AICE Media Studies

Here is our final project. We are so excited for it to be completed!!

 Wow! We finally solved the problem of finding our music - and we are so so excited! We were in class the other day, listening to music as per usual. I asked my group if they had any interest in adding a song by Ethel Cain into our movie. I don't think anyone fully registered what I was saying, they were preoccupied, but nonetheless, I went to email Ethel's team.  On her website, there are helpful links and emails to reach out for all sorts of inquiries. I didn't know exactly which category my question fell under. So, I decided not to chance it, and emailed four different emails at once. I used the template Amelie had created a few months ago, when we were reaching out to other teams.  Not even an hour later, I received an email back! They told us that we were allowed rights to the song, just so long as we properly credited her and kept the video on YouTube, for educational purposes.  We were shocked, and overjoyed at the speed and cooperation from Ethel Cain's legal te

 After adding in the new titles, we wanted some more constructive criticism. So, I asked my dad to check out our video. We all trust his creative opinion. He has worked with us on other things of this sort in the past. It was Amelie's idea that we should go to him. I had previously talked to him about problems we were having during the production of our movie, so he was up to date on the efforts we put in.  I texted him the most recently updated version of our video and asked him for some constructive criticism. As expected, he was happy to help! He watched the video, and texted me back a review. He said that the titles looked good, but that we should try to put an effect on them so they could stand out against the backgrounds more. He also suggested tweaking the audio at a particular part where the volume significantly lowers.  So, with his suggestions in mind, I went back onto CapCut, and got to work.  I did not adjust the sound because we have intentionally chosen the specific c

We finished our final project! Or so we thought.  We finally put music into our movie, and it was looking great. But then it was time to receive feedback on it.  I showed the video to one of my friends in another media studies group. He brought to my attention that we were missing something from the rubric. Previously, all of our titles were written on pieces of paper, or objects we shot in the surroundings of our set. But in the rubric of the assignment, it was outlined that we needed to insert our titles as text boxes into the video during the editing process.  We were obviously very disappointed because we had put so much work into our movie already. It's a shame that most of it went to waste. We are still able to use the footage, but the point of our specific shots is now lost.  So, I went back to re-edit our movie.  I did a lot of research into tools imbedded into the iMovie app, but none of them were exactly what we were looking for. So, I wound up using CapCut. The tools on

   After filming, we all headed back to my house. This has become our habitual editing location. We all file into my bedroom, Isaac sits on a stool beside me, at my desk, and Amelie and Lilly lay on my bed on their stomachs. We all face my desktop computer screen, which becomes the most important thing for the next 45 minutes.  I had previously uploaded the videos from our first day of filming to my computer, so all I now had to worry about was the transfer of day #2’s videos. There weren’t as many as the first time, so I was easily able to airdrop from my phone to my computer. I dragged in all of the videos in the correct order of where titles must go. I added everything in and we were at about 3 minutes of footage. That was when we collectively started to panic. We realized that after cutting everything down to the right length, there would be no way for us to reach 2 minutes. We kept going back and forth on what to prioritize. The integrity of the production and storyline, or the ti

   Hey again! To finish up filming, we had three more shots to get! Another book, showing “Written by”; the friendship bracelets, showing “Executive producer”; and a phone screen, showing “Music by.” We first took a shot of the book. We had already accounted for all the required shots in our movie, so we had some more freedom with this. We decided to play around with the Dutch angle. We removed some books from the shelf and placed one book, the subject of our shot. We placed it so that it was slanted, and diagonal compared to the top and bottom, horizontal lines of the bookshelf, and the side-to-side, vertical lines of the books. The shot started with the vertical lines vertical, the horizontal lines horizontal, and our book slanted - making it a bit challenging to read the title. As the shot progressed, I rotated the camera so the text on our book spine was legible. The other lines in the shot were now slanted - our book is now the only thing making sense in the shot’s context. When w