Finishing off the Questions for the Presentation

     In preparation to create my presentation for the CCR, I wanted to answer the remaining 2 CCR questions. Just looking at the overall aspects of each question I believe I will likely order it where I start by answering question 3 "How did your production skills develop throughout this project?" and add the aspects of how I approached pre through post-production. Then I will move on to question 4 "How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware, and online – in this project?" which will be directly tied to the production processes I just spoke about. Then I will double back to question 3 and answer how I have improved during this process to end the presentation. I also plan to supplement the words with images representing what I will be talking about. So, until I actually work on the presentation here is the reflection I have done and will be adapting to the presentation medium: link here. 

Script for Directory's Commentary

     So, after working on the director's commentary script I think I have inputted all the information I need to successfully answer the questions and have made a script that will help guide me through the process which I will be putting on here. 

You gotta know what is first

    So, obviously, since I have never done anything like this before I had no real idea of what a director's commentary even was. I knew that I had to comment and that I had to use clips from my opening but that's about it. So, I used the resources I had (Youtube) to find an example on me to base it on. When doing this search the first result was for the Knife's Out director's commentary but that one had no visual stimulus to go with it just the director talking which I thought was quite boring so I went to the 2nd result which was from a director that specializes in the exact genre I was doing: Jordan Peele. In this one, he used a lot of clips from his movie get out and analyzed them as he showed them on screen. I like this approach but I had to condense it for the sake of time picking out the important parts to talk about not all the parts. 

The Director's Commentary by Jordan Peele

Script done

    After working on it for about 1-2 hours I finished the script for the directory's commentary I will be doing. It totals out to be about 5 pages and 1.36k words. I do not know if I will be able to say all that in the time frame and if I am not I can definitely cut out some parts of it to make it shorter and more concise. 

This is the link to it: Script

Conclusion

    I will now start to work on the presentation that I will be doing for the 2nd part of the CCR to answer the last 2 questions. I plan on recording the audio for both of these things through voice-over on the weekend and getting them on the blog in time. I am excited to almost be done and will see you in the next update until then stay tuned!

Sources for commentary:

https://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/5-horror-movie-marketing-tactics-you-can-steal-for-your-brand/ 

https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

article=1030&context=post_honors_theses#:~:text=Chapter%202%2C%20“Mise-en,scene%20and%20create%20specific%20techniques.

https://raindance.org/6-common-horror-film-tropes/

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-horror-definition/

https://www.slideshare.net/Amber2805/conventions-of-the-horror-genre-67172644

https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/horror-conventions

https://www.omnicoreagency.com/youtube-statistics/#:~:text=54.4%25%20of%20YouTube%27s%20total%20users,the%2025-34%20age%20bracket.

https://filmfreeway.com/atlantahorrorfest

Peer reviewing

     With the editing basically done for the opening I decided to send it to my groupmates so they could review it and tell me what I needed to change. From this, I got feedback that helped to make it so the opening was better produced and had fewer errors. 

Change #1

    After showing the video to my groupmates they said that they could not really hear the audio coming from the friend and asked me to increase it. Although it sounded fine to me on my computer when I opened up the opening on my phone the audio did become hard to hear and I could see where they were coming from by recommending the phone audio go up. Although the fix for this was very easy, only requiring me to up the audio gain of the phone segment audio from -20 to -15dB, it is still great that we were able to remedy this and make the experience for the viewer better. 

the audio gain at -15dB now

Change #2

    When we were watching it through again we noticed that in our opening in the dialogue Miguel had said see you tomorrow instead of asking if he was coming over. This was very frustrating because in the ending we decided to have the friend call back and say he was about to get there. Also, the fact that a close-up is done when he says this makes it impossible to cut away without it seeming awkward. So to remedy this I decided to change the voice-over for the friend. Instead of saying that they will call them back like was originally intended the friend asks if he can come over later tonight since he was busy with something. Although this seems a bit redundant and unnecessary considering that he says see you tomorrow it was the best fix that my groupmates and I could come up with. There is enough space for that dialogue to fit in there and does not really mess with the pacing and removes the confusion of the friend saying he is coming soon later in the night despite being established to be coming tomorrow. 

New voice-over to remedy the dialogue mistake

Change #3

    This error came up as I was trying to fix the dialogue mistake where after I inserted the new dialogue I had forgotten to add the parametric equalizer preset to make the phone audio seem like it is on the phone. That contrast of it not having the phone audio effect made it sound auditorily jarring after hearing how the guy sounded earlier over the phone in the same scene so all I had to do was apply the preset again but it goes to show that you should always double check your work or else there could be lingering mistakes that were not meant to be there. 

The audio now has the preset and is fixed. 

Conclusion

    With the peer reviews done, I will start to consider the CCR as I said earlier in the week, and begin to answer the questions so I will be prepared to film. I am thinking I will for sure do a director's commentary, but I do not know what other medium I will select. I am thinking of something like a presentation or a podcast but I will have to decide. Until next time, stay tuned!

Adding Credits and Effects

    To pick up where I left off yesterday with editing I decided to add the credits into the opening as well as add some effects to the reveal of the doppelganger. 

    Adding Credits

    This part was fairly easy we had a large opening segment outside the house with the doppelganger looking from afar at the victim's house. Using this ample time I put all the credits that needed to be added using a crossfade for the text in and out so they were not just suddenly on the screen. I chose to make them red as that hints at the event to come and worked best with the dark blue background and other colors in the opening. 

Here are the credits done don't the timeline above the adjustment layer so that the color was easier to get. Above that is also a sample of how the credits looked in the opening. 

    Not part of the credits but done so in a similar process was the title. For this, I followed the same procedure as the credits but I made the title centered and in large text. I also placed it right after the victim screams (implying his death) which is not immediately clear at that moment and leaves the remaining portion of the opening to understand somewhat of the meaning behind it. Also since the friend is established to be coming over after the title is shown we were able to provide the sense that there is more going on after the opening like an opening should do. 

The title card is shown with the title.

Adding effects

    For the effects, I decided to go with adding the blacked-out eyes from a previous blog post talking about the effects I will add as well as a glitch effect for the reveal of the killer's face. The blacking out of the eyes was quite straightforward and was not too intensive of a process as I had done it before so it was done with relative ease. 

Frame from the blackout eyes section of the opening.

    The glitch effect was also pretty easy since there was an effect for that already in Premiere called VR DIgitial Glitch which allowed the glitch effect to be done. I messed with the noise and distortion levels so that it would not be too much but would still make changes to the video to emphasize the reveal and the unnaturalness of what is now shown. To make it go smoothly I utilized basic keyframes to make an in-and-out feel for the glitch that made it momentary. 

Frame from the glitch showing the momentary distortion while the mask is being taken off. 

Conclusion

    With this editing is basically done and all I have to do is show it to my peers for review which will be the last post of the week. I shall start the CCR in the meantime answering the questions and giving my thoughts on the mediums I will present said answers in on this blog next week. We shall also look to record them next week hopefully so editing will be possible and will not be done at so last second. Until then stay tuned!

Adding sound

     To pick off from last week I wanted to continue editing by adding sound effects, doing the voice-over for the friend, and messing with the audio levels of the project to get them just right. 

Adding Sound Effects

    For this part of the project, although some of it was done through organic sound we captured during filming I still had to add in some more sounds so that what was on screen could not just be seen but also be heard. For this, I first started by doing some voice recordings of the heavy breathing the dark figure would do throughout the project I used this for all the scenes where his heavy breathing was required. Then for the scenes that were shot outside establishing the setting and the killer looking into the house, I grabbed some royalty-free grass rustling and grass walking sounds to give it a more realistic feel with the camera movement aligning with the grass moving. I then got some walking sound effects to use when the camera did not capture the sound of the actor walking. I used that whenever movement was important. I also go an iPhone ringing sound effect for the scene where the figure picks up the phone. Finally, I used music to stimulate suspense and tension. The music I used was from a previous blog I did covering the musical selection I will be using (link here). From these choices, I used Distant Tension for the sting for the killer whenever he would appear and I used Aftermath for the chase sequence. The sounds that were added make the overall project have a more standout creepy feel to it that could not have been developed if not for the sound. 

Used for the sting for the dark figure.

Used for the chase scene sound

Doing the Voice Over

    This part was mostly easy I just used Premiere's built-in voice-over function and the mic I had connected to my computer to add in the friend's audio over the phone.

The voice-over button I used to record the audio.

I also took into account the fact that the audio over the phone should sound a bit muffled through a phone so I utilized the parametric equalizer with the generic lowpass preset to make the audio seem more muffled like it would be through the phone. 

These were the settings I used to get the muffled sound.

Messing with the Audio Levels

    For the audio, I decided to have the sounds be a bit quieter than originally filmed to do this I used the audio gain function and set most clips that were originally shot to -10 and most other sound effects pulled from youtube to -30 to -40. This is what I found made the most sense and made the sounds audible when messed together on multiple tracks. I also applied a denoise effect to all the original audio to remove the background noise to allow the actually intended sounds to shine through. 

This is what the timeline looked like after I finished editing the sound it took 4 audio tracks to get everything done. The first tack mostly was the original audio and the other tracks had the added sound effects for the project. 

Conclusion

    With the around done all I need to do now is add some special effects and the credits for the opening. I have made some great progress and will likely add the special effects and the credits during the same editing session and report it here later this week so stay tuned!

All is Lost or is it?

     Well, it was quite an eventful morning for me today. I woke up to having Hayden make his version of the sequence and having us review it and we find that it is not exactly the best with many pacing errors and just a clunky feel to it overall. So we were considering scrapping everything, getting a new actor, and reshooting it. However, I still had to do my version of the sequence and from there we would see what path to take going forward. So, picked off right where I left off yesterday, with all the clips in a folder labeled to what they are supposed to be, and I am going to order them into the initial sequence and get my group's feedback.

First Sequence Done

    So, after about 30 minutes I was able to make a coherent version of the event for the opening sequence. I had to cut a lot of clips short, slow some down to fit the pacing, and I had to mesh some clips together to give them a flow of movement, especially for the chase scene. Overall, after doing the initial edit I was proud of how it turned out. It seemed like something we could work with going forward and maybe this would be enough to not scrap everything. 

Finished the sequence with all the clips. I will be adding effects to them later, and Hayden will be doing the color correction later as well. The audio also still needs to be done, most of the audio we originally recorded will likely be cut and replaced with foley, vo, and copyright-free sound effects. 

Error

    Although I was able to get this done I then had to render the sequence in to out to ensure all the clips were properly inputted and flowed properly. When I went to do this I faced an error though. 

This was the error I was faced with. I had never seen this before and I had no idea how to fix it. However, I did remember that I faced another error when I was opening up Premiere. 

This was the error that I had when I was opening up Premiere and I thought that this may be the reason that I was facing the issue while trying to render the sequence. 

To solve the issue I decided that it might work if I updated the drivers on my PC because that is what the error when opening Premiere told me was wrong. 

With the drivers now installed I went to check if the error was still occurring.

Premiere opened up properly this time without a pop-up error so things were looking up. 

However, when I went to render the sequence against the error still was popping up. I then took it to the place with all the answers (Google) to see if someone had the same error I was having and if they knew how to fix it.

I found this amazing Youtube video that was able to help me fix it. 

With the solution, he gave I was able to render my sequence finally, so shoutout to him, I would not be able to proceed without his solution. 

Group Feedback

    With that out of the way there was only 1 thing left to do: show my group what I had done and talk about whether or not we should scrap everything. To do this we got onto calls on discord and screen shared in order to show the video easily without having to deal with the hassle of sending it. I first called Hayden and he said what I did looked great and I salvaged what he thought was a lost cause. He said after I showed Miguel then I should give him the file so he could do the color correction for the video. Next, I showed it to Miguela and he also said that what I did worked and looked great so we will not be reshooting everything and we will be going forward with my version. 

Conclusion

    Despite the downs that today had we were able to stay on track for this week and we will hopefully go on to finish this component in a great way that shows off our technique and ourselves. I have sent the files to Hayden to color correct it and when I get back the footage I will add some effects to it as the final touches along with some sound effects. So, stay tuned for that!

SO MANY CLIPS

     So, I finally was able to get all 111 clips sent to me through google drive from Hayden (yay!), but now comes the hard part. I now have to look through all 111 clips to find which ones are usable and which ones are not. This will be a real pain since some of the clips are up to 30 seconds and in total, I think it is 11 GB of footage and there are 2 different folders that I have to look at.

The folder I was sent with 80 clips

More clips were sent directly to my drive since his drive was full.

1 Hour Later

    So, about 1 hour later I was able to look at all the clips properly and label them in a way that would make it easy later on to transfer them into a folder and to understand what they are when I put them into my project bin. There is not really much else to say but I can show you exactly what I did and why it took so long.

As you can see, These were the notes I took of the events of each clip along with their number so I could successfully put them into a sequence later on.

From there I had to download all the clips and put them into a folder so that I could later put them into my project bin. 

Conclusion

    Despite seeming like a small step this will make starting the editing process a whole lot easier overall since I now know what each clip has in it and what clips to use. This narrowed my options from 11 clips down to about 37 which makes it a lot more manageable. Tomorrow I will start to order the clips in a sequence on Premiere in the order we want it based on the storyboard and script, so stay tuned for that!