A-Lvl CCR :')

Here it is, my CCR!

No, it does not feel real that this project and high school are over.

I say it in my CCR, but I wanna say it here: whoever you are, wether a classmate reading, a curious student, my teacher (hi Tstock!) or a Cambridge grader...thank you, this class has changed my life.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=19UbDoujiq99Rr2SdprmqGafiqJuvadnm

Curtain calls, part 2: on my project

Website:
 https://grinmovie2020.weebly.com/

Film card:

front


back


Film:
https://youtu.be/asVK7SLdEVc

OR

Fun fact: While exporting the final cut onto Youtube and my Google Drive, it would have taken like about 2-3 hours to do the full upload, and I closed my tabs/laptop the progress wouldn't finish in time, so to fix that, I finally did what I needed to do....went on Netflix, put on "The Irishman" (dir. by Martin Scorcese), left it playing and went to sleep. Call that a modern solution.

It looks good, I should actually watch it someday lol

 

me, being galaxy brained

Curtain calls, part 1: on high school

Today it was announced that school is out for the rest of the year.

It feels unreal that my time at CBHS is over. Like, there was so much I've done and so much I've yet to do. I just wanna shoutout the fact that these last 4 years, particularly the last 2, have been amazing beyond description. I shoutout the last two because of my marvelous Media Studies teacher, Tina Stoklosa.

When I was in the 8th grade, and I had to take 1 more elective as I was quitting band, I chose film 1 cause why not. I liked movies and I wanted to have a fun elective that wasn't Spanish. For a long time during that school year, I would watch movies in film or shoot projects we had to make and dream of being a director, or someone who worked in the film industry. My high point was helping costume design, direct, and edit a group project in which we recreated the opening Bohemian Rhapsody scene from Wayne's World, Frame-for-Frame too. Our teacher loved it so much I remember him showing it ecstatically to the class, with an added side-by-side comparison to see how faithful our recreation was (very faithful, not to brag too hard).

As I entered high school, particularly debate, I decided to toss aside silly aspirations as a director or someone in that field in favor of something else: being the politics kid. Gross, I know. Being only about politics is a bad way to form a personality, speaking from personal experience. However, twi good things happened over the last two ears that took me away from the track of a wannabe career politician:

1. I read some Marx and Engels. Fully recommend, it'll change your life. Now I see the error of my neoliberal, pro-capital apologist ways. No, I am not a Communist don't freak out and call whatever the British equivalent to the CIA is on me. I'm personally more of a demsoc, as it's a view I feel really gives me a clear path towards bettering the word and the lives of those outside of just myself.

2. Media Studies. Tstok really sparked that flame in me again. I want to be creative. I want to edit, I want to be behind a camera and shoot projects and films and tell stories about people, by people, for people. Maybe I can marry politics and film and do some documentaries as I plan on doing right now with my life, and I will work to make that vision a reality. In short, Tstok you're amazing. The world needs people and educators like you everywhere, everyday. Thank you, for being a life-changer, an educator, and one amazing quasi-friend.

So this is goodbye Cypress Bay. Thank you for four stellar years. This has been Gus Lanz, and for one last time...

Go Lightning.

Refleción

I have mixed feelings about everything in the portfolio project. Out of the good, the bad, and the ok, I'll start with the good. I started off thinking I was gonna have no one to work with, striking up a partnership with Jules out of a good weekend of work. Early prep with Jules went phenomenal, we were already getting costumes, shooting dates, locations, you name it we had it. Up until about the last week I will ever be at school, we had our fingers to the pulse. That, admittedly, is about doing it for the good. Now, onto the dreaded bad. I am a self-diagnosed "bad-at-crisis-management" type of person, so when school got cancelled and we started to lose actors/collaborators to quarantine, I hit a huge wall. My creativity sort of sputtered and I did not give myself the time and resources I would've liked. Some of the equipment I ordered Pre-quarantine is STILL DELIVERING!!! I cycled through too many actors and spent too much useful time being indecisive about my choices, which in turn kind of led into the positives of sticking to what I know and I felt very comfortable in that. Still, that huge, days (or weeks) long break in my schedule hurt just as much as the constant cast turnovers. On the ok: I am very happy with what I did. I realized the last week to make sure I could have what I needed and I feel very satisfied. I learned super cool skills, discovered I have a knack for audio, and me and Jules communicated well, albeit much later than a regularly scheduled, non coronavirus year would have allowed. All in all, my mixed feelings can't change the past, but my biggest takeaway is that I was able to seize a slice of the present to make this a nice reality, one I am sad I could not live out in a normal school setting, but am glad could lend itself to me making this real.

The final day: Please help me

Hello!

genius on da track ;)

If you are reading this, I've been awake since 7:30 AM yesterday. No, I am not joking and no I am nowhere near ok with what I am doing to myself. I didn't even drink coffee I have 0 clue how I am still awake/alive right now! Anyways, What have I been doing you ask? Well, if you must know, I am making sure everything has just been laid down on the Premiere pro track before I color grade, something that I fully finished at like 4:14 AM.
(No, I did not take a picture of myself slipping into madness because Bernie was asleep and I didn't wanna bother the little man.)

Bernie sleeping on my headphones as I post this god
I wish I was him rn

Color waves go "brrrr"

After I laid everything down. I started color Correcting/grading. And while yes, most people would certainly make there two aspects of production multiple posts with multiple takes and multiple outcomes, I am not. That is for two reasons: one, its too late to do that now; two, my film is very simple in execution really I font need a ton of outtakes. Right now I have exported two cuts. The cut that has nothing but sound (the Gus cut), and the cut that's nothing but the images (the Sil cut). These two cuts will soon be combined into one mega project that...still has no name. I told Jules we should call it like a synonym of smile, some one words title like "Grin". Personally, I love one word titles and I think it fits with the Art house nature of our film.

   Anyways, I am actually dying and I will cry because of how tired I am. I have also been helping with out with the postcard and our new canva poster. Nothing has changes since the last post, I am just making sure I have covered all my bases because I've been up 26 hours. On the note of what I am helping Jules out with, I added the title "Grin" to the teaser Jules made with my footage plus I did minor grading of like once scene. See how cool it looks now?      I know I really like it it's gonna be dope on the website. I really wanna find music like that for the background of my soundscape for a scene or two but I know I could never use that song or one fully like that because it's copyrighted AF. Can I do much about that? NO, but I did find a cool super long old public access radio broadcast I am going to trim down to just fill the emptiness with. The audio design is very cool and I love that process, I have all my audios done and downloaded I just have to finish here and get to that. 

This is fittingly called the last day cause it's the last day of really intensive work cause once I am done here I am sleeping until tomorrow and then just posting the project. Yes sir, I am dying please send coffee.

Hmm, maybe that can be how I sign off.

Day 2, aka "the first 48"

Hi there again...

This has been my life for a day and 3/4's for now

So day 2 with Sil just  wrapped up. We got a lot more done day 1 than I thought we did which helped today go by faster, but by no stretch of the imagination did we do enough. I mean, we got the footage I showed you from day 1, but today we switched gears from Tarantino to Saw as we got "the money shot" of this $0.00 production: The Chelsea grin.

Having fun w unfinished grin

Doesn't Sil look great? we took that while messing around.  Before that, I was busy taking shots of the scene. It was the very first scene we shot that day because honestly the rest was just getting what we didn't yesterday and that footage is semi-repetitive for a blog. Anyways, here's a taste of what that Chelsea grin scene will look like (fully unedited btw)



Pretty sick, Amirite? if you're wondering what the blood is, it's blue+red food dye. Red for the big spills, blue for the thick concentration of blood at the very bottom of the sink. If you need a visual, I am more than happy to provide you with one. Enjoy:

Anyways, the main big section of shots after this was the "blue smile" scene. I discovered today that Sil's skin stains easily so I didn't wanna expose her to a marker. That's why I settled for the next best thing: blue makeup. 

Messing around pt. 2, crab rave tine

We shot the the Blue smile scenes pretty easily tbh. I had no major hiccups. the one annoying thing is that I had to shoot some of it on Sil's phone while mine was dead..which lead to a LOT of emails of just footage. Also Jules is there cause I am sending her footage too for inspiration.  She even made a teaser for it.

Here's the rough teaser. Yes, there is a few things to fix but it's honestly nothing I can't fix. The rest of the filming for today was just finishing up any shots I may not have gotten yesterday from cut 1. Here's to cut 2, I think I'll get to sleep soon or i'll stay off. Who knows? Will I finally have a catch phase to sign off? Who's really to say...

Day 1: The time is nigh

S'up y'all'steve,

With Sil's help, I have valiantly begun production on my short, yet-to-be titled film! WHOOOOO!

Anyways, I biked over with my blue school backpack with laptop, camera and storyboard and you KNOW we got to work...after messing around for a little admittedly. 

OK back to the serious stuff...

After a few attempts to shoot w my camera (Nikon p500) I remembered that:

A. it's almost 10 years old.

B. Quality is super hard to maximize.

C. Exporting is a dystopian nightmare and evidenced by the clips I am featuring I just wasn't liking the end result.

D. An iPhone shoots better quality and I just borrowed a sick tripod...

Sooooooo....

I realized I had the solution in my pocket, literally. I just switched over to my handy-dandy Iphone and Tripod set up and got shooting like a maniac.

So anyways, I got to shooting a LOT of stuff. But mainly it was that opening morning sequence like a billion times. It got honestly so repetitive I am going to force you to look at these videos that were made as a result:

Yes, those were all unedited originally and were just 10 straight minutes of socks. I was living Tarantino's fantasies. Unfortunately, I don't wanna upload the youtube video of just feet and I need these cuts so these clips will do for now in blog land.

Anyways, at the end of the day, I made a rough first cut: here it is 

Looking sick! and ~unfinished~!!!! WHOOOOOOOO!

Anyways, that was day 1. Tune in tomorrow for day 2 :).

I become an FM Radio ☆//MEET BERNIE!!!!

Today's topic: A continuation of me completing my soundscape, specifically through playing around w/software until my voice became the perfect radio host voice for this piece. BUT, before we do that, I wanna introduce you to the newest member of our Crew...

Meet my kitten, Bernardo aka Bernie

Yes! That's a live kitten I adopted! Well, technically, Sil helped me adopt him 99% of the way there. Story time: I like Sil's cat, Pikachu, a lot. That, plus the fact I think having another animal may boost the mood of my aging dog (whom I love) led me to consider adopting a kitten. So Sil, being the quickster she is, looked up some forms, filled them out for me and filed them with the Broward Pet&Animal rescue for kitten adoptions, and within hours of her posting them I got a call to go pick up a kitten!

I was SUPER NERVOUS about picking him up today, I could barely sleep. Before we went to pick him up, I went over to Sil's and got working on my project (we will discuss that in a second after story time). Once I got another call to go pick him up, we went quickly on our way to the shelter and after I signed a few papers they brought out for me (stay away COVID-19), they brought out Bernie along with food+kitty litter for him. In short, thanks in part to COVID, adopting a pet right now is WAYYYYYY easier than it realistically should be. I am not complaining though, I am just pointing that out. Anyways, me and Sil brought him back home after buying a litter box and collar for him, and while my family is very surprised and apprehensive, they've promised to give him a chance.

So for your viewing pleasure, here is the first ever picture I took of Bernie! It was when I unboxed him while he was in the car.

1st ever picture!

 Anyways, that has been Bernie! Now on to actual content.!

Imma be real I do not comprehend what this means

So as y'all saw, I downloaded Audacity onto my laptop and I was hoping to use it for some ~real~ soundscape style action. Unfortunately, Audacity is like NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to operate successfully. Its user manual is 25 pages long, the interface is ugly and super clunky and the compression bars are complicated AF and DO NOT match the videos I watched and memorized yesterday AT ALL, so I had no real idea how to work audacity all day. So there I was, kitten by my side, Audacity on my screen and I was feeling FRUSTRATED. So I googled viable alternatives and came upon what would soon be my saving grace: Adobe Audtion.

After launching the Adobe cloud, a privilege I owe to Sil's email AND my sister's .Edu email (call me Parasite the way I be leenchin') I got working on Audition. For those who don't know, Audition is just like premiere Pro except you edit just sound. It's like a DJ booth for just sounds I need to edit/make for a video or movie. I googled one (1) tutorial and I followed it to the T.

Immediately, the change was HUGE. The interface was SO easy to navigate and I didn't get lost. Unlike Audacity which is a steaming hot pile of garbage.








                                                                          After, I just messed around with the settings. First, as the video did, I went to the broadcast preset and made it active which was already a huge boost. Then, I got unto the nitty gritty of sound design (it's displayed in the video but I'll run you through what I did to achieve the sound you hear):
1. Heavily compressed the bass to -6.0 (dial 1)
2. Lowered Mid-frequencies to give the broadcast a flatter, older feeling with -52 DB's (dial 2)
3. Increased lead frequencies, those being my voice, so I sound like I am speaking in an empty room with the added "bzzz" effect of the lowered Mids (dial 3)
4. Completely knocked off the treble in my voice so that there's no reverb and my voice is led by Bass, making it sound artificially deeper and for there to be no "pops" in the sound that would break from the "old-time radio" aesthetic of the sound.
5. You're now a pro-sound designer. Congrats.

So yes, I am 10000000000% a convert. Adobe audition > Audacity.

Meme made by me

Here's a sample of the new audios:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DuKiUJVvwlCwU-MrKSmkKtXes2N1PacO

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1US39ZzwSNs2XXtL-ryWHNk1JbuVuuvJw

Anyways, now that I fixed all my sounds plus learned valuable skills. I'm ready to get shooting later this week when both me and Sil aren't busy with work shifts. Being an essential worker is #rough in this economy.
Anyways, thank y'all for your company,
This has been Gus (who still doesn't know a good phrase for signing off with).

Taking it back to 90's-50's=40's

This is just gonna be a quick post about a cool software I found. So I was googling (verbatim) "old radio host voice effect" and I found this video:

This tutorial was dope, it was easy, and Audacity was FREE???? This guy really sold me on its viability.

So, like anyone trying to make a short film would, I went ahead and downloaded Audacity.

It was a sick moment. I felt like a real sound designer and I am happy with that. Next, came actually opening her up.

So there's a lot to unpack here. That's a lie there's actually very little to unpack. This is what I first saw upon launch. I went ahead and read their manual and it is 25 pages long. No thank you. So I think just sticking to Youtube videos and intuition will help me best. 

As you can also see to the side, the interface is pretty slick, I think using audacity will be a blast. Except for that I need to learn how it works LOL.

Which is precisely why...

Google is now my best friend. Anyways, I'll get to watching videos and take this up later.

For now,

This is once again Gus, giving you your constant ambivalence about how one signs off correctly.

Coming to you live, this is...NPR

I've listened to a lot of radio broadcasts in my life. Back when I still lived in Venezuela, I was obsessed with a horror-themed public access radio show called "Nuestro insolito Universo", which was like my 10-Year-old self's version of a radio Horror "Black Mirror".  It was SICK! Then I moved here and never listened to it again...sad.

Anyways, as someone who has a lot of suburbanite liberal™️friends (even if I am admittedly more radical than they are), I have listened to a LOT of NPR when they give my rides. I even went to a Pete Buttigieg rally in, like, May of last year and they were BLASTING NPR (they'll never be as hype as Bernie rallies tho, rip the king).

Anyways, my sadness aside. I knew it was time to get the narrative crux of this short film recorded: the voice memos. First, I wanted to practice the accent. 

I looked up tutorials. I trained. I studied the blade. Adjectives. Anyways, it was too hard, so I decided "as long as I sound slightly like a New York Italian man, I think I've nailed it". So while I was over at Sil's house to help them finish editing their AS-Level opening (Hi Tstock this is me being a good representative of your helpful values), I decided "hey, I have a spare moment".

God they're ugly

So I borrowed her brother's gaming headphones that look kind of like this, connected them to my phone using the Apple inc. Certified headset-to-charging port adapter, opened up memos and went into this weird storage-style room in the middle of their house and locked the door behind me.

 So after a few minutes, I took three. Two of them I love, the other is a scrap cause I did not sound coherent or even Italian, it was like spoken-word doodles.

Here is a sample of what those sounded like:

After I got home, I decided to get ahead while I could and just go ham in downloading sounds I knew I was going to need to create my soundscape for the short film

I am becoming very passionate about sound design. Maybe it's meticulous, but even all the way back when I worked on Mirage, I always wanted it to have an intricate soundscape that was as alive as possible. Will I need more sounds? who's to say, I probably will. But for now, I am very happy I got ahead. 

Credits to the sound downloaders that made some of these youtube videos into MP3's/MP3 downloaders:

https://freemp3downloads.online/home

https://ytmp3.cc/en13/

https://www.y2mate.com/en20/youtube-mp3

Additional shoutout to old, free access radio shows for still being archived online.

Bernie Sanders has left the Presidential raceヽ( °╭∩╮°)ﾉ

I know this is not an update blog but it belongs here due to how much I've talked about him in this blog.

It happened...the dreaded day finally came :(
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/us/politics/bernie-sanders-drops-out.html

I know its quick, but I can't understate how much of an inspiration Bernie is. He was the first Politician I ever felt represented by. My family has always had struggles with healthcare accessibility, dozens of friends of mine come from working class families or backgrounds, and here was a candidate who's sole claim to fame was aiming to help us. Genuinely help us.

I want to thank Senator Bernie Sanders. Even if this is going out into the void, he deserves it. I have a lot of ideas as to what I wanna do with my life, and I know nothing is guaranteed. But thanks to Bernie, I know no matter what I do I want to help people.

To sign off his campaign, here's a collection of (like 2% of mine cause I don't mess with that 1% capitalism is evil) Bernie Sanders Media I have saved on my phone I have either saved or made:

And last, but certainly not least, my magnum opus of my Bernie collection:

This has been Gus,

Thank you Bernie. The fight goes on.

Trying to shoot w my sister: a lesson in failing

Ok so because I need to start filming, I grabbed my family's Nikon P500, I gave my sister some directions, and I tried to start shooting. 

i am going to keep this brief. It went awful. She stalled a lot of the shooting, then left 5 minutes in to go to work. I mean I have work too but she promised me she'd help. UGHGHGHGH!!!!

I asked Sil to help me, and she agreed which is great :). The one catch is that I have to wait for a week where we both have days off of work, and that could likely be two weeks from now because this week we both work every day which is rough essential labor is NOT the move right now. 

Here's some of that footage so Y'all can judge its lack of value with me:

I also got some fire B-Roll:

Anyways, when I can get going with Sil/other aspects of the project I will update, but for now I can call my shoots w my sister a bad day all around.

Once again, I don't know how to say bye.

A post on April 1st because I am a clown

This post is just to reminisce on one fact and one fact only:

*The Bernie Train has lost SO MUCH MOMENTUMMMMM :(:(

I enjoyed my first time voting but god we are getting rolled and its bad. I know it's unrelated to film but I am a clown who's put a part of the project on hold to phone bank and volunteer and it has only resulted in L's it is frustrating. Also, all my actors cancelled so I asked my sister for the favor of being in my movie and I already FEEL it won't go well. I need to:
*finish pre-plans
*finish project
*Win Bernie something
*communicate more with Jules who I have a now scarce texting relationship with which is not effective communication.

Here's how I am looking rn: