The Future is Uncertain

   Recently, the state of Florida has gotten news of what will happen regarding the schools. The Coronavirus outbreak has spread rapidly throughout the state and has caused many changes this past week. This is especially true in my county, which is Broward county. Our governor has announced that school is cancelled until April 15. This is not good news for our film project. I am certain that re-shooting will no longer be possible at this point. The risk of contracting the virus is too high. We can try to get together but I doubt that our parents would actually let us get together during this outbreak. Besides, we wouldn’t to potentially spread the virus to each other as well. This leaves us with two options. The first is that one person re-shoots scenes at their house and it’ll only be them. The problem with this, however, is that the scenes we need to reshoot include multiple character so this would not workout at all. It would also not workout for consistency of the setting. The second option I think is much better and much more practical. This option is just taking the footage that we already have and editing it up to make it work better. This option’s problem is that one of the scenes that needed to be reshot was very dark. This means that the lighting was too dark to really get a clear sight of what was happening. This was not our fault though and the problem could have been avoided if we filmed quicker. What had happened was that the lights in the park we were filming in had shut off on us leaving us in almost complete darkness. This is not something we can go back and edit to fix. We would have to reshoot it entirely. However, I still believe option 2 is a lot better than option 1.


This is a picture of that dark scene.

Re-shoots Might Not Happen Soon

   This past week has been very interesting, for the entire world I would say. An outbreak of a deadly virus has plagued the world as of recently. It is known as the corona virus or COVID-19. It first started out in China but quickly has found its way to the U.S., and even worse, our own county. There was talk about school getting cancelled for a few days but on Friday afternoon, our superintendent made an announcement that school would be cancelled the week of March 16th. Unfortunately, this was the last week of the third quarter. A lot of students and teachers were unhappy about this due to not knowing what would happen with grades. However some good news was that next week would be spring break though so we wouldn’t be missing anything if we had to miss that week too. This has impacted our re-shooting schedule though. Everybody is under self quarantine as of right now. The government is telling that we must practice social distancing for the time being. This means we should have the least amount of human interaction possible. This will supposedly help to combat the virus, or at least help to stop it from spreading so quickly. However, this means that we can’t do re-shoots for a while. We’re not sure what we can do about this and we’re scared for the future of our film project. For now, all we can do is edit the footage that we do have. I was planning on editing the footage either tomorrow or sometime next week but unfortunately my computer has broken. It will not start up and when it does, it just crashes. This is the worst time for my computer to be broken because after spring break, there’s a good chance that we may have to online school. If I can get a hold of a computer though, I will definitely work on editing some footage. Maybe I will even get a new computer, but I’m not sure at this time.

Here is a computer model of the Coronavirus or COVID-19.

What we need to fix

  In our AICE Media Studies class, we have had our film peer reviewed and are ready to start the next step, which is to reshoot and re-edit. The peer review gave us lots of insight on what we could do better in our film. For starters, in the peer review, it was mentioned and suggested that we clean up the story a bit. The reviewers pointed out that there were several plot holes in the story. This included character motivations and explanations as to how a character was in a certain scene at one point. We took this into consideration and realized the only way we could fix this is if we did a reshoot. We would use the reshoot to replace the old scenes that don’t make sense with new ones that do make sense. This would allow the film to have a better overall story. We also had a problem with lighting in one of the last shots of the film. This was not our fault because the lights in the park we were filming in shut off randomly in the middle of one of our takes. This was not very convenient for us, so the last three shots in the film are very dark and hard to see. So we’d need to reshoot those parts when there’s actually lights on. We also need to do some more editing. We need to add in some sounds, like for example, we need to add a thud noise in one scene. We also want to add some music to it as well to try and set the mood of the film better. We also want to edit in our titles. We know that they were supposed to be in the film in time for the peer review, however it just didn’t work out. This was mostly due to the fact that we filmed the Saturday before it was due. It was our fault for sure, but at least we could still add the titles. When we finished doing all of that, I believe our film will be really good and up to par with what Cambridge expects. I have a good feeling about our final product.


This is a picture of the bad lighting towards the end of the film.

Week in Review

 We have now completed the peer evidenced at the time of writing this. Prior to that however, we had filmed the Saturday before at one of my group members’ house. We all met there at around five o’clock. Another person who was not in our group was with us as well. He is a sophomore, just like the rest of us in the group, except he has his license and a car. The original plan was for him to just drive us around, but he ended up playing the villain character in our film. His acting abilities were actually pretty good, so there was no issue there. So we had started filming outside of my group member’s house, which was supposed to be the setting of a party. This is where I filmed my little comic relief moment and acted as a spring breaker. That was a very fun scene to shoot and it definitely took a couple of tries to get it right. After we finished filming at his house, we decided to drive to a park for our second location. When we got to the park, I got out of the car and they filmed the scenes that would take place inside the car. I could not be in there because there was no room, as it was a relatively small car, and I wasn’t a character in that scene. Therefore, while they drove around the area, I waited for them at the park. When they came back we wrapped up the rest of it, and I got to film my trunk shot, which was fun. We filmed the chase scene which took a couple tries due to lighting issues. Speaking of lighting issues though, during one of our takes, the lights in the park suddenly shut off, and you can actually see it in the film. All in all, filming this was a fun experience, and my favorite filming of the three projects we have had this school year. The peer review allowed us to get some great feed back on our film. We realized that we still have a lot of editing to clean up with our film and we are excited to make it as best as possible.

Peer Review

On Tuesday in our AICE Media Studies class, we did peer reviews on everybody’s final project/video.

Before the peer review, our group filmed, re-shot, and edited. The video that we produced was not the final product, however. We plan on making more changes editing wise, as well as adding more titles to the film. I do not believe re-shoot will be necessary.

The group that we graded had a great film. It was about a girl that wakes up in a simulation. She comes home and passes out, and then it switches to her in a training ground. The group was able to fill almost all of the criteria. I hope that our group can learn some things from the group that we peer reviewed, and implement it into our own film.

As well as peer reviewing another group, we had our video peer reviewed. Most of the comments were positive, but some were not. I have learned what we need to change and put into our film. One of the things being titles. Things such as "edited by" and "filmed by" were missing in our film. Our group will definitely be able to put these things into our film by the time it is due.

I am glad we had the ability to experience peer reviewing. It has helped me see what our group is doing good in, and what we are lacking in. I plan on going home and changing the video transitions. I will also add the title slides, and some eerie music.