Media Studies Portfolio

So this is the CCR that I have created and I hope you enjoy

Here it is in full detail! The final film opening journey has come to a close but I am very excited for you to see it. I hope you enjoy. Signing off, AMANDA CORTES:)  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PzNmEYq17KHAMsWWvnFGSDwDoZaQQBH-

So for this post I am going to be reflecting on the entire process that this film opening has brought me through. I am glad I have finished this opening up and am now able to reflect on it. The film opening starts off with just a normal American citizen, whom we decided not to name since she won't have anything to do with the rest of the film, played by Val Tiralongo  who is just spending her night at home. She begins by trying to watch tv but it ends up not working so she gets frustrated and goes to the kitchen to go make herself some more oatmeal. As she leaves the room to go to the kitchen a national emergency plays and since she leave the room, she can not here the emergency that is going on. It is vital that she does not hear this since what happens next depends on that Then as the national emergency is playing over her making oatmeal we can see that she is not even paying attention to the broadcast that is playing. This broadcast is saying how there is hacker going aro

        Welcome to the second post of the week and if you can tell by my last post you can tell that I have been very busy during the break. Since I was at a national competition, I did not have enough time to be able to edit a lot of the film opening. This week I’m going to work hard and try to get most of it done as soon as I can since the deadline is around the corner.           When we were filming, it was night so we had to find method of creating a kind of light that would match the mood of the film and not make it look like something it is not. We did not capture much of the lighting that we used during the shoot, but it turned out looking decent in the shot. We used a series of flashlights, even the phone light which gave the subject a soft light and didn’t make it too harsh. The reason we decided to use light from the phone is because it has different setting and we are able to adjust the light to what we want it to look like.   When we used flashlights for a stinger li

       Hello everyone welcome back the blog. Spring break has been very hectic since I have been out of town the whole break due to a competition for TV. I have not really been editing the film since I had no time during the break. I also have not been talking to my partner since we have had very busy schedules. It is getting closer to the due date and I am hoping to be able to finish editing soon.           I haven’t made many drastic changes to our film since I like the direction it is going in. What I have been planning out is what is going to go on the tv during the film opening. We decided not to finish it before we went out to film because we wanted to make sure that we did not rush to finish it and make it look bad. So what we ended up doing is putting up a green screen on the tv to be able to add what we wanted in post production . It was a struggle in the beginning since the reflection of the color was very bright and was reflecting off of our subjects face. What we end

        For the last post of the week I am going to update you guys in what is going on with our film as a whole. Like I have mentioned a couple of times we have finished filming and i have looked over the clips and they look pretty good. The lighting I can fix while editing cause I want the atmosphere to look a little more dull and creepier. In my last post I talked about the virus that I am working on, which is almost done and I am excited to see how that is going to look all together. Since I am the one who is editing, I have to make sure I work a little more quicker since the deadline is coming up. Editing is a strenuous process, which is at least something that I enjoy doing.          What I am going to do first is put all the clips together, to make sure that we got all the shots we needed- I did get a lot of extra shots to be able to replace any if necessary. After I do all of this then I am going to go in and color correct any shots that I need to fix up. All that is left afte

        In this post I am going to be talking about what I am doing to improve the hack. I know that I have been posting a lot about this virus and hack, but at the moment that is what I am focusing on, since it is Honestly one of the most important parts of our film. I am close to getting the virus to how I want it.         In the beginning, I thought the virus was going to be completely different to what I have now. I thought our character was just going to be drawn in by the static on the tv. Now that we have changed this around we have made the virus a little more complex and visually appealing. Currently I am getting closer to the end of what I want it to look like, all I want to do is make it smoother than what I have at the moment. The transition between the shot of the virus and the eye is a little choppy. A way that I might be able to fix it is by fading the virus with the eye to make is a better transition. I just want to look like the virus is going into her eye. That is t

        Hello and welcome back to the second post of the week. During our last class we were once again able to get back with out classmates and look at our projects and give opinions and constructive criticism on our progress.        So I was able to show them what I have edited so far like the virus, text, and part of the film. I quickly gave a description of the plot of the film opening and showed them what I have so far. Everyone thought that what I showed them was really good and it was a good start to what we want to achieve. I obviously told them that whatever I showed is not final, but they enjoyed what I showed them.         One thing that I was told to fix is one part where the virus goes into the eye to slow it down a little bit and try to make it smoother. I was already planning on doing this before I showed them, but I am glad that I got their input on what i should fix on what i have so far. I have to try and find a way in which I can make this transition smoother, but

        Hello everyone and welcome back to week 5 of the blog. This process has been a very difficult one, but we are making our way towards the end of this film opening. Since our schedules were very full and we were both going to be out in spring break we have already filmed and our in post production.         We have first began editing all the effects that we are going to put in like the text and the virus. Coming up with how we wanted the text to look like was rather easy since we wanted the text to look like a kind of hacker text. We looked up a video on youtube to figure out how to recreate the specific kind of text and it turned out exactly how we wanted it. I just have to make a few more different ones with different text but I am liking how this is looking.  We have decided to use this during the virus to make is seem that the virus is fully being transmitted. In class , we had another discussion about our projects(which I will address in a later post), some students that I

        Hello everyone and this is the 4th and final post of the week! This week had been very hectic since we were planning a lot to be able to go and film today. Everything at the moment is going according to plan.         While we were filming, my partner during the shots was directing the actors to do what she wanted them to do, which worked out great. The only problem with that is that she is talking in the back of the clips. So what I decided to do is grab all the stuff we were using and film separate clips of just the audio of things like walking, banging the remote, and things like that. Being able to hear the sound is very important, because without those sounds our film opening will be very plain and boring. While we were filming I filmed quick things that I could use for later. I also came across this video which shows certain things to create different kinds of sound. Having an effective microphone for this is a huge necessity for this is very important to make it seem as

      Welcome back for the third post of the week. In this post I am going to be explaining why we had to change our location of our film opening .         Originally we had planned out that we wanted to film in a garage with small tv and a couch. That had to change due to the reason that we could not find a garage to film in. My partner and I decided to just film inside a house and make it look as if it were a small apartment. Since our main focus is the virus that is going around we did not really have an issue with changing the location. The only thing that was a little bit difficult is that we had to get her out of the room at one point to broadcast the emergency that was going to be up on the tv. Since the house we filmed in had a very open space we had to film around that and make it seem smaller that it actually was. I ended up capturing shots that made it look as if our character was living in a small apartment, which is really good. If there were any open spaces I just had to

        Hey guys welcome back to post two of this week. I did not mention this in the previous post, but we were able to film our opening today! I am so relieved that we were able to get everything we needed all in one day, if anything we can go back and reshoot. From here on out we are at the post production stage.         Today my partner and I decided to change the outline before going to film. We revised it right before we filmed and we decided that we wanted the hacker in our film opening. We made sure to leave the hacker very anonymous, since it is the film opening. The reason behind this is because we feel like it will add a questioning feel to the film like "Who is the hacker?" and "Why are they doing this?". Luckily we had an extra actor there so we were able to get the shots necessary. The hacker will be shown on the tv and release a "message" to whomever is still watching the tv. I will also be masking the voice of our actor to make is seem mor

    Welcome back to the blog. This is week four of the blog and all I can say is that everything is moving along in a good manner. We have began making all of the "virus" and the emergency broadcast and things are going in a good route.         In this blog I will be talking about the virus that I have come up with. I have edited this on Adobe After Effects and I really am liking how it is turning out. It was not too hard but it just took a long time to create this. We took inspiration from the series "Chuck" because we really enjoyed how it zoomed into the eye and made it look like it was an eye. They do seem very similar, but we are going to add more things to make it not seem like a complete replica of the series. As I was creating this we wanted to make it seem as if it was an eye, which I think I have come to accomplish.While editing I am going to make it so it looks like the virus is "downloading" into the character's brain, which is the whole p

Last post of the week is about our storyboard. In out previous story board there is just a very simple back and forth between the character and the tv. I felt that is was a little too bare in the fact that i will build no suspense as to what is going to happen next. So to help fix that, we have added a part in that the character leaves the room and that is when the switch from normal tv to the emergency broadcast goes off. At this moment the broadcast will announce to turn off all TVs since there is a virus going around. This will help build up the suspense because our character will be out of the room and not hear the broadcast. Upon his return the tv will go back to the normal show and that is when the virus will come in and take over our character. I think that with this it will build up more suspense instead of just a plain old back and forth between the character and the TV. See you next week! AMANDA CORTES

In this posting I am going to explain the process of how I am brainstorming for the name of our film opening. The title of the film is pretty important since it is what labels the film in its entirety. Honestly thinking about the name of this film is one of the most challenging things since I want it not to be a basic name. I want it to have a sense of creativity and originality to the title, but at the same time I do not want to be too crazy. At first I started brainstorming different words that relate to the plot of the movie. The words I came up with were download and virus. I tried to add words around this, but i didn't like the flow of some of the titles I came up with. Then I realized that it does not have to be that complicated. I finally found a word that could be suited for the title. What I ended coming up with was Error. This is a very simple but creative title since the "virus" is basically an error in this society. I still want to come up w

Hey guys welcome back to this weeks second blog posting. So like I mentioned in the previous blog post we had to postpone our filming date cause I had to leave out of town all of a sudden. My partner and I will have to figure out another date to film soon because I am eventually not going to have enough time to edit the film opening the way that I want it to turn out.   Anyway besides that I have began to edit the “virus” that is going to be shown on the TV.   At the moment it is a little bit hard since we have to create our own show to be shown. I have just begun doing the emergency broadcast since I don’t need anything live action.   Also I have found it difficult since I need to make this long enough for the duration of the whole film opening.   Since whatever is shown on the TV is the most important part of our film opening I need to make it the most believable I can.   A film that contains something like this is Get Out and I wish to make it look somewhat like this si