Charles Meng Li

 Here is my group's final video for our film opening! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NViPQilLsWc

 My idea for my Creative Critical Reflection is to film a 15-minute-long video of me playing basketball with my friend Ethan. I did not really have any other ideas to do my CCR on, so I kept it simple and just had a background video of me playing a sport I like. I also did not plan on doing a script for my CCR and decided that I am going to freeball it and come up with the answers as I am recording. The basketball session was very fun, and I enjoyed using it as a video for my CCR.

 I learned a lot throughout this entire filming process. I learned the various ways to employ camera shots, angles, and movement, as well as editing techniques to help develop a film opening. This process was enjoyable as I had a fun experience with Matthew and Tyler filming and editing our film. I enjoyed editing the cutting-on-action shots and adding in the sound effects, and it made me very proud to finally finish the film. I think our film turned out extremely well and left on a cliffhanger, which entices the audience and creates suspense. I think our title fully encapsulates what occurs in the film and how it may continue to tell a deeper story. I am glad I took this class and worked with Matthew and Tyler to create an amazing film opening.

 We had various ways of communicating as a group. For one, we discussed our filming process and planned in our AICE Media Studies class in the third period. Most of our film discussion was in class. We also used text messages to individually text each other, which we then moved over to a WhatsApp group chat, which was much easier. We also used an app called Discord to communicate at home to join voice calls, especially to help my group and me edit our video, since I could screen share my activity.

 We decided to incorporate various sounds to help create a more realistic scene for a kidnapping film opening. We included the ambient sounds of Tyler's AC in the background to show that it is not completely silent and that you would still hear normal sounds in a house. We also added a phone call sound in, which we recorded in the garage at the same time, to make it sound as if the phone call was there in the filming. This was so we could overlay the audio of the phone call, so we did not have to time it with the scene, which is what we were doing before, simplifying our editing process. We then planned to include hitting and punching sound effects found on YouTube into our choreographed fight scene to make it realistic and emphasize the hits being performed. We also added in the sound for me running outside and saying "How did they know?" since the viewer could hear me running on the grass, so we recorded a separate video of me saying that and overlayed the audio over th...

 Today, I finished editing the first portion of the film, added it to the finished opening, and adjusted the scenes to fit under the 2-minute mark. This portion only took around 20 minutes to edit since it was short. The film's opening was originally 2 minutes and 8 seconds long after adding this portion, but I cut down on various parts and even removed some scenes, such as a previous scene where Matthew and Tyler slapped me when interrogating me, as it did not flow with the film and was unnecessary. I also added the text message sound effects and the pop-up texts on the screen to make it flow smoothly, as well as created an invisible cut when the screen turned black to flow into the next scene. I added the final title card of "Two-faced" and finished the editing of the film with 1 minute and 58 seconds.