End of MP 2 Blog Post 1

Intention Definition & Exploration of Ideas: Careful analysis and attention has been given to finding an area of digital media to begin a focus on.

- My theme is Representations of Everyday Life

-When coming up with the idea for this film the idea sparked when I remembered a show I use to watch a long time ago called Wilfred. I wanted to make a film about work-life balance kind of like Wilfred did. In real life, I was trying to figure out the whole work-life balance thing because I got a job over the summer and now I also have to deal with school work. It was hard for me to find time for my hobbies and to just relax. But, after a few months, I got into a good flow by talking to some of my friends who also have jobs. They helped me out I finally feel comfortable again. So, thought I should express how I felt through a film. 

Planning: What to do. Making and communicating decisions; how to implement them, and projecting their consequences

- The first thing I did was write down a main outline of the plot. After I got the main idea of the film down, I made a storyboard for each scene. In my head, I imagined what shots I wanted to do and thought about if I would actually be able to pull them off. After I was finished with that I started on the script to provide more detail and actual lines to make the story flow and make sense. Then, I made a list of props I would need and bought a few I didn't already have around my house, for example, the monkey mask. 

Storyboard:

Editing: 

- At the beginning of my film I made a little into that was the abbreviation of Monkey Business 2 (MB2) and showed clips from my film inside the shapes. I added this to make it more interesting instead of going directly into the film.

- For this edit, I didn't know how to mask out the text, so I looked up a quick tutorial on YouTube to show me. Though in the video, the guy only shows how to put one single clip behind the text. I wanted to have a different clip for each section/letter. I knew about an effect called crop which just allows you to crop your clips, so it would fit its section and wouldn't spill into the section next to it. 

- I also made some speed ramps at the end of my film for the montage section. I knew how to slow down videos but not how to make a ramp so that it's a smoother transition between speeds. I looked up another video that showed the process of creating one. 

Producing: Creating what has been planned.

Evaluating: Evaluating the experience; testing what has been produced and assessing what has been done to determine if the problem has been solved as intended or goals attained. 

- Filming the project went pretty smoothly. The one thing I wish I looked into a little more and prepared for was the lighting for the darker scenes. The one part with the red light, I wish I bought at least one more red light bulb to light the room up a little more. it was too dark and I had to adjust their camera settings to make it look lighter. Me fidgeting with the camera took up some of our filming time. Also, in the one scene when Gavin opens the sliding door to look outside, it was too dark to show the outside. I had to find a light to place outside so the camera could focus on something. If I had thought about it beforehand I could have found a better solution. Also for this film, I wish I used more camera movements because in most of the shots the camera is sitting still on a tripod. 

Integrating: integrating what is learned with knowledge from prior experience to improve an outcome or prepare for the future.  

- From last year in Film II, I worked on a film at my own house for the first time with friends. It was my first film being more in the director role. It helped me practice working with other people in a leadership role and basically giving people orders. Doing it this year I wasn't that nervous to kind of guide my friends to do certain scenes the way I was envisioning them.