CCR

I can't begin to describe how happy I am with what I've accomplished. I know it's not perfect, but knowing I did the best I possibly could have done is incredibly fulfilling. I got to make a cool thing I'm proud of with full creative direction, along with my friends- what's better than that?

I hope you get the chance to do something like this soon, you mysterious and obscure Cambridge person you :) I'm gonna miss you. 

I AM FREE

I AM FINALLY DONE WITH ALL OF MY COMPONENTS!

Video (click top right corner for full screen):

Postcard:

Website:

https://toreelinagoldfish.wixsite.com/triagfilm

Postcard Progress

work in progress

Last weekend while on the plane back from New York ( I was visiting a school), I began putting my images into photoshop to work on my postcard.

I went with the design of the fish and son facing each other because I felt that it conveyed the feeling of the film best without giving too much away. For my postcard, I wanted to emulate that they were both facing off inside a fishbowl- hence the borders. The painting in the background is a direct reference to the one in the film, and the white silhouette of the orchids reinforces their significance.

I wasn't too fond of this design at first.  It felt like a bunch of images edited together, not a cohesive, finished piece. I didn't work on this again until Monday night.

Once I was home and had access to my drawing tablet, I could alter my postcard and be more precise with my edits. I had originally planned to paint/draw the postcard from scratch, but given I had no time to do so, I resorted to putting filters on the images and then painting over it with the same technique I would use in a real painting. This also really helped to integrate the background and foreground and to unify the whole piece. Lastly, I changed the layout of the border and text. I don't know what I was thinking the first time around, but thankfully I came to my senses.

Finished Front

For the back, I used this website and my instructor's advice as a guide.

Finished Back

Until next time,
See ya!

PLAY THAT FUNKY MUSIC

As you may have guessed from a previous post, my good friend Zoe is helping me out with music.

When I say "helping," I really mean HELPING. A couple weeks back,  Zoe randomly and benevolently offered to compose the entire score for my film. Now I really don't know how to emphasize this enough, BUT SHE MADE MUSIC, THAT SOUNDS BEAUTIFUL, FROM NOTHING. But before I show you, let me give you some insight into the creative process.

Before she could do anything, she needed some inspiration. She already knew what my film was about but not necessarily what it would sound like. So I gave her a list of songs from movie scores that I liked the sound of, and she predominantly used songs from The Shape of Water and Lady Bird. 

This was one of the first samples:

A few weeks passed until we discussed music again. I basically needed to finish editing so we could work out the pacing. Once I had a rough edit, I sent her this guide so that she knew what kinds of sounds corresponded to the different scenes. We talked about having the sounds in these scenes be derivative of the original sample, so that in the end, the sounds from the disparate scenes would appear to come together in one cohesive piece- just a lil reverse engineering.

During the final stages of the composing, feedback was pretty easy because of technology. Zoe would quickly make edits, I would almost cry listening, and then send notes.

I began writing this blog post earlier in the week, but as of now, the music is done!!! I can't thank Zoe enough for her help with it, and I'm so so happy with it. If you have the time, I highly recommend checking out her portfolio project!

Here it is! Be warned, you may cry.






Del Toro, Guillermo, director. The Shape of Water . Fox Searchlight Pictures , 2017. Gerwig, Greta, director. Ladybird. A24, 2017.

[Inaudible Gargling]

Last Wednesday I met with my wonderfully kind (and patient) friend David to start recording the fish's voice. The wondrous idea to have this dumb fish speak actually surfaced out of the depths of nonsense one night at David's house. I don't remember what we were doing exactly, but we somehow ended up making dumb noises- I'm sure you can figure out how it all came together.

So since I had my wonderful fish casted already all we had to do was actually record the lines. And bOy iT wAs fUN! At first, we recorded the same sounds we initially had made that first day, but it was lacking that underwater feeling. So naturally we decided to gargle. 

David was laying on his bathroom floor with his head resting on the bathtub. Facing up, he was in the perfect position to question why he ever agreed to do this (by "this" I mean be friends with me, he had no choice in helping me under friend contract). Our process consisted of him taking a gulp of water, me telling him his lines, and then recording it on my phone. Despite our initial setbacks, and David almost drowning a couple times, we developed a pretty streamlined process by the end of it. Sure, he did end up drinking a concerning amount of water, but on the upside he's never been more hydrated!

David, hiding his pain with a smile. 

Also, recording this actually lengthened my film, I was originally under the time limit by quite a bit, but this added a couple seconds more to my film!

I never expected to be spending my senior year weekday making unintelligible noises in my best friend's bathroom (while his confused abuela listened warily), but I'm having a great time, and I'm so excited to finish this project!

See ya!

https://goo.gl/images/228CAm

Postcard

As I near the end of my editing process, I've began thinking about my secondary components. I had made a sketch of my postcard way back before I started filming, but looking back at it, it doesn't really fit the conventions of a film festival postcard.

Postcards are usually horizontal, given that it allows for more information to be displayed in the backside when split midway. I would argue I'm breaking conventions, but breaking connections just for the sake of aesthetic doesn't seem like a smart choice.




These are a bunch of sketches that take the horizontal format into account. I figured I could have somewhat of a symmetrical composition in which the fish and son look at each other in confrontation, mimicking the tabletop scenes.

I'm planning to shoot some pictures of Leandro tomorrow during school so I can begin working on that over the weekend.







EDIT: Here they are!

ZOE IS QUEEN OF MUSIC

That is all for now, see you in my next post.