CCR ideas PP#26

     CCR?  Creative Critical Response?

    Never done something like this before.  But one part stems out a lot in that description, and I really like it.  

Creative.

    And with this, I have a couple ideas.  

    I immediately had the idea of an interview-style type of reflection, where I play as both the interviewer and myself in the same interview.  

https://youtu.be/CDyXod3wBME

^^^^^^^^

    Something like this!

    In this video, Markiplier, an amazing YouTuber, plays the role of himself, and also plays Wilford Warfstache, an incoherent interviewer.  He goes way over the top when asking the questions, and I think I wanna take a lot of inspiration. I wanna make the interviewer ask ridiculous questions, but I wanna be able to actually answer the question in a coherent way, and answer the CCR as the answers should be presented.

    I have to make a script for this of course, and I'll keep you updated once I make one!

                                                                                                                            -Noa

Distribution? PP#25

     I'm going to try to make it to theaters around the world.

KIDDING!

    That would be really dumb, and there would be no way of that happening.  Plus, it probably wouldn't perform too well, considering the whopping budget of zero dollars.  

    But for real talk, we're obviously going to have to start out small.  YouTube is an excellent platform to start on.  I've already uploaded a couple videos, so uploading another video is gonna be easy.  But YouTube is one of the most popular video services in the world, so trying to post it on there is going to be a good idea.  

    Another way to get it out there is maybe film festivals?  FilmFreeway.com has some ways to get yourself into a film festival, and a couple of places I'm seeing are actually pretty local and are in Miami.  I think maybe getting into a film festival.  There's one called Miami Short Film Festival, and I think I'll look into that one and maybe try to present it there, so it can get some exposure.

    Social Media is important!

    That would be another good idea for exposure.  Maybe Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat would be good ways in order to spread Nat20.  Uploading them to their own dedicated accounts, and making promotions, along with showing clips of the movie!

                                                                                                                                -Noa

Audience? PP#24

     The audience for Nat20 isn't really a thin line, fortunately.  I think this movie would be mostly enjoyed by anyone in the age range of 14-28, mostly consisting of males (since the movie mainly has males)  and I feel like that would be an age that many people would be able to relate to the teenagers, but also all the struggles that they are going through.  The ideas are easy to understand on the surface, the but situations, and the way they are handled show a much bigger picture than what is just presented.   

    I do wanna say that I believe an older audience would also appreciate the film as well, since a large part of the movie, Dungeons, and Dragons, is really apparent for this older audience.  I think they too, would also be able to feel the pressure and understand the situation, and the leisure that DnD could potentially bring.  For this older audience, I'm thinking maybe 40-60, geeks who enjoyed playing DnD in the past.  I think they would understand a lot that would be going on, especially for the DnD portions.

                                                                                                                                -Noa

Representation of Nat20 PP#23

     With so much talk on how I created the final piece of my opening, I think I wanna talk a little bit more of what it represents.  

    Now although I dont have any personal experiences that can really drive this represntaiton to have a really high amount of meaning, there are some aspects that I'd like to talk about that led me to how I got the representation.  

    One of the main drives for this film was my love for Dungeons and Dragons.  I love playing, and although I only learned recently over the span of quarantine and now, the amount it has brought to me has been really amazing.  It's like an escape from reality, as you can be transported from one world to another.  And this is enhanced with the idea on bringing friends into the mix, which can take it up a whole notch.  Having some people to play with, and mixed with a great story, who knows what can happen.  

    And with this core personal idea in mind, I thought I'd implement that with the idea is trauma and despair.  

    I know that was a total 180, but let me explain.  Although I don't have massive trauma from a significant event, or something that has happened in my life, but I do feel pretty distraught from time to time, and somedays DnD felt like a really nice route out of reality.  With so much going on in our regualr everyday lives, it can be hard to get a grasp on reality.  

    This is where the representation comes in.  I wanted to portray a group of friends, totally going through hell at home, but are able to be themselves when mixed with DnD and friends coming together.  The opening is only going to show the friends together, laughing it up, but towards the end of the opening, we see one of the characters heading home, distraught.  This would entail the rest of the film showing the DnD and at home dynamic between the kids, as the go home for hell, and get together for heaven.  

FONTS PP#22

     Man, fonts are hard to find.

    I think I spent a good 30 minutes of genuinely looking at fonts.  And it was so frustrating because they all looked the same, and then I would scroll past a couple outliers that were just so crazy, there would be no way to include it in my opening.

    DaVinci fortunately made it easy to find fonts, since they had a bunch to choose from, but I knew what I would generally go for when it comes to the specific font that I wanted to find.  Firstly, I wanted a font that would fit both in a fantasy setting, and a realistic setting.  Therefore, I would be able to keep continuity when showing off the actors names, in both the beginning fantasy portion, and the realistic second part.  

    Then, I wanted something simple to read.  Big bold lettering would've been preferred, and I wanted to make sure the font would be able to be read in an instant, and wouldn't make the audience think twice or have to squint their eye.  

    Then, after some digging, I came to the C section of the alphabetically listed fonts, and came across Castellar.

    It was love at first sight.  The font looked fitting enough to be subjected into real life, and also had a fantasy look to it.  The lettering looks something outta ancient Rome, which is good since the beginning part is supposed to be taken place long ago.  

    Overall, I'm really liking how it looks, and it looks really good for the actor title cards, and the general subtitles in the opening.  

Here's an example!

    There might be better font out there, but I think this is the best one I will find.  

                                                                                                            -Noa

Editing is done! PP#21

     Now, remember when I said that I love editing?  Well, I wasn't joking.  

    I've been hard at work for the past couple days, I'd say about 5 days in total, and I've just been hacking at the footage, and I finally have a cohesive piece put together.  The following blog posts after this one are gonna be breaking down some of the aspects in my piece, but for now I'll talk about my overall editing experience.  

    Firstly, editing a two minute film is tough for my computer.  Constant lagging took place, and when you have so much media being inputted into the application, things tend to slow down.  

    Inputting all this media put such huge strain on my computer, and towards the end things really started to slow down.  It started off really nice, since, y'know, there would only be so much media, but adding more and more made the process slower and slower.  

But it was still fun to edit, especially the beginning portion.  This would culminate a slow start, then immediately build up fast.  

    This is the timeline of the beginning, and the white bits are text boxes to introduce the actors, and the green parts are music.  For the blue bits, which is the actual video, I had to overlap and cut major parts of the original video, which is pretty much editing 101.  The real hard part was making sure the audio would still line up when messing around with the clips.  For example, when I would show another clip with audio, the switch to another clip, but still use the same audio, it would be hard to mae the context of the scene match up.  But after some fiddling, I managed to get it down right.  

    This is the timeline of the rest of the opening, which you can see is a lot more extensive than the beginning part.  I had to add more white bits, especially towards the end so I can mention myself!  I put the tags edited by, directed by, produced by, and written by, and then cut to a shot of it saying "Noa Batista"

    Also this part just had generally more clips, obviously, but this meant that there would be overlapping portions since the characters are talking to each other a lot more here.  So the back and forth audio needed to be carried over as the characters would talk to eachother.

                                                                                                                                -Noa

The Music of Nat 20 PP#20

     After some digging, I found some songs.  And lemme just say, the songs on the YouTube Audio Library is just not the best.  I mean, it has some good songs, but the reality is that since they're all royalty-free, it was really apparent that they wouldn't be good.  HOWEVER, after a ton of digging, I found three songs that I'll use for my opening.

The first song I found was from Vadim Krakhmal.  This fantastical song would fit perfectly for a DnD song, and would make it seem like something from a medieval scene.  However, I have to include the following:

Music: Vadim Krakhmal - Journey To The Toucan Isle Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported - CC BY-SA 3.0 https://soundcloud.com/jeaniro 

Supported by NCM: https://youtu.be/BT_m449iJzM 

    Next, a heavy song, that fast-paced for a battle scene.  I managed to find one called:

I managed to find this one just straight out of the YoutTube Audio Library.

    After that, some background music for friends playing DnD in their mom's basement.  

    This one is actually made by the same person as the last one!  Thanks Patrick!

  

    And finally, a concluding song, which I found:

These are the songs I plan on using!

                                                                                                                            -Noa

Sources!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URY8wHgWtbs&ab_channel=NoCopyrightAudioLibrary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKCgqq_4IkA&ab_channel=NoCopyrightAudioLibrary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT_m449iJzM&ab_channel=NoCopyrightMusic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQyrPovC7pM&ab_channel=NoCopyrightMusic

What I need for Music of Nat 20 PP#19

    Before I say anything about music that I'm going to use in my opening, I wanna make a couple of pointers that I would go with.  Firstly, I didn't want to use any copyrighted music.  I didn't want to deal with having to email people and get struggle to get permission, only to be told by the corporate overlords that it would be only cost a whopping $1000 a year.  Fun fact my sister asked someone for the rights to a song, and they actually told her some outrageous number like that, so no thanks.  I don't want to deal with that.  

    Next, I wanted to base my music around my opening, as opposed to the other way around.  I feel like basing your video around some music you pick BEFORE HAND, is just a bad idea, especially when it's NOT a music video.  Lemme explain in a couple bullet points:

• Basing an opening around a song would mean I would have to directly change multiple aspects of my opening just to fit my music choice.  
• Only having one song is bland!  I'd rather have a couple spewed in there, especially for mine, since a couple different vibes are in my opening.

    Now onto the music, I'd actually choose.  And I figured that the YouTube Audio Library would be my best bet.  Literally, all the songs are there are royalty-free, so I can just download and use it from there, which is loads better than chasing someone down to use their songs.

    So now that I know where I'm going to get my songs from, I need to know WHAT songs I'm going to choose.   And I have a base template for songs to pick, and a very general prompt to go from.  I actually have a couple of them:

•  A fantasy song, like fairy sounding for DnD
• an epic battle sort-of song, one that is generally fast-paced

• a more relaxed song, primarily going to be used around a group of friends, that is just background relaxed music
• A send-off song, as the main character walks off.  Primarily sadder, but liminal, with heavy feelings.

    These are a couple aspects that I'm looking for in my music, and I'm going to go searching for it.

    I'll let you know what I find!!!

                                                                                                                                                 -Noa  

Editing PP#18

    So after I captured all the footage, it was now onto editing.  And lemme just say, I absolutely love editing.  I think it's the idea of culminating all the footage together into one, cohesive thing is just really, really awesome.  And with the past projects this year, I had the duty of editing the music video, along with the one-word project we had.  Since this, I managed to sharpen my editing skills a little, prior to actually getting into the project.  

    Because of that, that was the main reason I wanted to work alone.  I knew that after I would recorded all the content for the video, it would mainly be me editing it.  And since I had such a love for editing, I was extremely eager to start editing.

    But before I continue, I have a massive problem to introduce.  You may have remembered that in my past posts I said that I was moving.  And now I'm in the midst of moving, and I currently don't have my desktop to edit my video, resulting in me having to edit on my laptop.  And while I have DaVinci on my laptop, it runs SUPER slow, especially when trying to import so much footage.  

    Now my laptop is pretty powerful, but it was still slow with DaVinci.  

    BUT that's not gonna stop me!

    

    I've done projects before, so this should be no different.  I've done some research on some ways to make the playback of the editing software run smoother, in order to generally make it run faster.  Here is a couple of them:  

    They all essentially have an idea of compressing and using the only media you're gonna use in your video, which should take less stress on other portions of the editing.  With this in mind, I'm going to start the editing!

                                                                                                                        -Noa

Sources!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNxsqTkQy-c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9l2oXdR2c

Production wrapped up: Filming final Portion discussion PP#17

     Today we'll talk about the last and final portion of the film opening, which was inside around the DnD table.  This part needed to be taken towards the night for a couple of reasons.  I wanted to convey the idea of time going by to show that the time between the first portion and this portion wasn't filmed back to back.  Moreover, I needed to wait for Nick, the Dungeon Master, to come so he can take his role.  

    Josh couldn't come unfortunately due to personal reasons, which meant I had to swap out the roles.  Instead of having Josh as the Dungeon Master, I needed to have Nick take his role.  Fortunately, I had the script on hand, and Nicks's role allowed him to read the script as he played his role!

    This part of filming was.....

    Pretty rough I'm not gonna lie.  

    Not only were my actors pretty tired with filming from the first portion, but they seemingly didn't take this part as seriously, and didn't really commit to the role as much as I liked.  Getting my friends to actually commit to the role took about a solid 30 minutes.  They thought what they were doing was dumb and silly, but it's hard to shrug that off when you're trying to make a project for an actual school grade!

    But after some trials and tribulations, I was able to convince them to take the role somewhat seriously, and I managed to make something out of it.

    As much as I loved filming with my friends, I do not think they will be a viable option in the future.  I have to take into consideration that they're my friends, not actors!  

    So the takeaway is next time, I can't include my friends.  Which is okay!  I'm sure next time they'll be able to help in ways that aren't related to acting positions.  

    But with that out of the way, let's talk about what actually came about this portion!  Other than what was stated above, it went really swell!  We had a bunch of ups and downs, but it was really fun.  Being able to perform how we usually do, but in front of a camera.  So now I'll show you some clips from the shooting!

 

      Above are a couple of clips that we shot during filming!  It was really funny to see David rage like that.  And it's actually really reflective of real life since he usually rages like that at video games.

    I hope you enjoyed my insight on the filming of the last portion.  Next is editing, which I'll talk about ALOT since I love editing.

                                                                                                                -Noa

Production wrapped up: Title Nat 20 PP#16

     Before going any further about the production, or at least, the physical portion of my production, I think I should talk about the actual title of the film, and my opening.  Before making my screenplay, the script, and even the storyboard, I didn't really have an idea in mind for the title and pretty much only had the idea of the opening in mind.  I'd figured I'd need a title, not only for the actual filming and editing but to also give my film some direction.  

    Well, I wanted the title to be referenced to something within the film.  And since DnD is such a major portion of my phone, I was thinking of using a term that is prominent within the DnD community, yet still seems a little bit vague from someone from the outside.  This would entail the viewer looking into the term, and learning more about it.  After some fiddling around, I also wanted the term to be in reference with luck.  Towards the end of my scene, the character has to leave his friends and proceeds to head home in a distraught sort of manner.  His friends wish him luck as he leaves, so that's pretty much why I want to have the idea of luck to be prominent.  

    Nat 20 is the name I decided to land on for the film for a couple reasons.  For instance, the little friend group seen in the film is called the Nat 20 club.  Moreover, the term would most likely resonates throughout the friend group seen in the scene.  "Nat 20" is when you roll a 20 sided dice, and land a 20.  So I want the idea of DnD, which is the way that the friend group mostly interacts, to be heavily associated with the term luck.  

    In another blog posting, I plan on touching on the overall idea of the film since I have a couple ideas in mind, but for the time being...

    I hope you enjoyed my explanation of the film!

                                                                                                                        -Noa

Sources:

https://www.facebook.com/Nat-20-101512454724508/

Production wrapped up: Filming first portion PP#15

     So after making the costumes, we waited a little bit till the other actors arrived.  And this is when the problems gradually rolled in.  Nick, who was supposed to be playing one of the main roles, wasn't able to make it till much later in the day.  So I had 3/5 of my actors right now and only needed 1 for the first part.  So instead of having Nick be the main actor, I pretty much just had Saloman take the first role, and would swap a couple other roles later down in the day.   

    So the first scene came the outside scene, in which the two characters are walking in a field, and one of them dies.  I told my friends what they would be doing, and they fortunately seemed pretty eager to get it on the way.  So as everyone got their costumes, we went outside to the first location.  

    But right before we headed out, we needed ketchup!  Y'know, for some cool effects!  So with a bottle of ketchup, my two actors, and my phone, we started the filming!

    I wanted the scene to start off with just shots of the characters walking and just going for a stroll.  I wanted to capture this via medium and long shots of the characters just walking alongside the bush towards the right on the photo above.  

    The videos above are a couple scenes I filmed in order to convey the idea of them just walking, seemingly alongside a bush.  Then, one of them would collapse, and start spewing blood everywhere.  This part was too much fun.  Seriously, having David's mouth full of ketchup and waiting in anticipation for it to blow was just amazing.  

    After that, we pretty much wrapped up and had that first portion done.  Now all we had to do was wait for the other actors, and wait till sun-down for the last portion at the table!

                                                                                                                            -Noa

Production wrapped up: Costumes PP#14

    Welp, on the 5th of March, shooting for my film opening commenced.  It was a hot Saturday afternoon when I proceeded to head over to my friend's house to officially start filming.  But before doing so, I needed some supplies.  Like I mentioned in some of my previous blog posts, the main things I needed were cardboard and the DnD materials.  

    So I managed to make my way to David's house, but before any actual filming could start, I needed to actually make the cardboard armor!

    I needed to make the base of the armor, like the torso/chest piece.  This part was a no-brainer since it really isn't hard to make a piece like this, and it was pretty easy to just eye-ball it.  It was really just essentially cutting a hole in a center of a folding piece of cardboard for the head, and making the shoulders rounded out to make it rest on the shoulders. 

    The pictures above show the process of actually making the cardboard since we just started off with regular pieces of cardboard, but we managed to cut it into pieces that could resemble a torso.  Then after that, we decided to decorate it a little bit for some pizzazz!

    After the torso came to the helmet.  This is when I leaned towards the internet for some help since the helmet was going to be more intricate.  But I managed to find a website to help give me some inspiration and created one with ducktape, cardboard, and staples.  I wanted to make it look like a knight helmet, yet still make it look a little rough around the edges to really give it that LARP vibe.  

    The helmet seemed nice and paired with the torso, it really looked awesome!  We also paired it with a PLASTIC sword since, y'know, the knight needs some weapons!

    So we got one costume down, and fortunately, my friend had a ninja costume, which we managed to use for the other character.  And I thought that not only would it fit with the "old-timey" vibe that would go with the knight.  But I decided to pair the ninja costume with a TOY katana that my friend also had.  This katana was not real and was kept in the sheath throughout all of the filming.  

    

    Overall the pre-production worked nice, as we got the costumes down right away, which was a perfect lead-in towards the actual filming, which I'll talk about next.  David was a really nice touch towards the actual production of the costumes.  Without him, this would've taken me a little bit longer.  The rest of the actors actually haven't arrived yet, but once the costumes were done, that's when I'd start filming.    

                                                                                                                                    -Noa

Sources!

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/506232814343057859/

Screenplay Made+Updates! PP#13

         Tomorrow officially starts filming, but I've been absent for a couple days, so let me update you.  I managed to complete the screenplay, which will be sent out to the actors today.  I want them to get comfortable with the script before filming so it is not all new to them once actual production starts.  

The screenplay!: 

        So I've sent that out to everyone, so they can get a little comfortable with their roles till shooting starts.  Everything's been pretty hectic recently, so I'm glad I got it out there before the actual shooting.  But with that out of the way, I think I should talk a little bit about what's happening outside the project.  

        I've said previously in my other blogs that I was moving!  And I am currently in the midst of actually moving from one house to another.  All my belongings are currently in a UHUAL truck, except for the items that I need for filming!  But not only has this project lead me to not be able to focus properly on schoolwork, but also, especially this project.  I'm still managing to get by, but this week has been stressful nonetheless.  

        Production and shooting should start tomorrow.  I'll keep you updated!

                                                                                                                            -Noa

Costume design ideas PP#12

         Now for my opening, I'd like to break it down into two major portions that require focus to the overall costume designs.  First is the obvious, which I'm going to talk about first, and then proceed to talk "costumes" that not only takes up much more of the opening, but is going to be required for more characters.  

        First is the knight outfits.  I was thinking quite a bit on how I would get these done, and after some time I think I got it.  Well, my first idea was to just outright buy two knight outfits from Party City, and just go from there.  But there's a couple problems with that.  First, they cost money!  And currently at the moment I'm not really doing to fluent on cash at the moment.  Moreover, I feel like it'd really take away from the idea of creating something.  A majority of costumes from movies and whatnot are made from scratch, and aren't store bought.  Plus it'd just take the fun away!

        So what do I do with these knight costumes?  Welp I thought of an idea that is not only pretty cost effective, but makes sense in context.  I plan on making the knight outfits out of cardboard, as not only do I have an abundance of cardboard boxes (since I'm moving), but also it would make sense since DnD is largely associated with LARP (live action role-playing)

        You know those nerds dressed up in the middle of an open field, with poorly created outfits and acting as if they're in the midst of battle?

        THAT is what I'm trying to accomplish when I go with these cardboard outfits.  It'd make sense in the situation (since the opening revolves around a bunch of kids playing DnD), and would be a perfect transition towards the other portion of the opening.  

                             I found this image on Google, and I think I'm going to do something similar!

        I'm sure it won't be too hard to make a two sets of armor for the pair of knights.  I looked at a couple YouTube videos, and they only span at about a couple minutes, so how hard can it be?

PLUS! I've actually made costumes in the past that are heavily cardboard related.  Unfortunately I don't have a picture since that Halloween was years ago, but I do have some experience under my belt.

        Now for the other portion, in which focuses on the group of friends who are playing DnD.  For their costume designs, they're obviously less prominent than the knight outfits, so they're going to require less focus.  And as opposed of making them wear something super specific, I think I'm going to give them a simple prompt, and they can just how they want from that.  Since the design isn't a major focus here, I won't focuses as much as the other portion.  So for that part, I want them to wear the following:

1. Normal clothing, nothing too out of the ordinary
2. Something they would wear to school, so it makes it as if they've came back from school.  
3. That's pretty much it
4. But look good!

        These are a couple photos of the people who are gonna be in my opening, and I want to show what they usually wear just to prove that they are actually decent human beings when it comes to attire.  And what you see above are most likely what they are gonna wear, or something similar. 

        But that's pretty much it in terms of costume.  Now I gotta make the cardboard ones.....

        See ya!

                                                                                                                                -Noa

        

Sources!:

https://grinningskullstudios.design.blog/2014/01/10/seven-things-i-miss-about-larp/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDWHBhOweY4&ab_channel=Mark%E2%80%99sWorkshop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBSNAT-6GhI