Final Blogs: Final Project- Movie Creative Critical Reflection

Once our movie was finally complete, my group members and I focused our attention on the creative critical response (CCR). This CCR was a bit different from the rest. Instead of it being typed, it was being recorded. My group members and I learned that we should take a creative approach when doing this. The approach that we decided to take towards the CCR was a television interview. We came up with a plan to meet at one of our houses and do the interviews. To make it more proper and easier, we were going to get one of our friends to be the interviewer. However, due to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, plans changed. Due to the virus, there were many rules and regulations placed on us for our safety and the safety of others. We were told to self-quarantine and social distance. This left us lost on what to do. We were concerned as to how we were going to get this done with the self-quarantine and social distancing order. Fortunately, one of my group members came up with a brilliant idea. This idea was for each of us to send in videos of ourselves answering one CCR question. To prevent confusion, we assigned questions. One of my group members enlisted the help of her friend wh agreed to be the interviewer or host. That same group member volunteered to put together the videos to make one. Some of the videos had to be reshot because the time limit was not reached. Once those videos were done and all put together, the CCR was finally complete. We believe that it came out well.

Final Blog: Second Project

At this time when my group members and I became more comfortable with the filming process, it was time to jump into our next project. This project was a music video. For this project, each group got to choose any song they wanted as long as it was school appropriate. This granted us creative control. So, we were quite pleased and enthusiastic about the journey. The song my group members and I chose was, Catch Me Outside by Florida native rapper, Ski Mask The Slump God. The planning process for this project was a breeze. Due to the song's fun, hype and jumpy beat and flow my group members and I decided to make the music video a fun "Girls night out" type of theme. However, that's not all. We also revealed at the end that it was all a dream that everyone was having at the same time. We shot the video at the Sawgrass Mills Mall during the night. A few of the scenes were shot at one of my group members' houses. Everyone in the group was an actor in the video and a director. When filming this video, not everything ran quite smoothly. For instance, not every store in the mall allowed us to film. Regardless, we worked around our shortcomings and were able to produce an amazing music video. During the filming process, we truly enjoyed ourselves and had extremely high hopes for the outcome of the music video.  After Lauren finished editing the music video, the rest of my group members and I were amazed at how good it came out. In the end, we were very pleased with the project and couldn't wait to begin the next one.

Final Blogs: Final Project- Movie

After about a year's worth of preparation, it was finally time for the last project. This project was to film the first two minutes of a movie. In the first two minutes of every movie, you will see the titles. The titles introduce the main credits. This includes the production studio, the film studio, the director(s), the actors, etc. It was highly stressed that we do not make the movie seem like a trailer. That is why certain movie genres were ruled out when deciding on one for the film. For example, comedy was ruled out because in the first two minutes of a movie it would be difficult to tell that the movie is a comedy. However, deciding on what genre our movie should be wasn't a problem. My group members and I were sold on the idea of doing a thriller. After we decided on the genre, we came up with three different plots. In the end, we went with Aaliyah's plot because it was the most original and wouldn't be too difficult to do. Once this was settled and the filming process began, we found ourselves running into problems when it came to our schedules. As a result, we got really behind on filming, but things began to calm down and eventually, we got a majority of our scenes done to have something descent to turn in for the peer review. After we analyzed what the other group said about our film and it was time to reshoot, we knew exactly what we needed to switch, add-in, or take out. Not too long after this when my group members and I were planning the reshoot filming schedule, the schools closed due to the COVID-19 (Corona Virus) Pandemic. We thought that this would be a disaster, but instead, it gave us more time to reshoot. Even though we didn't have the camera from the school, all of my group members had an iPhone 11 which has been cleared to use for filming. Once we finished filming Lauren began editing and the film came out amazing. Though it didn't start out too great at first, everything started to come together to eventually create one of the best projects we have ever done.

Final Blogs: First Project- Commercial

The first project that my group members and I worked on was the commercial. When beginning this project we had high hopes for the outcome. To start off the project each group was given an identical list of companies to choose from to advertise for. The company that my group members and I chose was McDonald's. We focused our attention on the "Happy Meal". More specifically, the toy that comes with it. We chose this approach to appeal to the target audience: children. In the typical McDonald's commercials, you would see a happy family eating their meals together, and the kids playing with their new toys. These commercials imply that the children are the center of the household. To add on, when children see something that they want, typically on the television, they run and tell their parent(s) and the majority of the time their parent(s) would say yes because they can't seem to refuse their young one. So, once that the McDonald's "Happy Meal" commercial airs and the toy catches the children's eye, the sales of the product will increase.

 At the time the toy that came with it, for females, was the Barbie Doll. Once we discovered this we knew exactly how we wanted to film our commercial. The costumes for the commercial were casual, child based clothing for the actors playing the children, casual adult clothing for the actor playing the mother, and plain black pants, shirt, and visor for the actor playing the McDonald’s employee. The lighting in the commercial was natural. The actors were everyone in the group: Lauren, Aaliyah, Anishkaneel, and I. There was no makeup used for the making of this commercial. The props that we will be using are the McDonalds Happy Meal box and the contents that come in it: the sandwich/ chicken nuggets, a small fries, a small drink (milk, juice, or soda), apple slices, and a toy. The setting of the scene was the Upper Classmen Patio outside and, briefly, the doors of the Media Center. For this project, we didn't have much time to film. We were only allowed to film on campus and during the class period for two days. This became quite frustrating because we found ourselves trying to rush to make sure everything is correct, and we had to return to class once it was time for lunch which was an hour to thirty minutes after the beginning of class. This project didn't turn out how we had hoped, but it was our first project and it taught us a lot.