CCR Opening Sequence

 Here is the CCR for the mystery opening sequence; it was a pleasure!

Mystery Opening Sequence Final Task/ Product

 It was a pleasure to be a part of and participate in this project, thank you!

Test Running Everything

     There's one last thing I want to do before I'm sure my group is finished. Just one last test run of everything should suffice. I want to make sure everything goes smoothly. Especially when submitting the final opening sequence. The first thing I wanted to check was the blogs that I published. I skimmed through the text on all of them. This was to make sure that I covered everything important during the course of this project. I found no holes in the information provided in my blogs. After checking the text, I knew I needed to check the pictures. I heard just because you can see the picture you cant be sure it's there. Sometimes it will show the picture when it's really not properly uploaded. I figured it would be a good idea to view my blogs from a separate account. This way I would know if an outside viewer could see their pictures properly. Luckily, that question rang true for all of my blogs. I was able to see all media accompanying my blogs, so all green flags there. Next, I watched through the opening sequence last time to make sure nothing was missed. Once again, all green flags on that front. Finally, I sent the opening sequence from my phone onto my computer. I was able to do this through google drive. This just made it way easier to submit the final product when it came time. In total, it looked like My group and I was ready to submit.

Changes From Quality Check

      What would be the point of a quality check, if I didn't adopt any changes from it? Prior to making my own changes, there was something I wanted to do. It would make sense for me to consult with my groupmates first. There would be no point in this process if we all made individual changes. Obviously, I wanted every time to compile the changes they found needed to be made. That way, my group would achieve an overall better end product. So I first started by telling my groupmates the changes I think need to be made. After I asked them to send their changes if they had found any, or were told any. Although there weren't many, my groupmates all had at least one. I found that it would be best if one person fixed their changes, then sent that product to the next member. That way all changes would be made and it would be a collaborative effort. In this process, I would go last. After my group agreed on the changes pitched, the process commenced. I got the almost final product with all the changes back in no less than an hour. I hadn't seen anything considerable, but it was definitively cleaner than when I last saw it. The problems I sought to fix were the diegetic and non-diegetic sound cut off by the transitions. So I first tracked down the heartbeat scene and door slamming seen. I lessened the transitions on both clips to reveal more of the sound. After, I turned up the audio for both scenes but in different ways. For the heartbeat scene, I isolated only the heartbeat sound and turned that up to not interfere with any dialogue happening. For the door scene, I turned up the volume for the entire scene as even the dialogue was quiet. I watched both scenes back over and was satisfied with the changes.

     

Needed a Quality Check

       Just because I said editing and filming are done, doesn't mean it's over. Anything could be improved upon. All things need a quality check, films included. I wanted somebody to go over my film for a multitude of benefits. First, I needed an opinion from someone outside looking in. As much as I want to praise my group, there are many things we cant catch. This is because we produced the entire thing, we may miss the small things. Not only that, we are potentially biased and need a more objective view. This way I can actually make improvements from an audience perspective. Secondly, my groupmates and I saw the script and wrote the scenes with the intention of it being a mystery. But I want to know how well this genre came off. I wanted to see if an outside view could understand the plot and character dynamics. For the first reason, I asked some of my peers interested in film. This was because they would be more likely to focus on, angles, movements, or any technical subject matter. The general consensus was that both nondiegetic and diegetic sounds needed to be made louder. The nondiegetic sound was the heartbeat of the crazy investigator character. The diegetic was the doors slamming, which often got cut short by the transitions that were too quick. I asked each person what they thought the plot was to satisfy my second want. Most of them picked up on the mystery aspects of the film, if not mystery then a thriller. All understood for the most part what I wanted to represent with the film. Little plot points like a secret society and an unsolved murder were understood. I was relieved as this meant no major refilming. It was just now time for me to fix the little editing mistakes.

Finishing the Editing Process

 Last time, I dealt with the most complex editing part when it came to the opening sequence. That was the heartbeat audio part. That means this time around, editing would be easy. Since that was the biggest thing, the rest of the diting was relatively easy to do. Even though it was simple, I still made a to-do list.

     I first went over the transitions between each scene. One of my members made the transitions, so I thought I'd go over them. I noticed they just used the automatic fade transition between all the normal scenes. The fade-ins weernt the problem. it's how long it took to transition. Luckily, IMovie allows you to edit, speed up, and slow down transitions. I took advantage of this and sped up some of the fade-ins. This way it gave the opening sequence more of a faster flow.

     After that, I watched the entire opening sequence and it seemed basically finished. I just gave it some final touch-ups, like speeding up the transitions between tense scenes. I added the music one of my members created to add more atmosphere. Following that, it seemed like the opening sequence was complete.

Starting the Editing Process

 I wanted to start the editing process immediately after filming. I wanted to make sure I'd have some time for some mock trial activities I had soon. I knew that I wanted to edit it on iMovie because it had worked for me before. Before I started editing, I made a list of things that I wanted to do. This to-do list would keep me on track. One of the most important parts of editing comes after the interrogation scene. Here I wanted to display the investigator going insane. I first questioned how I would do that? I took some inspiration from past opening sequences that I watched before. They generally use a lot of non-diegetic sounds, but they are extremely specific. Most of these sounds have connotations with, of course, going insane. Cuckoo clocks, loud sounds, heartbeats, and inaudible whispering, are all examples. I chose to go with heart beating because I believe that suited the scene the most. It wasn't too outlandish, like a cuckoo clock, but added just the right amount of tension. It fit well, the heartbeat would make the scene feel tense, then the outburst from the detective would be a release. I screen recorded a royalty-free sound of a heartbeat, then cut it down to the same amount of time as the clip. Then I inserted the video as an audio file only so it would play over the movie. This took a couple of tries as it kept going in as a video and not as an audio file. Eventually, I got sick of it and used a video to mp3 converter. Imovie is compatible with mp3 files so it allowed it to go over the movie. I then sent it to my groupmates to review.