The 10 things I learned from the last 3 Star Wars movies. I know another amazing countdown!

So as you know from my last post this thanksgiving break my family and I binged watched all of the Star Wars movies. I did an earlier blog post about the first three movies and I decided to make another blog post over the last three. A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

1. Young Harrison Ford is HOT! I mean seriously that dude looked great in all of these movies and I am not ashamed to say that this video student has a major crush on that young actor. The rebellious attitude he has just makes him even better. 
2. Chewbacca is my spirit animal and I have no shame in that. I mean that Wookie can pull arms out of their sockets I think I can relate to him in spirit. 
3. Binary Sunset is the best name for a death metal band, and it happens to be one of the scene names in A New Hope. 
4. I WANT TO BE LEIA. Let's be real here a Princess who can kick butt, look good while doing it, and get Han Solo (Refer to point 1) is the kinda person I want to be. Not only is she amazing but she fights for her cause and never looses hope- minus the gold bikini scene (I mean come on Lucus the franchise would've been just as great without that scene).
5. A genius Yoda is. I mean that man gives words of wisdom that is applicable in all galexies, not just ones far far away.
6. If someone says "I have a bad feeling about this" feces is about to hit the oscillating object (if you know what I mean). This is used at least once in every movie and is in my opinion a great line.
7. Luke Skywalker is very talented at using his emotions to his advantage and not turn to the dark side which is a fabulous character trait that I praise the writers for because it was AMAZING!
8. If it seems funky it is probably a trap. That is a critical plot point in the movies especially the last one. 
9. The opening lines of one of the new star wars movie is the exact same line as Return of the Jedi. THAT IS SO AWESOME!!! I feel super smart for pulling that out. 
10. No one liked the empire, yet the rebel forces were so small. Why weren't more people fighting with the rebels? I just want to know. 

Now that is my list and I hope you enjoyed this silly and short blog post and, as always, May the Force be with You. 

Well it has been a long time coming, but now I will tell you all about my involvement in the Band Documentary!

Now I have recently been short on updating my blogs due to my busy schedule and heavy involvement in a documentary that my class in making over the Marching Band's season. Now since I am both a band kid and an e-commer I volunteered to help out with this video. I wanted to take on a leadership role, yet I didn't want all of the responsibility. So I asked a friend of mine if we could be co-head-editors. Now we both agreed that this was a good choice for us and thus the editors were found. Another friend stepped up for directing and we gathered a few kids to film and we were off. Now we did miss a lot of the season because our project started so late, but we pulled it off. Now it was hard for me especially, I couldn't film festivals I had to perform and more than once we were very limited in the people who could make it out there to film. I would do what I could though and spent most of my time editing and organizing. Now the season went off pretty well, only a few minor problems that I don't feel the need to highlight in this post. Now came the not so fun part of interviews. Now don't get me wrong I don't mind doing interviews, we just kept having to redo them that I got sick of the repetition and the impasse that we were at. We can't write a story without interviews but we also don't have much time until the project is due and the interviews have to be good. So we put ourselves in a big catch 22 and ended up stuck for about a week until we could get the time to just film all of the interviews.

Now that finally finished up and the leadership team got to the hardest most tedious part of the whole video, editing. Now my first job was audio syncing from all of the interviews. I would take two camera angles, match the better audio up to the better shot and then export that out. That alone took me one entire day of editing and a few hours at home. Now it has been a stressful few months with this video as we have a few weeks until deadline and the other two editors have been busy and are in a different hour. Now that has made editing a problem but we began evening editing sessions as soon as we could and we have been working together to create an awesome video. Now I might talk more about this whole project when it is over but for now all I can say is that I'm glad that I took on this role. Working with my friends has been a blast and I don't regret taking this role, but trust me I look forward to more free time as soon as the video is over.

The 10 things I learned from watching the first 3 episodes of Star Wars!

So over this Thanksgiving break my family and I decided to binge watch all of the Star Wars episodes. Now we started in chronological order with The Phantom Menace, followed by Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith. Now we are finishing up the last 3 in these next couple of days, but I figured that I would tell you the ten things I learned from the first three.

1.  Dialogue is crucial to every movie. Just trust me on this if you are planning to write dialogue say it out loud before submitting it. Anything that sounds robotic or uninteresting probably is and needs to be fixed.
2. If you are going to write romance into a movie please don't just open a romance manual and use all of the first things you see. Please it is overused and so very annoying and very not fun to watch.  
3. Fight Scenes can really turn a movie around. The fight scenes in all of these movies had me intrigued beyond belief and kept me watching as the plots got harder to watch. 
4. The hair and makeup people were insanely good, every time we see the queen she looks stunning. They seriously should've gotten some great pay for their work. 
5. Plot lines should be drafted, run by more than a few people and then rewritten, and then reworked yet another time. 
6. Jar Jar Binks. This is one character that I cannot stand. He has literally no point to the plot or any part of the storyline. 
7. I seriously love the lightsaber fights in these movies. I know it sounds strange but they are pretty amazing and I want to learn how to remake them.  
8. Wilhelm Scream works in all galaxies even those long ago and far away. Just saying
9. Padmè's character in the first movie was well written, second movie was eh but my lord the last movie was the worst of them all. If you are going to establish a strong female character than at least do it well and don't just quit halfway through and make her dependent on the men. 
10. Teenage Anakin is very moody and kinda creepy. Lets not lie that guy's lines are terrible and every look is crazy creepy. 
11. (Bonus I know it's awesome) Pew pew pew is the best sound foley ever used and if you disagree with me than pew pew pew at you too. 

I know that was a bit silly and short, but I hope you enjoyed my list, and May the Force be with You.

Reflection.. Something that is good for all of us to do every now and then.

Now I know this is a little late, but I would like to reflect on my time up to now with e-Communication and how much work I think I have put into bettering myself and helping the program with projects. This past semester has been crazy busy, I am still in denial that it is almost over. Yet it is time to face the music and talk about what has been going on throughout the semester. Now I have been up to my neck in band footage for a while now, but to get the full story we start at the beginning with an eager yet unsure Jessie fresh into her junior year. Now I was very scared coming into the year that my filing or editing skills would be terrible compared to those in my class, and I shied away from any major roles. That is until they needed people to step up for the all school video. So I did what I always do and tried out something difficult. I became a day editor and helped a little over the evening to get all the footage ready for the major edits. My confidence in my own skills and work grew and that is when I took the role of co-head-editor on the Band Documentary that our department is making as part of a fund raiser. Now I then started overthinking things and became very convinced that my skills weren't good enough for the project, but since I can't just quit (It's not in my DNA) I kept with it and finally overcame my fear of not being good enough.

Now my key issue was self-confidence, something that I struggle with outside of the film-making department, and I knew that in order to get anything done I would have to work on small projects to reassure myself that I was good at what I do and that I wouldn't completely mess everything up. Now this took some small projects and helping other out a lot, but I was able to convince myself that I can still edit (thank goodness I didn't loose that skill, that would be a problem) and that my storylines were still applicable. Now this has shown through most in the past couple of weeks when I took charge on filming interviews and editing together short clips as well as working on a few side projects for friends. I also maintained communication with the band families and our video group, which helped me feel more at home. Now this all led to the past couple of days (and the next few weeks) where me and the other team members on editing (Drew and Elizabeth) get together and edit for hours after school to hit our deadline, and make a kick-butt video.

Now this semester as a whole has really changed me and helped me grow as a person. I have made some of the best friends ever and learned more about myself through the work that I do that ever before. I have realized that my work is important to me and the relationships I build through this work are just as important. The people I work with everyday (including my teacher) help me to better understand who I am and what I want to work on. I know that once this crazy video is over and we have all of the copies distributed. I will start planning my next adventure in Videos and I can't wait to better explore myself and hopefully entertain a few people along the way. I have learned to believe in myself and to let the future take me where it wants, because in the end it is in control not me. So thank you to all who have helped me most to grow these past few months and thank you to all I annoyed in the process. You have helped me to get this far and have helped me prepare myself for what lies ahead both in e-Comm and in life.

This week I teach you how to edit to the beats of an audio file! Lets do this!

I'm back for another blog, where I teach you how to do stuff! This week we are gonna focus on editing to the beat of an audio file, particularly a song. Now I have chosen a song I am very familiar with that also has a little bit of a slower tempo, so that those of you who want to follow along and edit as you read can have an easy start. I picked the song "A thousand years" by: Christina Perry. Now I am gonna tell you all the directions for a Final Cut Pro edit, because that is the software that I use and understand. So first create a new event and place a new project in that event. Next up you are gonna want to drag your song file into the timeline and click on it.

Now the next step is very important in keeping the video in sync with the audio. So with your selected track on the timeline, go through and listen to the beat of the song. Now whenever the beat is hit the M button and it will place a mark on your song like this. This process may take a while to get the beats just right, but when it is correct it will have a great effect in the audience.

Next step is to identify the photos you want to use in your video, these should flow seamlessly into one another and all have a common theme that makes the video theme understandable. The next step is to import those photos and lay them out in the timeline. You will want to make a layout that seems logical. Now make sure your snapping technique is turned on and it looks like this on the final cut software (It's the blue highlighted one).

Now you will want to drag the photos to the beginning of the clip or wherever on the timeline you want to place the clip as long as it is between two marks on the song. Now make the clip length the same length as the length between the marks. Repeat this process until your video is done and boom, you have just edited to the beat of the music. I hope that helped someone out and I will join you again for another blog later. 

We're all in this together!

Hey all I'm back with another blog post! This time I'm gonna talk about myself and review the quality of the work that I put into our all school video. Now the whole theme of the video was talking about how after the tragedies of last year we would come back stronger and as a united school, one that is all in this together (get what I did there?).  Anyway we filmed one Thursday and edited the footage by Tuesday for a short 90 second video. I had volunteered to do the card dumps throughout the day which was a lot of fun and I will talk more about later. I also stayed after school that Friday to help edit. Overall I spent many hours at school working on this video. I have linked the contest version here and the full version here.

On Thursday we started at 6 AM, but I was excused from band at 8 and I headed straight for the video room. I got there and helped as they finished setting up the computers to receive footage. We got the footage as second hour started and thats where the craziness began. We rushed to get nine computers of footage imported, favorited, and key-worded. This lasted the majority of hour and I got a camera that was on a monopod moving around the gym. I had some very interesting shots, lots of close-ups and artsy shots. We did this same race against time every hour until sixth hour when we had to go set up for the assembly.

I helped to transform the gym from a filming zone to the pep assembly set up. I helped carry the track and then I got set up for band to play in the assembly. The assembly went well and afterwords I went home for the night. The next day I came in as soon as my flute lesson was over to help out with the crunch edit for the contest video. I had changed computers and was editing a different POV of footage. I was told to make a highlight reel of that computer for the entire day and I got to work. I worked for about an hour before we took a break for dinner. After that I worked for another couple of hours before another desert break. Finally I did a little more work before we took a final break and called it a night. Overall I was there from 3 PM to 9:30 PM.

Now let me talk about how I think I did. Overall, I joked around a lot. I feel like I could've done a lot more had I been more on task and focused on my work. I also know that part of my distraction was the fact that I was surrounded by hilarious great people that are my friends. That is to no fault of theirs however I need to learn to better manage myself and my time. So I think throughout the project I could've been more help if I had focused more myself and my energy towards the project and less towards socializing with my friends. So in general I am proud of the work I put into the video and I think I did well.

No Film School. Complex Transitions. All in a days work!

Hello I am back yet again this time to do a review of an article I recently read on No Film School. Click here to see the actual article and without further ado I will get on with the technical stuff.

This article uses the filmmaker Matty Brown's video Playground Italy and the Story & Heart video in which he describes the process of a beautifully executed transition. First we are gonna talk about the video Playground Italy and how he used complex transitions throughout it. The entire video is about Italy and extreme mountain biking throughout the country. His video is excellent and I would highly recommend checking it out. Anyway he uses a wide variety of transitions throughout his video and then, lower down in the article there is a video where he gives us some tips of how to create complex transitions. Now I loved getting to hear all the great advice and I will talk about that a little later on, but first I want to give my opinion of the article itself.

Now I thought the article was very interesting. The article is mostly the two videos and some text describing the importance and difficulty of transitions. They start off talking about the importance of transitions and how overlooked they can be. However the article then talks about how a seamless transition can make a video amazing. Now I think that the article around the videos is excellently written to highlight what makes these transitions so important to videos. They point out the complexity of the transitions and how much time they take, but that the benefits are well worth the work. I also think that the video they picked to write about is a great example of they point the article is trying to make. Overall I was very impressed with this article and I learned a lot from it.

Now onto the video and what I though of it. I thought that the informational video was exceptionally made and really taught me what the directer, Matty Brown, thought was important about creating complex transitions. I will just highlight the main ideas of the video but again go check it out on the link to the article, it is such a helpful video especially for new film editors or those who want to expand their knowledge. Matty defines what he thinks transitions are, talks about why they are important in videos, and the gained experience for the viewer that these complex transitions add.

Well thats all for now folks! I will see you next time for another blog!

Saving Private Ryan, What an experience including SPOILERS

Hey I am back for another blog post, I watched Saving Private Ryan recently and thought I would write my own little review of it along with all the technical and storyline things I thought the movie did well. I don't know how many of you have seen this film so I will put this warning of SPOILERS. If you haven't seen this movie I seriously recommend that you go check it out! Without further ado lets go.

Well let's start off with the storyline of the entire movie. As many of you know it is about soldiers fighting in World War 2. Now the main plot is trying to find this one Private Ryan in the large amount of troops in France after Normandy. The script itself focuses on one group of soldiers and that humanizes the war for many people and makes the movie more relatable. This makes the movie more of a human experience though a war we typically see as a tactical experience. The finding of the first Private Ryan and the comedic effect it provides lessens the tension for a moment. Then you see the number of soldiers who die throughout the story's progression in the search for one soldier. Those men who die make the surviving soldiers even angrier at Pvt. Ryan. The friendships formed by the soldiers shows how the horrors of war can bring people together to form the most unlikely friendships.

There was also some examples of symbolism in the film that whenever a terrible battle begins there is water of some kind. Whether it is the ocean that borders Normandy, the rain after a couple of attacks on major German guns, or the rain at the end of the film when the final battle scene is over. Another example of symbolism is the right hand of various characters. The main Captain Miller has a shaky hand before every big battle, but once he is in the heat of the battle his hand stops shaking. This shows the nerve he had and may even hint at a subconscious PTSD thing. They show his hand shaking and in the big scene where Miller dies they show Ryan's steady hand directly afterwords. (If you are complaining that I spoiled the movie for you I said Spoilers... That is on you for reading this even after the two warnings I gave you!) This shows a significant connection between the right hand and nerves, which also shows the true horrors of war. Another symbol in the movie is red. Each time people die a vivid and very noticeable shade of red is show, weather the water on Omaha Beach which was stained red or the blood seeping out of soldiers when they are shot.

The use of camera effects and coloring is also something that made the film especially great. Most of the shots are dark colored and the addition of shaky cam makes it feel like the footage was actually shot by a soldier during World War 2. They also used a special lens that closes in a way to capture the motion without motion blur. This makes the audience feel as if they are really there throughout the attacks and experiencing the event through the first point of view. The use of sound foley also adds to the overall effect of the movie. They added in the sounds of soldiers breathing to create a more realistic feel. The sound also cuts out during intense scenes to represent the shell shock that some of these soldier must have felt during war. The use of close-ups in this film is excellent. They show emotion and create an even more powerful emotion towards the characters in the movie and their storyline.

The makeup artists also smudges makeup on the actors face and adds in other makeup to make the characters appear dirty and beat down from the horrors of war. This gives the audience a more realistic view of the war and the toll it takes on men. The toll of the battles and horrors they have seen is fairly evident through the use of makeup and smudges.

That is about all I have to say about this movie, but if you haven't already seen it, or it's been a while since you've watched it, then definitely go re-watch it. While there are some emotionally tough and traumatizing scenes, the movie as a whole really speaks to the horrors of war and the bond formed between soldiers fighting that war. Thanks for reading and tune in next time!- Jessie.

We all talk....Today I will talk to you about documentaries!

Hey all I am Jessie (which you probably gathered by the title of the blog), ok so cliche entrance covered. Well anyway I will continue the cliche by telling you a little bit about myself. I am a student still who has big dreams, but is a little scared of the unknown that the future provides. I will blog all about film, editing and screenplay writing. I will write about award winning movies I see, scripts I enjoy or write, and all sorts of projects that I create with my peers. Now that the cliche entrance has come to an end I can tell you about this pretty cool article I read recently about how to write an interesting documentary script and the article really struck me as cool. So stick with me people cause I plan on taking you on the wild ride that will be the next few years.

Now I am very interested in making a documentary project this year and the best way to start is with a script. So I decided to look up how to write a documentary script. I came across this article that talks all about the process. So I am gonna try and sum it up for you right here.

First step in writing your script is obviously to pick your topic, then research that topic until you feel like there is no part of it for which you are not an expert. During the research process make a list of all the people you want to interview or subtopics you want to cover in your script. Also find the main point of your video or the big idea that you want to get across (I mean this seems pretty routine and basic, but still very important). Next up you want to decide the style of your story and what kind of tone the story will bring to the audience. I have recently been learning about the connotations of words in school and think that this would be a great place to use those feelings you get off a word to your advantage. Next up you will want to write an outline of your story, when you want to cover the main points and subtopics as well. Also include an idea of what you will put to support those points.

Now this is the part where you film all of your interviews for which you will structure the entire story around. Since we can't script what a person will say when they talk about something we have to format the entire story around what they say so you will want to type or write up what the interviewee says to create a script and place the audio. That honestly seems like a lot of writing, but if you don't do this script how will you know what clips fit best where and what quotes will flow best. This step is hard work, but totally worth it (What am I 12 who says totally anymore? Oh well its been a long week of studying cut me some slack :P).

Anyway I found this article super helpful when writing this blog and based my steps and commentary off what they said and I defiantly learned a lot reading that article. I hope I can use the stuff i learned and conveyed to yall to help me become a better writer.

Until the next adventure and learning experience,
Jessie.