Blog 16 - Ideas for the CCR

 Ideas for the CCR

So in the last blog, I kind of got confused because I thought we were supposed to write about what we learned from the CCR videos, but we were actually supposed to make a "rough draft" idea of what our CCR was going to look like. So let's get into it because I've thought of some AMAZING ideas.

CCR Rough Draft

So far, all of my friends have thought of their CCR video and what they're going to do. But I was a little lost in what I was going to do, and I really no idea what to even plan. I've done some more digging into the CCR videos, and I've thought of my plan. 

So the video is going to start off with me, and all my friends walking in the mall. I want this to be more of a horror setting because that's what me and my group have been studying and completing the most, so I feel I have more knowledge in that area. Sooo, the main character (me) is this famous influencer or actor who's just trying to have a good day out with her friends. But little does she know she has a stalker who wants to know the backstory to all her film. After a while of walking around, she decides to go to the bathroom while all her friends are trying on clothes in a store. She then walks out alone..

After she FINALLY found the bathroom, she goes and someone KIDNAPS HER!! Little does she know..IT'S HER STALKER!! He takes her to this dark room where all you can see is her. Then he starts asking her the 4 CCR questions.

More Ideas

Now I don't really know if I want to do 2 seperate videos of this or 1..but if I did 2 this is how the second video would go.

So instead of the stalker asking her all 4, he'd only ask her 2, and then the stalker would hear her friends calling for her and looking for her. So then the stalker let's her go but tells her one important thing:

"Make a video online, and post it answering these last two questions, or this will happen again.." And then he tells her the next to questions.

Then, she continues her trip with her friends but ends up leaving early due to being uncomfortable. She gets home, props up her camera and films the next 2 questions the stalker has for her, just so she's safe.

Reflection

Now I do feel this could be way better, but we still have some time to think of more ideas, so hopefully some better ones come to mind. I want to do very good on these CCR's and to do that, I'm going to need to think of something better, or make this itself better.

Blog 15 - CapCut..why was it banned?

     CapCut..why was it banned?

    As some of you may know, at the start of the month, right after TikTok got banned, CAPCUT got banned.. and I'm gonna tell you how we adjusted to that.

Adjusting period

So as you know, me and my group just finished a film assignment of interviews. I personally reviewed all the videos before putting them into my blogs or submitting them to make sure they were top notch..which they were. But I wanted to see how another song choice for the background would've affected the video, so I went to go into capcut and FOUND THAT IT WAS BANNED!! For your viewing, heres what it looked like. 

After I found this out, I panicked because all we've been using to edit our videos was CapCut. I thought I would need to start using iMovie aka a whole different platform to edit videos because of this. I started looking up YouTube videos about using iMovie, and many more platforms, but I found that not only was iMovie getting a lot of traction on YouTube, a lot of the previous students said they used iMovie in their CCR or even on their blogs.

A couple days after Tiktok got unbanned, CapCut did as well. We all learned after the fact that CapCut was banned because of a law passed to "address national security concerns and data privacy" which is basically the same reason TikTok got banned, but we're not talking about that here. All in all, I'm relieved CapCut is back in business, because iMovie is REALLY difficult to use. Or at least for me.

Blog 14 - CCR and Blog Inspiration

 CCR and Blog Inspiration

Today's assignment was to look at previous CCR's and take notes on them. This was helpful because it made me realize what I'm lacking, and what I'm on point with. We were required to make a whole page dedicated to notes, so we could get some tips/inspiration and prepare for the upcoming weeks. Let's get into what I've learned.

The notes

So the first thing being: a great place to get props that I didn't think of before is party city. It's around all year around, so that means the supply will be great. But one problem is that all the party city stores around me are closing down because of bankruptcy or something so I might just have to order them from amazon. 

Another thing to really elevate the quality of the CCR's is to blog and take pictures of EVERYTHING because you never know, you might have the answers to the CCR's in your blogs.

One major assignment we had earlier was to create a production schedule so we don't fall behind. That's one thing we did correct and we hope to stay on track with films, bloopers, blogs, and other editing aspects we need to keep on track.

Also, when answering CCR questions, but real examples of what you've done/worked on with dates, so they can really see what goes on with production and learn how much tension there really is with being able to complete everything on time, while also trying to not make it look sloppy.

One idea I had was to make the CCR videos with 2 questions in one video and the other 2 questions in the next. I feel like that would work out better seeing as how the CCR needs to be 7 minutes long. So instead of filming and editing a 7 minute video, it'll be 3 minutes and 30 seconds and a 4 minute video, which is what we've been working on lately. It'll also be easier to edit since it's not such a long video. 

One thing I realized in these CCR examples, was that they made a plot. So instead of just sitting in front of the camera and answering 4 questions, they really put in effort and creativity into these videos, which made them become more alive.

The questions

Finally, the 4 CCR questions are:

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions, and how does it represent social groups or issues?

2. How does your product engage with audiences, and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

4. How did you intergate technologies-software, hardware, and online-in this project? 

Blog 13 - 3 BLOGS A WEEK?!

 3 BLOGS A WEEK?!

Our latest lesson was about the fact that to be able to make it to all 60 blogs, we need to be doing 3 blogs a week. Now for someone who has plenty of other cambridge classes I was like "WHAT!!" butttttt it ended up not being so bad.

My plan

My plan to get all these blogs done is try to work on 4 continuous blogs a week, so if i ever fall behind by a day, it's easy to make up as I'll only have 2 blogs to make up instead of 3. 

- My media studies journey begins

- five photo story

- thirty second film

- sound

- next film plan

- sound effects

- editing assignments

- news report

- final decisions

- planning for the news report

- bloopers

- final product

This makes a total of 14 blogs, so for the rest of this week (aka just today) I am required to make a total of 2 blogs buttt as I said I wanna do more than that. So this week I wanna try to work on 3 more blogs if possible. The next blog is mainly going to be about the CCR notes I took and my inspiration for that, plus other blogs and tips for the next upcoming blogs. I hope you enjoy these next couple of blogs, because it's going to be..A LOT!!

Blog 12- Final Product

 Final Product

I'm sure you've been super pumped to see this final project now that you know everything and evert DETAIl that has gone into this project and I hope you all like it. We spent a lot of time on this trying to make it perfect, and we couldn't have done it without our best team involving Savannah, Amaris, Adrian, and of course, ME!! Sit back and enjoy the video!!

Final Video

Reflection

Now I know you all know how this goes. We say a couple lines saying that our video could be better, because that's what you WANT to hear. But I'm going to tell you the raw truth about how I really feel about this News Report. 

I personally fee like the video itself without all the editing does need some more work as far as memorizing lines go. I (the interviewer) was needed to ask the interviewee the questions but I made the mistake of not memorizing them so I had to keep looking over at the computer which you can CLEARLY see. But on the contrary I really do believe the editing skills were amazing given the little time we had. It made the whole video come to life because of the switching of shots, music, and comedy that was put into it. 

Now here comes the basic part (prepare yourself). I do feel like this could've used more work, but it's not bad for the time we used. I hope to see you guys on the next blog, and hope to improve and improve like we have been since the start of the year.

Blog 11 - Bloopers

 Bloopers

As you remember, I talked about the News Report planning, and mentioned we would talk more about that later. Well here it is! We mainly only took videos of the second try around because we found it funny how we were rushing around trying to finish. AKA just trying to make light of the situation. Now here are some of the funny bloopers for your liking! Hope you enjoy, now take a seat back and WATCH these comical videos.

YouTube Links

Conclusion

I hope you all enjoyed those funny little blooper clips, and I'll see you again once the final product is done!

Blog 10 - News Report Planning

 News Report Planning

 So you all remember when I talked about the 2 minute news report last blog, so here's the game plan. We are gonna start off with Savannah kick starting the research aspect of it, while Amaris and Savannah go to the gym to interview people on their physical health and how it effects their mental health. Then, me and Adrian were going to go to Dr. Felix (psychology major) and ask her to tell us what she thinks effects teenagers and adults mental health. Buuuuttt.. thats not how it turned out. So let's get into it!

Problems

There was one majorrr problem when we went to go film this video. WE FORGOT TO FILM! We had the plan down and everything but we kept putting it off for some reason I can't explain, until the day before it was due. So, we ended up filming a financial health segment during class on Wednesday instead, and adrian went home to edit it, buttt it was TRASH!!! So scrap that, now we had to do something new but OH NO, IT'S DUE TODAY!! So we had to stay about an hour after school and film the ENTIRE THING OVER AGAIN, and this is how we did it!

Filming

Adrian started off by making a script for Savannah and that's how she would kick start the entire video. We decided to do that last since the more we waited, the less people there would be to interview. So, we first interviewed Enmanuel which is actually Adrian's cousin. Then we interviewed a couple other people, but the hardest part was actually finding people to interview. A lot of the students we asked don't even have an income to comment on financial wellbeing. So we had trouble finding teens for that part, so instead we went took all the students we could get and went straight to teachers. Teachers had a lot to say about money saving and I thought it was pretty funny seeing their faces when minors were asking grown adults for money advice. We had Amaris holding the script up for me while I interviewed people, Savannah recording, and Adrian playing a part in the interview as well.

Editing

After we finished interviewing everyone, I sent all the videos to Adrian so he could start filming..but we forgot one segment. SAVANNAHS INTRO! That was the most important part of the whole assignment, so we had Savannah film her part on her own at home while Adrian edited the rest. Savannah did have a lot of bloopers, but we will talk more about that later on. Adrian was finally able to finish editing the video, so as soon as I came back from work, I turned it in and let out a HUGE sigh of relief!