Blog 2:

  I finally got to start designing my magazine using Canva after spending hours coming up with ideas for it. At first, I didn’t know where to start. There are hundreds of templates, colors, fonts, and pictures to choose from. So, the first step I took in making my magazine was to start looking at the different layouts to get ideas for my own cover. I was trying to think of something that looked nice and interesting so that when people saw it in the store, they would immediately know that it was my magazine and not just some other project that I had completed in school. 

From creating the main image of the magazine to picking out a font for the title, I learned that each component of the magazine cover is crucial to making it appealing to potential readers. Choosing the font for the title was also a very interesting process. There were so many to choose from and each had its own special style and look. In the end, I picked a font that was easy to read and stood out from the rest of the cover, especially with the use of color for the title and for the smaller headlines.

I worked on making my magazine look more realistic by putting out smaller headlines around the main image. Professional magazines contain short descriptions of what one can expect to read in the magazine. I put out similar descriptions in my magazine to make it look more realistic. Sometimes words didn’t look right where I put them so I had to move them in other places. After some time I realized that even the smallest change could be better for the magazine.

Using Canva for this project was so much fun for me because it allowed me to explore many different creative paths to design my magazine cover. In the end, designing a magazine cover requires way more planning than I anticipated. All of the small details such as the font size of the title of your magazine and where you place the main image must be taken into consideration. This project taught me a lot about design in general and I hope to continue to use the skills that I learned with designing the cover of my magazine in future projects.

CCR creations

                                                                   CCR creations

Part 1:

check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TqV0-MQq_Y&t=195s

Part 2:

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mNInp4vN1Q

 

Final Project!

                    

                                         Final Project

Hey guys! it's finally done and I am so relieved but also super sad that it's over... anyways check it out using the link down below. Love you queens! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLOyt17zoP8

CCR script

 

                                                             CCR Script

    Hey everyone! I hope everyone is good! just letting you guys know it's a national holiday, aka.... MY BIRTHDAY!! Sorry but I am FINALLY 16 so I think everyone should celebrate. Anyways, I wanted to come here and share my CCR script which took me quite a while to make. I had to consider essential questions during the development of the script. I mentioned several details about what it was like working with Hannah, how I felt during the process, and how the concept would entice audiences. Below is my script, let me know what yall think about it. 

CCR

Creative Critical Reflection

Hey everyone! I'm back and back with more news! Now that I am finished with the film's creation and opening itself, it is time for the project's creative, critical reflection portion. This is basically the independent part of the project, where we choose a question about the process of the project and explain it through different forms that can range from podcasts to talk shows. Although I have not begun this part yet, I have been looking at each question with careful consideration. From my options, I am definitely leaning more towards the talk show and podcast just because I can make these more engaging for my audience. My AICE media teacher was kind enough to teach us more about this and give examples of past CCR's to help us understand how to complete this in more depth. During class, Mrs. Stoklosa highly encouraged us all to take detailed notes of everything being discussed in class so we can look back at it later on, and it can help us through this process. I also looked at the questions options that we can choose from to answer which are....

• How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
• How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
• How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

I think I want to choose the last two questions just because I think it is easier for me to elaborate on my experience of what happened and how it developed the overall outcome of the whole project. I am planning on beginning the CCR sometime since Hannah, and I just needed a break from all this since she has been in pain after her surgery, and I have been on vacation and have been doing online classes.  I also have a dance competition later on tonight at 10 pm, so I have to find a way to begin at least the script and overall schedule tonight of my CCR development. 

Editing journey

 

                                                        Editing Journey 

Yolo queens! Wow, Hannah and I have not gotten a break from all this yet! After hours and hours of editing in Hannah's room AND mine, we finally finished our film opening.  This was probably the most time-consuming part of the whole project, but I think that using CapCut, it was much easier and faster that way.  For me, editing has never been one of my strongest skills. I am good at developing an idea, acting, filming, creating the set design, and thinking about costume design.  After discussing it, Hannah openly told me that she knew how to edit and was actually good at it. So we got right to work after filming everything we needed to.  Hannah and I spent about eight hours working and playing around with CapCut, in other words, Hannah did most of the editing while I was next to her for moral support since every time I tried to edit, I would screw something up. 

The very first thing Hannah and I did was take all the footage and insert it into the editing platform. We wanted to cut any unnecessary footage that didn't work out or was useless. We thought it was better to have an excessive amount of time than less so that all we had to do was cut down on numerous clips. I actually made an album with my phone with every piece of content we created because, more most of it, it we used my phone as the main source of filming tool. Below is the album of all footage and content created by yours truly. 

After everything, all clips and audio were in order, and we added the credits and title to the project. Hannah and I included all information wherever we needed to, including at the beginning of our fake film. When it came down to choosing a font and animations, Hannah admitted that she wasn't good at that stuff, so she told me that I should be the one to do so, considering the fact that I'm a student government kid and I live for that stuff haha. Anyways, that part was actually fun to do as I had to choose a title and font and font color that represented our film expressively. 

I knew from the beginning of the brainstorming process that the title of the film opening should be "Stella." The name itself means "star," and that is who she is. Originally,  Hannah was not very on board with the title option but eventually agreed to it the more I explained why we should incorporate this as the title. After creating the title and playing around with the options, the final product looked so good. Check it out below!

Honestly, I think I slayed that!

Also, yall must be thinking, "girl, what happened to the audio?" Wellll, Hannah I was not going to incorporate music into it because we did not want the response from the company to be super late. So we found a website that would offer copyright-free music. We played several tracks until we found one that fit the "vibe" of the film opening. 

Now that Hannah and I finished editing the video itself, it's time to work on my CCR! I will be discussing this in my next blog so tuned hotties!

Film shooting extended

             

                                                      Film shooting extended

    Hey ya'll! I'm back with nothing but more and more updates on me and Hannah's film opening project! So although Hannah and I are mainly finished with the process, we still had a few clips that needed to be filmed in another location... 

                                                           Change of scenery

    So as you guys know, Hannah and I wanted our character to be watching a film that inspired her to follow her dreams and become an aspiring actress regardless of her unfortunate circumstance of being in a wheelchair after looking at the directions again. Hannah and I realized we screwed up and had to make EVERYTHING from scratch. So we knew that using the "Rocky Balboa" film could not be an option; we would have to make our own film.  So Hannah and I were brainstorming about what kind of film we could do.  Originally, we were going to make a film with me being the lead, and it would mainly focus on a girl and a man in the kitchen; this would be set in the 50s in black and white when women were meant to be housewives. The woman was going to stand up for herself and her rights. But we realized that I couldn't be the star in the film we're making and the film I am watching in the film opening.  Also, making this would require a male role; we did not have that in our favor. So, developing the concept would take too much time and require too much effort. So, we decided to make a documentary with Hannah's mom as the lead role. She would be acting as if she was an actress and sharing her story with fans in an interview.  She would be inspiring young people to follow their dreams no matter the circumstance.  I wrote the script and held it up as she read off of it while Hannah filmed with her tripod.  

Some things we did when shooting this portion used different angles and shots to create more of a realistic and entertaining documentary.  We cut each line of the script so that each line had a different angle or shot so that the footage was not too continuous.  Examples are shown below...

This did not take that long as all Hannah's mom had to do was read off a script, but we did run into an issue with audio. When we recorded the footage, we listened to it and realized there was too much background noise occurring in the very audible video.  Since we were outside, of course, there would be tons of noise that would make the actress's voice from being audible to the audience. There were cars passing by, birds making chirping noises, and kids playing outside. So Hannah and I had to fix the audio issue. We ended up refilming and while I held the script and filmed, Hannah used her mom's phone to voice record her voice as she spoke so that later on, we could sync the audio to the corresponding clips when we started editing. Below is an example of our audio being synced to the footage.