Jil's AICE Blog

The time has come. The moment we've all been waiting for. Everything is all edited and complete. Ladies and gentlemen... it's time to reveal my film opening! So, voila! Introducing Back in My Life, starring me (Jil Modi) and my co-star Lihi Almog. I hope you like it, and thank you for coming on this film-making journey with me!

  Here are the credits to all the sound effects and songs I used in my CCR.  Extra Fries by The Fly Guy Five - Artist, composer, & producer: The Fly Guy Five (Specific artist names are unknown) © 2022 Epidemic Sound. All Rights Reserved. All the sound effects (i.e: the applause, boom, and magic sound effect) belong to Capcut, which is owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance.

    Here are the credits to all the sound effects and songs I used in my movie opening.  ETA by NewJeans - Artist: NewJeans (Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin, and Hyein) - Producer: Min Hee Jin - Songwriters: Beenzino, Gigi, Ylva Dimberg - Composer: 250 © 2023 ADOR. All Rights Reserved. My Own Summer/Shove It (Instrumental) by Deftones - Artist/Writer: Deftones (Vocalist Chino Moreno, guitarist Stephen Carpenter, bassist Chi Cheng, and drummer Abe Cunningham) - Producer: Terry Date & Deftones - Recorded by: Studio X - Mixed by: Larrabee Studios © 1997 Maverick Recording Company. All Rights Reserved. Alarm Clock Sound Effect - Published to YouTube - Creator: KunalVerma1996 - Publish date: July 23, 2024 © YouTube. All Rights Reserved.

My film is officially complete. So, now it's time to begin the CCR.  I already have a strong idea for how I want it to go & how I'm going to make it creative. For my CCR, I'm going to be interviewing myself! I'm going to dress up like a talk show host (specifically a bootleg Jimmy Fallon...) and ask myself the CCR questions. As I answer these questions, I'm going to provide examples on-screen of what I'm talking about. I'm also going to add in fun sound elements--including sound effects and music--to make my video fun and engaging! I've already drafted the main idea for how I want it to go, and my responses to the questions. Here's what I have currently. ~ ______________________________ THE SCENE [ It’s late at night, and you’re sitting on the couch waiting for your favorite show to come on. Then, the clock finally hits 11:35 P.M. An unmistakable title flashes on your TV screen. It’s… The Jimmy Jilly Fallon Tonight Show! ] ______________________...

I finally finished creating my film! Even if I created just an opening, I'd learned a lot from the short production I made. I thought it would be nice if today, I shared what I learned with you guys, and how it helped me throughout my film-making journey. Let's dive in! Pre-Production   1. Write for Avaliability My first tip is to base your film's story off of locations, props, and actors that are accessible to you. For mine, I didn't hire any professional actors or use "high-tech" equipment. Instead, I used friends and family members that were avaliable on weekends to help me film. We used our phones and reliable editing programs to compile the clips and produce our final product.  W riting for what is available guaranteed that our film gets made instead of stuck in development. 2. Minimize Locations  My second tip is to stick to one to three filming locations. This saves money, time, and prevents shooting schedules from getting too complicated. I did this fo...

My film is officially complete. All my scenes are colorgraded and everything is ready to be published. But, before I show it to you guys... I thought I'd release the bloopers! So, get your popcorn ready, because you're in for a chaotic ride!

  So... my film opening is officially done! Hooray! But, I'm not going to show you all just yet. I've actually been considering making a few adjustments. This includes colorgrading. Colorgrading is done in post-production and involves manipulating a clip's saturation, contrast, and tone to evoke a certain aesthetic. It's basically like slapping a filter onto your film! But also, not quite. It is more complex than this. Certain elements need to be altered carefully to achieve a specific look and effect. This process often needs to be repeated throughout a scene's entirety to maintain visual cohesion. A film that's widely recognized for its striking colorgrading is Twilight. The entire film is tinted green, making the atmosphere feel gothic and cold. This is something I plan to do for my protagonist Jillian. For her scenes, I want to add high contrast and bluish-purple tint to make it look moody and also "alternative." This is the same vibe that's ac...

School is over, so now it's time to get to editing! I'm using the same software from yesterday (CapCut) to put together my clips. But, one new thing I'm going to attempt to do is an L and J-cut! A L-cut is when you still hear the audio from a past clip after a scene visibly changes. A J-cut is when you hear the audio for a clip before it plays on-screen. In my film, I'm planning to apply both of these! I'm going to do a J-cut to begin my character's montage. It shows her getting ready, but the audio is her narrating what she's writing in her diary. But, the scene of her actually writing in this diary doesn't play until later. You'll see the vision once my movie opening comes out! I'm inserting an L-cut later in my film. My character is still going to be narrating her diary, but the scene of her actually writing in it is going to have played before this. The new clip is going to be of my backyard's sunrise and her drive to school. However, the...

Okay. Now is officially the final day of filming! I had a slight delay because my parents (who were my cameramen) went to bed last night. So now, I'm filming my final scenes today before school. Here's a sneak peak... Ok. This is a pretty lame sneak peak. But... you'll see everything come together when you watch my movie opening! I also have more pictures to show you from the morning shoot. In my last post, I mentioned how I wanted to film a scene outside to capture the sunrise. And as I was going outside, I saw... BABY DUCKS IN MY BACKYARD! Ahhhh! So cute! Here they are. I tried to get a video of them and zoom in, but my camera settings were already in cinematic mode, so it didn't let me do a close-up on them! They scurried off the minute I stepped outside. But, it's okay. Atleast I saw them. The ducklings were so cute! Here's the shot I ended up taking. The bird flying by was a paid actor. I didn't get much of a sunrise because it was cloudy this morning. ...

(Can you tell I love this pose) It's day two of filming! I'm all in-character, as you can tell from this selfie I took. Today, I'm calling out my dad and mom to help me film. My dad is going to hold the camera for me, and my mom is going to be in my movie opening but offscreen.  But, I can film the rest of my scenes independently. A lot of my film opening is my main character's getting-ready montage. Here, she tells you about her life and affiliation to my second protagonist--who is Lihi's character Lily. I'm planning to wrap up recording today so I can work on my CCR. For the getting-ready scenes, I'm going to mount my camera on my bathroom mirror or counter. I'm going to probably have to stack random things together in order for my phone to get good filming height! As for the content of these scenes, I'm just going to basic things like brushing my teeth, messing with my hair, doing mascara, etc. The voiceover and dialogue is going to "carry...

It's currently 9:38 P.M, and I've compiled Lihi's scenes into Capcut for my film opening. I've edited in the soundtrack and text credits aswell. However, I've made two different variations of her character introduction sequence. I'm finding myself torn between the two! So, I'm going to share them with you guys. Here is the first one.  As of right now, the quality is a little poor and a watermark from Capcut is obstructing some of the text. But, that will all be fixed once I export my final draft. The main difference from this video and the second one is the way my title is introduced. Here, I have it on a plain black screen, which then fades into a video of Lihi opening her eyes. One thing I don't like about this first draft is how the audio seems to play randomly and adruptly. I had to cut the beginning bit of the song so it wouldn't be too long & so the beats would align with the clips I used. This is why I'm not leaning towards this one as...

The time has officially come.  The day is April 7th and it's 4:00 P.M. It is... TIME TO FILM! Yayyy! Today, I'm at Lihi's house to shoot my movie opening.  (Me and Twin) We've just run through the script together. Her scenes are pretty straightforward and have little-to-no dialogue, so we should be able to bang this out! But, before I get into that... check out these muffins we made! (Scrum Dilly Yum!!) Lihi actually did 70% of the work. I'm super useless when it comes to baking. But, the muffins were amazing! And... I'm getting a little off topic.  After we finished baking, cleaning up the kitchen, and packing up the rest of the muffins, it was finally time to shoot. We went up to her room--which I explained a couple posts ago would be the new set for our film. Instead of going to my house, I went over to her house to film because it was more convenient. (And so we could make muffins, but don't tell her that!) ~ Conclusion Today's filming was a success....

  1. Not-So-Friends This is my first title idea. I've chosen as one of my options because my two characters are not really friends--but also never had an actual "falling out," as one of them had just adruptly moved away. This title represents this complicated relationship in a straightforward and somewhat comedic way. It reminds me of those titles of Dork Diaries books, which I grew up reading as a kid! (These were my favorite ones. As you can see, they have that same "not-so..." title. The plot of these books are actually somewhat similar to mine. They both follow a school-aged "outcast" who documents her life in her diary in a dramatic, often amusing way.)  But, one reason I'm not really learning towards this title is because it seems too "childish." I want my film to appear to young adults and teenagers, and I don't want the title to repel this target audience or market my film to children. Dork Diaries is also a pre-existing form ...

It's almost time to film. So, let's go over my editing equipment! Here's what I'll be using: 1. iPhone 14 Pro This is the phone I have! A few posts ago, I analyzed a music video from the band NewJeans and the camera techniques they used. They used this same phone to film the entire music video. To make my film opening look as professional as possible, I'll try to employ the same techniques and camera settings they used.  2. iPhone 17 Pro Max This is the phone my filming partner has. Because it's a newer generation iPhone, it's supposed to have a better camera. The iPhone 17 Pro Max offers a 4x zoom, which is a step up from my phone's 3x zoom maximum. It also features higher camera resolution. So, I can blend both the iPhone 17's extended filming capabilities with the one I have to produce my film opening. 3. Capcut  Capcut is what I'll be using to put my clips together and edit my movie opening. I've used the app before, so I already have a g...