. We also noted that they should add some creepy music. The film didn't have much sound and we suggested that maybe some music in the opening sequence would intensify the film and make it scarier overall. I enjoyed this activity and felt that my group and I saw what some people did that we liked and wanted to do and some mistakes that we saw that we should stray away from.