WELL THIS IS IT!! PROJECT COMPONENTS

 Well thank you for accompanying me in this long process, I loved sharing my progress with you and hope to see you soon! I hope you like our project as much as I did, I’m really proud of all the hard work we put into it so without further ado here is the link to our final project and Instagram ! 

Final project

Instagram

Thank you!,

CRITICAL REFLECTION!

 People love sports, whether it is watching them or doing them recreationally or professionally. Our short film ‘Reaching the Bar’ goes through that mental battle of not knowing how to let go of something that once upon a time it brought you joy. Our short film explores the mental impacts that sports have on you. We chose the sport of gymnastics because it is one of the most mentally challenging sports, comparing everything about yourself from a young age.  

We had a hard time deciding what our short film was going to be about but when we finally landed on an idea; we knew that the first thing to do was research. To start with, we researched some sports drama short films since that is what we were focusing on. Short films such as Game Night” by Joel Fendelman, “LIGA” by Toby’s Sport, and “good sport” were analyzed deeply to get the most inspiration out of them, and while studying these films one of the things that they had in common was that they are incredibly emotional, and they will make you feel something as you are watching. Moreover, the shots used for each film were very authentic to show the authenticity of the sport. Therefore, to achieve and be successful in this sports drama short film we had to really show the different kinds of emotions that playing a sport brings you, whether that is joy, frustration, anger, or sadness. (Research short film blogs)

While conducting the research necessary to make this production is long and time-consuming, it is incredibly important to accomplish. So not only did we research short films, but we also researched some gymnastics movies such as ‘Stick It’ (2006) and ‘Full Out’ (2015). From analyzing these films, we got some viewpoints on how to accomplish some authentic shots of gymnastics.

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The sequence of the video from ‘Full Out’ and the way the shots are put together demonstrates how quick gymnastics really is, to the point where it is hard to watch because there is so much going on which was something we wanted to accomplish on our film, as well as, the sequence from ‘Stick it’ falling over and over because the sport is really about failing over and over again until you get it right, therefore, they are both an accurate demonstration and representation of the sport which is why it was necessary to show some kind of those sequences.

The genre of our short film ‘Reaching the Bar’ is a sports drama, in which the plot is about growing up in the sport you love, nevertheless, as time passes it becomes a mental struggle every day as the main character starts comparing herself to others and starts to ponder why she isn’t good enough. While conducting our research for the genre I came across the sports drama conventions in which it adds drama to a sports storyline, in addition to it tends to capture the more intense aspects of the sporting world which is exactly what we did. In our film, we showed how gymnastics can be incredibly deteriorating for your mental health even though it can bring us amusement sometimes. Nonetheless, we were adamant about incorporating the sports drama conventions. (Research)

Just as research is an important part of filmmaking so is targeting the audience since they are the ones that will be watching the film. Due to the fact that our film is about sports and our main character is a female, we thought that the best target audience for our film was teenage girls to be specific but any teenager really because this is the stage when everything gets serious and the sport you once did as a fun activity is now on that increases the pressure of your performance which can cause some stress. Moreover, the short film is something that most teenagers would be able to relate to it and realize that they are not alone in whatever they are going through with their respective sports. Because our protagonist is a female gymnast, the short film is strongly targeted to the many gymnasts that have gone through this mental battle when you do the sport because gymnastics is not a team sport, you are completely alone trying to deal with the different kinds of emotion that the sports bring out. And because it is not a team sport, it leaves you comparing yourself to your teammates wondering why you can’t do the same things they can or why your teammate might be at a higher level and they’re not; it is mentally deteriorating. Consequently, we would also love for adults to watch this film so they can grasp an understanding of what their kids might be going through with the sport they are playing and have a little more understanding as to why sometimes leaving the sport is the right answer.

For our brand, you can see that we kept it cohesive throughout the entirety of our project. Nonetheless, the brand that we are trying to achieve is that over time a sport can become something that you dislike doing. The message we are trying to pass along is that sometimes it is okay to quit something that it is not bringing you joy anymore but instead, is causing you some mental issues. A lot of times we think that giving up something we once loved, but is causing us pain it’s the end of the world but in reality it's not, it is okay; it takes a lot of courage to make that decision but that is exactly what we want to communicate with our brand; we want to give all the little girls watching the film courage to leave whatever it is causing them to be hurt. The way we show this to our audience in our film is that as the character grows older, she becomes more critical of herself causing her to have mental struggles.

In our film, we can make a connection with a persistent issue today which is mental health and struggles. The main character of our film keeps all her feelings to herself and all her mental struggles which make her mental health deteriorate. In the sports world, this is something that happens every time because it is a common difficulty because of the constant pressure athletes put on themselves. As the film progresses there is a constant sense of jealousy and a decrease of self-esteem. In addition to that, there is also a social issue that in the world of gymnastics sometimes being an African American gymnast means that you have an immense amount of talent which is not true in every case, therefore, our film works to break that stereotype placed in the world of gymnastics as well. Finally, our short film works together to show a social issue and break another one at the same time.

 

 

AND WE ARE COMING TO AN END…

 Well, my friends this is the last week, our project is due tomorrow and we just about done. All we have been doing since last week is editing and we kinda split the work that way we can get it done faster. Nonetheless, as we are editing it we realized that we are running a little short on time so now we are brainstorming to see what we could add from the footage that we already had since we had 101 videos LOL. 

On another note, I got the part of doing the credits for the project and I got it done yesterday, nonetheless, I got a little stuck because I didn't know if I wanted to use the smoke effect or the typewriter effect. We decided to place the credits over some bloopers we got to make it fun and entertaining!

This is what the smoke effect looked like. 

As you can see the red is kinda tricky to see but the blue wasn't any better so I was stuck.

This is what the typewriter effect looked like and since I had to layer the text it looked like there was a lot going on, therefore, I didn't think it was a right fit. 

And lastly, these is the typical credits that everyone does but I think they look good so I think we are going to stick with this one. 

And then I had trouble picking what color to do because our brand colors are kinda blue and red but you can’t read them as clearly with these colors, therefore, I had to find another color or adjust the placement of the text in a way that you can read them clearly. 

When I showed my group mates I realized that it needs to be a little longer because they are going way too fast to the point where you can barely read them so I have to adjust that as well. 

Well, that's it!! Next time we meet you are going to have the final project on your hands!

EVEN MORE INSTA

 Welcome welcome, the last time we talked I told you we were editing and that was going great but i’m not here to talk about more editing, instead, I am here to talk about more Instagram because we had to post more since you know the project is due next Thrusday and all. 

So we now have 12 post on our Instagram and a couple of story highlights. Here see…

See! I think it looks great, I think we kept a cohesive theme going on throughout the whole social media page that goes very well with the film. We posted a couple of behind the scenes footage, videos of the “actresses” having fun on “set” the day of filming and a couple of just general gymnastics videos with captions that explain little things about gymnastics to educate the people that don’t know anything about it. We also posted a little postcard to tell the people where the movie is going to be and when it’s coming out. And look! film festival liked a couple of our post as well! We we’re very excited about this.

See!!! it’s pretty legit, we don’t know how they found our page but they started following us and they liked our post so it was pretty exciting g to say the least. But anyways, just wanted to update you on how the Instagram is going and I think we’re doing a pretty good job on it, I still think we need a few more posts but we have time to post still. Now, the next thing I have to do is my critical reflection because that is due the same day as well. 

THR WORST PART… EDITING

After my last blog post I tried editing with the “clip champ” app from my computer but it didn’t work, it looked like cut out and choppy. So then I tried Adobe but two things; one my editing skills don’t go that far and two my computer hates adobe because ur crashes everytimeeee so I would have to use my sisters computer to edit. But that’s not the point, on Wednesday in class, Ana brought her computer and for some reason adobe works for her so we started editing and we realized a few things. One do them was that there was a problem with continuity because in some clips the girls had different leo’s and it was gonna mess up the continuity of the film. We also realized that we may need more footage just to add some more B-roll. But nonetheless, we started editing just to get ahead because this is due Thrusday so we have to get going. 

Here is a us editing in class having a complete blast! 

Later that day I went to the gym to practice and get the film and because we are lucky people it turns out that the girls that we used decided to wear the same leo that we had already recorded them in! So it worked out great because instead of redoing the whole segment I only had to redo one shot so it was a pretty good day to say the least. Now we just have to keep editing and finish the short film! i’m very excited and I hope it turns out good and everybody enjoys it as well. 

SEE YOU SOON! 

THE START OF THE END

Yesterday in class we were very productive, we went through the 101 pieces of footage that we have and kinda organized them in order so that way when we edit we don't have to go through all those videos to see which one we are looking for. It was a long process, to say the least, but we also did this in case we were missing any other key piece of footage that way when I went to practice I could just shoot it really fast, again, it was minor details that we were missing so we made a list about it. 

After that, it was time to figure out how we were editing. Since we all have HP computers adobe or DaVinci always crash or at least on my computer, they do because last year trying to edit for my CCR was a nightmare because the program kept crashing. Nevertheless, the HP computer comes with its own editing app called "ClimpChamp" so we were trying to get familiar with that program and the one that Ana used for her other project. 

This is us trying to get used to the programs to see which one would be better to edit LOL. I think we are going to try the "Climpchamp" one and see if looks good on that one if not we will use Adobe. 

The next few blogs are  not going to be interesting because it is all about editing and the final product but stick with us through the hardest step of this whole project. editing. 

MORE INSTAGRAM

Welcome back! I know I have been talking quite a lot about the postcard but now that that's done we can move on to our social media account. Last time we talked about Instagram it was doing well but we need a little more, especially audience interactive posts so that is our next thing on the agenda. So I came up with these posts...

These types of posts are fun and eye-catching which would help if someone is scrolling through their Instagram and they stumble on one of these posts and they would be intrigued and forced to check out the rest of the Instagram and the film of course. I feel like I want to put a video together of all the Behind the scenes footage that we have and all the bloopers I feel like it would fit well with Instagram and the audience would enjoy it. Nonetheless, I did put together a video about gymnastics that we plan to post with the caption of "Gymnastics in 30 seconds, would you want to do it?". I'm terrible at captions by the way that is just the first thing that came to mind but look at the video. 

And that is it for this blog post and Instagram, we have less than two weeks to turn in this project which means that this entire week is mostly about editing and finishing touches. Tomorrow we are going to go through the footage and kinda organized it so that way editing becomes easier to do so Stay super tuned for the end result!.