AICE Media Studies

  Below is my critical creative reflection!

Here's my final task! I've been through a lot to finish this video and I really hope this comes across. There were a lot of issues trying to get this done, technologically and scheduling-wise. However, mistakes can be good, as long as you learn from them. So, what have I learned? I learned to keep myself organized, start and plan things way earlier, and to work well with other people. I think I also learned the importance of using the internet. Researching has been one of the most useful tools for this project. From researching music, to figuring out editing platforms, and researching how to use OpenShot, it was definitely a key player. I definitely had fun doing this project, but I would have had more fun if it was planned better. Overall, I'm happy I've gotten this project done, and am ready to work on my CCR and studying for upcoming finals. 

So, I made the additional changes to the film, according to my friends' suggestions. As I said before, I was feeling a little reluctant about making them. One part of me was feeling slightly demotivated, while the other part of me figured I had done my best with the editing. Still I knew that it would be best to get an outside perspective.  The first change was the quickest fix. One friend of mine suggested that the music should start at a different section, specifically earlier. Shifting the audio track did not take long and it added something to the film. By having the film start at the point right before the murder happens, it adds an element of foreshadowing. I think if this were a real movie that having the music start where it did would be very impactful. I'm very grateful that she made this suggestion, despite my reluctance.  The second change was fixing the editing from shot to shot. Collectively, they found some of the editing choppy and awkward. I was a bit confused w

 Editing today felt difficult for some reason. I was to finalize the timing and get the final transitions in. This may not seem like much, but the stress and insecurities about this really got to me. I kept wanting to focus on my other schoolwork due to the anxiety, but I pulled through.  The continous stream of new shots also made things difficult. The timing of those shots varied greatly. Because of their variation, I had to keep compensating for the lack or overload of time. Needless to say, it became very frustrating. The process required that I jump between three apps on my computer. These were my editing app, my messaging app, and my files. I first had to go to my editing app and place the files in the right folder. Then from there I place the new item in the folder into the project assests for my editing app, OpenShot. I know this may not sound like much, but the back and forth of it became very old, very quickly.  I am grateful I kept myself organized though. Honestly, organiza

Today, I needed to show someone the film in progress and see what they think. I bounced around who to show at first, just because I need an objective opinion. My first thought was someone from my family, but parents tend to be proud of anything their kids do, no matter how good or bad. Plus, any suggestions made would probably be to the storyline or pitch and not to the editing. Since that would have been an unproductive option, I decided to show my friends the film, instead. The specific friend group I showed has had no issue with pointing things out in the past and they are often sarcastic, meaning they won't hold back on things that needed to be changed.  My friends seemed to like it, but apparently the editing from scene to scene was a bit choppy. It didn't seem to impede their understanding of the film, but it made things awkward. I took note of this, thinking about how I could change that. It's probably going to require more advanced editing than I'm used to, but

Against our best efforts, it's too late for any copyrighted music. We did so much planning for it, too. One of our members made a whole playlist, and we sent dozens of emails out. However, it seems that things have been taking too long. I don't know how exactly to send out those rejection emails, but I have no choice.  To be entirely honest, I wasn't expecting the process for getting copyrighted music to be so difficult. Most people didn't even reply to our emails. If they did, they mentioned things like prices and filling out forms, despite the fact that I stated we were high schoolers. When my teacher was explaining the process, I figured it would be as simple. Well, lesson learned I guess. The lesson being that I should never underestimate how complicated people make things.  This lesson also came up when finding royalty-free music and discovering licenses. Apparently, you can't use royalty-free music without a license. While most were cheaper than the rights for

Today I had to compile all the shots we had into one folder, put them all into a timeline, and figure out what shots we needed to film and how. We just have one more scene to film and we'll be done with filming. Honestly, this whole entire film process felt rushed. I kept trying to meet up and film so we could get started with editing, but scheduling seemed to keep getting in our way. Everything seems to be coming together just fine, but I don't want to go through something like this ever again.  While going through the shots gathered, I realized that one of our members had filmed in the wrong aspect ratio. I was going to try to fix it through editing, but realized it would be easier to ask if he could refilm it instead. He said yes, which is great. Meanwhile, I'm trying my best to keep these shots as organized as possible. I'm downloading them into a specific folder, naming them accordingly. I'm also making sure we have all of the necessary conventions. We were mis

We finally got to film in the park today, which I was very happy about. Today was a shortened day after school, so I was slightly afraid that the people playing tennis would be there. Luckily, they were gone by the time we arrived. We all decided that we should eat lunch first and then film, so there was a bit of a waiting period. While I usually hate those kinds of time segments, this one was transitional in a good way. I got to get myself relaxed and away from the "school mode" I was in. We needed to use the same park as the one that was used. I'm glad it is as close to the school as it is, because it was quite hot. If school ended at the time it usually did, it may have been cooler because the sun would be lower in the sky, but it was near noon. After the thankfully short walk to the park, we needed to set up the GoPro on to the tripod so that could film with it. After some fidgeting with it and watching two unhelpful Youtube tutorials, we decided to just film without