AICE Media Studies

We finally had the finished product! We were all so excited. Unfortunately, Isaac had to leave. Without Isaac, we wouldn’t be able to make as many choices, as we wanted to include him too. To make use of the remaining time, we just played it a few times while watching. Sammie has a huge collection of vinyl, so while we watched it we played one of our favorite records. While playing it, we continued to watch our video over. In one take, the music just so happened to line up perfectly with the video! The song had a lyric that said, “Brown eyes,” and in the video, it cut directly to a close-up shot of Amelie’s brown eyes. We all had a short moment of laughing and freaking-out. While this song would fit lyrically, it doesn’t have the vibe we wanted. We still needed a song that felt creepy. Something that would make the audience feel Amelie’s insanity. Although we couldn’t get the rights, we put our original song over it just to see how it would look. As we expected, it fit very well. We we

Back at the house, we all got settled down and prepared to edit our video. All the photos were already on Sammie's phone. This meant we had no issue transferring any of the footage. Sammie got all the videos set up onto her computer in no time. She opened her software to put all the clips together. We ordered all the clips in the order that our teacher said too. Each title had a certain place in the video. We also needed to add fade-ins at the beginning and end. Sammie did this easily by just dragging one in. They were supplied by the software itself. This made the whole thing very easy. We all made little comments on the order before it was finalized. After we got the order of the clips, we had to cut them down. The video was barely over the amount of time we needed, which was concerning. We did not want to cut too much out, as it would make the video shorter. However, we just accepted that we would need more footage. This allowed us to just cut down what made the video look silly

The only thing left that we wanted to do was a dutch angle. The bookshelf was filled to the brim, so we just took some of them out. After gently placing them down, we took our last custom book prop. We liked how it looked placed on its side diagonally. Sammie got her camera and filmed a pan shot of the whole bookshelf. This was alright, but it did not give us the intended effect. To fix this issue, Sammie got closer to the prop itself. She then turned the camera to align it with the book. It looked great, and we were all happy with the result. We got everything we needed at that point. After checking the list one more time, we walked around the store for any remaining shots we could get. Assuming that the video was going to be too long already, we left. On the ride back, we discussed the problem with the music. Since Colin Greenwood was a dead end, we needed a new pick. Radiohead was still our first choice. Other than that song, we didn't have many lined up. Maybe a classical piece

On our way to Barnes and Noble, we stopped for some breakfast right across the street. While eating, we discussed our plan. All we needed were the missing shots with the props. Once we finished up breakfast, we walked over to the store. Immediately, we went to the little corner that we first filmed in. Amelie brought her sweater that she wore the first time. The rest of her outfit was different though, so we could only get shots of her arm. Fortunately, that’s all that was needed. Isaac brought the list of required shots and crossed them off as we filmed. First, we got a tilt of Amelie’s hand laying on the ground with the bracelets on. It was slightly choppy, but the lettering was clear, which was all that we needed. We took a few tries of this until we were satisfied with the outcome. Next, we took a few books out of the shelf behind Amelie’s head and replaced it with the props. Sammie filmed a pan of the entire row of books and stopped at ours. She used cinematic mode on her phone, b

Today, we decided to go out and finish filming and editing! A few days ago, we all texted each other and asked who was free on which days. The only day we all had free time was today. We all decided to show up to Sammie’s house at 10 AM to get an early start. Last night, when we were planning, Sammie decided to make some of our props for today. She printed off colored paper with Isaac and I’s names on them. She wrapped the pages around old books so it looked like our names were printed on the book spines. Each of our names were accompanied by a title such as, “Edited by..” We were going to use these for title cards in the video. She sent pictures of the completed books and we all agreed it looked great. Sammie said that we could finish the rest of our props tomorrow morning. We thought so too, so we wished each other goodnight and got to Sammie’s house the next morning! Traffic was rough, but we all got there as soon as we could. Once we were all there, we looked at our to-do list. The

Our group has finally moved forward with our filming process. Now we have to get over a large obstacle, music. Our teacher told us that we would need to use royalty free music, unless we got permission from the people who made a published song. The last thing we wanted was for the music to be generic when we were trying to convey a creepy mood to our audience. We tried to brainstorm for song ideas, looking through Spotify playlists and such. After a while, I suggested we use "Everything in Its Right Place." This is a Radiohead song and it seems like a perfect fit for our concept. The song starts fairly mellow but progressed to something loud and overwhelming, which is exactly how we wanted to convey Amelie's emotions. We got to work immediately. I found as many people related to Radiohead as possible. I sent Amelie their Instagram accounts, Twitter accounts, store email, etc. She reached out on every possible platform I gave her. We waited a few days and when we felt like

To continue where I left off, we all sat in a circle and pulled up our teacher's list of shots we should have in our video. Isaac wrote them down on one of Amelie's notebook so we could cross them out. I took the pencil and put a tiny check next to the ones we had already got when wandering around the store. After seeing the remaining shots, we decided to try and get a high angle of Amelie sitting down. The only way to get a high angle of her was over the bookshelf behind her. However, even though I am the tallest of the group, I still couldn't reach over it. We decided to go on a quest around the store to find a stool. Sammie and I ventured downstairs to grab stool from the record sections. We hauled the stool upstairs to our corner, and I placed it behind the shelf Amelie was sitting at. We took multiple shots of Amelie sitting down on the floor to make sure it was perfect. Now that we had that, we could focus on the actual part of the film where she was going crazy. Samm

A couple days ago, we filmed the first few scenes of our final task! We had a half day of school, so we decided that we could film after school and be home by the time school would normally end. Sammie drove the four of us to get lunch and then we went to Barnes and Noble, where we planned to film. Once we got there we scoped the store and found a quiet corner that we could film in front of a bookshelf. When pitching the idea, we decided that Amelie would be the actor. She came prepared in a schoolgirl outfit. We thought that her acting crazy would be further exemplified if she was dressed neatly but had running makeup. Before we shot our first scene, Amelie pulled some purple eyeshadow from her bag and put it under her eyes, to make herself look tired and slightly crazed. Once she was happy with her look, we left our corner and walked around to get some other shots. Isaac pointed out that we should have an establishing shot, but I said that it would make it seem like a sitcom. We comp

Today, we planned our the logistics and schedule for filming the final task! We made our storyboard, which you can see in the blog before this one. We have our ideas for all the shots and scenes we want to include. For example, we thought that only doing our title cards on the actor's notebook would be repetitive. Sammie pitched that we use items around our actor to show the title cards. Very "Napoleon Dynamite". We thought this was a cool idea, but we were unsure how to execute it. Sammie said we could all come over one day and make a pencil engraved with the name of our producer, and a book spine with our editor's name on it. We loved this idea and agreed to come over sometime soon. Next, we had to choose when we would film. We knew there was a half day coming up recently. All of us were free immediately after school, so that time seemed perfect. Once that was figured out, we needed an actor. Amelie said she would love too and she has the most "acting" exp