AICE Media Studies

  The time has finally come. "The Odd Man Out" is finished and full. I'm incredibly happy with the way this turned out. I think this is my best work yet in this course. My biggest issue with this task was the titling and editing. It proved to be a challenge. I overcame the adversity though and made my last-minute changes as per my last blog. From my last project, the biggest change in my abilities was costuming, music, and editing abilities. This was by far my best-costumed project in this class. I was able to utilize a local costume shop which I've befriended the owners of over the years. For this project, I had to find licensing in order to use music. I tried getting in touch with the Zappa family trust in order to secure a song early on but had no success. In the end, I was able to find a free site for audio, and then dig through that to find just what I needed.  The editing, I've already spoken about enough. To put things simply, it was a painful process. Whe

 This was my final editing session. Here, I completed my final watch-through and applied my last touches. I made sure my titles were just where I wanted them. This was incredibly tedious, as I had to drag and drop over and over and over. This was one on iMovie, which made it hard. The only space I had to work was a tiny phone screen. I also spent time making sure they were the same shade of red, or as close together as they could be. This took way too long, but I'm glad it worked. Here, I also set the black and white vs color. This took a while as well, as I had to find a good cutoff for each. I'm really happy with the way the first one looks in particular. The cutaway flashback is in color, and I use a zoom transition through the actor's hair. This was by far my favorite edit in the whole film. This was the thought process in finishing up. I'm so happy I'm finally done. This project as a whole took a while to materialize. In the end, it turned out better than I exp

 I was fortunate enough to only get good criticism from my friends. I did, however, find a few things I didn't like about the film. It was mostly the transitions that I didn't like. All I really had to do was hit a couple buttons In order to fix this problem. I had to find the part of the footage where the transition occurred, and use what I had there over the transition. The way I had this done, is that the transitions were embedded in the film. The first one occurs where the camera zooms into the back of the main character's head, before zooming out on him walking upstairs, through the head. The first part of the transition is in black and white, but the second is in color. The way I had it before, the color of his hair started showing before it was fully zoomed in. It was just a little sloppy, which I was able to fix. It now looks good. The next transition was at the end of the second scene,  where it reverts back to black and white from color. This happens as the camera

 This was by far the easiest part of my whole final task. I used less than 20 seconds of music in the whole thing. The majority of my sound in the film was as is. The speaking parts were all spoken and they sounded just fine in recordings. This is the first time in all of my now three tasks that the audio was perfect. All I had to do in terms of sound editing this time was take the audio mentioned in my last editing blog, and apply it. Using iMovie, I clipped all the footage down, all the extra seconds here and there. Then, I used the footage to which I'd already applied the titles. I used the sound for the opening few seconds, which was easy enough. In this software, there's a line below the film for sound. I actually like that feature, as I can line them up to fit perfectly. This means the sound will last just as long as I need it to coordinate with the film. Snipping away at the film was the hardest part. I had all these 5-7 second clips of usable footage surrounded by like

 I had  a couple friends review my film. I used one inside source, my actor Eric, and one outside source, my friend Greg. Eric gave the film a 9/10. When I asked him his honest thoughts, he said "The usage of flashbacks in the story really tie together the intro. It brings to light the extent of the protagonist's ordeal. This ensures that the audience never forgets that Spence isn't escaping for his own gain. He does it for his wife. The atmosphere within the film expresses n absurd reality. It showcases not only the life of a man wrongfully imprisoned, but also what a cruel life a prisoner led in the mid-20th century." I really appreciated this rating, and appreciate that it was all positive. I asked my friend Greg, and he said this: "I like how you put the scenes together. The transitions were all really nice. I appreciated the plot, and would love to see more of the characters. When looking back through your process while watching, and seeing the storyboard, i