Monday, March 24, 2025

Potfolio Project 28 Looking Back

 #28 Looking Back


    Looking back, I don't really remember where the name MEEK came from. I know I originally wanted to call it The Meek, until Alejandro pointed out that 'The Meek' implies theres many of them, so we had it changed. I also remember thinking that my team was gonna hate the name, made sense wasn't the flashiest name in the world, in one of my earlier projects, the film pitch, me and my team had along argument about the name of the project, my didn't get in so it feels very full circle for it to now have.

    All I wanted with this project was to make something EVIL, and as I look at my Hateful Eight (2018) poster thats hanging limp in my chair because I have yet to place it back on my wall after I took it down for the video, and the picture frame that is bloody and broken that was used for said video, I think that I achieved that goal but came out with a positive look. The opening ends on an optimistic note, Ollie will finally go back to his NA meetings... right? Maybe, I didn't think that far. I think the opening evolved as time changed into something with more value than "evil" and the video turned out far better because of that. I'll leave you with this, when I was filming the foot gash shot we didn't film anything that even remotely look like a gash, so in a tired state I mindlessly key framed this, the funniest thing I've ever made: 








Saturday, March 22, 2025

Portfolio Project 27 CCR Editing

 #27 CCR Editing

   

    I am exhausted of editing for now and eternity, there is a special place in my heart that hold the hatred I have for adobe and any adobe product but it's fine now that I'm done. I was right in my last blog, you could see the sweat all over me, it was a little less noticeable when the footage was in black and white but you could definetly see it.

Gross!

    My hair kept moving due to me looking down at my script, anytime I'm not saying lines I'm looking down like a scared emu.

    The second CCR was once again much quicker and uneventful than the first, the end turned out a little bit awkward due me not thinking about how I would line up the last two shots together properly but it turned out fine.
  

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Portfolio Project 26 CCR Filming

 #26 CCR Filming


    How did David Lynch make a one and a half hour long movie about a guy wearing a suit? How did he not die of a heat stroke? How do people work in suits everyday I don't believe it. It was rough filming the first 2 CCR questions, I had to kneels slightly so I could be in the camera, I'm not great at remembering my lines, I had to hold my laptop right under the camera for the script, and like I said I was dying of heat, I'm sure you'll be able of seeing the sweat in the real video, I was sweating more than a pig wearing a Nixon mask. All I can think about now is how the set of Eraserhead smelled.

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    The second CCR was not nearly as difficult, I made a pretty last second change and decided to film at night instead of day because I wanted to use the overhang light in my kitchen for a more bar like look. I could actually sit in a chair, the laptop was right out of frame, I had convenient water for the filming that I could drink, the shoot went by way quicker, and I was wearing a short sleeve button up so it wasn't hot at all. A problem I had was I kept drinking too much water and having to refill it out of stress. I'm realizing now that the first CCR was meant to be shot at night but you can't tell by most of the footage what time it is so I shot it at day, and for this one it was meant to be shot at day but was shot at night, funny how that turned out.

Portfolio Project 25 CCR 3

#25 CCR 3


Finally the last CCR, I am done writing, for a bit now.


Portfolio Project 24 CCR 3

 #24 CCR 3  


    I was stumped on what to do for my second CCR, at first I wanted to do a fake oscars but thats not creative, so I decided to change it. I read a tweet about The Lord Of The Rings, and it made me remember that scene were Aragorn is at the tavern and looks all mysterious, and then that reminded me of the classic trope of someone depressed and drunk at a bar telling you his life story in that in medias res style were they begin their story with, "it all started _ years ago". I hope this trope is common enough for this all to make sense. I also decided to start with question 4 and then 3 since I felt that would be more interesting.



Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Portfolio Project 23 CCR 2

#23 CCR 2   


 Keeping up with the insanity of the Lynch theme, I'm also adding very formal dialogue, or at least semi-formal.




Saturday, March 15, 2025

Portfolio Project 22 CCR 1

 #22 CCR 1


    So my Idea for the first 2 questions, and first video, is to make an artsy, David Lynch inspired little showcase where I edit voice over footage and such with a very small short film that is in black and white and has bizarre stuff happening.




Thursday, March 13, 2025

Production Project 21 Prop Me

 #21 Prop Me


    I've gone over where our props were bought from, I think this is all pretty clear by now. However there was a lot of set up for our little video, all of the props were notably unready for usage when first bought. We had to destroy the photo frame and print out a photo of me, we had to make a bunch of fake glass out of plastic probably shaving it down and making it look glassy, we also had to powder up the mirrors to the point that they look 'used', and of course we had to change the batteries in this little alarm. Now the first thing we did was the frame, we removed the glass pane obviously, we just wanted to bend it, the metal wasn't strong and it eventually snap in half, but it turned out fine cause if anything it only added to the look. We needed a photo but were struggling with the printer since we had to get the dimensions right, it turned out printing way too small but if anything it added to the look of this total loser who can't get anything right so we kept it, we also added comedically placed tape to really sell the look. When we were filming the scene with fake blood  we placed a bit in the frame to make it seem like the blood spread a bit and it wound up looking very raw and interesting, I like it a lot.


    The plastic didn't turn out great, when we were breaking it Alejandro tried standing on it hoping it would shatter and it did nothing, and then i placed my heel on top of it because heels do that for whatever reason, funny story I know. We tried shaving all of the plastic shards but it really didn't do much and we also had to deal with corner pieces that had a small dent and did not look like glass in any way, it looked fine and with the way we shot it I don't think It will be a problem. We didn't have flour so we wound up using NOT artificial sweetener like I was planning on using. but baking soda, and yeah it looked great. The mirrors looked like they were covered in cocaine, it was great, It's funny to think that if I didn't have the thought of using sweetener from watching a bad movie, this project would be entirely different. The radio worked fine, half way through recording we realized that we could hear the radio playing music which was surprising, I had to launch the radio off of my desk a bunch and it somehow survived, Nina has it now.

Portfolio Project 20 Settling On Sets

 #20 Settling On Sets


    We had ONE day to film in my old house, uno, no mistakes, no reshoots, we just had to get it done. We drove to the house and immediately faced our first challenge, they changed the lock. Now we weren't breaking and entering here, I wouldn't admit to that on a blog like a FOOL, my dad had the locks switched early, and this gave us a major issue in our filming process, so we entered the house through the garage, and remember we had to film in the front door, a lot of shots would need us to keep the front door open and to go inside and out for production reasons. Filming the shot-reverse-shot was HELL especially when one of use had to walk inside. The camera woman, Nina, had to stand still and who ever wasn't in shot had to run around the house through the garage, hold the dog to make sure he doesn't run away and run around, ruining our timing, and unlock the door which would AUTO LOCK because it was electronic, then they had to keep relocking it and unlocking to refresh the auto lock's timer, it was a major pain but we got it done. The house also had no water so we went the entire shoot dying of thirst, that includes the poor dog who got a major break after shoot, plus we had to be careful with everything since if anything breaks I would be screwed. Here is a photo of the house from Zillow:

    Filming at my house was a bit easier, my dad was off in Miami and my dog slept outside so we didn't have a lot of problems. It sucked having to take down all of my posters off the wall but it's FINE they can come back. Not a lot of interesting stuff happened relating to the setting but at least we didn't face a lot of issues that couldn't be fixed from not being legally allowed to go into the house.


Portfolio Project 19 Consumer Goods

 #19 Consumer Goods


    We needed a lot of props for this and had like 3 before hand. These props included: A couple of mirrors, a radio, a clock, broken glass, a picture frame, fast food bags and cups, and a dog, of those we had a single mirror, a clock, and a dog. Alejandro picked us up and drove us over to the dollar store, they didn't really have a lot that we wanted, we got these two tiny circle mirrors and they work fine, there's a metal bit sticking out of them and we're probably gonna have to rip them off plus they are very small but with good stage directing that won't be a problem. Alejandro also had the GENIUS idea of using those hard plastic bowls for the broken glass, chiseling them to give them that sandy glass look. Overall we walked out of the dollar store with 2 mirrors, one plastic bowl, and two things of beef jerky because we were hungry, boy I wonder how we're gonna handle that issue!!!

    We were actually gonna just get a bunch of bags from Macdonalds but we realized we should get things like those burger wrappers and fries holders and such, plus we were hungry sooo.... I paid for everything. The bags didn't show up a lot in the video but im still glad we got it.

    Last we needed a radio/clock, we merged the two by buying an alarm clock radio. We went to Goodwill and found the perfect one immediately, it was greasy, very greasy, Alejandro had to wash his hands to get whatever was in it. We originally wanted to get a radio and analog clock but there weren't any good ones and we wanted to cut bluff for time and I'd say it worked out in the end.

Sunday, March 9, 2025

Portfolio Project 18 Editing Start

#18 Editing Start 


    Last time,  during the music marketing project, I did most of the editing, my team mate Nina doing some changes and additions. This time the opposite will be true as she is going to be the main editor of the project with me and probably Alejandro doing secondary things. So far what she mostly has done is put the clips together in the timeline which is a lot when you actually sit down and do it. While filming we wound up reshooting everything near the start since we figured out a way to make the shots look better, and properly white balanced to get the pre-editing yellow look.

    

I don't mean to give us too much credit, but I kind of love this shot

Saturday, March 8, 2025

Portfolio Project 17 Editing Plan

 #17 Editing Plan


    The most common thing I ever say while filming a project and my team mates don't think it's looking good is:" don't worry, it'll come together in editing". Storyboards, scripts, and shot plans are very very helpful but I am a very amateur film maker, and I over shoot how much I can actually do while filming all the time. Sometimes some shots just don't work out, my last blog was about working with my dog and I didn't mention how we had to scrap a wide shot of the dog barking at the door since we couldn't figure out a way to make him face it, wound up having to replace it. We faced a similar issue trying to get those low angels of the dog, however those will be salvaged in editing, we will use cut aways to the dog as if he were intruding Ollie's mind while he lays on his bed. An obvious example of this being in Empire season 1 episode 1, we just recently had to watch and excerpt for this in media studies and me an my team used this scene of the hospital as our example.