Creative Critical Reflection

Hi this is my creative critical reflection for the film opening Hacked. I hope you enjoy! 

Hacked film opening

When the most popular high school student at Cypress Bay, Isabella finds out that her best friend since elementary school has been sleeping with her boyfriend of four years, she decided that it was time to teach them a lesson. Using the one secret she had kept from everyone she decided to plot out her plan of revenge. really Below I attached the link to the opening of MICC productions' original film, "HACKED".

Editing day 4

Hey guys,
Tomorrow we will be finalizing the film opening tomorrow. Today I was sick, so we decided to all meet up at Isa's house to complete the finishing touches on our film opening and submit it on our blogs. I'm excited for all of you to see our film opening!
Caroline

Editing day 3

Hi guys,
Today we just continued editing. I have started to think of what I am going to say for my creative critical reflection and will share a mini-script with you guys tomorrow.
Talk to you guys soon,
Caroline

Editing day 2

Hi guys!
We are have started editing and its going really well. We have decided to use iMovie for the editing of the actual video and GarageBand for the editing of the sounds. We have decided to change our story a bit. We first have decided to change the opening of the film. Instead of opening with a screen cast of the coding, we decided to open with a establishing shot of Caroline (me) reading on my bed. This begins to establish our character by showing her girly room, and her silk pajamas. We then hear the sound of the Facetime call from her computer. Then we do a over the shoulder shot of her on the bed as she answers the facetime call. The call begins with Isa (hacker) asking Caroline why she is wearing pajamas. Caroline responds with the "I'm tired" excuse, which causes Isa to get mad and rant about how her 'best friend' never goes out with her. Then Isa gets over her fit quickly just as girls do and tells Caroline that she has some juicy gossip to share. Isa tells Caroline to get headphones so no one hears the gossip. Caroline then reaches for her headphones and begins to listen to the story. A few seconds pass by and then we hear Caroline getting zapped by the headphone. This is where we imply to our audience that her brain has now been taken over. Instead of showing our audience that Isa is the one hacking, we decided that it would be best to leave that a mystery. Caroline instantly feels the effect of being hacked and stumbles into the bathroom. She washed her face and looks into the mirror. She then sees the neon eye and shuts down. Using garageband we were able to fine some cool noises to help imply that I am being hacked. We used a scene from the bloopers that showed me on the floor in pain from putting in the contact to make it seem like the hacking was so strong it pushed me down and was controlling my entire brain. We should be done with all of the editing by Thursday, latest Friday.
I am also starting to think about what I am going to use for my creative critical reflection. I think I have decided to do a screencast. I am going to start learning how to make one tonight.
I will keep you guys updated on my progress,
Caroline

Editing

Hi guys!
I'm just here to tell you that we will be starting to edit our film opening tomorrow. We have decided to use iMovie because we all have it and it is the only program that we all feel truly comfortable working with. Also, Isa said she will be making the screencast tomorrow. I will let you guys know how it goes tomorrow.
Talk to you guys soon,
Caroline

Filming part 3

Hi guys! 
So we filmed almost the entire film opening today and it went smoothly until I had to put the contact in. We got around the problem we had of getting new contacts by only using one contact. We filmed in a angle that only showed one of my eyes (the one with the contact). This fixed our problem because when we went to order the contacts last week they all took too long to ship. I have attached a video of my reaction when I put the contact in. I normally do not wear contacts so putting them in took me like 20 minutes. We took multiple takes of each scene to make sure that it came out just right. The only thing we have left now is to shoot the screencast of Isa typing the code. 

Filming take 2

We started filming this Tuesday and we thought all went well. Then when we edited it all week we realized that we did not like the way we were showing that she was being hacked. The way we invisioned it was Isa pushing a button. The video looked bad being filmed in school so we decided to reform today in Carolinas house. We are going to film the part of Isa hacking me through various cuts on FaceTime. Other than that we are trying to keep the idea the same just in a house setting. I'll let you know how it goes!
-Caroline

Starting the film opening

Today our group discussed starting to film. However since we are all traveling and since our school is closed for the break we decided it would be best to start the actual filming on Monday.  Isa started researching some programs on how to create the screencast and she found that the best program for the screencast that we are looking to show in out open in is named Jing. Below I attached a tutorial on how to use Jing. I am not a computer genius but this tutorial allowed me to sort of understand how Isa will be using this program while coding. She did run into an issue when trying to test it- her computer broke. She is waiting to get it fixed and for now we are just making sure that all our group members have a free schedule next week. Other than that we still have not decided how to show our drama portion of the film. We are hoping to get some of our classmates opinions when we get back in school on Monday. 

I will keep you guys updated. 

Talk to you soon, 

Caroline 

Storyboard

Hey guys!

So my group and I finally got together and we made the storyboard for our film opening. It’s just a rough sketch of what we were envisioning. 

It starts out with a screencast of the computer codes, in this screencast we wanted to show the credits as codes. Then we zoom into a specific code and then zoom out to see Isa's reflection in the computer. After this we cut to a close up of Isa's face to show she is the hacker. We then cut to a scene which is a flashback of me walking with a guy, we are holding hands and clearly in some sort of relationship. This scene is show in a point of view shot, from Isa's point of view. We then cut to Isa hacking again. She is angry and then gets an epiphany. She begins to code very quickly. Then we hear her alarm clock ring and she gets up and grabs her makeup bag. We show this shot first with a pan of her face. We take this scene in multiple shots to show all she is doing- getting up, grabbing her makeup, and choosing her outfit. This begins to develop Isa's double personality. Then we follow her as she gets ready and out the door. This is shown in a long shot. Then there is a cut to Isa walking behind me in school, she hears me talking about how amazing its been with my boyfriend. I then turn around and see her. This is shown in a point of view shot, it gets awkward and the anger in Isa's face is immediately seen. (We are trying to show that this is either Isa's ex-boyfriend, or that this is Isa's long time crush). The anger is seen but Isa assures Caroline (me) that nothing is wrong and its just school stuff. They walk off together as if they were best friends. We then cut to me in my room doing homework at 2 in the morning. I have headphones in and that is shown through a close-up of my face. This close up is meant to show both my eyes and the headphones in my ear. After this we see Isa press a button on her computer "enter" which send a signal to my headphones. We then go back to the close-up of my face and you see her jolt because of the signal that was just sent to her headphones. This signal made a chip eject into her ear, through the canal and attach to the brain. In this close-up you see her eyes are now a neon color (the colored contacts). Our only problem is showing what she is going to do. We want to imply that she kills her boyfriend with no recollection. But we are still unsure if that is the route we want to go.  After we show the dramatic part we are going to show the title. As of now we are saying "Hacked" but that is still up for discussion. Below are the sketched of the storyboard. I'll let you guys know soon on some ideas for the dramatic part!

Talk to you soon, 

Caroline 

Choosing a Title

Hi guys, 

Since my group and I have the plot done, we decided to start coming up with titles. To do this I did a little research on how to choose a good tittle for our film opening. According to Chris' Top Ten Tips for Titling your Movie, the title should be: 

1)  Short and sweet 

2)  Title should hint at the genre 

3)  Make a title that has word(s) that are frequently searched on Google

4) Title should infer the main conflict of the story

These are just some of the tips that Chris Jones gives on his blog, however I found these to be the most important. Since our plot involves the protagonist, which we have decided will be me, being hacked by the hacker (Isa). We decided that the title should include the word "hacked" or "code". These words imply the main conflict of the story. Some possibilities for titles that I came up with are:

•   Hacked 

•   The Code

•   The Hacker

•   Cyber-criminal 

I was also starting to think of film covers. I was thinking that a close up of my face with the colored contacts in would be a good idea. I was also thinking that an over the shoulder shot of Isa with her computer. 

Below is the picture of me wearing the colored contacts again. We could use a picture like that but with a dark background. Also I should be wearing the pajamas that I previously posted about. Also since I would be in bed, I think I should have no heavy makeup on to make it more believable. 

I'll let you guys know when we decide on the title and the movie cover. As of now we agreed to start filming on Monday!

Talk to you guys soon, 

Caroline 

Mise en scene

Hi guys I hope all is going well! So today my group and I were supposed to meet and do the story board but our schedules conflicted and we couldn't. So instead we decided to do a Skype call and discuss the camera shots and miss en scene we had in mind for our film opening. As discussed in the previous post, our hacker is going to be popular by day and a hacker by night. We showed you the types of outfits we had in mind. For our protagonist we want her to be wearing pajamas because she is supposed to be getting ready for bed. I was thinking something that our target audience would wear to bed. Forever 21 is a store that most socio-economic levels shop at so I thought that having our protagonist wear this would appeal to the most people. Below is a picture of a pajama that I saw online and thought would fit in perfectly with our character. Its a simple pajama that any teenage girl could have in her closet.

Regarding the contacts, the neon blue ones that I posted in an earlier post broke in half (we do not know how). So we are going to be purchasing neon green ones hopefully within the next few days. Below is a picture of the ones we want to buy for out protagonist. 

When filming we thought that having our set be filmed in both a dark office with some bright little flickering lights around would be good for the hacker. For the protagonist, we need to show her in a bedroom. We will be using one of our own bedrooms to film in there. 

I do not have anything else as of now to report to you guys. We are hopefully going to meet tomorrow and buy the clothes, contacts, and make the storyboard.

Talk to you soon, 

Caroline 

We finally have our whole story

Hello everyone, 

Yesterday my group and I met up after school at my house and continued to develop our story. We also discussed how we were going to film some of it. As you all know, we already had a very good idea of what we wanted to do in our film opening, but there were some parts that we did not specifically know what we wanted to show. 

Once our protagonist wakes up in the middle of the night with the blue eyes, we did not know how to show to our audience how Isa (the hacker) hacked her brain in the first place. We have decided that our protagonist used to be best friends with the hacker. When the hacker and her boyfriend broke up, our protagonist started to date him. Then the hacker decided that she was going to do something to get her "best friend" back for that, so she implanted a chip into the protagonist’s headphones. When she sends a computer signal to the chip it is going to shoot into her ear. This chip now responds to all commands made by our hacker’s computer. This idea works with out target audience, which are teens and young adults 14 to 25. This target audience usually expects there to be some kind of drama in the story line. We also could not figure out what exactly out protagonist would be doing while being controlled. We decided that she should first kill the hacker’s ex-boyfriend (her current boyfriend). This will cause people to be surprised because she will have no recollection of killing him, and will mourn his death, even though she is the one who killed him. Since we only have two minutes, and we can't show a real killing, we are going to imply it by ending our opening with our protagonist sharpening a knife while he is sleeping in the other room. 

To show the opening, Isa showed me a basic coding video. I included the video above. We are going to change the words typed into the computer, but this is what it looks like. 

Another important thing to remember when imagining our film opening is that Isa (the hacker) is very popular in school. She is a secret genius. This creates another secretive aspect in our film. It will appeal more to our targeted audience. We imagine a scene where Isa comes home and changes from her very pretty outfit, takes off all her makeup and puts on all black clothes. Two outfit examples are shown below. 

The top outfit is what she will come home and put on. The bottom outfit is an example of how she will display herself to the world. Additionally, we are deciding if we should stick with the neon blue contacts, or if we should purchase neon green contacts. The neon green contacts will match the coding that Isa has on the computer. This will work better if we want to do a graphic match of some sorts. 

We are getting together tomorrow again to draw out the storyboard. I will keep you guys updated on our progress. Stay tuned! 

Talk to you soon, 

Caroline