Focus Group

Like I mentioned in my last post, today I sent the opening to a "focus group" I recruited to help me better understand how an audience would receive the film opening. Here's an overview of what I did:

The Sample
My focus group sample consisted of 10 people, 5 teenagers (of whom only  2 have taken AICE media) and 5 adults ( all graduates, with experience, or currently working in the field of media/production of media). I reached out to everyone ahead of time yesterday and asked them if they would be willing to volunteer to be part of the focus group; after they agreed, they received this email:

Noticeable members of the group include a college professor at the University of Maryland and a graduate in production from the New York Film Academy.

The Procedure
I scheduled the email to send itself at 6:00am, all members of the focus group had until 2:45 EST to respond to the email with their answers to 3 questions, they were not able to see each other's response. I sent the original copy of the video, not the second version because I strongly believed -and still do- that the first is better than the second edit I made. 

The questions were:

1)What do you think the film is about?
2)What's going on during the film Opening?
3)Feel free to include any comments or suggestion, these are all pieces of critical feedback!

Analyzing The Feedback 
I read through every answer, some were very detailed, others too vague. All 10 members were able to correctly identify the topic of the opening, 9 were able to identify that the experiment would reopen (citing either or both the "2017" in the last shot or the voiceover foreshadowing); however, 8/10 members mentioned the audio as an aspect that could be improved. Having a better understanding of how people with no background about the syllabus (expect from 2) received the opening was eye-opening! I have to say, I'm very proud that the first version performed this well! Nonetheless, I knew I could do better! That's when I got working on version 3!



Editing Like There's No Tomorrow
Thankfully, I received most responses before 9:30am which was perfect timing because it was the beginning of my study hall! I edited non stop, I edited through very much needed bathroom breaks and through my lunch, I edited until it was probably a bit unhealthy to keep going. I found a track that was PERFECT! All along the static sound effect I was using wasn't helping me in the last, the one I found (on we video's free public domain library) was just right! That changed it all, I had finally found the happy middle! I noticed I had to rerecord some part of the script again for it to sound right, so that's exactly what I did. I locked myself in my business teacher's closet and rerecorded what I need. Here's the sample (same as the samples for version #1 and #2)!



I'm A True Media Nerd

It's official! After I finished recording the new voice over pieces, I was doing foley for the opening and closing beeps on the sony recorder inside of the closet of my teacher's class; I recorded the lst beep without the video on preview mode in the hopes of just matching it to the visuals later by moving it around the timeline and editing it... Then it happened, I played it back with the visuals and the foley matched PERFECTLY! I jumped inside the closet and triumphantly walked out with the computer at hand to show it to my business teacher. When I played it back again, I did a "yes hand gesture" and went in for a high five! My teacher didn't get why I was excited in the least but it was an awesome moment for me!

Editing Day #3

Well, you know what they say, third time's a charm! -At least I hope it is 😐-

Today was my third day editing the film opening and I may a final copy! I'll be sending the finished video to a focus group I assembled tomorrow at 6:00 am, all the group members have until 2:45 to email me their observations about the film (I'll discuss the process more later in the post). Today was a long day with many different parts, here's the breakdown of the editing process!

Oops, My Bad!
On my last editing post, I mentioned that my mom pointed out a problem with my audio which was preventing the diegetic sound that transitions into a voice over to be clearly heard. I wanted to get more opinions, not because I don't trust my mom's vast experience in the filed, but rather because I wanted to make sure it wasn't just her who felt the voice competed with the static in the voice over. I asked my friend Jake (who's portfolio blog is amazing! Check it out HERE!) to view the opening and give me feedback; I didn't tell him what my mom had pointed out so there weren't any demand characteristics. Jake agreed. I even asked one more person, whose opinion I highly value, to watch it and they gave me the same feedback; "the shots look great, but there's something about the audio that's not right."

I thought I had fixed my audio problem by creating the "dips" but it seems like I needed to revisit it. By discussing the feedback, I found the problem; I recorded the voice over on the sony recorder and later took a video of that recording which is what you could hear in the film opening. The audio sounded authentically old but the static was WAY too loud, which hindered the audience from hearing the dialogue (an essential part of the opening). When I explained the situation to my instructor, she recommended I changed the leveling; but that can't be done since they aren't separate tracks... I should have known better than to use a third generation of the audio!!

I had to sit down and re-record the ENTIRE audio directly into the editing platform (using a mic) so that I could manipulate the levels; sure, I could have left it as it was, but I'm committed to this project and when I commit, I commit my 110%. Since the static audio has a constant volume I had to create A LOT of  "dips" to get it to sound somewhat close to the original. The voice over is much clearer in the new version of the audio, but I'm just not convinced it's good enough, it sounds mediocre; my gut is telling me something isn't right. I plan on looking for a solution tomorrow as I haven't slept in days and I still need to get through writing this post while everything is still fresh on my mind.

Here is a short clip from both versions of the opening, try listening to hear the difference between the diagetic voice over.

Adding The New Scenes
When I recorded the filling cabinet scene I wasn't sure that I would use them in the opening because I was concerned about the quality of the production; however, after editing them together, I think it helped enhance the overall story just like in my storyboard! I added the new videos and decided to lower their brightness, increase their contrast, and increase their saturation to help disguise the backdrop. I was quite happy with the results! I edited the timing so that the shots would be quick, added the non-diegetic sound of a heartbeat, and left black frames between shots. When I first came up with the idea of adding a heartbeat I thought I would soon dismiss it, it turns out it was a great idea! The slowly increasing, low base, heartbeat builds up the tension into the experimenter's scene. I love how the scene turned out, have a look! PS: I recommend to wear headphones when listening because I'm finding some devices don't have enough base power like to hear the heartbeat. 

This scene is so fun to make because of one thing, there's a psychological reaction! When the audience hears the sound, it's a clue that the atmosphere is both very tense and potentially dangerous, this causes the viewer's own sympathetic nervous system to react by making them more alert (in a way warming up their "flight or fight" response). Knowing that the media I produce can have this type of effect has gotten me to question whether content creators are both aware of the power they have on the audience's emotions and whether they all use that influence responsibly.

I'M READY!

The first episode of Spongebob aired on May 1, 1999. The episode featured a scene of SpongeBob over enthusiastically saying "IM READY!" over and over again as he walked towards the Krusty Krab restaurant ... Today, I AM SpongeBob, and the finish line for this project is my Krusty Krab!

Screen grab of the SpongeBob episode

I'm finally ready to import the final clip to my timeline and FINISH THE OPENING! This is really exciting because I'm ahead of what I anticipated! I thought I'd finish editing on early Friday afternoon but since I'm done recording early, I'll just jump into editing tomorrow! I'll hopefully be finished by tomorrow night which leaves all of Friday to write the script for my CCR, get feedback from the focus group, and set everything up so that I can get recording early Saturday morning!

PS: Here are some comments on the last day of shooting!

I only had one scene to shoot (the file cabinet scene from my storyboard). I shot the scene at school, I asked my ex-business teacher if I could use her room after school to shoot and she agreed! My former business teacher, Mrs.Reid, had to leave at 3:00... School gets out at 4:45... So, I only had 10 minutes to set up my shooting space, 25 minutes to shoot it all, and 5 to clean up. I successfully put up a black background in 10 minutes! (Even though it kept falling because the tape wasn't strong enough). The most difficult thing in today's shoot was framing, I didn't have a set like in my garage, I had a backdrop, which made it difficult to get interesting shots by utilizing angles; instead, I'll make the shots more engaging in post-production.


Fun Fact: I didn't tell my business teacher exactly what I was going to do in her room and she was on a skype call when I recorded it, so picture this... I walked into her room, she can't address me directly because she's on a call but she acknowledges me with a wave of her hand off-screen, I suddenly start putting up black plastic curtains for no reason, pretty much hijack her computer car to serve as a filing cabinet, and start to shoot video and take pictures... She was SO confused!! I was able to explain what I was doing after she hung up so it didn't seem completely random, she's super excited to see the final cut as am I!

Editing Day #2

Today was my second day of editing! I made a lot of progress today, I am now only about 10 seconds away from finishing the opening! I added the rest of the audio tracks I needed, now my project has a total of 6 layers of visuals & audio (I haven't added the opening credits & title which will make it about 8 layers in total). I showed the draft to my mom, who worked in the media industry for many years, she pointed out that my audio wasn't clear and told me that was affecting the delivery of content necessary for the viewer to exercise the "rule of 2+2".

Like it can be seen in the video above, after reviewing the audio I decided to play around with audio levels to find the one that would allow the voice over to be heard through both the static sound and the background music. After you could distinguish my voice from the background, I decided to add quick decreases and increases in the audio level (which I call "dips"); these "dips" help emphasize what's being said and contribute to the tone of the opening by creating a dramatic and suspenseful delivery of the lines.

The first "dip" on the music track

Lastly, I want to make sure that an audience member with no background about the project can understand the film and grasp the opening's promise. I assembled a focus group of people with no knowledge of the AICE Media curriculum to watch and interpret the film,  once the opening is fully edited on early afternoon Friday, I will send them a link and read their reactions, questions, and comments. It might be too late to re-edit somethings at that point, but I'll have peace of mind if everything goes as I hope! Wish me luck!

Vlog #3

Here's my third vlog about shooting! In this vlog, I discuss my creative process when shooting, the planning stage, and offer some tips I think will help future AICE Media students on their portfolio project! I'm confident that this will be my last vlog posting, my priority is finishing my opening and CCR in time so that my teacher can grade them! I've never "vlogged" before, so it was a new experience from which I learned a lot (including that my life would have been easier if I scripted my vlogs 😅), I hope to use what I got from this experience when making my CCR! without further ado, here it is, enjoy!