It’s close, the end, that is. Filming has finished. I cannot edit it to my liking, so I’m sending it to a trusted editor who I have worked with in the past. Not only does he have more experience, but he also has After Effects and Premiere. Compiling the films will be kinda difficult, but not impossible. I created yet another paper to help my editor understand what’s happening. Things are DARK, but I filmed a better ending than I had. The end is nigh, and I’m ready for it. I’m excited to see the final product. As far as I know, my work is nearly done. I just have to send the files to my editor, wait for a little bit, and then recieve the edited versions and upload it to YouTube in a way which will conform to the Choose Your Own Adventure standard. I’m hopeful. The due date still lingers in the back of my mind, but I know it will go in my favor. My work is mostly done, so now it’s waiting time.
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, This was the week of frustration. Things just did not work sometimee. I had a clear goal in mind for this week, get intro, outro, and episode 1 filmed. However, my time was consumed doing the intro and trying to format episode 2 that not much else really got finished, I’m still hoping to film some of the episode 1 stuff filmed tonight however. So far though, the intro has been almost finalized. The ideal sunset I wanted I could not get. Trees played a major factor in this. That and the season. Because the sun didn’t go very far up, I couldn’t get it go nicely behind the trees without it going down at an angle. I tried finding stock footage, but nothing free really captured it very well. So I made my own footage. I have an astronomy application on my computer that can emulate the night sky and more importantly, the sunset. So I chose a nice mountain lake location and used the built in screen capture functionality. This proved difficult to make it look nice, as the film window was tiny and recorded in 240p. That was out of the question. My second idea was to capture it with the Windows Screen Recorder and crop the corners a bit so it looked more realistic. That also proved difficult as the computer I was using to edit was from 2012 so the Windows 10 Screen Recorder didn’t support the hardware. At this point I was about to give up on the astronomy program but I finally found a decent free screen recorder. It recorded in 360p, but at least it’s better than 240p. It still doesn’t look great. I added a fade in of the title “One of Those Days” in a nice postcard font with the 360p sunset in the background. It worked out fine, and I was about to go ahead and add some music, but I was sidetracked. While adding the iPhone footage into Premiere, I found that the .MOV files that the movies were couldn’t be put into Premiere because the new codec that the iPhones had couldn’t be deciphered with 2008 Premiere. I had to change the format of the files before it would accept them. The Canon camera I used to film the previous film had it saved under .WMV, so I sought out to change the format. I had to download a program to change it, a program to move them into Premiere, and finally a codec replacement tool so it wouldn’t spit them back out again. This made transporting the films a LOT longer, but it finally rendered them all. I had all the films in there, and then it was time for the outro. I filmed a nice video of me jazzily playing the ocarina to the song “Rotisserie” by Yung Gravy because I thought it would be funny. I separatly filmed the audio so it would be clear, but I never did get around to formatting those to my liking. They will definitely take the longest out of all of them.
More has been filmed for the project. About 1/2 has, in fact. Not only has most of Episode 3, but now some of Episode 2. I would currently feel pretty good about editing what I currently have and posting it now. I won’t do that though, because I already wrote out all of the rest of it. I went to a friends house for another actor, and took full advantage of the equipment I brought, (My phone, a flashlight, and the paper), and of the stuff there. My actor was dead on the ground with a concoction of ketchup, water, and corn starch for coagulation, smeared across his face for blood. I went up to the body, investigated, and took the equipment he had. Some cooler story elements were added to make the flow better, but otherwise I stuck pretty close to the draft. While there, I also got experience popping a shoulder back into socket, which is a good life lesson. The only other part I wish I got to filming was the introduction. I wanted to make it stand out, so in my head it was going to be a 360 around me on the ground, an upward zoom via drone, and then the fade in of the words “Just one of those days”, but I ran into complications. The drone can’t to video, it just does still photographs. The photographs also look as good as a DSI camera, which wasn’t going to fly. My second idea was a timelapse of sunset to night time, with the words fading in there instead. My plan was film right after I got off work, and get the sunset that way. However, I got off of work at 6, and because it is Autumn, the sun was already down. I’ll probably have to start filming at about 4 to capture the whole thing. Another problem I ran into was the fact that it is all filmed during nighttime. It’s cool on paper, character is stuck in endless loop of night, and can only get out when monster stops chasing him. The problem was I don’t have very much lighting equipment. I film on my phone which can film with a flashlight on so it picks up about a foot in front of it. In Episode 2, I find a flashlight that I also used for lighting. Hopefully it will turn out better than I think it will, because not much can be seen right now. Maybe with the inclusion of music and a few effect, people will understand what’s happening. Aside from that though, this film seems much better than the last.
Project: CYOA has had a complete revamp. The old script was trashed, a new storyline was created, and about 1/5 has been filmed. I’m much happier with this film, however that could be due to the length if time that had passed since its conception. Yesterday me and my sister filmed some random clips of an entity killing me in various ways, just playing around with the camera, and it actually looked really nice. Camera angles and artistic visuals were the main focus, along with some humor. I don’t think I’ll use the humorous parts, but it helped persuade me to trash the old project and begin anew. I was toying with using some of the older footage, but I don’t think it would flow well, so I don’t think I will. I also set up a better system of knowing what else needs to be done by writing down each episode and their branching paths, and then highlighting the segments that I already filmed In conclusion, the film has restarted, but I’ve already finished more than I did in the first film
The introduction is nearly done. That being said, if I can’t get my film crew together to get another good day of filming, the rest won’t be completed.
I am very proud of my introduction. About 2 hours worth of filming have been compiled into a 1 minute segment. The music has been difficult, and trying to get it to cooperate with the reat of the video is difficult. Sam acted better than I thought. He woke up, got dressed, walked through the hall, and looked at a picture. The choose your own adventure part happens when the viewer chooses to either notice the photograph or walk past the photograph. Each photograph represents another path that Sam could take. The plot of the story is looking at each photograph changes the course of the world. Noticing the photographs changed multiple aspects of the world. Olivia is blind and Sam is deaf because those portions of the photograph were not visible. Sam and I’s world is black and white due to the photograph being in black and white. There is 3 pictures of Sam and Zach, so the day repeats over and over.getting sound effects was also challenging. I had to find free alarm clock sounds along with other sound effects. The music is great and worth my money. As the end nears, the project is still open. That being said, progress has been made this week and last week more than probably the rest of the weeks combined. Last week the introduction was filmed as well as seperate, individual scenes from different parts within the three-part story. While none of the three branch stuff has been compiled and completed, the introduction has been nearly completed. After filming it, I put the film into a file on some obscure Adobe project that never really made it into the fonal cut, but was still released as a standalone. It was cheaper, but it was also awfully slow and rendered awfully as well. But it could edit videos, so I used it. I put the takes together and created the coherant introduction. Zach’s part still needs to be filmed, and the intro scene needs to be filmed, and audio needs to be added to the whole thing, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is it’s close to being done. As for the rest of the project, it’s still in the air. Worst case, it won’t be Choose your own Adventure, it will just be one storyline, which isn’t as fun. But if I can pull it all together, the product will be really cool I think. Anyways, if I get as much done as I have been in the last few weeks, the project will probably be completed. Filming is a huge issue though. Getting everyone together is very difficult, which is why a one storyline video may have to happen. Anyways, this week’s workload was pretty hefty. Many hours were spent editing and fixing the problems that occured to make a 45 second at nost segment seem perfect. Editing is hard, but I’m getting a grasp on it now that I’ve been doing it for a little bit. I forgot how cool it was to see my work in such a literal way like a video. I used to make YouTube videos where I was the main actor and I got someone else to edit, and that was really fun. My project has the same vibe as those videos. In conclusion, this week was productive.
l Film day is finally upon us, and the preparation phase has ended. The script is written, my actors know their parts, and it’s looking to be a very productive day. Scheduling has still been an issue, but nothing too crazy. Film day had to be switched because one of my actors couldn’t make it, and so I moved it to Friday, and he can’t come Friday either. So I’ll probably film Sam’s intro, Sam and I’s part, and Sam and Olivia’s part. The incorporation of the choose your own adventure will not be as expansive as the examples found on the internet, but it will still be incorporated. The person watching will be able to choose which path to take, and that is by definition, choosing your own adventure. I reread the script recently, after letting it sit for a while, and I found myself not liking some of the dialogue that I had written. To solve this problem, I gave my actors much more liberty in making the part theirs. Some scenework will be done on location, actually most of it. I’m pretty against the idea of me, by myself, coming up with all of the dialogue and how things will work. Because of this, I don’t really think of myself as a director. The directing won’t lie with one person, but with everyone. I’m more comfortable making myself the planner and filmer. I set up the storyline, my actors adjust their respective parts and in the end, the product will hopefully be something we can all be proud of. Worst case, the plotline won’t be as coherent as it could have been, but as is, it’s not that coherent anyways. I’m not doing it to tell a grand story, or to teach a valuable lesson. I’m doing it for me, to see a story I wrote be adapted to a choose your own adventure format. And if I’m really upset with the project, I have a backup. This backup would be a completely different idea that doesn’t even include filming or acting or anything. That’s my second choice, just in case. It is possible that the film will be terrible and make everyone uncomfortable. The reason I bring that up is because a few student films I’ve watched recently have made me uncomfortable because I didn’t like the story, and I’d hate to invoke that feeling in the viewers of this project. It isn’t all that different than my “What not to do” film that 1, some of my actors were in, and 2, I was also in. But I want it to be clearly distinct. I want to add comedic tones and lighten the overall product up more than it would have been before, so another option is a script rewrite. I’m considering this, even though we are close to film day. All in all,
This week I focused the most on setting dates for when filming will begin. Our scheduled day one will be Tuesday of next week. This date has the least amount of scheduling conflicts, which is why it is next week instead of this week. The completed script has also been shared with my actors and actresses, so they can begin rehearsing and practices before filming day arrives.
I tried as hard as I could to start the filming this week so less time would be wasted, but I couldn’t squeeze it in. Everyone has separate schedules so planning a long filming day is pretty difficult. Aside from those conflicts, things have gone pretty well so far. Only two conflicts have happened, those being the aforementioned scheduling difficulties and an actor disagreeing with the actions that take place in the film. This has since been worked out, and now we are back to smooth sailing. My actor didn’t like how he died in my film, so I changed the script a bit so he died over and over and over again. This helped the situation and appeased my upset actor. The script has been shared with my actors and actress, and hopefully they will begin memorizing and practicing for film day. It isn’t very long or difficult, so practicing and memorizing should be easy. I have been working on memorizing my lines, and I have faith that my actors have as well. In conclusion, my project is coming along swimmingly. I wished that I had gotten more done by now, but because I had so much time to work on filming, leniency will still work as long as work is still happening. And it has. I’m still in the organizational period. I am looking forward to the filming date, and practicing and memorizing will definitely support the final product Week 4(?) has gone by and I’m pretty happy with my progress. Scripting has been completed, and everything is in place for filming whenever the date comes. Ideally me and my three actors will all be able to get together and film it all in one day, but this may not be possible. Especially if props or makeup and multiple shoots are needed. In a perfect world the filming process would take 3-6 hours. Now this is a big range, and that’s because there is many variables in filming.
The script came out well, and communication between me and my actors helps to prepare for the filming date. I can only remind the crew to practice their lines and such, but I have faith that they will do well. To my knowledge we all have acting and filming experience, which will definitely speed up the process. Me and Sam have even filmed together before, which is even better. Incorporating the choose your own part of the film series is a bit more difficult than I thought, but it should work. Because the script is short relative to other scripts I’ve written, the filming portion will definitely not take up as many weeks as I had planned for them to take. I think another week should go to formatting, and the final week should be polishing the end product and releasing it onto the internet. I’m definitely most excited that I was able to get to use a few songs that I had planned to use but didn’t think I could without paying a large sum of money, but I got them for just $12. I mean, it’s a bit sketchy but it is what it is. You can only ask so much from a soundcloud artist. I’m hoping it will come together well. I was looking into student made films from around here, and one I saw had the same level of tension and an intense story, but it came together poorly. I was able to come up with three reasons why this film came out poorly. Poor use of camera, a poorly written plot, and bad characters. This is saying something because I was in the film I’m using as an example of what not to do. In conclusion, things are coming together nicely, and soon the idea will become a reality. This week I finished my script, discussed filming dates, and researched student films and the pros and cons of such. The final preparations are complete and now it’s film time Well another week of Genius Hour has gone by, and I am pretty close to filming. Once a few script pieces are written, the filming will commence. After speaking to my actors and actress, I have come up with the best way to format the videos, and finalized how the story will take place. Right now me and my film crew are looking into locations and dates for filming. Based on my estimate of how time and work would be split among 12 weeks, I have a lot of room fir modifications before the editing process. Unless editing takes an obscene amount of time that I didn’t account for in my estimate, everything is still on track. Next week I’ll plan out props, filming days, and any script modifications if needed. At the moment, the idea is still an idea. It hasn’t been translated to anything of any substance quite yet. That being said, I’m hoping that will change within the next 2-3 weeks. As of right now, I have a working script, a completed storyboard, and most equipment needed to propel Project: CYOA off the ground. My film team has access to a nice enough camera to film, however we do not have editing software. I do not have editing software. Because of this, for the editing process, either someone who has the equipment will have to edit, or I will have to edit using their software. While this is a problem, it is nowhere near an unsolvable, project-ruining problem. At most it wil lengthen the editing process, leaving less room for filming, but as previously stated, I have a lot of room in that respect. Reflecting on this week, I feel that I used my time to my advantage, and really pursued the goal of finalizing the preliminary stages of filming. I have a lot of faith in my actors and actress, and feel that they will definitely act well. I guarantee it. And I’m confident that I will as well.
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AuthorNoah Etter, ArchivesCategories |