Oh no! the water supply!!!!!!

 So, as you guys know, I´ve been doing stuff, right...  my big next project wasn't as self-centered as the one I talked about in my last blog post. This was way more interesting and fun! Let me introduce you to...

OUR FILM DISTRIBUTION PROJECT!

I say "OUR" because lucky for me, I had the privilege to work with 2 other amazing classmates that I enjoyed working with so much, Kaylie Fretwell and Maria Peacock! 

For this project, my group received 3 short stories from a creative writing class in which we had to decide to bring 1 of them to life! We decided to step out of our comfort zone and do something we had never done before; an action film. 

The story was a little...weird, but we worked through it and did a pretty decent job. Our film was about a vigilante, Raith, who returned to being a vigilante after an old friend and villain, Crimson, reemerged back into the public eye to, for some reason, poison the city's water supply. It was a story written by Amad Rizvi (we did not meet him, but he does deserve the credit). Rizvi had originally named the film "Sinners Past" but we changed it to "Crimsons wave" because we wanted to incorporate the poisonous water supply theme of the piece. 

For this project, we were only assigned to work on 2 things, a teaser for the movie and a trailer. Now, with so much in our hands, my group and I started working right away, we 1st researched the hell out of the action genre and watched different trailers and teasers for some of the best-marketed action movies. Shang Chi and, BABY DRIVER, created dialogues, talked about miscenesene elements, cast and characters, costume design, who was going to edit, and all the stuff that goes behind the scenes. 

We came to the conclusion that it would have been a good idea to make Maria play Crimson´s character, and Kaylie, Raith´s character. That way we had more control over the characters since you know, every mind is a different world. When we finally decided on each of the character's costumes, Maria and Kaylie took some pictures for us to work on our key art! Maria is the brain behind the Key art, here's what after brainstorming for some time about the colors, outfits, and poses she put together for part of the distribution 

They're awesome right!??? The keyart on the left would be distributed as our print one, which includes film festivals, small showings, even maybe movie theaters that's why it includes some credits, at the bottom, and even the release date. On the right, however, would be our key art for online distribution, it is noticeable that this one is more condensed and is appealing to the eye which can help whoever is scrolling online to stop for a second or even enough time for them to check out the teaser or watch the trailer.

As soon as Maria had a rough idea of what she was going to do with the posters, we started to throw ideas around for both the teaser and the trailer. Kaylie and maria had really good ideas that were all over the place but somehow made sense for us. Since I was the one in charge of editing I suggested we storyboarded, which really helped all of us to have a good view of what our final project could look like.

 

                                                            QUALITY IS S#%T Sorray m8

Honestly, I hate doing stick figures on silly tiny rectangles, but I do it for my future self, I knew that I didn't storyboard this project was going to go to S#%T, and my future self thanks to my past self for that! THANK YOU. Because without that I could have not edited with both of our amazing TEASER and TRAILER. 

Teaser rundown from editors POV:  As an amateur editor, I  was scared for my life, I have a very basic knowledge of Premiere Pro, and not going to lie I was scared my group was going to think my editing skills stank. However, that's life, it was challenging yet It was the most fun I've ever had while editing. Personally, I realized how much I enjoy editing and how fun it is to bring the footage together and create something interesting and intriguing. Since the teaser was a little more slow-paced than the trailer it wasn't as hard, but since it was the first one I did, I was very self-conscious of my abilities. Not to brag but I did pretty well IMO.

    Most challenging things for the teaser:

• Some of the footage quality was A$$, which made me mad
• Finding a good song that wasn't copyrighted that fit the theme/ genre         

Trailer rundown from editors POV:  Recording was really fun, we went out to a park in public to record, it was harsh because it was outside so the lighting in some clips was different, there was a lot of background noise in some clips, but it was productive and we got lots of footage. Once again, I was very much scared for my life because I'm not a Pro at Premiere Pro. It was very time-consuming, cutting clips for the fast-paced editing, fixing the timeline, making the audio match the scenes, making the dialogue hearable (did not work too well), finding a good font, god damn it was SO much work! But loved every second of it, I was so invested in seeing the final product. 

    Most challenging things for the Trailer:

• I have no idea how to fix audio on premier pro after 100000 YouTube videos
• Way too much footage that wasn't necessary; it was annoying going through all the clips to see what worked and didn't 
• Spent way too much time trying to figure out transitions and didn't even use them... #fail

    I would say this was a great learning experience, I didn't think I would enjoy editing so much before doing this but now I'm open to whatever comes next! About the hero, however, there was definitely so many things we could have done way better, which after doing the class critiques, helped us see the thing we were missing, like maybe focusing more on Kayilies character (Raith) since she was supposed to be the hero, she deserved a little more spotlight. I'm glad we got to learn more about distribution and be selective and careful on the way things are thrown out for the consumers. 

that's it for this blog!

PAZ!