Planning for the Future Because the Present is STRESSING ME OUT

    In class this week, we went over the purpose of CCRs and how to tackle the process of making our own. 

After we are finished with production of  our project, we have to make a Creative Critical Reflection. This basically a series of creative products in which we reflect upon our final project (it's pretty much in the name). It requires us to creatively answer a few questions relating to target audience, genre conventions, production process, and technology use. We watched a couple of past CCR that gave me a lot of ideas for my own. One that I particularly liked featured a format similar to Vogue's 73 Questions series. The other one that I liked was like a talk show format.

    This got me thinking about recent interviews that I've liked and I realized that recently, there's been this like surge of interviews featuring people eating chicken??? The example that first comes to mind for me is Amelia Dimoldenberg's Chicken Shop Date on YouTube in which the host (Amelia) interviews artists in the guise of them being on a "date" in a fried chicken restaurant..  Another popular one is Sean Evan's Hot Ones series, in which celebrities are interviewed while trying different hot wings until they can't take the heat anymore. These are so popular because of their unconventional format and charismatic hosts (at least I personally really enjoy watching them). I think a food related interview type CCR would be creative and relatively unique (might not age well but oh well). My hesitation on doing something like this is the fact that I would rather not appear on camera because I am unfortunately VERY awkward and not charismatic in the slightest (also my voice sounds so odd on camera, it would be a pain to edit).

Thumbnail of a Chicken Shop Date episode featuring Paul Mescal

    My second a idea is a bit more conventional: a podcast. I'm not someone who is an avid podcast listener (I prefer 3 hour video essays on YouTube about a topic I had never heard about before), but I am aware that podcasts have become an increasingly popular medium that is basically replacing talk radio at thus point. Usually when I listen to podcasts though, it's as background noise when I'm working on homework or cooking or something, so I would need to do a little research on how to best format it to make it engaging. The positives of doing a podcast is that I wouldn't have to appear on camera or have to do any video editing (which would be great because that's eliminating a process that I really don't enjoy). However, there are some downsides. Podcasts are an auditory medium, so it wouldn't be possible for me to show an footage to highlight what I am discussing, although I could use sound from the project to illustrate my point. I've done minimal research on this so far since my CCR is still kinda a long ways away, but I have found some websites that help you create engaging podcast websites such as Podbean and Simplecast, but I would need to find website without a hosting fee.

    The last idea that I came up with is a director's commentary type of video. The only director's commentary I've seen is the one featured in the La La Land DVD where Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz talk over the entire movie to give insight on the process. Honestly, I thought this was SO boring, and only got through about the first half before I had to turn it off. However, I do enjoy watching those Vanity Fair interviews in which directors (or actors, choreographers, composers, etc.) break down specific scene (Denis Villenueve breaking down a scene from Dune and Park Chan-wook breaking down the hallway scene from Oldboy). I have a ton of DVDs at home that feature director's commentary that I could skim through to get inspiration.

Process/Schedule

    I'm still debating, but I might move back my project date a little bit more. I'm ready to film right now, but I am still having trouble getting actors. My personal deadline for filming is Wednesday though, so I can have Thursday and Friday to edit (I have experience editing, so I'm not particularly worried about how long it'll take me to edit). This leaves me with Spring break, and Monday and Tuesday of the week after to work on my CCR. My schedule is to start planning the CCR format this weekend and to have a hard plan by Monday. Once I'm done editing my opening (hopefully by Saturday), I'll begin writing the two scripts for the CCRs. Monday or Tuesday, I'll film the first one, edit it Wednesday, then film the second one Thursday and edit it Friday. I'm not doing anything this spring break, so I have basically that entire week to just film, edit, and write my blog. If I follow this schedule, it would leave the entire weekend and the two days of the other week to do any revisions and finalize editing.