Today is the day ladies and gentleman!! Adolescent is not finished and ready to be watched. Thank you so much for keeping up with my blog along the way and staying in tune to the process because it was a really long one. The movie was a lot of hard work between Scarlett and I but I am really glad that it turned out the way it did, so I hope you guys enjoy it too. Please enjoy Adolescent and be apart of the journey between Jax and Beck. I can’t wait to see what you all think!! 🙂

Today I recorded my creative critical review or CCR for short. The video pretty much sums up what Scarlett and I have done over the process of making our film, Adolescent. The video discusses the elements of mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound that are all present in the movie, why it is there, and the reasoning as to how we used/portrayed those elements. I then go over our process of research and choosing an appropriate production/distribution company for our why. I also explain why we chose A24 then discuss our means of exhibition and marketing. Then later in the video discuss what technology was used over the whole process from pre-production to post-production, and just explain what I have learned along the way of this really crazy journey.

A lot of what is in my video is present in my blog and can be read more in depth as well, however the CCR is pretty much just to sum all of that up before the release of our movie.

Now that we have completely finished the editing process of our movie, I wanted to talk about the technologies that we used to help make the process easier. To put the shots in order, attach the sound, color correct, etc. we used imovie for that section of editing. It was pretty easy using imovie and we didn’t have much difficulty figuring things out because Scarlett and I have both used it many times before. Evidence that we used imovie throughout the process of editing and putting the final touches of our film and pictured frequently throughout our blog so just go check those out and see our work chronologically through the creation of our movie. 🙂

For the audio of Scarlett or Beck playing the guitar in the beginning of the film during the credits was recorded on garageband. There was multiple recordings (or regions) on one track so I just had to save each one separately in order to use it easier in imovie and not have to cut out the recordings I didn’t need. Besides that though we didn’t use garageband or any other technologies throughout the process.

After the whole experience of post production I learned out to use imovie pretty efficiently. Before taking this class I had never used it before or really knew anything about how to work it, besides the already formatted trailers when that was a big thing when it first came out. When I was younger my friends and I would make trailers all the time…yikes. I also learned how to somewhat use garageband, I didn’t look up how to work it I kind of just figured it out on my own.

For the color correction process of our film, we still wanted to keep the sunset colors palette because it was really aesthetic for the idea of our movie. We did not add any filters to the video but we made the color of the pictures come out warmer. For the exposure we had to switch it back and forth from turning it up and down along with the brightness. When filming some of the shots came out really dark or too bright so depending on how the clip looked we altered the exposure and brightness to make them the same. Overall though we wanted our clips to be darker and moody.

Along with the warm color, exposure, and brightness we turned the saturation up as well to make the colors of the clip really stand out and highlight the color palette that we wanted. After color correction the look and feel of the rooms and characters being contrasted is highlighted extremely. After color correction Beck’s room has more of the pick’s and blue’s while my room is more of the yellow’s and oranges that are in a sunset, which really worked out for the fact that we can see the contrast even more.

Since we have a rough cut complete some transitions that we have in our movie are just regular cuts from one scene to the other and a couple jump cuts when Beck grabs her guitar and when Jax plays a record. Other than that the transitions are pretty minimal and we have no effects added into our film. We wanted it to see as everyday life as possible. The feel in our movie though will really come together when we color correct the film. For titles and credits, it was shown earlier in our blog how we used a while lettering on a black screen for the title and credits because we thought it went better with the aesthetic of our film. We got this idea from Perks of Being a Wallflower which is a really popular, indie, coming of age movie that Scarlett and I both really like, so that and how we incorporated sound into the credits is why we decided to do that rather than superimposing the titles onto the pictures.

For sound, we needed to add the diegetic sounds of the record and the guitar playing the same song, in which later in the film it turns into non-diegetic. We also needed to really catch the sound the record player made when your first began playing the record, because it had this really cool organic cracking/static sound. Along with that for the intro we needed to as well record Scarlett or Beck in the movie messing around with the guitar as if she is tuning it while the credits run.

Looking at this screenshot you can see the audio of the record spinning making the cracking/static sound, and the audio of the song we used as a diegetic sound which then later turns into non-diegetic. We recorded the record using my iphone x because it picked up the static really well because it was super quiet and unable to be heard through the camera we recorded on. For the song cigarette daydreams that we use is simply just a downloaded version of it rather than recorded because then the music wouldn’t be as clear. The song in our movie, however, is supposed to be coming from the record player and Beck’s guitar as she plays it when you watch the film. This connects the two characters even more, along with the parallel editing to show that even though there is a contrast they have similar tastes and styles.

This screenshot shows the audio of the guitar as Scarlett (Beck) messes around with some different notes, ending with a final chord as the title shows up to hint that the credits are over. The audio came from a long recording of Scarlett tuning her guitar and near the end just playing random notes. Scarlett recorded herself by using a condenser mic which was plugged up into her computer. The way the audio is connected to the credits/title is something we got from Perks which is one of our main influences when filming Adolescent. The guitar signifies something important that you need to remember throughout the movie, kind of like how Perks used the sound of a typewriter which was later seen in the movie when Charlie received one from Sam.

These are a series of shots that we are using as our bloopers because they were either really funny or we just messed up while shooting a clip. I will also post a collection of shots that were good but we just didn’t use as outtakes under our bloopers so you all can see the ideas we had while shooting Adolescent. We have a lot of outtakes so the video may be pretty long especially since we had to reshoot like two times. Enjoy our bloopers!!!

This video of a collection of shots that we filmed during our shooting but we ended up not using for our rough cut and eventually final draft whenever that time comes. I added some music to make the video more interesting so you’re not just sitting there watching boring unused shots 😉

Now that we have finally finished production, we are now able to begin post-production/editing!! Throughout the whole time of shooting and reshooting we started putting together the different shots to form our rough cut for the introduction to Adolescent. So we’ve had the basis of a rough cut for a while, except some of the shots were changed or rearranged till we were finally happy with the rough cut that we came out with.

Through editing, since we just began the process, we created a coherent meaning through our collection of shots. The way we did this was by really focusing on the parallel that we wanted present in our film. This parallel editing showed that the two characters were connected somehow even though we the audience may not know why yet. The parallel editing shows Jax and Beck both doing different things at the same time but in different locations, and at the end they have gone somewhere and we are just left focusing on the two objects they have left behind.

This is one of the main focus points throughout the whole beginning of the film. The fact that the two characters are doing two different things at the same time shows us the contrast between the two just based on what they are doing. For example, in the clip you can see Beck playing the guitar while Jax in the video, does her makeup and smokes a cigarette.

Another aspect of post-production we have added to create meaning in our film is a sound bridge we have created between the two characters. However that will be discussed in a later post, so stay tuned to hear about our most excellent sound bridge.

Check out our rough cut as well, the final cut will be posted later when post-production is complete.

So yesterday, which was March 19th, Scarlett and I completely reshot Beck’s part of the movie. In the last post talking about how we reshot some of the scene in Jax’s room I explained why we needed to reshoot Beck. We needed more establishing shots because during class when we had classmates look over our video they were getting confused that Beck and Jax were in two different rooms. So we needed more establishing shots and we decided that we needed cooler and more aesthetic shots of Beck rather than just having her sit there and play guitar the whole time. We also changed Beck’s outfit in the process.

This is a picture of Beck grabbing her guitar which we are going to use in the first two minutes of our film after reshooting. I took the picture while shooting to show Scarlett how the shot/angle looked because obviously she cannot see what I am seeing while I am recording her. We did not use this angle to show Beck taking her guitar off the wall but we used the idea and it turned out pretty good.

Some difficulties we faced during reshooting was lighting and coming up with new ideas for things that Beck could do besides just sitting there playing the guitar. So with the lighting the difficulties that occurred were the fact that in some clips the lighting on the camera was really bright and super clear while other times the lighting would make the clips super blurry on my camera. So we fixed this by turning down the lighting setting on my camera in the clips that came up blurry. However now the clips are way darker than the others but we are going to fix it during post production and editing.

The difficulties that came up with the new ideas was the fact that we wanted the parallel editing to really stand out in our film between Jax and Beck. In the first two minutes we have a clip of Jax in her room doing her lipstick in her vanity mirror. We tried the same angle with Beck while she played guitar but it just did turn out as good with the lighting, angles, and the fact that I kept showing up in the clips. In the end we decided to scratch that idea and just come up with other ones.

So today Scarlett and I had to reshoot for Jax’s part of the film intro. This is because when we began to create our rough cut (which i’m telling you was rough) we noticed and had other people for their opinions see that our intro lacked establishing shots. The reason as to why we need more besides the few insert which count as establishing shot is to prevent the viewer from being disoriented due to the parallel editing.

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Reshooting was difficult because everytime we filmed a shot that we thought looked good we then later realized something was off, like the lighting was different or the lamp wasn’t on. Having to reshoot the same clip that many times because of little mistakes was really aggravating lol.

A couple of things we reshot as stated before was some of the establishing shots of just the room empty, kind of like the master shot. I’m not sure where we will put that in or even if we will but it’s extra footage we wanted just in case. We also reshot the makeup scenes because I had a different lipstick that was a slightly different shade. You could only really tell though when I was directly in light. Pretty much the main concept of reshooting today was to create shots that we can add into our movie that would make more sense to viewers who have never seen it before, which was harder than I thought.

We are going to reshoot Scarlett (Beck’s) section of the movie as well because we also need more establishing shots of her room and cooler angels of her playing guitar. Wish us luck again!!

Some of the main influences that we took from to shape our film is The Perks of being A Wallflower and LadyBird. A lot of aspects of our film are pretty much original like the aspect of the parallel editing which we didn’t take from any coming of age film. Also the act of smoking seen in the opening of our movie we used because it was a main genre convention.

The main thing we took from Perks for the opening of our movie was how they did the title and credits. The opening of Perks it starts out with the title and credits on a black screen starting with the producers and Summit Entertainment who financed and distributed the film. The words are typed out as they are shown, and as the letters are typed out we can hear a typewriter in the background insync with the words. The sound still is in the background as the credits go on and when the title shows up we can hear the typewriter reset itself.

Scarlett and I thought the introduction with the sound of the typewriter which something significantly important was really cool. So we did our title/credits on a black screen with white letter and in the background we can hear a guitar being played to test if it is tuned. Then when the title is displayed we hear a full chord being played to initiate the credits are over and the movie is about to begin.

Another influence which was said to be from LadyBird was the concept and reason on why they color corrected their film the way they did. The director as I have talked about before in my blog wanted the whole movie to be like a dream or a memory like you’re connected but disconnected, like you’re there but you’re not. We wanted this concept to apply to our film as well except we are doing more of a sunset related color palette because sunsets have always been something that is indefinitely nostalgic to anyone. Scarlett and I liked the grain applied to LadyBird as well which is something we plan on using when we begin editing.