Last minute changes

 Well, hey there again!
              In today’s blog, I will be discussing the last-minute changes my group made to our movie opener.

 To clarify, my group did not make any changes after showing our movie opener to our friend Eric (initial screening). However, we did make multiple changes during the editing process. In other words, there were several times where my group was like, “We are done! Here is the final product. Check through it to see if it is good.” However, every time we looked through the so-called final product, we noticed some small details that needed fixing. As a result, whatever detail that we wanted to fix, we saved the video and made the changes ourselves. This process happened a few times until everyone in the group was fully satisfied.

To start off with, one of the biggest last-minute changes we made was our song choice. Originally, we were going to play the song “Constellations” by Jade Lemac in the background throughout the film. However, the song did not suit some of the scenes at times, and we needed a song that would fit throughout the whole film, and not just one or two scenes. As a result, I was responsible for finding other potential song options. I looked on YouTube and sent many suggestions to our group chat, such as “Blessed” by Daniel Caesar, “All I Want” by Kodaline, and “Ocean Eyes” by Billie Eilish. I sent these three options, and our group ended up voting on “Ocean Eyes” by Billie Eilish. However, in order to try to avoid being copyrighted, Emijola suggested finding a cover of the song rather than simply using the song itself. As a result, we used a cover of the song by Alice Kristiansen. Luckily, this played in our favor because the cover seemed to suit the film opener even more in that it was an acoustic version, and the audience could hear the raw vocals and emotions in the singer’s voice, which further helps intensify the grief we are trying to portray.

Another last-minute change we made was in the last scene, the classroom scene. Originally, the way we were going to leave our movie opener was through a close-up of Ngoc, then a zoom into the pupil of her eye to black. However, during that day of filming, we completely forgot to film that part. We only realized that we forgot to film that part when we all went home. Since our school follows a block schedule, our next available day to film in that same class would have to be two days later. This was an issue because my group was already a little bit behind when it came to filming, and we needed to finish recording as soon as possible. As a result, we simply decided not to record that part and leave it out of our film. In the end, however, it still worked out because that scene would have made our opener too long, and we felt that if we were to end it like that, it would seem more like a movie trailer rather than an opener. So, the way we left off our opener was just by letting it cut to black once it reached the two-minute mark.

Overall, we did not make any changes after Eric’s initial screening of our opener because we felt that it would be way too much of a hassle. Emijola and Jahzara had originally edited the video on their phones. Afterwards, I saved that video and edited the credits into the video. Thus, if we were to make any physical changes, Emijola would have to reedit the video that does not have the credits and then send it to me so that I could put the credits on the opener again. We thought that a majority of Eric’s critiques were small details, and so it would not be worth it to go through that whole process to simply change two or three minor details.