Editing and Filming our News Broadcast

Located above is some of the raw footage my partner and I took when we filmed our News Broadcast. We decided to film in my partner's house due to the fact that her house is mostly made up of colorless, white walls. Thus, we were able to get a solid, white color wall as our background for our broadcast. However, we do regret not being able to get the projector in time to project an image of a beautiful city in the background or our logo, like how most professional news broadcasts have.

Moving on, we used the edge of my partner's glass, dining table as our desk for the news broadcast, which gave us a more modern look to go with the idea that the problem is occurring present-day. Also, we forgot to ask our teacher for a tripod so we ended up making a tripod of our own with the help of many textbooks. On the table, my partner and I decided to include two identical mugs, two pieces of paper with identical information on it, and two of the same type of blue pens. All these elements were, of course, placed side-by-side of the table to mimic the layout of real news broadcasts.

As for the appearance that my partner and I took on, we decided on letting on hair down for the news broadcast due to the fact that it was not very common for female news anchors to have their hair tied up. Moreover, we both decided to wear blazers with a formal top underneath to capture the professional vibes of female news anchors. As for the makeup of our look, we decided to use a dark pink lipstick instead of a red lipstick.

In the raw footage above, as you can tell it was a little difficult getting the lines right for the both of us. However, the use of a teleprompter helped us tremendously in getting our lines right. We also ran  into a few situations where my partner and I had some trouble staying serious to get our lines right, but in the end we ultimately were able to succeed in maintaining a serious tone when we talked about the problem of phones causing mass suicides. Furthermore, when me and my partner messed up our lines, by accident of course, we kept going because we knew that we could edit it later to make it seem as if it was one continuous shot.

We ended up using the editing application iMovie to edit the News broadcast because it is the ones we are most familiar with, and we made use of the different news broadcast layouts they have to take our news broadcast to the next level with making it look legit. Moreover, we accomplished making the cuts look as continuous as possible. Ultimately we were able to finish our news broadcast with the addition of both the clip of me running through the mall and the image/clip of the empty grocery store shelves.

Editing Chaotic Scenes for the News Broadcast

Located below are some of the video clips that my partner and I took when we went to the mall last week to get the chaotic running scenes showing how many individuals were taking this problem very seriously. We utilized handheld camera movement to capture the chaotic vibes we wanted to achieve in creating this video clip. There were several videos that we were able to get; however, we finally decided on the following three:

The second video located above is one of the best candidates compared with the first and third videos due to the fact that it has just the right amount of shaky camera movement, giving it that chaotic vibe. Thus, the first video located above has way too much shaking going on, which ultimately doesn't let the viewers actually see what is going on in the video clip inserted in the news broadcast. Thus, this is why we ruled this video out of our final cut. Moreover, the third video didn't make the cut due to the fact that it was extremely noticeable that there were not many people in the video clip. Therefore, my partner and I came to terms with utilizing the second video as the video insert in the news broadcast for our film opening. 

Now that we have decided on which video to use for our news broadcast, we want to give the video a more "home-made" look. Thus, I found this app called "Camcorder" to give the video a more retro look. The reason behind this is mainly to make the video clip seem more believable and convincing. Therefore, below is the end result of editing this video clip on the "Camcorder" app.

Filming Setback

My partner and I were going to follow the schedule that we previously made; however, over the last couple of weeks, both have us have been extremely busy with regards to school work, taking the SAT, all of our extra-curricular activities, and our jobs. Thus, we composed a new schedule to follow tightly during spring break that will consist of filming both parts of our film opening: the news broadcast and our actual film opening. Located below is our new filming schedule that works for both me and my partner as well as Valentina Suarez, our main actress.

Ending Scene makeup

The ending scene of our film opening consists of the possession-like occurrence of when Lucy picks up her phone and something causes her to fall under want to kill herself. Thus, in order to represent this my partner and I had already planned on drawing inspiration from a popular TV series known as The Vampire Diaries.

The way we plan on drawing inspiration from The Vampire Diaries is in the way that the directors portray the vampires in the show. Through the use of makeup to create fake veins and contacts to create a change in state of mind, the vampires are represented as non-human-like creatures. In the below image is what my partner and I will mimic in the ending scene of our film opening to portray Lucy becoming possessed and suffering the consequence of answering her cell phone, which of course is killing herself.



Getting the contacts:

• My partner will be going to Miami this Wednesday (03/27/2019) to get the colored contacts from Halloween store called The House of Costumes that sells a range of colored contacts
• We were originally going to order the colored contacts off of an online website; however we realized that it would have taken too long to arrive in order to fulfill our new filming schedule that will be explained in a later post
• She will be specifically be looking for red colored contacts like the ones below

Getting the makeup look:

• For the makeup look we plan on using a combination of eyeliner and black eyeshadow to mimic the picture located above
• The black will mostly be focused around her eyes as can be seen in our inspiration photo
• The use of red blush on Lucy’s cheeks will also be utilized to give her face more color
• We will not be using a dark lipstick like the one in our inspiration image; we won’t be doing anything to the lips other than leave the lip gloss

Main Character Outfit/Makeup

In the image above is our actress for our main character Lucy, Valentina Suarez, for our film opening, and there are two very important elements that my partner and I must consider in order to achieve the representation of teenagers that we want to include in our opening. These elements are none other than her makeup, hair, and outfit.

To further expand on the inspiration that we drew from actually developing our main character, Lucy, there was one character that we drew most of our inspiration from. This character is the popular white girl, Regina George, in the infamous film Mean Girls (2004). Below is an image of Regina George.

In the Mean Girls film, this character is known for her sassy and ignorant personality. She is also well-recognized in the film as the “queen-bee” of her group of other teenage girls as well. Thus, we took inspiration from her character in developing Lucy’s character as one of the “popular girls” at her high school with a sassy and ignorant personality just like Regina George’s personality. However, we do plan on disregarding any comedic aspects to Regina’s personality. 

• Makeup 
• For the makeup of Lucy Thomas we plan on doing a natural look that includes elements such as eyeshadow, mascara, and lipgloss. We plan on doing a look similar to the below image.

• Outfit
• For the outfit we plan on doing something similar to the below picture that includes elements such as a skirt, solid color undershirt, and a small jacket to put on top of the outfit.
• The image below is our inspiration photo.

• Hair
• Lucy’s hair will consist of a natural look with Valentina’s straight blonde hair, like the below image.

Text Messages Script

Located below is our script for the online conversation that our main character, Lucy, is going to be having once she finishes watching the news broadcast. Moreover, in this text message conversation that my partner and I created, we made sure to include the modern-day slang of teenagers. For example, words such as "wack" that translate to "crazy" and phrases such as "tbh" that mean "to be honest". Also, the use of all capitol letters helps put emphasis on certain words such as when Tiffany states "ANSWWWER SIS" because Sydney was not active in the chat. Therefore, this leads viewers to wonder what could have happened to Sydney. Thus, by using this language, we capture the age group that Lucy and her friends are a part of. Furthermore, the group chat consists of four young girls: Lucy, Sydney, Taylor, and Tiffany.

 

New Broadcast Script

Located below is our script for our news broadcast: