Erin's Blog

The music video was for the first song of The Weeknd's album, Starboy. It basically introduces The Weeknd's new musical persona, and makes a statement about how he feels about his role in the music industry. The music video has amazing editing and cinematography. The rich blue, green and red color scheme is beautiful and fits the tone of the song very well. The editing matches the beats perfectly, which really emphasizes the catchiness of the song.  The story of the video is a bit vague and interpretive, but you can tell that the creators did that on purpose. It begins with the "old" Weeknd (long hair, etc.) tied up in a chair, sitting across from a masked man. The masked man gets up and suffocates the old Weeknd with a bag, killing him. This is representative of The Weeknd "killing" his old persona and moving in a new direction with his music. The masked man then removes said mask, revealing it is once again The Weeknd, but with a new short haircut si...

My group's commercial was about dental floss. Our concept was to have a couple out on a  date in the park, but the romantic atmosphere gets interrupted when the boy smiles and his teeth are  filled with food. The girl then pulls out her floss and the advertisement's spiel starts.  Early on, one of my group members  proposed  the idea of having a commercial that starts out  beautiful  and cinematic, but unexpectedly ends up being comedic. We all liked that idea and started brainstorming different ways we could achieve that effect. We eventually came up with the idea of having our product be dental floss, with a date as the main  storyline. We drew up storyboards and wrote the script fairly quickly, then set up our filming schedule. I wasn't able to actually be there for filming because of work, but once I got the clips I started editing them right away. We worked together to create a romantic mood through a w...

1. What did you do for the feature film?
 a. What was the production role? 
 I was the supervising editor for the film. I was in charge of editing, delegating work to other editors, and making sure the entire movie was edited well without any mistakes. b. What were some challenges you faced? 
 It was my first time working with such a large project, and I had some issues with organization and knowing how to properly delegate to the other editors. c. What did you learn along the way? 
 I learned a lot. My technical skills, along with leadership and teamwork skills, have grown tremendously. I became much more adept in Adobe Premiere and started learning how to work in after effects. I also learned how to edit large scenes, instead of just short films or PSAs. d. What was some feedback you were given? 
 I was given a lot of positive feedback, although I was also told that I needed to get better at spreading out work so that it wasn't all on me to get things done. e. What d...

What was the scope of the project, what was the assignment? The project was my classes' feature film, the Kansas City Savior. I was assigned to be the supervising editor of the movie. I was in charge of delegating work to other editors,  editing myself, and working with sound and the directors to get the right look. What was your process (speak to Pre-Production...idea, concepting, storyboards, etc.; Production...the actual creation; Post-Production...editing). The crew would come back from filming and give me an SD card containing all of their sound and audio. I would take them, organize what was needed, and then either give the footage to another editor to work on or start editing the scene myself. Once the basic sequence was together, I would start putting in the audio, color correcting, and adding music/sound effects. What did you learn along the way? I learned a lot. I learned how to work with boom audio, how to color correct more efficiently, how to work wit...

           The first project I did this semester was a PSA. My group decided to make our PSA over depression and the importance of showing your true emotions, because many people going through depression don't convey it. In the video, we asked kids around school to laugh without smiling. The project took a couple days to film and probably about a week to edit. Some challenges I faced during it was actually going up to random kids and asking to film them. As you can imagine, it was usually pretty awkward. Some other challenges came from the editing process. I had some difficulty finding a fitting tone and pacing to the video. But, besides that, it was a relatively easy video to make. Along the way, I learned how to make a typing effect and how to add black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. Compared to older videos I've made, I think this one actually looks kind of professional. I was given positive feedback for the majority, though I didn't actu...

MX4D is marketed as being a step up from 3D. It attempts to provide a true immersive experience by making your seat move with the film's movements, emitting smells that correspond with what's on screen, and other cool effects like strobe lighting, snow, and fog. I was really excited when I went to see Justice League with my classmates for an e-Comm field trip (despite not knowing much about the DC universe, admittedly). I really enjoyed certain aspects of the 4D, like the seat moving during the fight scenes. However, I felt like some of the other effects were just distractions from the movie and seemed kind of  unnecessary, like the water spraying in our faces (it was loud and kind of jarring), and the smells which honestly just seemed "off."  My favorite part of the whole field-trip actually wasn't the 4D at all, but getting to tour the theatre and see all of the cool technology B&B had renovated. ...

For this menu item, I watched a variety of short horror films. I did so in order to get inspiration for my own short horror movie that's currently in the making, Black-Eyed Children. I enjoyed watching the shorts and was impressed by the professional look of them. Two of the shorts were by CryptTV, The Birch and Itsy Bitsy Spiders. The third,  The Moonlight Man, was by Danny Donahue.  Of the three I watched, my favorite would have to be Itsy Bitsy Spiders . It wasn't the scariest film I've ever seen, but I enjoyed thoroughly enjoyed the story and concept. It was about a little boy with a strange obsession of drawing spiders. In the end, you learn the reason behind why he developed his weird obsession.  After watching the short horror films, it helped me make changes to the script I'm currently working on with my friend for our own short movie. I want to make sure our movie has a good mix of character development and story as well as scares, as some of...