Sep. 27

Reflecting on the notes (just in case whoever sees the metric ton of notes and skips past this)

The thematic notes I've taken here today are extremely helpful to bear in mind as we were briefed on our two big assessments today- Criteria A and B, but specifically for criteria B. I really hope that I get to be the director for this project, because I've never gotten a chance to direct during all my years taking the MYP film course. It's a pity, because I feel like it's a job I would enjoy. I have some ideas especially for this film noir course, but I'd be fine if someone else took charge. Also, I hope my group doesn't make me play the femme fatale- I know that acting like that kind of character isn't my strong point.

For our Crit. A piece of writing, though, if I decide to document the history and evolution of film these notes contain great points about why people turned to film noir in their creative age as well as inspiration and examples to back those up. 

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WHAT IS FILM NOIR?
• French for black film
• Genre that peaked in the 1944-1955 period

Sep. 18

WHAT HAPPENED TODAY

My group split up into two sets of partners and each pair of us got to edit our footage from the last class in our own way. I was paired with Joseph, and after a brief editing review with Mr. Chiang (see below) we got down to business. 

The first thing we did was go through our clips, and throw out any of the simply unusable ones. For the clips that might have been useful for either sound or video we kept and labeled as such. Then came the assembly edit, then a simple cut. Because this was only an exercise and we didn't have time, it wasn't a rough cut or a fine cut, more a rather average mix of both that resulted in our final product- at least, in terms of a cut. Along the way, I also fixed the sound to the best of my ability, changing the volume levels of each one to fit the last shot, and also trying to reduce background noise by making the volume come up or down based on which part has the most gain. 

Then we found our worst shot- the final shot, which was extremely shaky and hard to see, and looked through how we could fix it. As it turns out, there is a very helpful video filter on Final Cut Pro that steadies and smoothens the entire thing, and it managed to look like a very convincing Dutch angle which we were quite proud of. Finally, we added a grayscale filter- it was film noir after all.

IB LEARNER PROFILE

Today's lesson, even with the review in mind, still required a lot of beforehand knowledge of editing and using Final Cut, and thus the most applicable facet would be 'knowledgeable'. 

CHOOSE SETUP
>Format > Apple ProRes 422
>Primary scratch disk > Documents > Final Cut Pro Documents
-scratch disk: auto save files, etc.

Sep 10th: Storyboarding Double Indemnity

WHAT HAPPENED TODAY

After watching and finishing Double Indemnity for homework, this class we got to start storyboarding a scene of our choice, presumably so we can act on this storyboard afterwards. It was a fun activity for me, as I enjoy drawing, but despite having storyboarded before this is the first time I've reverse-storyboarded- that is, done a storyboard to an existing scene. It was a strange experience, and if anything just as difficult as making up the shots. Low angles are hard for me to draw, I think. But ultimately it does help as a handy reference if we do shoot this as a proper scene later without having to watch the clip over and over again. 

IB LEARNER PROFILE

Being knowledgeable probably applied a lot today- there were people who came to me (?!?) for advice to draw some of their scenes and that required knowing what I was doing at least to a degree. 

Sep. 6: Notes about continuity editing

What is continuity editing?

-Breaking down a scene into a series of shots
-Making it feel believable to the watcher
-Creates coherence and helps spectator orientation
-Shots are edited so the viewer can actually piece it together (into a story) like a puzzle

Sep. 4

watched film: double indemnity add reflections afterwards on the film i guess idk

Sep. 2nd

WHAT HAPPENED TODAY

First half of the class:

While Stephanie speed edited our footage with some of my direction and Hannah's advice, the rest of us started sending all of our sound effects and soundtracks to her. We discovered that we missed quite a few, more than we had expected and it turned into a mad rush to get the perfect sound effects while I took over the syncing with the audio and video. It was sloppy, I didn't get to equalize everything in every sound. I missed a couple of sound clips though, and it definitely showed in the second half of class.

Second half of the class:

Then came the screening and it turned out alright. It could have been better- the soundtrack that we eventually decided on could have been better but in the rush of things that was pretty decent, I believe. Ms. Wong felt that our selection of clips was pretty effective, and I agree somewhat, though the very choppy editing didn't help at all. There was some people who disagreed, and they said that one of our clips of choice- a clip where one of the main characters is piercing the other main character's ear, because it was too easy to see what was going on. 

IB LEARNER PROFILE

Risk taker. We took a lot of risks today when we edited that quickly, especially in terms of quality, but in the end it all paid off. Things like the choppy editing- scenes flashed by so quickly nobody fcould really tell what was going on, and that turned out to prove to be useful, very useful. There was one scene where there was a prank being played on another character and it looked like it was actually a gory scene. However, it was apparently very effective and there were people who actually were taken aback. Our risk had proven to turn out okay.