(kinda late) April fools! Anyways here's my opening: DJ! Turn Up The Tune!
Sunday, April 2, 2023
The Great Final in the Sky
Normally I would use an album closer, but I couldn't find one that I could make a good pun with. The Great Gig in the Sky technically closes side A of The Dark Side of the Moon, so it's technically a closer.
It feels weird that this is finally coming to an end. This kinda feels like the end of school, except this was just a long project that I worked on for about 8 weeks. I had so many other ideas that I wanted to do, like one about a gamer. Maybe I can do that next year for A level!
I wanted to include more clone scenes and have them be a more integral part of the opening, but I didn't have enough time to include it. I also felt like I made the completely wrong genre of music and had to change some of the sounds. Originally, I was making an almost ambient/garage song, but that wouldn't make sense and would be weird to play. So at almost the last minute, I changed the song to be more like a traditional EDM song you would hear today. I also wanted to incorporate music in the ending, but I wasn't sure how to, so I just left it alone. I really like the match cut transition I did with sound. I took some inspiration of that from the Breaking Bad "Blood to Ketchup" transition. Instead of the swirling of a mop and a fry, I used the door closing and William knocking on my window.
This was a really fun project! I can't wait to see what comes at A level!
A Rush of Blood to the Ed(iting)
It's time to start editing the opening! After removing the blooper clips, I sorted them into 3 scenes. This was easy because I knew that I filmed scenes 1 and 3 a day before scene 2. When sorting into scene 1, I made the actions on camera match up with the music. For example, when the clone on the piano asks for some drums, the camera shows Oliver on the computer playing the drums using the keyboard. I color coded the clips to match the scenes so it would be easy for me to visualize how long each scene would be and which clips belong with which scenes. Also, I tried to be neatish.
For the clone shots, I made a mask of a frame with one clone in the frame and overlayed it onto another with Oliver. This works well, but you have to hide the mask edges well. Here, I hid mine on the edge of the window and wall.
For the title, I decided to rotoscope it in the last scene. I would walk from the right to left, and have the title show behind me. That took some time, but it wasn't too tedious. However the second part was very, so very tedious. I would have William come in front of the title. This meant I had to rotoscope not just his back but his front. It was so frustrating and tedious. This took me almost an hour to rotoscope 3ish seconds of 30fps footage.
Developing my 2nd CCR
For my 2nd CCR, I decided to make a podcast. This is a continuation of the story in the 1st CCR, where I was calling into this podcast. To make it more funny and engaging, I decided to use the new trend of American presidents like Obama, deepfaked audio into my podcast. I created the script, which reflected the last 2 questions of the CCR. I recorded myself speaking the entirety of it, even the parts where Obama was supposed to be speaking. This is for reference audio, where the AI will convert it into Obama's voice. I found a website that allowed for deep faked audios of celebrities and used reference audio, called uberduck.ai. The best part was that it was free! I cut out the parts where I was speaking and saved them into another audio file for later. I used Ableton, the music software I used to make my music, to form the podcast. I listened to Obama's questions in it, and I noticed how many times it was almost stuttering on a word for almost 30 seconds. Thankfully, the AI fixed itself so I can cut out the stutters. I realized that most podcasts have some intro music that sets the podcast's tone. I didn't want to make another song because of how tedious it was and time constraints, so I went onto the YouTube Audio Library. This has songs that are non-copyrighted and allows anyone to use them for any use. I searched for songs under the bright tag and found the song "Fun Kid" by Quincas Moreira. The intro was playful and informal, which was perfect for the podcast. I used about the first 10 seconds for it, because the music would be too distracting if I kept it for the entirety of the podcast. With my audio where I answered the questions, I put them into an Adobe Podcast Enhance Speech program, which would reduce the amount of noise. The program was very good at removing noise and hums. I put this into the timeline in Ableton and made cuts where I was "waiting" for Obama to question me. I made cuts to Obama's audio where he finishes answering questions. With this, I just had to order it all so that when Obama was asking a question, I was answering it. This was a fairly straightforward process but it took some time to make it all.
Here is the script: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qrCQoh-TOUUXSbfYdMt0j5Gf7B3ajLvUXKvGJe5_h_w/edit?usp=sharing
Saturday, April 1, 2023
Developing my 1st CCR
My first CCR will be a directors commentary in the style of a Discord Q and A. With this, questions 1 and 2 would be broken up and would come from people who viewed the film opening. I used an old Discord server and I sent the questions. The way I made it look like it was from different people was by changing my profile picture and nickname.
Originally, I wanted to have my clone be a talk show host and being arrogant. But I felt like it would be too long if I made the clone have arrogant remarks, so I cut it out. I didn't change the script much, because of time constraints. Before, I wanted to use my Dad as the host, but since I used him as Dad in the opening, it would feel weird having someone who was against Oliver in the I added some references to some famous musicians, like Thom Yorke from Radiohead and Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd.
I recorded it today. Here's a funny blooper! One of my friends online is JasmineFox, so I accidentally said her name instead of Jasmine.
Script: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gzzQaythqxJj1iBj7ysqdTrmbBZc65jCwqQCatLRYxs/edit?usp=sharing
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