My CCR

My Creative Critical Reflection

Final Project

The final cut of our film opening "The Leroux's"

Final Thoughts

As I sit in Panera Bread typing my last real blog post right now, I cant help but reminisce on the great  adventure that this project was.

From crazy film ideas back and forth between Alex and I to seven hours of shooting on our day off at my house, I must say I am grateful for the memories and so proud of all of our hard work. I believe in the saying "you get what you put in" and that is exactly what we did. We worked our butt's off filming, creating, and editing and the results we got are truly more than satisfying.

Alex loaded all of our footage onto a USB so he can spend his Spring Break creating the complete Leroux's film. (it will definitely be longer than two minutes..haha) He's also going to compile all of the hilarious bloopers we have into a short video to look back on whenever we need a laugh. Im so excited to see the potential short independent film he will create! Hey, maybe I'll post it here if my readers are still begging me for content three months from now.

Next Tuesday, the final due date, Alex has been so kind to offer to submit both of our projects since I will be out of the country and with little to no computer access. Today, is actually the day I leave and I am trying to calm my nerves with a strawberry banana smoothie, warm bagel, and some therapeutic blog writing. For those of you that don't know, I hate flying! It is my absolute worst fear and just thinking about having to be confined in the plane for 8 hours soon makes my entire body cringe.

Anyways, to my readers, it's time I say goodbye and thank you all for being a part of this wild, sometimes stressful, but mostly fun, journey.

-L

Youtube Stars

Last night I fixed the background noise on some of the scenes to finalize our film. I saved it and emailed it back to Alex.


And just like that, our film is finally done and uploaded to Youtube! You can find it under "The Leroux's" or through our name "Lara and Alex".


Disclaimer: on Youtube it says our film is 2:01 but I can guarantee you it is 2 minutes on iMovie.


Go check it out and let me know what you guys think!
-L

CCR Mode

Last night I stayed up late finishing the critical reflection. (Again mine needs to be done by Wednesday because I will be in Spain for Spring Break!) I still am not sure whether I'm going to do a podcast or video but that will be all figured out soon. Once that is done, I will post my final CCR. Stay tuned,
-L

Here is my final critical reflection script:

Hi everyone! Today I will be talking about my film opening titled The Leroux’s. The film falls under the Crime genre and the Film Noir sub-genre. Film noir is a stylistic 1930’s/40’s crime genre characterized by stark lighting effects and the common plot of a murder investigation. The Leroux’s is set in the 1940’s with two main characters named Adele Leroux and Detective Briggs. I play Adele and my partner Alex Medina plays the Detective. The story follows the investigation of Adele’s deceased husband. Detective Briggs is responsible for the case and places Adele as the leading suspect whom he questions. Adele is uninterested and emotionless throughout the questioning which infers the idea that she may have something to do with her husband’s death. The ending is both ominous and suspenseful as Detective Briggs leaves Adele’s home and the final shot focuses in on her smile and quick wink just before she shuts the front door.  

The Leroux’s challenges the conventions of a typical old fashioned crime film in which the victim is a helpless female and the criminal or murderer is a dominant male. In our film, the roles are reversed. Adele Leroux is the killer and displays a high level of confidence throughout the film, while Detective Briggs is somewhat subordinate as he attempts to investigate the case. We thought it would be unique to create the film in this way because typically, crime or suspenseful films revolve around the so called damsel in distress.

Our film was inspired by director Wes Anderson’s common stylistic approach. His films are quirky and weird in their own odd way. Anderson has a distinct style that is prevalent in all of his films, a style that is recognizable from the first shot of the movie. We took heavy inspiration from him in terms of his camera placement.  He uses symmetrical framing to engage the audience in the characters and the characters only. His shots, especially in conversations, place the characters in the center of the frame, drawing all focus to them and their immediate surroundings.  Since our opening has a conversation at the forefront, we wanted to make our shots lined up perfectly symmetrical to give that feeling and personality of Anderson’s films.

Because of the era we wanted to portray in our film, we chose specific costumes for the characters accordingly. Our film is set in the 1930’s/40’s, so this tasked us with the problem of finding a wardrobe for our characters that matched the era. Luckily, my mother had many vintage pieces in her wardrobe including clothing and jewelry that I was able to borrow. My character, Adele Leroux, is a woman of high class during this time period, so I made sure to incorporate key pieces like pearls, heels, and leather gloves to convey the typical rich 1930’s female. Alex’s outfit had to portray a detective from the era. Typically that meant, a long trench coat and a fedora as the two main tropes of the typical detective outfit. Fortunately, Alex was able to find the whole outfit for just under $15 at Goodwill and Burlington Coat Factory.

My house was the set for the movie, we used my parents bedroom/office, the dining room and my front porch. For the opening credits, which were filmed on the office desk, we shined two lamps on either side of the center image to brighten the shot. We cut out the letters for the credits ourselves from magazines because it contributed to the crime genre, as if the mismatched letters were put together by the detective. We had to place the letters individually each time for each shot, which was the first struggle we faced while filming. Also, we did not have a tripod for the Nikon camera we were using, so that called for intense improvisation on our part. We took about ten to twelve textbooks and stacked them high on my dining room table. We were able to successfully place the camera on the books and add or remove any to raise or lower the shot.

The entire editing process took place with the iMovie software on my Mac laptop. iMovie is a simple to use editing program that Alex and I are familiar with from using on past projects, so we agreed it would be the best tool to use for the film. Apart from video edits, iMovie contains many filters to choose from that can be placed on each clip. We went with the “old world” filter because of its dark shadows and old fashioned look, similar to the film noir style.

I would first submit this film to an independent film festival like Sundance Film Festival or South by Southwest to capture the attention of a smaller audience which will promote the film to a much larger audience in the long run. If it is picked up by a distributor at a festival, that would allow us to commercialize the film at Movie theaters across the country.

This film opening project has truthfully, improved my production skills tremendously. I previously never created a film and the entire process of this project taught me so many valuable film techniques and editing skills that I will cherish for a long time. The majority of this lessons learned I must thank my amazing partner Alex for. Without him, none of this would have been possible.

Until then,

Thank you for watching!

Weekly Update

First off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Alex!!! He is 18 today.

This week, Alex and I spent each day editing our film. We ran through a big struggle in the last couple of days because we had more footage than we had time (the film must be a maximum of two minutes) and we felt that every scene/shot was so crucial to the whole story! When we finally got to the 2 minute mark we still had an ending shot we wanted to put in to tie the entire scene together. The film ended after a response I had to Alex who was interviewing me and it just felt like it stopped in the middle of such an important part.

Luckily, today I kept messing with the film on iMovie and I was able to make it exactly 2 minutes with the ending shots we wanted! How? I went through every single shot and cut any unnecessary pauses or camera lingering that we had and miraculously, created a two minute film opening. I'm going to bring my laptop next class to show Alex the finished product and see if we need to make any final tweaks/changes to it.

Up next, the Critical Reflection!

Whew!
-L

A Finishing Touch

Throughout the editing process, I knew I really wanted to put some type of filter onto the film to emphasize the time period (30's/40's) as well as to add a feeling of suspense.

At first, we considered to make it a black and white film since that is typical of the film noir genre. But, we agreed that the colors in each shot were crucial to the wealth and feeling we wanted to portray.

We settled on the "Old World" filter provided by our cooperative partner iMovie. It has dark shades in it but doesn't totally take away from the color in the shots, so it works perfectly.

Here's a sneak peak! ;)
-L