(25) Production and General Progress

Folks, the day has finally arrived! 

Today I finally got the chance to begin on getting some shots in and producing! >:D It's been a long time coming so I'm very relieved. Today I was able to get around 2 minutes of footage (which I'm estimating is around 1:30 minutes of usable footage). Although it is slow start, it's definitely better than nothing! ^^;

I thought that I was really familiar with my camera and how it worked, but unfortunately I don't feel like I really have it down. The viewfinder was really small and it made it very hard for me to see the footage that I was capturing. I also filmed my brother to get any moving shots with me in them and none of them turned out so great (which was sort of expected, he's never held any camera before).  Judging from all of the things that have happened today, I am going to need some more time to arrange my schedule so I can give myself more filming days. 

After talking with my dad I was able to get a subscription to Adobe Aftereffects since they have software which can help with the shakiness of my footage and it has more tools that I can use for later. Tomorrow I'm planning to take the time to learn about it a little more and hopefully get comfortable enough to use it! :D Oh and one more thing, I got around to making a Twitter account for my film! >:0 There's nothing on there yet but Im hoping that with the footage that I got today I can make some promotional tweets and maybe take some of the information that I have on my website. 

(I think the profile looks pretty cool!)

My apologies if this post was a little stale, but since I'm moving along with production I can't think of a lot to talk about since I'm just doing instead of planning or brainstorming. I hope that my next post will have a little more sustenance to it, wish me luck!

(24) Website is up!

Hello everyone! :D

Today I decided to take the time and tackle completing my website where I can upload my film. In the past blog posts I took the time to research for additional information I wanted to include in my blog, but for this post I needed to look back on my past knowledge and do some research for branding. 

Since I am entirely responsible for advertising and distributing my film, making sure that the branding of it remains consistent is a very large undertaking. The overall appearance of what you produce is the key component that either drives in audiences or pushes them away. Taking all of that into consideration, I want to delve into all of the design choices I have made for my website and how I plan to create a sense of consistent branding. 

In terms of the layout of my site, I wanted to keep it organized and simple so it would be accessible to a wide range of audiences and easy to take in. If I am someone who is coming onto a website expecting to see an artist's work I would expect to see a professional and tidy space. 

The main attraction right on the home page, easy peasy!

However, professional does not mean that my website should not have personality. I really want to incorporate my own sense of personality and style into my site (and in my brand as a whole) and more specifically how my personality shines through when discussing about my work and its contents. I made an about page where I explain what this website and project is about and I also aim to speak in my most authentic voice. Of course, I don't want to sound colloquial, but I want the consumers to get the idea that a person made this film and a person was behind this project, not a company. 

The colored background creates interest, plus it's the same background that is in my blogpost so there's some consistency points for branding >:P

The main reason that made me want to make this blog is none other than the additional information about grief that comes with my film. I hope that adding extra information about grief and forcing myself to address the consumers directly helps to build a more intimate connection in between the reader and I and makes my work and myself more trustworthy or worth listening to. After talking with some peers they felt that I should make the distinction that I am not a licensed professional, and so I made sure to not give any specific advice in my information page and offer resources that readers can refer to if they are looking for more information. 

With some pops of color in the back of course!

I want to add that for my background (and general branding as a whole) I am using a lot of gradient imagery with bright colors as I feel that it invokes feelings of introspection and reflection, which is a heavy theme that I am incorporating within my production. I really want to use that as the main driving force with brand and I want it to be the thing that sticks with people's mind the most. :0 

I think that concludes everything I needed to say in this blog post, hopefully I covered it all! I'll keep you guys posted!

(23) Group Meetings (pt. 3!)

Hello everyone! :D

As you can probably tell by the title, today in class we did another group meeting to discuss any issues that we may have and to offer people advice on any problems they could be running into during the production stages. I talked with my classmates about the stop motion portion of my project and I was telling them about the supplies I would need in order to film it. One student suggested that I could use a light box as a diorama :0

Here's a photo of the specific box that my classmate recommended me! 

It's usually used for photography, but since it has a light source at the top of it that means it could provide me an ample amount of light necessary for my production! I ordered one off of Amazon and I also ordered some play-dough as well in order to hold up my animations. Ellie advised me to utilize play-dough in order to hold up figures since it's very malleable and it is not as 'blocky' as other kinds of supports. Hopefully it'll work for what I need to do (fingers crossed!). 

Also, through the meetings I COMPLETELY forgot that I need to create social media sites in order to advertise my film. Through some discussion I concluded that Twitter will be the best application for me to advertise it since other social media sites since I can include text information without any images. 

I'll keep you guys posted on how my work goes! :D

(22) Taking It Out to the Real World

Hello! :D

I think I've talked about the idea of distributing my project to individuals who are going through grief, but I never considered actually doing it (until now). I was talking with my therapist about my project and she told me that she knows of a program that offers counseling to grieving teens in Miami Dade. Since she know the main organizers of the program she offered to help me and see if I could actually distribute it! :0

Because this is a school project I only thought of my distribution plans as concepts, but maybe this could actually happen. It would be so so cool to see my project out there and see it impacting people, I'm definitely going to look into it once I'm finished! 

The only problem is that the music I'm planning to use within my project is copyrighted, and while I reached out to the artists to get permissions for their songs, I never got any replies back. Not one. If I was only planning to show this video to my peers only (and the Cambridge graders of course) I don't think it would be an issue, but now that I have a chance to actually get my project out there copyrighted music is a big issue. I'm going to try and contact the artists and distributing companies again, but I'm unsure that I'll get a response.  I'm wondering if this means I'll have to look for copyright-free music if I want to actually distribute it, but I'm not sure if I have the time to sift through hours of music...

Hopefully there will be a resolution to this issue soon, I'll keep you guys posted if anything new occurs. :)

(21) New Idea!!!

Hello everyone, I have some good news! :D

After talking with my cousin about my plans, we bounced off ideas and I think I know what to do for the mise-en-scene for the stop motion animations! She said that instead of trying to capture the stages on a planet, I could go more abstract and try capturing the 'headspace' I'm in when I am experiencing a stage of grief. Instead of having a scene where there's a lot going on, I can keep it isolated and using lighting to highlight the feeling of what is happening. In a way, the scene will be the insides of my mind. :0 

I like this idea since I feel it'll add onto the mystery that is grief. It can feel very isolating to go through the motions of it alone, and I feel that I'm showcasing my feelings in a more accurate manner by doing this. Plus, after my cousin brought it up I think that portraying planets might be confusing for audiences to grasp what is going on. 

After deciding what I'm going to do I went to the internet to find some photos that I can use as a reference. I want to use lighting and simple figures to emulate that I am trying to depict the way my mind is like when I'm going through those stages. 

An example of some lighting techniques I could use :0

Okay, I know this is Spongebob, but this episode where Squidward is in the Nowhere dimension is a great reference as to what I want the scenery to look like!

In the next blog posts, my plan is to sketch out my plans and go get supplies. I need to get this done ASAP since the project is due in only a few weeks. Although I hate being behind, maybe it was necessary to plan out my ideas. I'll keep you guys posted. :)

(20) Change of Plans and Extra Thinking

Hello everyone. :)

Because I'm currently in spring break, my cousin decided to surprise me and my brother and now she'll be staying with us until Sunday. While I'm very very excited that she's here, that also means that now I will barely have any time to work on my project. There's very few things that I let get in the way of my work, but family is one of them. It's been very long since I last saw her and she has a lot of plans for us, so, I guess I'll put a pin on working on the stop motion portion of my project. 

While postponing production will mean I'm going to have to work extra hard later, considering how far I've gotten with designing the characters and going out to get supplies, I think I'll be alright!

Since I'm having to push back the production dates, that means I'm not going to waste the time that I have now and do my best to plan out the editing stage and shell out my production plans even further. One thing that has been on my mind is whether if I'm going to speak out my lines in my script or if I'm just going to have text appear on screen. After talking with some people and doing a bit of googling, I've decided that I'm going to have text appear on the screen. I want the audio component of my project to be strictly music, and I feel like having me speak within the project will make it cheesy (also I think hearing my voice will not make my piece too personal, I still want audiences to see themselves within my film).

I have also been recently inspired to take a different approach for the mise-en-scene my stop motion animations.  I was telling my cousin about my plans and how I wanted to tell the story, and she was asking me a couple questions as to why I was choosing certain elements. I was telling her about my planets idea, but she said "Do you really feel as if you're on a different planet or a different plane when you grieve?". The more I thought about her question the more I realized that she was right. 

I think that by using planets as the settings for the stages was not an accurate description of how it feels to me. This means I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board and reconsider some of my ideas, fast. I'll let you guys know what I come up with, I'll keep you guys posted. 

(19) Stop Motion Characters

Hello! :D

As I stated in previous posts, today marks the first week in which I'm going to start working on the stop motion scenes! >:D I'm using today in order to draw out everything I need for the animations, essentially I'm making the 'frames' of my animations today. 

Drawing out the Character! >:0

In case I never fully explained how it works, I wanted to take the time and dedicate this blog to talk about what my plan is for completing the stop motion portions. When I talked with Yejin a couple of weeks ago, they said that when it comes to drawing out my frames, I need to consider how many parts I will need for a single shot, and do everything I can to simplify the motion that is needed in that shot. Taking the time to actually draw out every single frame like they do in animation studios will take me months to get it done, so I need to work on a more realistic scale (also I'm doing all of this alone, which adds to the level of difficulty). 

They also said that in order to bring "life" into my animations, I really have to focus on the emotions within my characters and give emotion to any other objects I include as well. I decided to bring out a lot of detailing within the eyes and eyebrows of my characters to do this. :)

My goal is to finish up all of the drawing by tonight and so I can plan for how I want to set them up tomorrow. I'll keep you guys posted! :D

(18) Production Day Postponed

Somtimes, life gets in the way at the most inconvenient times. 

If you have been keeping up with my posts you would know that today was the day that I was supposed to film with my boyfriend. Unfortunately, he forgot that he had a very large project due tonight so today I need to help him out instead. There's a lot of parts and it'll probably take us the whole day to finish it, so therefore my filming day is postponed. 

Because I want to take the next week to work on stop motion I suggested that we moved the filming day to next Sunday, but next Sunday marks the first day of Passover so he is unsure that he'll be available. After talking back and forth I guess our only option is to film on Tuesday the 30th. While I'm really apprehensive about moving the film date so late because that will reduce my time to edit, this change is necessary since I'll need the time to film and I do not want to rush the process. 

However, not all is lost since this does give my boyfriend some time to understand how the camera works and test it out a bit! Hopefully this will make the day we do film easier and we won't waste as much time dealing with equipment. :) With that being said I need to make sure that in this upcoming week I have to work really hard and get as much of the stop motion animation done, I'll let you guys know how it goes. :0

(17) Website Research (pt. 2)

Okay, so in my last blog I defined what grief is and how it can look like, and so in this blog I want to talk about what are the steps people can take in order to heal. :0

When it comes to addressing grief, I feel most people are unsure of what to say or what are the steps you can take to heal. In my own experience I remember that I just wanted to desperately move on with my life and forget about it. Of course, that ended up backfiring and I dealt with a flurry of unresolved emotions a couple months later. 

While I feel that I'm much better at confronting my feelings and letting myself process them, it's still hard for me to talk about what I'm going through with others. Grief is a very touchy subject for everyone, and it can be hard to know how or where to get support or what to say to someone who is grieving. I'm hoping that having information on those topics will help individuals feel more comfortable with addressing grief and help open conversations about it. 

The first rule of thumb for people who are grieving and people who are supporting a loved one is that patience is key. Grieving takes time, and it's crucial to not place any judgements or rush yourself into feeling better as that can cause more problems later on. Many professionals advise to take the time to find activities that can help you relax or that help you release your feelings in a healthy manner. Things such as keeping a journal, meditating or listening to music are all healthy coping mechanisms. If you find yourself delving into unhealthy coping mechanisms (i.e. projecting your anger onto others or abusing substances) you should seek a therapist as soon as possible. Group therapy sessions or seeking for a support group is another good option for someone who does not have access to a therapist. 

If you are someone who is trying to support a grieving person, there are a few do's and don'ts that you should keep in mind. For starters, do not console someone with cliches such as "they're in a better place" as that minimizes the emotions they are going through and can make your support appear to be superficial. Acknowledge their struggle and provide support with statements such as "I'm here to listen if you want to talk". 

Under no circumstances should you ever try to compare a person's experience with your own. It can devalue a person's own pain and in almost all cases mourners are not interested in hearing about another loss. Instead, focus on your friend's grief and their experience. Offer to listen about their feelings and show that you are open to talking about their grief. Giving support through silence is just as helpful; being in their presence without saying anything still shows that you care. 

The stages of grieving don't always look the same from person to person. Sometimes it might take someone a few months to be able to get back on their feet or sometimes it might take years. Some people might have feel more anger rather than sadness and for some it might take a while for them to stop being in denial. The best thing anyone can do to help someone who is grieving is to allow them to grieve. Let them feel sad, let them process their anger. It can be tempting to try and cheer someone up and focus on the positives, but that may only put pressure on a grieving person to 'get better'. Within the media and in American society there is already a lot of stigma over people taking time to grieve, and forcing someone to focus on the positives only adds to that. 

With all of that typed out I think I have enough information to refer to when it's time for me to start putting my website together! :D  I'll keep you guys posted :P

SOURCES:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/ways-to-support-someone-who-is-grieving

https://healgrief.org/how-to-help-someone-grieving/

https://time.com/5118994/advice-for-helping-grieving-friend/

(16) Website Research

Hello everyone! :D

In this blog post I'd like to take the time to organize all of my research that I'm planning to put into my website where I'll showcase my film. As I mentioned in other blogs, I want to have additional information to hopefully give people a chance to learn about what grieving is like. 

For starters, I want to look at basic definitions of grief and how it can manifest in someone's daily life. According to WebMD, "Grief is a natural response to losing someone or something important to you". While we commonly think of grieving as a result of losing a love one, people can grieve over a variety of other instances, such as a break up or a pet passing away. Individuals can also grieve over past periods of their life, like their childhood or their college years. 

Grief can heavily impact a person's productivity and ability to do daily activities such as eating properly or keeping up with healthy hygiene habits. People who are grieving often report feeling as if there is no point in staying healthy or managing all of their tasks. In the case where someone is grieving over a sudden loss their feelings of regret or guilt can make them feel bad to continue with their daily life as if nothing happened. Conversely, some people will try fill up their schedules so they do not have a chance to think or feel pain from their loss. 

A wide range of studies and research show that grief can also manifest itself through physical symptoms. Many people report feeling their hearts literally ache or feel as if their body is very weak. Medical research cautions grieving individuals from exposing themselves to situations where they can contract diseases as the immune response in a grieving person is extremely fragile. In extreme cases, grief can bring up persisting symptoms of depression and suicidal thoughts and can trigger other mental disorders such as BPD or Schizophrenia. 

I feel like this is enough information to help give people an understanding of what grief is like. :) I'm thinking that within my website I'll insert a navigation menu and one section will have all of this information on it. I need to figure out whether if I should condense it or expand on it, but for now I think I'll keep it as is. 

I'll keep you guys posted as to what I'll do next! :D

SOURCES:

https://www.webmd.com/special-reports/grief-stages/default.htm

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/grief/coping-with-grief-and-loss.htm

https://www.webmd.com/special-reports/grief-stages/20190711/how-grief-affects-your-body-and-mind