CCR Script

Here's the finalized script for my CCR:

Start at piano:

Hello, my name is London Dernis and this is my creative critical reflection for my AICE Media Studies film opening. I will be your pianist for this video and without further ado, I will now hand the mic to my future self for a voiceover answering some questions. 

Voice over:

Hi there, its London Dernis, again, but I’m not at a piano this time. Lets just get started. For my AICE Media Studies film opening, I worked with Avrielle Sanzhes, on our film, “Clair,” which is a slight play on words of the piece featured in our opening, Clair De LUne by Calude Debussy, and is also, the main character’s name. But, obvesiouyll, we didn’t know all this from day 1. Before getting started with our opening, we obviously had to brainstorm ideas. We were talking for hours about our interests, what we wanted to, and films we’ve seen, before realizing a common overlap in these things: piano. We both play piano, and love movies like Black Swan and Whiplash with the obsessive artist trope, and decided we’d take that route. Anyways, I’ll explain more later, let’s get to the questions.

Question number 1: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

As I’ve mentioned, our film, Clair, follows the obsessive artist trope. This trope portrays our main character, Clair, as an obsessed pianist, whose dedication to the art turns harmful. In just the opening, we allude to a greater mental illness present in Clair, most apparant at the end. Here, the camera pans to show the empty audience. Of course, performances on a stage like Clair’s are usually meant to be watched. And to Clair, she thinks she is being watched. She is smiling the whole time while playing, completely entranced in her music, before taking a bow to no one? Through her smile after seeing the audience, we allude to Clair’s mania, or a manic disorder, brough on by her obsession with piano. This obsession is showcased through the use of flashbacks throughout her performance where Clair is practicing piano in her home. At first, this practice seems normal, but it is quickly becomes obvious that Clair is excessively pracitcing to a point that is dangerous. At the start, the time on the side shows 11:23 pm. In the next flashback, we still see her practicing, and know it is the same night because she is wearing the same clothes, her hair is the same, and there is a continuation in the camera work and sound, because of this, we know it is getting later. The time now is 12:25am. Continuing with this trend, it gets later and later, and now its 2:37 am. The final time we see is 3:33 am, which means Clair was practicing continuously for 4 hours and 10 minutes at a time when many are asleep. If the time doesn’t allude to a representation of insomnia in Clair, the close-up at the end should, as it shows Clair with bruised bags under her eyes.

Our product challenges conventions in several ways. I find that age is one of the most noticeable. I am 17 years old and play Clair. Though it is typical for actors to be ages different than their characters, and typically older than, Clair in our product is the same age as me. In the films that inspired us, mainly Black Swan and Whiplash, the characters were in there 20s, and go to studios as an adult for their niche skill, which then curates their perhaps positive obsession with it into one that is harmful. But in our film, Clair is only in high school and has already entered this manic stage with her skill before she even graduates. 

Question number 2: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

To start, my product was produced by Avrielle and I’s made-up production company, Derchez studios, which is a combination of our last names, Dernis and Sanchez, original, I know. Our cast also features known-celebrities who are legacies in the acting industry, such as Laura Dern, or are currently trending, such as Timothee Chalamet. With stars like them, their audiences will be attracted to our movie. There are also several film critics and viewers out there who are always looking for new talent, so hearing that a brand new actress London Dernis will be costarring with Chalamet and Dern will cach their attention. In the same way, so will the directorial debut of Avrielle Sanchez. All these people are even notated on our poster. This poster would be the first of many, as it doesn’t give much away, but just enough to catch attention. It shows the piano, and then it is known to be a drama rather than a musical with the subtle blood on the piano and the overall dark colors. Another noticeable feature of this poster is the release date of November 30, 2024. This date was carefully chosen for several reasons, all in accordance with our audience and with our inspirations. Because our film features a 17 year old, teenagers and young adults are our target audience. November 30 is a Saturday, and since these adolescents will be home from school, it is a perfect time to go to the movie theatres. Then, we looked at when our inspired films were released since it proved very successful for them. Black Swan was released December 3, Whiplas was released October 10, the Menu was released November 18, and La La Land was released December 9. All these films were released between October and December, so we opted for a late November date. 

And of course, to engage our audiences and distribute our movie in a way that it has the best chance at success, our movie is one that will be played in theatres everywhere. After weeks in theatres, it will be released to streaming sites such as Netflix, HBO Max, and Hulu. Because its filming style is very similar in its artistry to that of previous Academy Award winning films like La La Land, Whiplash, and Black Swan, it is guaranteed to be a hit. It will go on to dominate award season with nominations and wins. 

Question number 3: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

First and foremost, beyond just my production skills developing, so did my teamwork skills. I am someone who does like to lead things because I always have the visualization of hwo I want something to look in my own mind adn struggle to easily convey my thoughts with others. But, since I would be playing Clair, and thus the piano, in the film, I had to take a step back and led Avrielle handle the filming. But, I realized that this was ok, because we worked very closely and the our planning and test-shots were clear and thorough enough that it felt like I was behind teh camera too. Anyways, If you couldn’t tell already, I love Whiplash, and found it to be a perfect visualization for how I wanted our film opening to begin. So, we decided to also open our film with a gradual , low angle, zoom in, starting from the back of the setting before closing in on the instrument and person playing it. We also wanted to start with some what of a J-cut, where the piano was heard before viewers knew who was playing it. But, since we had 2 minutes for our opening, we did have to go a bit quicker than whiplash. So, with that preface, here was the Whiplashopening. Now, here was ours. Whiplash, though, as mentioned, wasn’t our only inspiration. I got the idea of doing a performance from the Black Swan opening, seen on the screen now. This dramatic ballet performance is the first thing seen by viewers. Its intention is to be confusing and chaotic, and viewers are supposed to feel left in the dark. These are the things I wanted to accomplish in our film opening. Just like in the Black Swan opening, there is no dialogue, there is only a performance, and then unlike BLack swan, some flashbacks. 

Overall, I would say another big schok for me was jst how long it does take to produce a film and see it through. And this is coming form someone who only had to do a 2 minute opening. For just the performance scene, we were there for 90 minutes and had to do about 10 takes and several practcies of different camera shots before getting our finalized product, which surprisingly was our second to last take, and not our last one. But, I also learnt, these 90 minutes werent just spent for filming, a lot of it was executing the production ideas we had in place, mainly with sound, lightning and coloring. We had wanted to do blue lightning as it represents sadness, mystery, and peace, all traits we wanted to be associated with Clair in this performance, as a mask put on to be interrupted by the red harsh lighting in the flashbacks, signifying, anger, obsession, and stress. But, plans are easier said than done. WHen we first got to the auditorium to film the performance scene, we had a lightning crisis. We couldn’t find the lights, and then once we did, we struggled to figure out how to have lights on in the audience but not in the stage. It was only Avrielle, our teacher, and I, and none of us had any experience with how to work the audietorium. Thankully, we didn’t give up, figured out the lightning, and also got the blue lights on for the stage. 

What we really wanted to highlight in our film opening was camera work. As seen, the camera work we decided to incorporate throughout our performance scene goes around the piano in continuous circles. By doing this, it builds the ambiance of the performance and creates intrigue and drags in attention to the sound, which allows for more disruption to the flashback scenes.

Speaking of, these flashback scenes are all edited with the performance scene using match cuts. We decided to use match cuts to give context of the connection between the poised performance and the crazed practice leading up to it, in a seeming and satifying way to view. The flashbacks, as mentioned previously, have the red/orange coloring to contract the black/blue color theme of the performance’s allusive mood. Editing this was not easy, and definitely helped me develop my production skills. We had to, to the best of our ability, seamlessly align the performance clips with flashback clips, and this took a lot of cutting, reframing, and sound adjusting. My favorite part was how it turned out fr this dramatic moment in the song. And while I’m pointing out my favorite parts, my other favorite shot was this siloutehtte we captured with the blue light right behind me as I walk to take my bow. 

All in all, I learnt that flexibility is essential in production. Rather than getting deterred by obstacles, learn how to utilize them, don’t jump through th whoop if you can just spin it around. For example, right off the bat, the AC in the auditorium was super loud. But, we liked the effect it created, especially here. It emphasizes that shock factor of no body being in the audience and made for a nice touch. Flexibility truly is key! 

Question number 4: How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware and online- in this project?

When I hear film, I think cameras. So, I found us a camera by getting in contact with our school’s yearbook advisor who gernosuly lent me one. But, to both Avrielle and my surprise, the camera’s quality when recording just wasn’t up to par. After many tries with us, we did one test on Avrielle’s Iphone 13 pro on cinematic mode. The quality was amazing. Though unvoncetional, we stuck with the phone to record all of our scenes. Lightning was another big incorporation in our film opening. We found this much easier in the aduiteruium, where the lights were already all hung up and we could adjust how we pleased. Where it was harder, was for the flashback scenes. We had to scour both Avrielle’s house and mine to find all of our dutsy LED lights. But we managed to find quote a few. Avrielle had a sunset lamp that we placed on a bench across from the piano to create a slight siloutehee effect similar to that in the performance. We also used my led lamp I have in my room, which was definitely not easy to bring downstairs, and had it set to red in teh corner of my piano room. Our pimrary source or ed lighting though, were Avrielle’s LED strips which we put all in the piano. Moving on from production technology, editing technology was essential to our film opening.

I love designing, and In my newspaper class, I use Adobe Indesign to create Newsmagazines. So, since I’m somewhat cofmoratble with this, I thought it wouldn’t be too hard to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our film opening. I was wrong- it was hard. Though I asked some friends for help and watched plenty of youtube videos, I did know my own limits, so I turned to my goold old friend, iMovie. I was reluctant to use Imovie because I felt it didn’t have the software abilities I desired, but I quickly realized its simplicity allowed me to manipulate and utilzie it to how I wanted my film to look. In the end, it was a simple way for avrielle and I to edit our two settings together. Because we wanted match cuts, we knew alignment wnoul dbe a challenge, but iMovie allowed us to cut our vidoes how we wanted and move them around to get the framing adjusted and correct. iMovie was also very helpful in sound overlay. It allowed us to use the sound from the performacne clip throughout the whole film opening, despite having the flashbacks intertwined throughout. 

After editing our clips together, there was one online website in aprticualr that played a large role in the editing process, and that was Canva. I, love canva, and even have a canva pro account. When it came to adding our opening credits, I didn’t like the limited font options on imovie so decided I’d upload the video to canva and add the text there. After an unexpected 20 minutes of work, I got our text on the video, and loved how it turned out. I also used canva to create our movie poster.

Some other online technology Avrielle and I used throughout this process were milanote, google calendar, and youtube. With the website, milanote, we were able to create a sort of storyboard to help our initial idaes get sorted. We used google calendar to help keep us on track to meet deadline. We used youtube to find inpsriation clips, ideas, and this is also where we uploaded some of our progress and ultimately, our final product. 

I’m proud of our final product, and hope that everyone who sees it enjoys it as much as Avrielle and I do. It wasn’t easy, but things we are proud of, rarely are. Ok, you can  have the mic back now.

Switch to piano:

Thank you London. And thank you all for listening to my piano and I hope you enjoyed my Creative critical reflection. Bye!