I was about to start editing but I had to stop immediately. Please let me know how I'm just now realizing this shot is disgusting.
There are outlets, wires, and the light can be seen. I'm starting to question if I need glasses because I do not remember the shot looking like that when I filmed.
I love generative fill and AI
However, this is nothing to stress about because I just so happened to stumble upon an Instagram reel about the brand new generative fill tool on Photoshop. In theory, I can remove or create any object I want to, and since the subject isn't moving around It works perfectly.
That's so much better but now that I'm thinking about it I could totally add items to the shelves, I just don't know if generative fill will do the best job so I had an idea. I will pick 3-5 items that I'd like to place on the shelves and learn how to animate them like pixel art. I know it's a stretch but it would look super cool and tie back to the whole video game aspect of the piece. I found this YouTube video that taught me the basics of animating pixel art, and it was actually very useful. Since I already did the pixelated pictures for social media, I also have that second method of creating pixel art, the hard part will be animating them but I can do it.
That's something I will get into at a later time because I'm going to need a full brain to do it. I will say that I did not think Photoshop would come in clutch as much as it did.
Even though the computer is still not working I got the footage on my Google Drive! I don't think anyone will understand how much stress I went through to get it to download. It crashed a total of 7 times and the upload took 3 hours but it was 100% worth it because this means I can start the line edit. I forgot to mention the one bad news is that I had two interview shots and I am still trying to download the second one but that's not a problem because as long as I have one I can edit.
The prayers were answered
And if that isn't already amazing news, I filmed B-roll with Parker today! I haven't looked through the footage yet but don't worry I downloaded it to two different drives. I am not losing that footage under any circumstances! I followed the b-roll list I created a few blogs ago and I am very happy with how a lot of the shots turned out. Here's a sneak peek of some of my favorites
The only things I wasn't able to get were trophies or certificates because I forgot to remind Parker to bring them with him but for 5 minutes, I have a lot to work with and I can still film next week during school IF it's necessary but I don't think it will be.
Pause. I need to rewind for a second because I am so proud of how that first shot turned out. It is exactly what I envisioned and I want to explain how I did it because It was way simpler than I thought It would be, it just took a little thinking outside the box.
Step one was going to Lowes and buying plexiglass. My dad already had some from a garage project so that step was more about cleaning the dirty plexiglass.
Step two includes being a genius and moving the two tallest chairs I have back to back so I can place the plexiglass on top.
Step three was sitting under the plexiglass and filming as Parker wrote.
I may not be a mathlete but that shot takes some major creativity skills.
This break has actually been a lot more busy than I anticipated but I hope to start editing soon. Ill keep the blog updated because we are still quite a bit behind schedule.
I was supposed to have locked in yesterday (spoiler alert I didn't) so today I worked on the print component. I hadn't looked into the layouts before today, but I found a few online that I thought to incorporate into my layout. The color scheme from the social media is definitely staying.
You know, I recently realized that the colors I chose are the same as the colors from this blog which was completely unintentional but kind of cool. Anywho these were some of my inspiration. I have one magazine that I saw on my Pinterest feed a couple days ago and I cannot find it for the life of me but I recreated a vision I had of it while combining a few elements from other magazines.
I think this layout really fits the aesthetic but once. I have the writing down I'd like to incorporate more of the "video game" aspects. Maybe some pixels at the bottom or making the quote the video game font.
To be completely honest, I thought writing would be a lot easier but it feels weird to write in the third person. I decided to write the article on the wonderful Google doc because if I wrote it directly on the layout, I would simply be trying to fill space not writing real meaningful content. This method worked really well but I didn't finish it all the way because I want to hear some feedback from people on what they would like to read about if they saw this magazine but here is what I've done so far.
I'm really happy with how this component is turning out so far but I will probably come back to it in a couple of days. I'm kind of having writers block.
While I am stuck in this technological pickle of not having my interview footage (see my last post for more context), I am going to start something that I am very behind on: social media.
I did the research already so now I just have to execute my idea. I definitely want to do a grid where each frame has an element of an episode but the feed looks like one picture. Each episode will have an assigned color and all the posts pertaining to that topic will be with that color.
After posting that "hard launch" I plan on posting quotes from each of the hypothetical episodes. That will facilitate the process since it takes no time to ask someone questions through a phone call and get their responses.
I also strategically chose soccer as one of the other episodes because I was the videographer for the boys soccer team this year, therefore I have tons of footage of them playing in addition to them winning their district finals, celebrating, scoring, and much more. That b-roll will most likely be used in a post, maybe with some voice over in the background or music.
Another idea I had is to include a reel of a singular line from the interview, I think that will be very engaging for the audience since it shows what will be in the final piece.
I made a short reference to what I was thinking on Procreate. I know it's not very descriptive but I get the gist of it and that's all that matters.
First Draft
When I was creating the first grid post, it took me a while. I made it on canvas using stock images at first and it did not look good at all, but the images were mainly placeholders. I later went and got the items to create it with my own pictures, but something still looked off. The edges on each of the colors made it look not uniform so I moved the project to Procreate and colored the background. Big improvement but the trophy felt out of place so I took that out. Then the best idea crossed my mind; to make the items pixelated. I found the following YouTube video which changed everything for the better.
The last thing I changed was the font because I hated it. I kid you not I have never gone through so many fonts but I found the perfect one. Lastly, I added the "player #" and their names as a little easter egg, and here's the final result:
I have yet to develop the other posts but I have officially created the account!
Guys... we have a problem. Please keep me in your prayers because I've lost the interview footage.
Ok, I'm being dramatic it's not lost but it's been super difficult to get it. When I finished the interview I downloaded the footage to my home computer. I have now learned the hard way to ALWAYS upload the footage to a hard drive or Google Drive because the computer decided to stop working and I am left without the footage. Every time I try downloading it to my hard drive I'll get hopeful that it's about to work and then the computer restarts. It has been awful!
My dad said he's getting it fixed this week but I had been planning on going through the interview as soon as I got back and unfortunately, I can't do that until I actually have the footage. This is such an annoying setback, but it's not game over. I have a lot of other things to work on in the meantime, let's just hope that the footage is back by spring break!
I am writing this as I am on the plane back to Florida and yesterday was the closing ceremony for the STN competition I was in. A few blogs ago I spoke about how it's kind of crazy that I was in the middle of a competition while making a documentary about high school competitions and the strive for first place. Of course, we've already established the name of the documentary: "First Place".
W in the chat
I still find it hard to believe but I got first place in my individual competition! Additionally, our program got a total of 6 first place awards this year which is a record for our school! Look, I don't know if you believe in manifestation or not, but maybe I was channeling this documentary all along and I brought the first place award to life.
I have been periodically keeping in touch with Parker over the trip just to do some scheduling. I let him know about the change in the documentary and how it will just be him as the main and only subject, I don't think he minds. We set a day after school to film him in a classroom setting and a day during the break to film staged b-roll. I have my own RGB light and cannon camera so I plan on using those to film over break.
If we're speaking about production, the next step is b-roll, but I should write out the shot list that I may want that way I don't forget anything on filming day. This, of course, will be going on the wonderful Google doc I've been using this whole process.
These are just some of the ideas I could come up with off the top of my head but I will most likely get more variety of angles and shots the days of filming.
Let me start off by saying I looooooooooove California. I am here for the TV competition I spoke about before and it's simply beautiful. I think it's kind of ironic that I'm making a documentary about high school competitions and niches and in the middle of it I am going to one. Let's hope I get "first place"! (wow that was so not funny I am running on no sleep please bear with me)
I hate to say it but I am kind of pessimistic towards the whole schedule. I got Parker's interview and also found out he isn't traveling over spring break so that is a big relief, but the two other interviewees I had are going to be in who knows where over break and I can't postpone anything after that. I am supposed to be editing over break so my only option is to film in the three days I have before school but there is also a dilemma with that. I have four tests to make up and only one free period to do so. That free period was when I was planning on filming the interviews and I unfortunately have to prioritize those tests so I can end the quarter with decent grades.
This whole process has become a bit overwhelming, but we had a guest speaker today who actually made some of the op-docs I researched on the New York Times and he gave me some motivation. Casey Neitstat. He said that in his life he faced so many challenges and people told him "you can't" on multiple occasions but he proved to everyone that he could. I can't lie, he yapped for a while but he really inspired me to just create. Sometimes it turns out bad and sometimes it's good, as long as you're happy making it and you work around the obstacles you can achieve your goals.
Therefore, I have decided to work around this setback and make my life easier. Each episode will focus on one subject. This also allows me to make each episode about a different "player" and have the Player 1, 2, 3, etc. I think it will also allow me to spend more time on the artistic part of it because Parker covered everything that I wanted to cover and much more in the 30 minutes we spoke. It's different from the original plan but I reworked the vision and the likelihood of this happening in the timeframe is so much better.
As of right now, I have two first places in mind, the documentary of course, and this competition. We'll see the results on Sunday morning. Wish me luck!
Today in class we did a new lesson about the print components that we are working on. For a documentary, the print component is a magazine spread. I've actually been looking forward to starting this part because fun fact about me I was part of the yearbook staff in 8th grade, so I'll be channeling those skills for this component.
The options we have are to do a story of the production, a director focus, or a topic focus. Whatever it is I have to write it from an outside author's point of view which is kind of weird cause ill be talking about myself in the third person. I don't think the production will be best for this story but I do think that the director's focus will be good since I am also competitive myself and I relate to a lot of the topics that will be discussed. Plus, nobody knows me better than myself so I can definitely add some director quotes in there and promote this docuseries.
To begin with my research, I scrolled through the canvas templates and saw if there was one that stood out to me or that I thought would fit the aesthetic of my docuseries. I saw a few that stood out to me but I will probably end up tweaking a very plain template to my own liking.
The more important part of this component is the content and it's not very easy to find magazine spreads on documentaries so I decided to look into the old projects made for this class on tstok.net and see what other students spoke about. I have a few friends who took this class in the past so I can see if any of their magazine spreads can be an inspiration for me. One of the ones that our advisor recommended we look at is "The Overlooked" series from two years ago made by two of my friends. I read it and I liked the way they formatted their questions to reveal what they spoke about in their documentary while still keeping the informative aspect of themselves. I would have probably liked to read more about the creators themselves so I'll keep that in mind when I start my magazine.
Part of my schedule says that I should have been done with the print component last week but I put that off waiting for the lesson. I also leave on my competition trip in two days which means I'll have very limited time to develop the project. What I'm thinking is I hope to be able to create at least the start of the physique of the print component while I'm gone so I can just write the content the week that I'm back and truly finalize this part Friday the 22nd.
Today after school I did my first interview with Parker Astley, one of the board members of MAO. At first, I was a bit nervous because I'm not super close with him so I didn't know if he wanted to speak a lot but it honestly couldn't have gone better.
I spent all of my lunch and part of 8th period setting up the interview shot. Knowing me, you already know it was filled with purple lighting and a cool background. I of course set up two cameras as well so that I could switch angles. I decided to go with a shot from the front kind of like the interview shots from Worn Stories, and I like it its definitely new for me.
Before any interview I let Parker know that it is simply a conversation and that they should forget the camera is even there, but this time I forgot the camera was there. From the first question, Parker answered it so intellectually. He started telling me about why he does extracurriculars and we ended up talking about some really profound topics. The interview ended up being about 30 minutes long, a new record for me! The challenging part is definitely going to be choosing what to include in the first five minutes.
Even though I got a lot of content from Parker, I feel like the doc would feel more complete with two more interviews so I'm going to continue trying to schedule them but it's looking like they will have to be done after my trip. I'll be gone from Wednesday to the next Monday. That is 5 days of filming and production that will only be able to be done remotely.
Right before leaving for spring break, I'm going to try and get the B-roll done for all three subjects in one day because most of it will be staged, but I'm a bit concerned with scheduling issues since I haven't asked parker or my other subjects if they are leaving for spring break so i am crossing my fingers they arent.
I finally got one of my interviews set for Friday after school!
This is probably something I should have had more concrete from the beginning but I am working on it little by little. I also have my second interviewee ready but scheduling with her has been more complicated because she doesn't have any free periods and I have a lot of afterschool activities coming up (as well as a week long trip). She said she would let me know if she had an opening any time soon, so I'll stay in touch with her.
Regardless of when I do these interviews, I need to come up with questions.
The way I did this for my last documentary is I worked off the outline. I thankfully already did the outline (see this blog to read more about it) so that's one step out of the way. The next thing is to chunk out how I want the interview to go, and what phrases I may want the interviewee to say. For example in my outline you may see that I have a quote saying "In comparison to athletes blah blah, that's why we’re called mathletes" so I made sure to ask questions like "Can you compare another club or sport to the competitive aspect of MAO"
I am making sure to be an open book to my interviewees as well. I told them my vision and the whole video game idea before so that they understand what I am trying to do with the videos and they feel more comfortable (I don't think they understood but it's ok!)
These are the questions I came up with but I know I will 100% ask other questions as the interview arises. Some of the ways they are listed may seem blunt or poorly phrased but that is because I want it to flow like a conversation. If I'm starting off the question "Might I inquire as to the myriad interactions, experiences, and endeavors that have comprised the fabric of your day?" to a high school student, I think I would get the driest responses in the world. It's about making the person being interviewed comfortable because talking in front of a camera is already scary enough.
As long as I know where I want the interview to go then I'll know how to get people to talk. Who knows maybe they actually hate math and do competitions for other reasons or maybe they do math as a distraction from something else. I think it's important to also have an open mind when doing an interview because another layer to the story could arise.
I hate to say it but it's almost like manipulation. I definitely try to use words relating to what I want the interviewee to say so that they are more likely to use those words.
Today was the first group meeting in relation to the project. The groups were assigned and we started discussing each other's projects. Funny enough, almost all of us were making a documentary and it was very interesting to see the different approaches that each person was taking. It was also crazy to see that we were all struggling with very different aspects of our projects.
I won’t get into what everyone else was struggling with, but I hope that my feedback was useful to them. This group was very successful in the conversation as we would easily cover more aspects than we intended to in each project.
When it came to my project, I felt like I was struggling a lot with the structure; more specifically what to include in it since we are required to do only 5 minutes of a longer episode. We all spoke about it and after explaining my idea of competition and MAO, everyone told me that it would be kind of cool if I did the beginning of the doc and end the 5 minute mark right before the competition day section starts. Their validation when they all were excited about the idea gave me a lot of confidence in what I'm making. Additionally, not having to include the competition part saves me so much additional work in filming and editing.
I think one of the most helpful insights from the group was that one of our classmates is in MAO, so I asked her if she could ask people to be interviewed since I was kind of struggling with finding my subjects. She said she would get back to me with this information on Thursday so let's cross our fingers that a few people say yes.
I might have just made a really unfortunate mistake concerning the project. If you checked out my calendar previously, you might remember that I had written down "MAO Regional Comp" for Sunday, March 3rd. One thing you should know about me is that I live off this calendar and as soon as anything gets added, it becomes a priority for that day. I guess I should have maybe thought about how a competition on a Sunday might be a little weird because as it turns out, it wasn't on Sunday, it was on Saturday. By the time I found out, not only was the competition already basically over, but I was also at an event I couldn't leave. This is kind of a major setback.
They have one more competition, and this one I know I wrote down correctly. Of course, it lands exactly during my trip. This all sounds like bad news but I can manage. I already spoke to a friend about going and filming the subjects the day of, and I'll just do all the interviews before and after. Additionally, I was planning on using mostly staged b-roll for the beginning either way so as long as all this goes to plan, the episode should be fine. I am really frustrated though cause it certainly is a mistake I could have avoided.
As for who my subjects will be, the plan I stated in my previous blogs won't work out anymore, therefore, I need to come up with a new way of getting someone. So far I've come up with three options:
Text the president again and see if he can give me the contact of someone who may want to do it.
Go to one of their tutoring sessions, pretend to need help, become buddies with someone, and ask them to be in the documentary.
DM the MAO Instagram to see if they can find someone interested in doing it.
I honestly could try all of them. Number 2 is my favorite option if I'm being honest. Nevertheless, I have hope everything will turn out perfectly fine in the end and this will just be a small oopsie that I'll look back at and laugh
I've said most of my ideas repeatedly on this blog, but I guess I haven't really considered how I'm going to execute them.
I've mentioned before how I wanted to make the B-roll look like an old arcade game. I'm not an animator, but I am willing to learn how to do some quick pixel art for the project. In the process of looking for tutorials, I actually found this video, and from the thumbnail, it seems like the exact vision I had. I wish it showed how to do a transition to turn something pixelated on screen but if anything I can add a cross dissolve to make them blend into each other.
Additionally, I mentioned how I wanted it to seem like someone was playing the video game in an arcade, so I found a tutorial on how to place video on different surfaces.
Squid Game Challenge
The way I want to execute this is sort of like how the reality Tv show "Squid Game Challenge" did in between scenes. They had multiple monitors of the mask people watching them like in the real show. Its a very clever way to cut between scenes and I think especially for the beginning, when I introduce the subjects as "characters" in this hypothetical game it would look very cool. Maybe on one of the parts it goes into a "training mode". Like i said in my last blog, the inspiration for this came from a documentary I recently watched called "Picaro: El Pequeño Nicolas", where they portrayed the life of the main subject through a board game. Below is a clip from the trailer showing some of the graphics they included. Of course, my level of expertise in the graphics field isn't as advanced, but I think I can do something similar in relation to video games.
If you remember, a couple blogs ago I researched different social media platforms for docuseries and found "Worn Stories". I said I would watch it and I did. It was nothing like what I was expecting but it certainly a unique approach to a docuseries. The second episode has been my favorite so far I really recommend it. Anyhow, what I was getting to is that I was inspired by the intro to their episodes. This trailer shows sort of what it's like.
The text is part of the clothes and tags, something I found super fun and creative. What I'm thinking is for my intro, I could have trophies and medals saying "First Place" and doing a match cut to introduce the show. I also am thinking it could be a seamless transition from pixels to real life. For example, I'd start the show as a video game and once the character retrieves the trophy in a short animation, it match cuts to real trophies and medals.
