Lucas Diaz's Blog

It is time where I have completely finished everything I can for this part of the AICE Media Studies As process. I feel I have put the utmost effort into everything I can in this class starting from when I started completing case studies, to filming my midterm, to shooting my movie The Bird Watcher and editing it. Then after all that I worked incredibly hard to write blog posts about all the processes I went through or limitations I faced. Finally, I ended with putting lots of work and creativity into my 4 CCRs. With the hours of struggle I have spent on this, I still am extremely grateful for everything this class has taught me and in general the knowledge I have gained about media and film in this class. Although, funnily enough the process isn't entirely over! My teacher has told us once everything was submitted regarding CCRs, our final cut for our movie, and blog posts that we would have to begin studying for the exam in May which requires us to write essays.  We will begin wi...

I have officially completed my 3rd CCR! If you asked me this was actually my favorite. Why? I had something in mind for this CCR when I went into it. I planned on making an intense, dramatic introduction to the documentary. I also wanted to start it with the idea that I hadn't liked this class when I first joined. From this I came up with the title of "I didn't even like movies." Throughout the documentary I thoroughly discuss the entire production process and how it has changed me.  This CCR also questions everything regarding question 3. Below is the link to my YouTube channel where you can watch the CCR.

 I have recently completed my 4th CCR about the integration of technologies into my project. It is a presentation where I go through the different slides and explain different parts of my project that technology helped me. For example, the use of Adobe Premiere Pro 2025 and my sister's Canon XS720 HS. Below is the link to the entire CCR presentation on YouTube which answers question 4.

 I have just completed my behind the scenes vlog/walk and talk in the woods and it was super fun to film! Sure it could've been a little nerve racking to have a phone up to my face talking while total strangers walk by; however, I think the fact that I got so out of my comfort zone was incredibly fun! Attached below is the link to my YouTube with my 2nd CCR which covers question 2.

It's official: I have finally finished and exported our movie The Bird Watcher! I couldn't be prouder of the work that has gone into the movie from filming the midterm to filming the final cut and spending hours editing it. It really has come together and I also couldn't thank my partner Lucca enough for the work he has also contributed into making this movie. To think that I would have come this far when I first entered this class is incredible. In first quarter I thought completing a case study on a movie was hard work but little did I know how much time it would take to really get my movie the way I want it. Unfortunately, the hard work has to continue now that I have to make sure all my blogs look great and that my CCRs are well done. I say unfortunately but I also mean fortunately because my love for movies and this class has only grown. I find everything we have to do in this class incredibly interesting and fun to do. On that note, below is the link to The Bird Watch...

 I created a podcast called Behind The Frame about diving into the minds behind storytellers or filmmakers. I was the guest of this blog and discussed essentially everything about my film in order to answer question 1. I made sure to include intro, background, and outro music along with some sound effects to really sell this as a podcast. Most of the music is energetic to get people uplifted or excited to listen to the podcast. Overall, I really enjoyed the experience of making this podcast and getting to see what it is like for people that actually make podcasts to have to get everything edited and uploaded, along with the questions and conversations that are needed. Below is the link to my YouTube channel with my podcast/CCR 1 on it which answers question 1.  

 Today I will be going through what changed from the final cut compared to the midterm. I will even mention small editing features I used for the final cut which I didn't for use for the midterm. One of the main parts that we felt needed to be fixed was how long Eric the bird watcher was in the house. Originally, our movie had around 15 to 20 seconds where Eric was getting ready to go watching. Both my partner Lucca and I felt this took away from building the plot while Eric is bird watching. To fix this our final cut only includes around 5 seconds of Eric looking through his binoculars to check if they are good, grabbing his hat, and then leaving. Something that greatly affected how good our movie could've been from our midterm was the pacing. In class we watched everyone's movies and then gave personal feedback to make the movie better. We received a lot of good feedback but the feedback we heard the most often was that we didn't have very good pacing of our movie and...

Lucca is essentially finished with the opening credits after about 3 days of working extremely hard on them. First, regarding our production label, we stuck with the idea of having it in a red, creepy font to have the conventions of a thriller movie. The production label was put on the back of a black screen and Lucca made a very cool effect where the letters of our production label slowly show up on the screen. I hadn't known he would add this effect or if something like that was even possible in Adobe so I found it extremely interesting when he first showed me it. There is also no sound during the showing of our production label which I will explain soon. The second opening credit which he finished was the title screen. He fixed the problem of not being able to see the title card with the caution tape texture over it. He ended up just inputting the colors of the caution tape.  The birds flying flew the screen are also more realistic now. Previously, Lucca had it so birds would ju...

Since editing is coming to an end for my movie The Bird Watcher and it is almost ready to export I am deciding today that it is best to look at the color grading process I went through for each clip in The Bird Watcher. When I first did the research behind color grading to get a better understanding of it, the first thing that was mentioned to me were LUTs. Essentially these were things where if you applied it to a clip it auto color graded it in a cool way for you. The only problem with these is most of them cost money and aren't very available. Either way I felt using them would take away from the process of making my movie, which I wanted to go through, and so I decided personally to just do the color grading myself. The color grading in the first half of the movie is completely different than the second half where the climax is. I say this because I was made aware of an auto color grading option in Adobe which would just make the clip look cleaner. I used this on my clips in th...

 I believe sound is extremely crucial to any movie and how a viewer feels about it so today I will going through the thoughts behind the sounds used and even the source of where I got it from. To first mention the source of where I got all my sounds from I used Pixabay. I primarily thought that I would have to venture out a lot further to get the sounds I desired, although going through Pixabay for about 20 minutes was just enough to find each audio needed. What I thought I was going to have to do is something like when I completed my podcast: Tower Talks. It was a Clash Royale based podcast so a lot of the sounds I wanted were not available on Pixabay. To be completely honest I don't completely remember how I got the audios onto Adobe. What I do remember is that I took them off of YouTube, recorded the audio on my MacBook, then transferred the recording of the audio onto Adobe. Most of the sounds used, if not all, are all creepier, tension-inducing sounds to help portray the conve...

 At times I feel not even I appreciate camera angles as much as I should. Camera angles not only influence the emotions of the audience but also their understanding of characters. My movie The Bird Watcher uses this with multiple different shots to create meaning. Today I plan to explain some of the shots taken in The Bird Watcher and go further into depth about them. My first personal favorite is close ups. Close ups allow the audience to really feel intimate with the actor in the movie but also see their emotions. For a thriller movie I wanted to convey a common convention through a close up that showed the character's, Eric the bird watcher's, fear. With the close up, the subtle facial expressions can show fear in Eric's eyes, but also help establish a strong emotional connection between Eric and the audience. The movie often had many medium shots, especially as Eric is walking through the forest. The idea behind these is medium shots is the audience is not only able to ...

Since my partner Lucca and I are just now getting the final touches to our movie The Bird Watcher, I wanted to share a few of the inspirations that we had in the process of creating our movie. The absolute first movie I have to mention is The Blair Witch Project. From the day the idea of creating a movie based off a bird watcher in the forest was created, Lucca and I had both talked about how our idea was greatly inspired from this movie alone. Its mention can even be seen as early as when I had created my mood board where I used the exact poster below to be apart of the mood board for my movie.  The Blair Witch project revolutionized its time in the 90's. The idea of it being filmed from a group of kids and just giving that nauseating effect to viewers was incredible. Also the fact that such a great movie was created that had very low budget is inspiring. Now, we didn't apply the filming from someone's point of view to our film however the forest setting definitely was app...

 Since the camera that is used doesn't get the credit it deserves sometimes in movies, especially since it's not usually shown during a movie except for in The Blair Witch Project, I will be putting the spotlight on the camera we used to film for both our final cut and midterm of The Bird Watcher: the Canon SX720 HS.                                  This camera gave us the quality we desired when filming our movie. Obviously we didn't have the budget for the more expensive cameras so we used our best option which was the Canon SX720 HS -also my sister's camera. I still loved how the footage looked even if the camera wasn't the most expensive. I was also able to enhance the footage's look through color grading. To show the difference between recording on iPhone, which many people in my class did, and using this camera I will show a picture of similar clips to compare quality.  Now of course on ...

While based off the title of this blog, it might seem that discussing this is useless however I believe there are several features in Adobe which go unnoticed and need their spotlight. Also since The Bird Watcher is now finished I thought I'd share editing features that helped lead to the success of the movie. First one of my favorites, speeding up a movie clip. This feature may seem normal on paper because I could speed up clips on an iPhone while editing footage if I wanted to, but once you dive deeper into the feature in Adobe it changes a lot.  To put some context behind using this feature in my movie, I had a major problem when I was editing a certain clip we had filmed: The speed was extremely slow. What I mean by this is when I acted out backing up out of fear after seeing the missing person tied to a tree, it felt way too slow to feel real. I thought to myself that this could easily be fixed by simply speeding up the clip; however, it wasn't this simple. During the clip...

We have really started to work on opening credits as of recent since we are coming up to the end of editing  our movie the bird watcher. When I say "we" I really refer to my partner Lucca. I was tasked with the editing of our movie while Lucca was tasked with working on the opening credits. I am extremely proud of all the work he is putting in on making these opening credits well done. He is using Canva to make them and currently has a work in progress for the credits. The problem he ran into is that he wants to have our title card have a caution tape texture over it, although it is very hard to read. He will also have birds fly across the screen along with the title card and forest background. After he works on the title card, he plans to work on our production label which we are sticking with from our midterm which is Dreadfall Entertainment. We want the production label to be in a red font to help contribute to the conventions of a thriller movie in our opening credits. La...

  Today I am completing the skills audit table from 6.1 in the Media Studies for Cambridge International AS & A level book. The only change to it  is  I am doing the updated version for the skills audit table. This is because when I first started my blog  posts  this was one of the first things I did and said I would redo  later in the year to see how much my skills in this class have changed. I will also be reflecting at the end on each skill.   Skill   I am good at this   I can do this but need to improve   I need to  acquire this  skill   Using a camera (photography or video) including those built into a mobile phone.               Recording sound either on its own or as part of a video.     Using light for effect, either in still photography or moving  image .     Using video or photo editing software.     Using desk-top publishing...