Portfolio Project: Post Production

While we haven't yet finished filming (there is a single shot that will show the film continues after opening) I have begun on... THE EDIT!!!

Main actress dancing on set after a great take

Post production is always my favorite part of making a project as I can only then see our ideas truly come into fruition. So far, I've edited very little but I've begun understanding the flow of the conversation our characters are having AND I've begun to hone in the coloring for the film. It is quite dark so I need to be careful of raising the exposure too much and introducing grain to the shots, but the colors are beautiful. 

So far, I've come into an issue with the movement of the very first shot matching exactly with a closeup of the main antagonist's watch in the next. I am going to have to move those clips around and see what will look the best, it's nothing I haven't had to deal with before. I may want to do a reshoot later (or just getting more shots) because I am a strong advocate for shot variety and so far I don't see that in the edit. The project feels kind of flat. But I am going to edit the whole thing before I decide on anything.

Premiere Pro timeline of our project

Portfolio Project: CCR Challenges to Social Issues (Q1)

 What is up Blog!!!

It is time to talk about the..

C!

C!

R!

I have a list of FOUR questions that I will have to respond to in 2 videos by creatively and critically reflecting on the portfolio project I've been working on with my team as a whole. 

The first question I have to answer is: "How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?"

A quote made by the character Knuckles in the TV Show "Sonic BOOM"

Our product uses conventions to its advantage. We wanted to create a fun Action Comedy Spy movie and there are a plethora of great movies that fall into each of those separate genres for us to take inspiration and learn from. The structure, for example, looks a lot like it could fit the opening of a Bond film, having a cold open showing the main character in a situation that has less importance to the rest of the plot but showcases their skills as a spy. The comedy is very similar to movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy or Bullet Train which is very situational and interlaced even into serious scenes. And the action is similar to the Bourne or, again, James Bond movies. These conventions all helped us to create a film that is worthy of the genres it is placed under.

Our story opening is based around a girl, Agent Vienna, who is a superspy on a task to take a dangerous case from a male villain character and take it back to her base. She is driven afterwards by her assistant, Jolly who is also a girl. Vienna's character is a mix between James Bond and Tony Stark, both male characters. Vienna breaks the gender conventions of this genre as most of the "cool secret agent" characters are played by men. In most spy films, women play either a sexualized twist villain, a love interest, or a secretary from a spy agency but never the main character. Vienna coming in and tricking a villain into giving her the case shows how the main spy role can be played by a woman and be just as amazing, believable, and intriguing as if it were played by a male.

Portfolio Project: Filming!!!

 Last night... We FINALLY started filming the project and from looking over the footage... it's pretty cool. 

The location we ended up shooting at was different from the original but it still had the proper set pieces to make the film flow correctly. The coloring was very warm and delivered a very cool vibe (especially with the neon lights) that captures some of the aspects I saw in Bullet Train. 

Our actors worked very well given that it was their first time acting and they even suggested an extra scene that we had not put in originally but brought a great sense of humor that helped the comedy genre side of the film.

I shot a majority of it on a tripod but there were various scenes in which I went handheld either to track the characters or to drive home the action feeling of the film. At times it got dark which is what we wanted, but I'll have to be careful when coloring so as to not put too much grain in the film. 

I feel that the footage came out great and I am excited to edit everything together. This is going great! (PS: There is a scene in which I will be making the main actress disappear behind a car and I will be using various masking techniques to perfect the effect. I haven't done this specific trick before but I think I'll be able to do it.)

Portfolio Project: Group Meeting 2

 BRAND NEW WEEK, Brand new ideas and updates from fellow students in my Media Studies Class.

There were a lot of new ideas thrown around at this meeting we had today. My classmate who had in the previous meeting discussed an idea of a project similar to "The Hangover" has now further developed his project, giving details about his filming process and dialogue which he was struggling with before. We were able to give him some critiques to further improve his project.

Another team was working on a Mafia style film with intermingling relationships similar to Romeo and Juliet. They had a very solid filming plan which had them shooting the majority of their project tonight (as my group also is). 

Portfolio Project: WE ARE SO BACK

 WE ARE SO BACK!

My team have just now, after not getting permission to film at a location and losing an actor, found a new location and TWO new actors to film this Tuesday. This is monumental is it means our project can actually continue and won't be stalled in the preproduction process till the end of time. The location is actually closer to us and has some very good burgers (which I will be munching on after the shoot) and the two actors are two of my buddies who I see almost every single day. I am so excited to be back on track and to finally be able to film something for this crazy cool project.

Portfolio Project: What to do if you get rejected twice on the same day

 Welcome back to the blog, Today's is going to be pretty short.

Our previous filming location has not given us the "ok" to film at their establishment and our original actor now has conflicting plans with most of the days we want to film. We really don't know what to do as of right now since one of my teammates and I are leaving on a big trip next week that will take up most of our time until Tuesday of the next week. We need to find something and someone else STAT or else this project could fall flat and fail.

We are looking at other potential actors, including one of my close friends, and other locations to see where we can shoot fast while  having a good final product.

Portfolio Project: BEEFCASE

 Welcome back to the blog!!!

My teammate on my portfolio project just found the best briefcase for our project ever. We needed a light blue one to represent the fun and whimsical nature of our main character, Vienna's, persona and she was able to find this!

She calls it the "Beefcase" because it's so chunky but it fits perfectly and we found it perfectly in time for our shooting date which is this upcoming Sunday. Other preparations such as the costuming and script reads have been done so that we're ready to film an efficient project this weekend. But as of now, there isn't much to do as we have to wait until this weekend to actually film.

Portfolio Project: Production Company Logo

 

What's up everyone, welcome BACK... to the blog where currently my team and I are preparing to film for our portfolio project! The first thing that we decided to tackle this week was the production company logo.

For the name, we decided on RGB Productions. It combined all of our names in a cool way but it was also related to digital screens and televisions. I wanted to emulate the digital RGB pixel display in the logo animation itself. So, what I did was...

I opened After Effects 2026 (the version is important and I'll tell you in a moment) and started with a base animation that opens the title card from white. Then that white pixelates and zooms out to show the logo.

Once I had that first step down, I continued the motion being pushed from the first set of letters into a 3D chunky version of the logo (and added "PRODUCTIONS" at the very bottom). I then proceeded to add lights into the scene to give the logo some dimension and weight. The "PRODUCTIONS" was coming in too early behind the logo so I decided to pre compose that layer, copying over the same light setup, and creating a rough mask so that it would not appear behind "RGB". The 3D space in After Effects received a huge overhaul in the most recent update, bringing 3D objects and textures natively to the software. While I won't be using 3D objects here, the text also received some slight quality of life updates which I am enjoying.

Finally, I added all my effects on top of the precomposed project. I added some fluid motion, a lot of glows so you would feel the impact, digital pixelation to connect to the double meaning of RGB, and finally, a huge helping of chromatic aberration to add again to the RGB idea.

FX Stack for RGB White Logo

RGB White Logo after adding FX Stack

FX Stack for 3D Logo

3D Logo after adding FX Stack

And here is the finished product!

Portfolio Project: Mise-en-scene (Costuming and Props)

 

Welcome back to the blog! Today I'm covering my team's costume and prop progress for our short film opening. 

I'm going to preface this blog by stating that I am not the person in charge of costuming and dress for the characters. One of my team mates had a pretty fun idea for color coding the characters and wanted to invoke different feelings from each of them. Our antagonist will be wearing mostly black, kind of giving off a mob boss vibe with leather, black slacks and dress shoes. Our main character will be wearing a couple layers including a red shirt and a trenchcoat/jacket very similar to Peter Quill from Guardians of the Galaxy.

As for our props, we will be using 2 briefcases, one black and one baby blue, for the characters to exchange. The difference in color exemplifies the two different personalities present both between Vienna and the antagonist AND Vienna and her later self. When Vienna exchanges the suitcases and leaves, she literally leaves her silly persona at the table along with her light blue suitcase and picks up a darker, more serious persona along with the black suitcases. Other props might include an earpiece for Vienna later in the opening and (if it counts) a van/big car for her driver to pick her up in.

Portfolio Project: Character Development

 

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CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!

Welcome back to my blog covering how my team is creating our short film opening! Today I'll be covering our character, Vienna's, development through the opening.

Who is Vienna?

Vienna, known to her work colleagues as Agent Vienna, is a secret agent for an even more secret government organization that's targeted around finding the worst of villains and stopping them from doing harm to society. She is very well planned out and knows each one of her targets inside and out before even getting within a mile of them. She at times plays a role making the targets believe she is completely inept as a mask to hide her plotting and real plan. This behavior takes inspiration from the "The Dark Knight Rises" rendition of Catwoman, played by Anne Hathaway. In the film, she is very calm and calculated but wears many masks in order to get (or often steal) what she wants. 

Example of Catwoman's behavior

How Does She Develop?

Our plan for Vienna in this short film is for her to come into the scene as a kind of silly, clumsy unserious character just coming to the diner to make a simple trade (unbeknownst to both the antagonist and the audience). As their interaction continues, their dichotomy in how serious they are taking the situation becomes the main source of humor. Once they finish that trade and Vienna departs from the table, we'll show a quick shot of her shifting in facial expression as she walks away, maybe side eyeing the antagonist while looking the opposite direction and a drop in her eyebrows. This will establish her act dropping, similar to how Anne Hathaway's sweet innocent persona changed as soon as Bruce Wayne figured out she was stealing. As the antagonist opens the suitcase he just exchanged, expecting a sum of money, he finds he was duped by Vienna and looks to the exit only to find she just left the establishment. He goes to chase after her and confronts her outside from across the street. Now, not wearing the "playing dumb" mask, Vienna stares straight back at the antagonist and puts on a smile. She has now shown her cards and become Agent Vienna.

Portfolio Project: Mise-en-scene (Set and Lighting)

 Welcome back to the blog! Here's a cookie for coming back, I appreciate your time. 🍪

This time I'll be researching my team's Set AND Lighting for our upcoming Portfolio Project. 

THE SET

Image Credit: Lester's Diner Website

Our story mainly takes place in a diner as this is where the antagonist has designated their meeting. When planning this scene, we all envisioned a 50s-60s styler diner where the interaction would happen in a booth. Our original idea was to try to call a local diner that we have connections with but the restaurant is only open until 4 PM and our story would be happening at night. So, with the help of our teacher, we found another location about 20 minutes away that fits the vibe of our film even better than the previous one. I've already called the location and am awaiting a call back to see if we can film next Friday. The restaurant has relatively flat lighting with lights hanging from above evenly lighting everything. Most of the vibe and coloring would come from how I expose the camera on location and from coloring in post. The interaction would happen at a booth with the antagonist already sat down with a view of the exit.

Portfolio Project: Audio Planning

 

Image Credit: PremiumBeat by Shutterstock

Welcome back to the blog! I'm very excited to discuss my team's plans for audio recording and foley for our upcoming portfolio project. 

1. ON SET AUDIO

Our main filming location will be a restaurant so a couple things we need to look out for are background noises from other patrons, plates clattering, waiters walking, etc. This background noise will aid in making our project feel more real but it could potentially muddle the dialogue of our actors. Now, I often use a set of Hollyland Lark M2 lavalier microphones for most of my projects and, while it is unconventional to use lav mics in a film, I believe it could be smart to use in place of boom mics as we can easily hide them in the characters clothing or within props in the scene and have the audio still be focused on the dialogue and not have much bleed from the background. If we were to use a boom mic, the mic may have a chance of picking up plenty of extra noise due to the distance it must maintain from both the characters and the camera, but it will also be much more of a disturbance to the restaurant and its patrons as we'd have a person standing in the middle of a walkway holding a big stick, blocking people from passing through. The Hollylands are wireless magnetic mics that are about the size of a quarter that could easily clip to the characters under layers to capture audio and stay out of sight. To make sure the background audio stays consistent through the whole project, I will also be letting the camera record the ambiance of the restaurant for about 2-3 minutes.

Hollyland Lark M2 Lavalier Microphones

2. FOLEY

My main source of foley for the projects we do for this class has been Epidemic Sound as we have a subscription to it provided by the school. It has a very large database of sound effects that will aid us in making our project as realistic and believable as possible. Any lack of SFX or foley can make a project feel flat and will not immerse the audience into your project no matter how good the visuals are. That being said, I don't have a very large list of SFX prepared before the shoot. Most of the sound effects I will look for will come from watching the footage and finding what is needed in the scene in the edit. The list I have now includes things like the characters sitting down, clothes ruffling, running footsteps, the latch of the villain opening a briefcase, and the clatter of tableware the main character accidentally knocks over.

3.MUSIC

Although I would love to compose all my own music for this project, as I know how to use the digital audio workspace Logic Pro, I don't believe I will have enough time to both create the music AND edit the entire project. This is why I will most likely be grabbing music from Epidemic Sound as they also have a very large music database alongside their sound effects library. The vibe we are trying to give off with the music is something adjacent to James Bond; classy yet action packed and primarily using orchestral instruments like trumpets, trombones, and violins. I may potentially write a motif for the character when they enter the scene and write a bigger version of that motif for when the character reveals their true self and the title card hits.

4. EDITING

The sound editing for this project will go through a very simple but long pipeline. First, the line edit of the footage from the set followed by leveling the footage audio. Once the footage audio has been completed, I will layer in the foley and extra sound effects, making sure to level them appropriately for the scene. Finally, I will place in and cut the music together to the story so that it doesn't overtake the rest of the audio and also matches to the story beats.

Portfolio Project: Media Theory Integration

 MEDIA THEORY INTEGRATION

...is something I did not expect myself to be saying while working on a film project, but thanks to my media studies class, I'll be saying it a couple more times just in this blog post as I explain what media theory I shall be integrating into this film opening!

Warner Bros. Pictures

Our opening mostly consists of a trade between our main character and the antagonist or the scene. Our main character, while they are a secret agent spy who is incredibly intelligent and resembles the traits of James Bond, this character is also quite silly and clumsy (at least that's the persona that they put up). So, to show this, we've put a lot of humor into his actions, making them awkwardly come into the scene and appear as an inept, unsuspecting deliveryman. We've even put a good bit of humor into their dialogue during this pretty scary situation. 

However, we needed something more, something physical to show his character. So, while we were looking for briefcases to use for the exchange our characters would have, one of my team members brought up a baby blue colored brief case that they have. We struggled to think how we could even use it, but we connected it to our protagonists characteristics and now, we had our physical symbolism.

This connects directly to the symbolic code, where the protagonist's personality and his briefcase are juxtaposed with the dark antagonist's personality and the general vibe of the scene. The color juxtaposition we chose here is similar to Barbie's character in the Barbie movie where she looks completely different from everything else in Urban America because she's a doll dressed in pink.

So, the Symbolic Code, will be the media theory we choose to integrate into our film. It will help the audience understand the personality of our protagonist and will build them out into a more rounded character overall.

Portfolio Project: Script

The script for my team’s spy comedy film opening was surprisingly one of the first things we finished. The team had a concrete idea for what we wanted to accomplish with the film and there was no time to waste. So, over about 2 class periods of my media studies class, we wrote the script which has plenty of humor and serious moments to properly fit the genre.

The central characters of this scene include:

AGENT VIENNA: The main protagonist of the film who, on the surface, is a silly, clumsy, unserious character who never quite seems to act appropriately to the stakes of a situation. But underneath they are a seasoned secret agent who takes inspiration from James Bond in the way they think and rationalize. They are on a mission to retrieve a briefcase from….

BINZIE DOODOOEYE (Script Name Only) The main antagonist of this scene. He’s a small villain that Agent Vienna faces only in the opening that serves as a way to introduce Vienna’s character. He resembles the characteristics of a brash Bond villain.

Here is our script!

Portfolio Project: Group Meeting 1

Today was a nice change of pace in my Media Studies class.

Instead of researching, blogging or working on our project, we were split into groups of about 8 people and we had to present the current state of our project to the group. 

I went first and explained my team's progress. We have our script already figured out, we have our actors set for filming, we have the necessary equipment (my Sony camera, briefcases, a tripod, gimbal, and costumes for example) and we are close to finding our filming locations. I'll divulge into all of that information in future blogs. 

After the meeting, my team and I discussed and brought together all of the recommendations we received in our separate groups. Our 3 major takeaways were:

1: Watch NAKED GUN

Someone in my group likened our Spy/Comedy idea to the plot of Naked Gun. He said a lot of the comedy and situational humor was similar and that if I want to level up my project, I should watch and study the original Naked Gun film.

2: The Earpiece

One of my team members reported back with an idea that, when we first introduce our main protagonist, they should have an interaction with an earpiece they have to show the audience that he is a secret agent from the very beginning. While I do like this idea and enjoy some possible shot ideas I could include in the film, a part of me wants to keep the fact that this character is a secret agent a secret until the very end where they run out with the suitcase and disappear. That would have the audience's first impression of the character be that he is just a clumsy unsuspecting cog in the machine until they figure out that there is something different about him at the same time as the antagonist. This is something we will have to discuss as a team, but it is a very good recommendation that could possibly make our opening better.

3: Filming Location

My other team member returned with a suggestion that we film at another restaurant than the one we previously had in mind that may have a better indoor aesthetic and potentially a place to film outside. We have connections with the owners of our first option and it would be easier to get permission to film there as I know we have filmed before, but the outdoor scenery does not really mesh well with the script so we were going to go to another location to film the outdoor sequence. But, this second place may have better indoor and outdoor scenery which would fit with our script. The only obstacle would be getting permission to film there. If we overcome that issue, we might have an even better setting for our intro.

The group that I was placed with had some great ideas that reflected the creativity of the students in this class. The ideas ranged from a coming of age film similar to Ladybird or Juno to a car-centric comedy film to one similar to the "Hangover" and a rock band drama thriller that was likened to "Uncut Gems" somehow. I'm excited to see how my fellow students develop their projects into full fledged film openings.

Portfolio Project: Main Idea & Inspiration

 The main plot of our story follows a secret agent, Vienna, who meets a mob boss at a restaurant for a briefcase exchange. Vienna leaves before the boss can open the case, but when the villain realizes he’s been duped, and that there’s nothing in the briefcase, he chases after Vienna. Vienna, now on the other side of the street outside, disappears behind a car a-la-Jason Borne and we cut to the title card. After the title card, the story continues  with Vienna in the car that passed by talking to her driver, Jolly (taking inspiration from MCU Iron Man’s Happy).

The biggest inspiration for this scene is the James Bond films and their slick dialogue scenes, with a second inspiration from the Naked Gun Films.