Editing additions PP#26

     I'm almost done editing my short film as a whole, and I'm super excited to show it off!  Another thing I'd love to talk about in this post is some of the new stuff I explored when making this short film, and a lot of the new editing ideas and concepts that I decided to do this time around, that I wasn't fully aware of when working on past other projects.  Now while my way of doing these new ideas is still pretty primitive, they are generally newer and more challenging for me, so being able to properly integrate them into the final film is awesome.  Let's have a look.  

Loading Screen! 

   One of the things that I did that was pretty challenging was this loading screen, which was like a  moving graphic.

    This one was super tricky, and I really wanted to nail it down since it would've been such a cool part of my project, so I strapped in, and did it mainly the only way I thought I could.  There are probably easier ways of doing it, but here's my way :D

    The mess you see above is the timeline that I made in order to get the loading screen to work.  I essentially took a png of a white bar, and made a box out of them which is the loading screen box seen above.  After that, I took that same png bar and place it in the middle of that box, making sure it would fill up the loading bar when completed.  After that I cropped out the bar in the middle, and would allow the bar to get uncropped, giving the illusion of a loading screen.

    You can see here that the cropping portion of the effects video tab has a little dial next to it, I think its called da keynote.  I would key note that the bar becomes uncropped, making it out as if the bar is loading!

Blood on the lenses!

    Another really cool effect that I wanted to implement, but had no fucking clue how to do was blood on the lenses, like in video games in movies.  

    Take this YouTube thumbnail for example, where the blood like splatters on the screen.  I went ahead and tried using this video, but I have Davinci :/

    So I tried by myself!

    The first thing I did was scoured the internet and needed some good-looking blood splatters that weren't too cartoonish but looked really goofy enough.  After some looking around a came across a couple and imported them into my timeline.

      Here are a couple of them, and after I brought them into Davinci, I ave them an opaque brown, reddish color, similar to the blood seen in the video.  After I did this, I would apply a Gaussian blur to them which is essentially the blur present when something is outta focus.  Next up would be to time these effects and make them line up when needed, like when David would sway his head after getting hit, and the final product looks pretty neat.  

-Noa

Camera Shake! PP#25

     One of the most important elements when it comes to the post-production aspect of fight scenes is camera movement.  Camera movement essentially allows certain actions to have more heft, or to have more volume in their motion, that wouldn't have been previously obtainable by just recording.  Additionally, camera movement would primarily be used to make the actions more, believable?  Make them so the viewer is fighting alongside them if that makes sense.  

    As I was actually filming, I would do a lot of camera movement alongside when I was filming my actors, but I had to be careful as I was doing so because I didn't wanna make the footage os fucking shaky that you wouldn't even be able to see what you were looking at  So with that in mind, I essentially would just record the fight scenes, add a little camera movement, like jittering the camera once David takes a punch, and move on from there.  

    Here is an example, but these movements only go a long way in conveying impact in the hits.  Also, what if I recorded a shot and I didn't add enough camera shake to it?  That's where editing comes in!

    Up above is a timeline for about 12 seconds, or about one fight sequence.  What I'll do, is I'll take the original clip and put it on the timeline, then cut out and duplicate a small portion of every clip, purposely trying to find the instances in which punches or hits are taken.  After that, I put them above and added the camera shake effect in order to make it so the rest of the fight is smooth, but whenever some of my actors take hits, it registers as having some large movement involved.  

    Here's another really great example, in which David receives a gnarly uppercut straight to the face!  But if you peer at the timeline, I simply cut out all the portions in which David would receive hits. and added the camera shake motion effect that you see on the side.  After this, it's important to fidget and figure out the best move that can be added, depending on how hard you want the hit to look.  In the photo above, I configured the motion so it would have more speed than usual, and screen back and forth at a much faster rate than normal, only to really enunciate the punch.  

    I simply do these to every impact, and yeah, they all look good!

-Noa

Music PP#24

     YouTube Audio Library is my friend!  it's extremely nice to be able to use music without the fear of being sued.  So with that, I took to the library and found some music that I would be able to use for my film.  I needed specific music that would match the vibe for specific parts of my film, and I would use the sort feature on the website in order to find the specific tones that I wanted.  

    A really cool feature that the library has is the idea of starring specific songs that you can use and go back to.  Usually, when I search for music, I'll go through like about a hundred songs before I find a couple of songs that match the tone that I'm searching for.  Once I find those specific ones, I start them and come back to them.

    After I find the songs, I'll download them and implement them into my timeline and edit them into the way that matches and fits into my edit.  

-Noa

Noise Reduction PP#23

     This was such a huge issue within my editing journey that it literally warrants its own blog post.  As I mentioned before, I started editing and filming my project, and a lot of the filming that I've done was taken place outside in the middle of a large field.  Because of this, a lot of wind was collected via the microphone of my phone, making the audio extremely hard to hear.  I don't have any lav mics or anything like that, so it's not like I could've brought some audio equipment on set.  Instead, all I had was my phone.  

    But as I was filming, the wind wasn't that bad.  Or at least so I thought.  The wind was pretty strong, but I really didn't think that it would make some parts totally unhearable.  

    You can hear in this video scene that the wind totally obstructs a lot of the audio and you can't really hear my actors.  This unfortunately was the case for a lot of the footage that was filmed outside.  Wind sucks, and I was left with two options when I sat down and heard the audio for the first time when I was about to start editing. Either:

• Scrap the clips, start again, and film on a new day where the wind didn't suck

OR

• Use my editing expertise in order to reduce the sound, and somehow make it work.  

    With those two options, I obviously went with the ladder and went to google to figure out how to make these clips manageable.  When I researched solutions, one managed to pop up when a YouTube video in which I came across an individual named Ian.  

    Ian suggested that a great way to take away wind sounds from a video clip would be to manage the frequencies that the video created, suggesting that wind sounds create such a low frequency, that being able to take out all the low frequencies within the video would ultimately take out all the wind sounds. 

With this, I took to the previous clip above, and it, unfortunately, didn't work. I think since my footage is more dynamic, meaning more wind is entering the microphone chamber, meaning that the wind variation is a lot more than the variation seen on the video since the camera is simply static.  It didn't really suppress the wind audio, mainly just all the audio in general.  

    

    I looked around some more to find more solutions, and I managed to actually find one by myself within DaVinci Resolve.  

    Noise reduction is typically used in order to remove background noise, and I was a little hesitant to use it because it wasn't really tailored for wind noises and their frequencies.  However, I decided to give it a shot, and was actually surprised to realize that there was a "speech mode" that you can apply to the audio clip and make it a lot more crisp.  With that, and increasing the audio, you get a much better sounding clip!

This is the same clip above, and although there still is some wind, a combination of different shots along with the noise reduction effect should make more clips audible.  

-Noa

Filming fight scenes PP#22

     So this past spring break, mainly today and yesterday, I've been editing the first portion, along with filming the fight portion and some extra parts that needed to get filmed.  I made a blog post about how I filmed the first parts like David putting on the headset after receiving a package.  But yesterday I also managed to film the fight scenes and the scenes that David and Saloman are also in, in which David meets the NPC.  Fortunately, since we've choreographed the fight scenes ahead of time, we were able to just hop in, film them, and be done in about an hour and a half!

    Here are some of the highlights!

In this video, Saloman is in a chokehold, and he proceeds to escape via punching in the gut and which then moves the fight forward, progressing it so Davids lands back on the ground.  

This shot was a bit trickier since these fight steps were a little bit longer and more intricate.  Some hits land really well, while others don't at all.  Because of this, it's super important to film multiple takes of the same fight, varying the angles so some hits that wouldn't look good on one angle, look good on others.  For example, here's the same fight from a different angle.  

This is again the same fight scene, but this time I filmed behind Saloman this time, and you can see that some of the hits, especially the ones in the middle, connect a lot better here than in the previous shot.  This is where I would put them together in post, and edit them together to make sure as many hits land!

-Noa

Spring Break PP#21

     Hey everyone!  It's spring break here in Florida, and I'm sorry this post is going to be rather short, however, I just wanna keep everyone updated on whats going to go down this week.  So in a couple days I plan on shooting the fight scenes for this project, and leaving everything afterward for the digital stuff, like editing and the social media.  Therefore, hopefully, after this break, I'll be completely done doing any physical stuff and moving onto the stuff that I truly love.  With that said, Imma enjoy some time and just chillax!

Print Component research PP#20

     I wanna do some quick research regarding the print component of the project.  I've already fortunately made a list of some of the important requirements about it, and looked at some examples that I can follow.  

-Advertisement for screening at a film festival
-4x6 inch
-Double-sided
-Includes 
-Title
-Key art
-Director name
-Date, time, and location of the screening
-Social media info

With this I took to the internet to look at examples.

    My teacher made us do an assignment regarding print-component research, and I included this one for a really good reason. Forts of all, a lot of postcard advertisements are in a horizontal landscape, so being able to see one vertically is pretty cool and unorthodox, and totally strikes a little differently. It also has some sci-fi aspects to it, which I wanna use, like the space guy looking upwards, I plan to implement something like that.

    I made this super quick, and obviously, this ain't my final design, but I like the idea of the VR headset in there, which I plan on getting a shot of when David wears the VR headset.

DaVinci Resolve PP#19

     I've been at work editing the first section of my film, and I've been using DaVinci Resolve as my editing software.  I don't know why, but I really prefer DaVinci, especially the free version, over other software like the expensive Premiere Pro.  Since it's free, I've been able to use it for a while now, and I have been using it ever since I've been in Media Studies.  It has truly won a place in my heart.  

    I really like the simplicity of DaVinci Resolve.  When I first started out, it was really easy to get the hang of things,  For example, when it comes to the media pool, it is exceptionally easy to import and use videos in your timeline.  DaVinci's layout is like a small, but bottomless pool.  It seems super easy to get the hang of, but once you stick your toes in, there's a lot more to be seen.  

    One of my favorite features is keyframes! Keyframes essentially allow you to manipulate a certain portion of media within your timeline.  

    I tend to use these when it comes to titles and other effects such as transitions and whatnot.  I'm pretty sure they're called keyframes.  If I'm wrong please let me know!  I managed to learn them via YouTube, and they definitely took some time to get used to.  I'm fully aware that Adobe products have something super similar, but since I learned DaVinci first I got more accustomed to it.  

    Additionally, another cool element in DaVinci is its use of effects, and there's one in particular that I really love.  Camera Shake is an effect that pretty much does exactly what it sounds like.  Camera shakes.  This effect is really useful when it comes to fight scenes, like when one punch connects to another, it adds a ton of really nice motion to the punch.  

Behind my actors PP#17

     My actors are a core part of my project, and I'd love to take a second and not only thank them but talk about them.  My main actors are Saloman Caldas and David Freyre.  They've been my best friends for a while, and they were even a part of my film introduction last year, and David was actually the main character.  David is super open whenever I wanna do these types of projects, and when I approached him about this one, he was just as cooperative as last time.  

    David is a junior at Western High School.  He's more of a stem student, and he's not only smarter than me but loves math and science a lot more than I do, especially math.  I hate math.  David also has a fighting background, which is perfect considering my film has a ton of fighting in it.  He used to be on the wrestling team at Western High and would actively participate in tournaments.  David is also a huge fan of MMA and fighting-related sports, which is a huge aspect of why I really wanted him to be on this project with me.  David is also a pretty good actor as well!  His performance in my last project was very good, and I want to push him towards some new acting ideas like fighting.  

    Saloman also has some fighting experience, which I wanted to utilize in my film.  He is actively involved in MMA, and practices in his free time.  Because of this, it feels great knowing Saloman would be able to deliver an authentic feel to the fighting.  Not only would he have the physics behind every punch and kick, but he would also be able to introduce new moves and ideas that are invisible to a fighting noob like me.  For instance, I remember being on set while we were practicing fighting, and we were all stumped on what fight moves to introduce next.  Saloman introduced a couple of really cool moves and even one that will be seen in the final product.  In the sequence where David and Saloman are on the ground fighting, a lot of that was him!  Getting insight from individuals regarding stuff that familiar with definitely helped out when it came to planning the fights.  

    David has been my friend ever since the beginning of 6th grade.  We would play Fortnite together, which would slowly turn into us hanging out in real life, and slowly bring us to today: filming something together.  Saloman follows the same story, in fact, we all do.  Middle school was the meeting point for all of us, and David, Saloman, and I would all grow closer and closer, which would be immaculate for the chemistry in FSVR.  And when it comes to chemistry, I think that is such a main driving force when it comes to these projects. Working together with my friends is really awesome, and doing something I love is even better.  Bringing them together allows me to have fun creating this project, while actively interacting with them.  

    I just wanted to give a little insight into how my friends were able to help out a ton during this project.  Also since a lot of them are involved in fighting and have a ton of experience with it, they were able to allocate a lot of safety procedures that I would've overlooked, like proper ways of throwing punches and how to perform certain moves without getting hurt. 

    Glad to have these guys on set!

-Noa

Back home, editing shall commence! PP#18

 Hello everyone!

    I'm back from competition at FIU, and I'm super happy to say I won an award!

    I was the United Kingdom!

    And with that out of the way, I'm glad to say I'm back on the homework grind :/ Now while that may sound bad, I know, it's actually not terrible!  While I do have a ton of busy work from other classes, I've been really excited to start editing my project.  But you may be asking yourself, "Noa, are you even done filming??"

No!

    But, you may remember me mentioning how I said I finished a large portion of my film already, the beginning portion of the film (where David is bored and opens the package)  I have all that footage right now, and while I'm waiting for spring break to commence so I can finish filming the fighting scenes, I figured I'd minus well start the editing process!

    If you've been a fan of this blog for a while, you might understand why I want to start editing right now.  It's my favorite part!  I use DaVinci Resolve for my main software, and it's really hard to explain why, but I really like editing.  MAybe it's the culmination of clips coming together to form one cohesive idea, or just the idea that I get to sit down at my desk and do work, it's honestly a treat!  Imma start editing today, and I'll share in a little bit on what I have got done!

-Noa

Busy weekend away from home PP#17

    Hello everyone, just wanted to give a quick update on where I'm at with my project.  I'm currently not home right now, and I've been really busy at FIU competing in a conference for my school club, Model UN.

    I, unfortunately, haven't been able to get much done considering how tight the schedule is here, however, I'm currently in an hour break session in between the committees, and I figured I'd get some work done for my blog, and update you guys on what's going on.

    During spring break I plan on filming all the fight choreography.  Spring break is next week so I'll still have plenty of time to edit for around 3 weeks!  I plan on focusing some more time on my social media page, along with the print component, and eventually have a concise theme across all those aspects.  

    But here at FIU, I'm currently the delegation of the United Kingdom discussing alternative methods towards mass incarceration.  Wish me luck!

-Noa

Trouble with fonts PP#16

     I have a hard time trying to pick a font that I plan on using within the film, along with the postcard advertisement.  You might remember that in a previous blog post I used a sort of retro-style font, popular amongst old arcade cabinets.  It looks like this.  

It's a classic, but I really don't feel it fits the vibe of my film.  It's like, too old in my opinion.  I want something more futuristic that is reflective of what the film is about.  Considering how there is VR in my title, I just don't see this font mixing well with the modern connotation of my film.  With that, I need to go hunting... for fonts.

    There's this website called fontspace.com.  Super cool stuff, especially since it's a generator, where you input the text and it spews back the fonts it could work with.  I took to google, researched video game fonts, and went away.  

    I fuck with this one super hard.  It's so... modern?  I don't know how to say it.  It's like the right amount of simplicity to show whats being told, while also allowing the text to be read.  Hold on imma try all capitals.  

    Really liking this font!   

    Also, love this font.  I like the glitch effect to it, which also alludes to the story of the film considering how the main character gets a VR headset from the dark web, which could have glitches inside of it.  

    Lot more futuristic here, which is also nice.  Definitely gonna consider this one.  

This one is reminiscent of code, like in the Matrix, which would look nice for my film.  All these look cool.  Now comes the hard part.  Choosing.  Imma continue to go through more.  I'll update you guys when I'm done!

-Noa

Filmed Indoor, NON-ACTION parts! PP#15

     Over the weekend I filmed the indoor portion sequences of my film, which included the mina character receiving a package, and proceeding to open and use the headset.  Although I was planning on shooting some fighting sequences, my friends were extremely busy and unfortunately had to cut some production short, however, I plan on filming the fight scenes either this weekend or next weekend.  With that, I did still film around 1/3 of my film, which is pretty cool.  I went to David's house, who was fortunately very cooperative and allowed me to film there.  

    I used a stabilizer borrowed from my teacher in order to get a lot of the handheld shots, and I used a tripod for the shots that included me because I had no one else to hold the camera :/

Roll the clips!

In this clip, we see David being super bored as he complains about what he wants to do today.  I wanted a dynamic movement to be shown here in order to focus on his face when sets his phone down.  

I wanted a really gross close-up of my friend eating here, just to reinforce the fact that he was a slob, and sorta unlikable.  The loud chewing makes him obnoxious, which is what I was going for.  

Here's another great one.  For this one I used a tripod in order to record the interaction between the mailman and David

Filming was super fun!  I think once I manage to get all the clips, I'll move onto editing!

-Noa

BLOOD! PP#14

     Today we're making blood because today we're going to be shooting some film!  But before we arrive on set, we need to make the blood first.  I made a previous post about me collecting the materials to make blood, and while those materials were fine, I was missing something.  You may recall that I bought a combination of cornstarch, food coloring, and Nesquik chocolate powder.  All the materials I just mentioned were fine, but the corn starch was not the best.  I made a small batch with the cornstarch prior, and it just didn't work out how I wanted as it ultimately wouldn't allow the red food coloring to mix well with the water due to the texture.  So I went back to the drawing board (YouTube) and proceeded to look up some more ways to make blood.  

    I saw a video on the internet in which the person used powdered sugar instead of cornstarch, and proceeded to use the same materials I have already collected.  So I went to Publix, grabbed some powdered sugar, mixed up a new batch of blood, made the results were... Awesome.  

    And with that, we got blood.  Time to use it in action. Literally.

-Noa
 

The Brick PP#13

    Within my script, I needed to make a brick.  There's this one part in the fight scene where Saloman slams a brick into Davids's face.  I asked David if he was okay with doing the scene with a real brick.  I don't know why but he said no, so I needed to make a fake brick as a prop.  So I made a brick.

    First up was researching and finding out what I could use and how to actually make a brick.  Obviously, I wanted this brick to be like a prop, in which it would be very lightweight and wouldn't cause any actual damage.  With that, I began cruising the web, until I found this video.  

https://youtu.be/H3--5Wp1PBo

    The video was pretty straightforward, and all it called for was styrofoam, white paint, red paint, yellow paint, and a brush.  So after making a quick trip to Walmart, I got myself the materials to make a brick.

    After I got home, I needed to heat treat the styrofoam in order to make it less porous, because if I started to paint the styrofoam block as soon as possible, their paint would just seep through the holes.  With that in mind, I took a hair dryer, made it super hot, and proceeded to heat down the block of styrofoam till it was a lot less hole-ly.

    I proceeded to follow the video more, and once I was done with the hair dryer, I proceeded to paint the block white in order to give it a white base color, while also making the block even less porous via the white paint drying and creating a coat.  

    I let that dry for a couple hours, then proceeded to come back and paint that brick with a mix of red and yellow, creating an orange, brownish tint that is seen when it usually comes to bricks.  I proceeded to paint that.  

    After I let that dry, it was looking a little too red.  So, I took some yellow paint and mixed it with water in order to create a light hint of dirtiness that is usually seen with bricks.  Also, I took some black watercolors that I got from shopping with the fake blood in order to get it a dirtier look.  

    It was looking good!  I proceeded to let that dry, and grab some dirt outside in order to make it look more realistic and dirty.  Although it doesn't look like the thumbnail in the original video I saw, it still looked rad!

    This is the final product.

And this -_- (volume on!)

    Yup... that's how I made a brick

Btw I'm moving... that's why my house is a fucking mess.

-Noa

  

Struggles with moving PP#12

     Moving in general is already super stressful... but moving while in school and actively doing projects is also super stressful.  If you recall from my last project from AS level, I was in the midst of moving as well, but I still managed to put out a good project.  This year I intend on doing the same thing, but there are still some challenges that I need to overcome.  

    It's really tough not having my desktop or Wi-Fi on me in the new house.  My room is super barren, and it's a rough transition from what I'm used to.   However, my situation could be a lot worse and I plan to utilize all the resources available to me.  I'm currently hunched down using my laptop and a hotspot in order to put this out.  Must be resourceful!  

    Also moving furniture is tough.  I fucking stubbed my toe yesterday.  Shit hurt.  But yeah we have moved into a new house, and it's going to be around a week till I have my room set up similar to how it was prior to my moving.  Once I do I'll be able to focus more on social media!

Lincoln vibing out in the empty house

-Noa

Target Audience PP#11

     I've talked a lot about the production aspects, especially the more literal aspects of it since I'm a huge sucker when it comes to doing pre-planning stuff that involves physical aspects, like location finding and fighting and all that.  But today we're gonna take it back a notch, and determine who the fuck this film is for.  

    Fight Simulator VR is a sci-fi action film that leans more toward action than sci-fi, yet still has a great combination of both.  It follows a teenager named David who manages to land his hands on a black market-listed VR headset, only allowed in the hands of a few.  He regards the caution labels, straps in, and is placed in the most realistic combat tutorial ever.  The fighting and language get extreme for good reason.  It's a video game!  And everything in video games is amped up to 10.  Language is explicit, and blood is abundant, which is why this film is going to be targeted at 14-35-year-old middle-class males.  Lemme break down exactly why this demographic is chosen.

• The average age of a gamer is apparently 35 years old, within the United States.  I feel like my film can most definitely tap into those older audiences who simply love video games.
• 58% of total gamers in the United States are aged <18-35 years old, which is why I choose my demographic to reach out to these individuals.
• 54% of gamers in the U.S. are males, which is no surprise.  Figured I'd target them since they make up the majority of my main audience, while also gearing certain conventions of film, like fighting and action, to people who really like it.  

Here's a pie chart from Statista that shows the demographic range of ages for gamers!

• I also chose middle-class individuals because I believe they would have the easiest access to not only the distribution platform that I plan to release this on, but when it comes to video games, they would most likely have more access than lower-class individuals.  According to a study done at Columbia UIniversity, the digital divide when it comes to video games is explicit, showing that lower-income families tend to distance their children from game-sharing networks for financial reasons.  Now, I question the validity of this article, as they only collected data from two high schools, and I feel like a larger sample size would've led to more definitive results, along with being outdated by about 15 years, however, I believe a logical point can still be drawn from the article.  Lower-income individuals are going to have less access to video games, which is why I want to target middle-class individuals who would be able to relate to the main premise of the film.  

    Some more notes:

• I understand that my film is going to be bloody and have some bad words in it, but I'm still reaching toward that teenage audience as opposed to just adults.  Kids all the time play violent video games, and they're well aware of the content they're viewing, which is why I believe kids are going to love my bloody film as well.  

So yeah, I believe that this film would follow similar target audiences to films like Ready Player one and John Wick, and maybe even The Matrix!

-Noa