We've come so far and finally filmed in the car!!

Happy sunday guys!! Ahh it’s the last day of spring break :(( I am sooo NOT ready to go back to school but I AM sooo ready to finish this project and finally show you guys how it turned out!! Now, I have only two scenes left until I finally finish so this blog might be a little short and simple!!



Today, Santi, my dad, and I filmed the car scene. It was pretty hard to get different angles in such a tiny car buttt we managed and it turned out great! This scene starts right after the tracking shot of the car (drone shot) and immediately introduces the characters inside the car.

The Smith family starts to talk about the moving situation and how everyone feels about it. For example, in the last post I explained that my character isn't really happy about moving. Therefore, in the dialogue i’m somewhat annoyed and rude.Since Santi’s character is excited about moving, he’s all happy and jumpy. Lastly, the father is neutral but leans more towards happy since it is a new experience and a new life they will be starting all together. 

Here are some shots we got:





Lastly, the final scene we need will be filmed tomorrow!! It is the school scene. In this scene, Santi and I have just gotten to school and we are standing on the catwalk right when the bell rings and everyone hurries to their next class. We will be focused on using a medium shot to show us looking at the crowd and then switch to a Point Of View shot of the crowd. Now, I’m gonna start working and finish editing! Ahhh we’re almost done and I’m so excitedddd!!


That’s it for today guys!! Stay tuned for this week as you’ll finally get to see my CCR and Final Opening!!




Peace and Love - Vale

We've waited so long, and finally got a song!!

Guys! Guys! Guys! Guys! First of all, welcome back I’ve missed talking to you guys!! It’s only been two days since I last posted on my blog but hey can’t a girl miss blogging? Anyways, for any of you wondering, my finger has gotten a lot better and I am as RED as tomato. Darn, I should have listened to my mom about putting sunscreen on LOL. My body is extremely sore from all the athletic activities I played at the beach. Tell me about it, I am NOT athletic at all and the one day I decide to play sports, my body hurts from head to toe!! Second of all, I have some really good news and I am so excited to share it with you guys!! 

Are you ready? I know I am!! We finally got permission to use a song for our film!! Now, it’s not the song we wanted which was Coldplay “Viva La Vida” and it’s not a song from the list I previously showed you guys butttt after Santi and I were at the beach, we heard this song on the radio and immediately contacted the owners of the song. I know that if you were born in the early 2000’s you DEFINITELY know this song!!

That’s right! It’s “I Gotta Feeling” by The Black Eyed Peas. If you HAVEN’T heard this song yet.. Check it out RIGHT NOW, you won’t regret it!! The beat is good, the speed is good, and the song is good. Although we wanted Coldplay, we are still excited that we now have rights to use this song. But we will still contact Coldplay’s producers/managers/record labels just in case.



Here are the emails of us getting permission!!

Click “open in new tab” to see the full email!!

I can’t believe we are only 11 days away from turning in our project, AHH I’M EXCITED!! Anyways, just wanted to update you guys like I said I would!! Stay tuned for this week and have an amazing spring break!! I'm gonna go download the song and start editing LOL!!


Peace and Love - Vale

Editing 101 with VP!

Happy Sunday guys!!! You won’t believe the kind of day I’ve had LOL! This morning I got up bright and early to help one of my friends with her film opening, and then got ready to go to the beach! I got in the water, I played some football, soccer, and volleyball. But here’s the best part.. Leave it to me to play sports and I come home with a broken finger and bruises all over my body. I was so excited to get tan and look all toastyy but don’t worry guys, this wasn’t only a day of relaxation it was also a day of filming too! Since we went to Ft. Lauderdale beach, we got some really cool establishing shots and I just uploaded them to my Wevideo..they’re looking great!

Here we are, having fun in the sun. I’m such a fruit omg ahahah okok back to work to talk about the editing process.


Now, like last time, today wasn’t as sunny so I am going to have to edit these videos to make them look all bright and happy. Here are our before and after pics Enjoy!!








Remember that these are just screenshots of the video. In the film opening, everything will be video graphed not photographed.

How do I do this you ask? Well let me tell you the process. I don’t think I can use my own phone to edit a video, so I either use this website called BeFunky or on Wevideo itself, there are options on what you want to edit. For example, if I were to use Wevideo the brightness would be on 18, the contrast would be on 10 and the saturation would be between 14-20 depending on the scene. This enhances the video to make it brighter. If I were to use BeFunky, the brightness would be -7, the contrast would be 8, and the highlights would be -8. So it all depends on the app you use.

Wevideo 

BeFunky 

Hope you enjoyed this blog post as much as I did. I’m going to finish editing the videos, put them in the right order on Wevideo, and then ice my finger ahahah. Remember to stay tuned for next week. See ya later alligators!!


Peace and Love - Vale

Let's do a meet and greet!!

Hi everyone, welcome back!! It is officially the third day of spring break and Santi and I have been very productive, which is great!! Today’s blog post is going to be nice and simple. As we get closer to the due date, we get closer to finishing! We finally have something called the “The End” date and it is march 30th. Which means we need to be done filming and editing by that date. Everything else like the credits, the song, and the CCR will be done throughout April 1-4.

Can you guys guess what today is?? Yup, you guessed it, you’re meeting the cast of our film!!! Remember this is a family of 3 (one dad, one daughter and one son.) Surprise!

Actor name: Valeria Parra 

Character name: Sophia Smith
Role: Daughter
Extra info related to film: Very annoyed at the fact that she’s moving to another state leaving all her friends and starting a new life.




Actor name: Mauricio Parra
Character name: Sam Smith
Role: Father
Extra info related to film: Got a new job with a better salary in a different state and now has to move with his kids to FL.














Actor name: Santino Lupica-Tondo

Character name: Sebastian Smith
Role: Son
Extra info related to film: Excited about moving to FL and lives life to the max.



























After a lot of thinking, Santi and I realized that it’s easier if we’re both in the film because then we wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else and film whenever they are available. With us in the film, we know how we’re going to act, we know the dialogue, and we are available all the time. At the same time, the character’s names aren’t 100% yet, we are still deciding on them but let me know if you like them!






Thank you guys for tuning in, remember to stay tuned tomorrow!! You’re all the best!


Peace and Love - Vale

Let's boogie!, we made some titles for our movie!

Good afternoon media friends!! Happy friday and welcome back to another one of VP’s blog posts!! So far this day has been great. I woke up extra early to eat a good breakfast, I went out for a jog, I cleaned my room, and now I’m here..extremely excited to tell you guys some news!



Santi and I have made a list of the top 5 titles we are considering!!! We want to be able to pick the title throughout this week but it’s not as easy as it looks. Therefore, we came up with 10 names and only chose the 5 that we liked! Just in case you guys still don’t know what this film is about, it is about a single parent with two teenage kids who gets a new job in Florida and has to deal with the emotions of the teenagers while they move. Here are the movies we were inspired by to get our title due to the fact that each movie has something to do with moving, traveling, and drama!



Remember that it is NOT in the order of the ones we like best, it is in the order of which name came first and which came last!

- Change
- The Move
- Their worst move
- Summer with the Smith’s (if we do a voice over)
- The 10 things NOT to do when you move (if we do a Voice Over)


Now, we don’t know yet if the family’s last name is Smith yet but I just added it so you guys could see what it looks like in the title. If you have any recommendations on family names, that would be great!

That’s all for today guys!! Stay tuned this week to find out who our cast members are, what the title is, and the editing process.


Peace and Love - Vale

Do we use a phone? Nah let's use a drone!

Hey spring breakers!! I’m BEYOND excited that it’s the first day of spring break!! I’m ready to go to the beach, work out a little, hang out with my friends and family, and most importantly.. To spend time filming/editing and talking to you guys!




If you guys had read my latest post, you would know that I said I would keep you guys updated on what my teacher said about my questions, and I will. So, in the email of one of the artist’s managers replies, they said “we should be fine” to use their song since it is a school project. So my question was, if we could still use the song even though she didn’t type out the words “yes” or “you have permission,” and even if it would be put on YouTube. My teacher said we NEED verbal consent that we are allowed to use their song. My second question was if we could use the app Garageband that I had told you guys about and she said she thinks it is legal but it is frowned upon, meaning it’s not ethical.


Santi and I won’t give up hope yet so don't worry! To get my mind off of that, let’s talk filming!! Since there was early release today (Thursday,) Santi, Fran (a friend of ours) and I went home together to film some shots. Fran owns a drone which allowed us to film the car scene. If you forgot what the car scene was it is that we want a tracking shot in the air of the car driving. So something like this, but the car would be in a neighborhood:





We plan on putting the scene right after the establishing shots so that the audience knows that this film has something to do with the people in the car. At the same time, this scene leads to introducing the characters to the audience without using a voice-over.


We spent only about 2 hours doing this because Fran and Santi were going to be busy at 3, but we got the shots we needed and so far so good! Here we are, preparing to drive around in the car while Fran films!!





After we got back, I sat on my computer and uploaded all of the videos to Wevideo (online video editor) and started putting them in their specific order. Now we only got about 4 shots and I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but hey.. It’s something! Either way, we’re missing a few things so we might go back again tomorrow to film the rest.


While editing, I also added some effects on Wevideo like “Sharpen,” “Brightness,” “Saturation,” etc. This enhances the video to make it look very sunny and bright!





Even though we already took the drone shots, we are still contemplating using the drone because it needs to look very precise so that the film doesn’t look unprofessional. Due to this, tomorrow, along with filming the drone shots we will also film the same scene but instead with our phones. Just in case we don’t like how the drone scene turns out, we will have extra shots of the same scene.


Hope you guys enjoyed this little sneak peek of how it’s going!! Stay tuned for tomorrow and happy spring breakkkk!!


Peace and Love - Vale

Emails on Emails on Emails!

Hey guys! As spring break gets closer, Santi and I become more stressed, only because time goes by really fast and once spring break ends.. Our project is due the following week! As you all may know, Santi and I have been trying our hardest to contact different artists, managers, and record companies in order to gain rights to the songs we want to use for this film. To be honest, this has been the MOST stressful part of the film, and we haven’t even started editing yet! LOL. Every single day we keep refreshing our email accounts to see if at least ONE of them have answered and guess what.. two did! I have a lot of information based on this topic so bare with me guys.

First Artist’s manager that replied to me: Sher Harper (Katrina and the waves’ manager) for the song Walking On Sunshine.

 

Once they replied to me, I went in search for BMG’s contact information and contacted them saying:

Thankfully, they answered me back saying

At this point we’re getting annoyed because it’s only a song that will be used for 2 minutes, it won’t be reproduced, and we’re not gaining profit doing this, so why do we even need rights? Sorry guys, this has just been a hassle. Anyways, we ended up filling out the form, now all we have to do is wait.




Second Artist’s Manager that replied to Santi: Coldplay HQ (goes by the name “Debs”):




Due to her response, I need to double check with my teacher and make sure that what she’s saying is true, because if it is true then she basically just said it was Okay for us to use the song since it is for a school project. UGH I’m so stressed guys.

At the same time, my friend told me that I could use this App called Garage band where I can insert the song and change the speed of it. By doing this, it would be non copyrighted since it’s not the original song. I don’t know if I can do this so that’s another thing I have to ask my teacher about!

In the meantime, we have been searching and searching for non copyrighted songs on this website that I have mentioned before called killer tracks and it’s not going good at all. I truly believe that either Walking on sunshine or Viva La Vida are perfect song choices, so I’m just gonna pray and hope for the best! Permission to use song = not granted..yet.

Lastly, I will keep you guys updated with what my teacher says and if I receive any more emails. Wish me Luck!


Peace and Love - Vale

This is (font)tastic!!

Hi guys!! I’m really excited to let you guys know another element that Santi and I have made a decision on. If you guys have read my previous blogs, I have been having trouble picking fonts and my group members suggested to use something like what the movie Monster In Law uses and this made me extremely happy cause I have mentioned this movie a few times already. How was I so blind to not see the types of fonts and colors they use!!?? This is what it looks like:





The font we chose is called  High Society and it's the closest thing we could find to not make it look 100% like Monster In Law's font. 

Robert Luketic used fonts that represent the Californian “vibe” about how it always feels like summer there and he did a really good job. He used both warm and cool hues in the fonts and that’s what I’m leaning towards to also.

Anyways, this made us realize that we want to change our focus from colors like yellow and blue to more of like an orange and turquoise, kind of like there’s. Not only was it stressing that we wanted to change ANOTHER part of our film but it was also very relieving that we’re finally sticking to what we’re showing you now. Here’s the palette of colors we’re focused on using for the opening credits:

As you can see, according to my knowledge from my Aice Media studies class, Orange represents a happy, confident, and adventurous feeling. Yellow represents playful and satisfying. Lastly, Turquoise represents clear thinking and peace.

So fonts and color = check ☑️

Stay tuned for tomorrow!!



Peace and Love - Vale

FriYAY filming!

It’s FriYAY!! Welcome back guys!! So yesterday I was talking to you guys about how my group meeting went and how they helped me figure some things out. So if you’re not up to date, I finally figured out the type of font and color I will be using for the credits with the help of my group members and I also figured out the location of where we will be filming. Now for the good stuff: filming!! Since we are going to do the establishing shots scene first.. I plan on driving around my community today and taking some shots of the palm trees and a big water fountain. I know it sounds weird but this is basically what I want it to look like:




Remember guys, all of these shots are going to go to the beat of the song that we will choose. So I just got back from filming these little parts and here’s how it came out:



Now these are just screenshots, but in the actual film it will be a video of the water moving in the fountain and the car moving through the trees. Also, C’mon.. This looks nothing like the “Sunshine state” so with my amazing editing skills, I made this:




*Editing technique = BeFunky* and here is a tutorial on how to use it!!
https://blog.befunky.com/exposure/





I’m actually so excited cause even though it was only a small part of the film that I filmed, I finally feel like i’m making progress and it’s turning out exactly how I want it!!


Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post, I have some news for you all!!


Peace and Love - Vale