Project Components

Here it is. So proud of this.

Short film + Postcard

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gGyBGwhjL28HXEO5hasGOWxY0uqi_tYl?usp=sharing 

Short film YouTube link in case:
https://youtu.be/1trwFIBIvG0?si=eZlyR3HziA_-4g_5

Social Media

https://www.instagram.com/thedivinesynthetic?igsh=MTgxeGNsaTlwNjk0MA== 

Critical Reflection

    The idea of The Divine Synthetic itself was actually born from a lot of the media theory that we learned in class, particularly Jean Baudrillard and his concept of hyperreality and simulacra. Although Baudrillard never explored artificial intelligence in his writings, it could be argued that AI is a perfect representation of these ideas. The purpose of artificial intelligence is to simulate human behavior and intelligence, going so far as to eventually become a representation, rather than a reality of human behavior. To go further into this idea, I decided to look into cases of what I like to call "enlightened robots" in media. I focused on the character AM from the short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and Harlan Ellison's meditation on the existence of an artificially created being. Particularly with the idea that artificial intelligence is an almost Frankenstein-esque invention doomed by its creator. While writing the script, I also knew I wanted to use voice-over recordings to move the piece forward, so I studied Daniel Keyes' epistolary writing style in his short story/novel, Flowers for Algernon. This story was actually a great inspiration for the script since it followed a similar theme of a character who experiences a scientifically induced personality/intelligence development over a set period of time. However, at this point during pre-production, I realized that I had been focusing too much on literary pieces and needed to start tying in that visual aspect. For that, I looked at the way the Love, Death + Robots episode "Zima Blue" blends its audio and visual features. This episode also gave me a gave a good idea of how to pace our short film, especially with the use of voiceover, without boring the audience. 

Graph from Statistica

    In fact, audience engagement is something that was definitely a priority at all points of production. At first, I was a bit reluctant with the subject matter because I felt apprehensive of it not being particularly relevant. However, as I thought about it further, I realized that, with the rise of ChatGPT and other generative AI, artificial intelligence is not only on the forefront of people's minds, but also a great source of worry for many. I think in a way, I wrote this script, and we made this film to represent that fear that a lot of people are feeling. At its most basic form, the thesis of this film is that artificial intelligence cannot replicate the human experience. We targeted this film to young adults (16-24) since we felt it was the generation that could relate most to the artificial intelligence situation, and the young adult demographic are the biggest consumers of science fiction media. To engage this audience, we chose to market the film on Instagram. Aside from YouTube, Instagram is the most used social media platform amongst teenagers and young adults. In fact, it was reported 75% of Generation Z are Instagram users. We also figured that Instagram was the best social media platform for cohesive branding since it allows photo posts, reels, and stories for interaction.   

  

In terms of actual film branding, Megan took charge on that, particularly on social media and general creative direction. We wanted to capture that science fiction aesthetic through social media, so we went with a very robotic color scheme of black, gray, and dark blue. While we wanted that stereotypical science fiction look to an extent, we also didn’t want it to look too cartoonish, we wanted a more, at the risk of sounding pretentious, sophisticated look. To be completely honest, I think we had a little trouble balancing that in the beginning of the process. I feel like, looking through our posts, I can tell that we weren’t completely sure on the fonts and color scheme that we wanted, but it definitely improved as the posts went on. With the postcard, we were struggling on finding a still from the short film to capture its essence enough to put it essentially as the face of the piece, so we decided it would be best to use a drawing instead. Megan ended designing an incredible logo that we used on both the postcard and all through social media. Additionally, we kept the same font on the postcard as the font used for the title and credits in the actual film and any social media teasers to keep that cohesive brand. The back I designed on Canva, it's a still modified enough to make our main character look very robotic. Like with the social media, the color scheme of the piece was that very robotic, almost cold, moody look. There was one scene in particular that we shot, but during editing, I realized that the color, outfits, and part of the room that we shot in just didn’t fit the rest of the look. I ended up replacing that scene. While there were some things we could have caught branding wise earlier with more planning, I’m pretty satisfied with how we branded and marketed this film and feel confident that it represents our vision. 

    We sought to represent humanity in this piece. Which is a very, very general statement. With the memory montage and The Engineer character, we wanted a physical representation of humankind in a piece that centers something very non-human. I think our representation of humanity might be a *bit* too optimistic as there's a whole lot of bad aspects that humans have, but I feel like, with the subject matter we are tackling, it was kind of a necessary reminder of a lot of the beauty of humanity. I think we live in a time where we need to be reminded that more often. Also, we wanted to stray away from those common robot stories where the robots go evil and decide to take over the world. I was hoping to add more nuance to artificial intelligence and to also acknowledge that humans themselves are the root cause for its existence. We also wanted to stray away from a romance, which was the original idea, to tackle the belief that AI can "feel things" or experience emotions.

    There were so many setbacks and problems that happened in the production of this piece, which makes me all the prouder of the final result. I made so many mistakes and learned so much from this experience, particularly with it being my first time directing a full short film (and obviously would not have been possible without my amazing co-director Megan). I hope you all enjoy it.

Goodbye

Welll. I just clicked export on my project. I guess this is it. It feels so bittersweet because on one hand, I'm so happy and relieved to be done with this project, but on the other, I'm gonna miss this experience so much. I'm so proud of the final result which came out of many sleepless nights, hours of stressing. and so many setbacks. I'm also so grateful to have gotten to work with Megan on this and for her to putting up with my insane ideas (I'm so sorry). This is my first short film, which is so something I've been wanting to say since I could remember, and I really hope I'll be making more in the future (hey maybe I'll even start a blog to document that). I'll miss posting my breakdowns into the endless void of the internet. I can't believe it's over. Can't wait for you to watch.

I'll miss this

God I Can't Wait to Sleep

So, I think this is my last post before my final two posts which is????? I can't believe how fast these last two months have gone. This whole experience has been so fun and fulfilling etc etc but to be completely honest, I can't wait to have a nice full night's rest once this is over. Between writing the script, blogging, social media, and filming I feel so exhausted. Case in point, we had our final filming session today. I got to Megan's house at 8:30 ish slightly sleep deprived and carrying about 100 lbs of equipment. While we waited for Mariano to arrive, we figured out the audio which was really stressful because the mic needed a microSD card but when I put mine in, it said it was the wrong format so I reformatted it and it still said it was the wrong format, so we just ended up using a wireless lav which luckily for us was fine since we only needed one scene with audio. Apparently, Mariano overslept so we basically had to drive to his house to drag him out of bed because we literally cannot film any other day. Then we drove to Dunkin to eat which was great cause I had only had a yogurt before and was already hungry.

We started filming probably somewhere around 11/12. Honestly, I was surprised at how smooth everything went. Like we finished a couple hours before I was expecting to which made me soooo happy. After we figured out the little audio problem, we didn't have any other equipment problems. Only thing was that we had to film on a different camera than last session so instead of the 33mm lens, we had a 50 and a zoom, so it was a little annoying having to switch between the two since the 50 wasn't as wide, but it wasn't that big a deal. We had to reshoot the opening because we didn't finish it last time, and we had to shoot the routine montage which was honestly kinda fun because we got to watch movie trailers for the scene. And then we had to get the final shot of the film which was honestly a little stressful because I really wanted to get an impacting final shot. But yeah, everything went really well!! When I got home, I immediately crashed and didn't wake up until recently. Now to edit until I forget what the sun looks like.

Photo Dump

Tripod dog!

Finalizing Social Media

Feels so insane to say but April 9th is so much closer than I thought. Like oh my god it's next Wednesday already. That's just insane. Luckily, I feel like we're pretty on schedule with everything, the only thing I'm worried about is getting the best possible edit done with just a couple days to work on it. But on the plus side, we've been good on updating our social media so far, so that's one less worry as our due date approaches. These last couple days especially we've been trying to get more posts on there and follower interaction. 

On Tuesday, we posted the finished logo inspired by da Vinci's Vitruvian Man drawing to represent that intersection between man and machine. Megan did such a good job on it and it looks so cool. 

On Thursday, we posted another behind the scene look of Megan and Mariano practicing lines together before shooting the final scene (fun fact: we shot that scene about a million time, and the angle we were shooting it at couldn't fit a tripod so I had to go handheld and basically had to hold my breath for the entirety of the scene, almost two minutes, so the camera wouldn't shake). You can see how much of a mess the room was in this picture lmaoo.

Yesterday was also SAT testing day for juniors and since I'm a senior, I got to miss class. And instead of going to the beach with all the other senior, I stayed home and edited...yay! I went a little more into that process in my last post, but during that long editing period, I did work on a little social media teaser. It was honestly a pain to make because color grading took way long than I was expecting, it was hard to find a riser/flutter that I liked, and Adobe After Effects is my greatest enemy. Seriously you have no clue how long it took me to figure out how to make those basic title graphics.

Finally, today we posted like that Instagram grid thing with multiple posts to spell out the title. She looks a little chopped but its fine. Sunday is our last day of filming so we'll probably do another bts post then or on Monday then we'll maybe do an out tomorrow post on Tuesday and then the official release post on Wednesday.

 Color Grading Ain't For Me

Actually, let me rephrase that: editing ain't for me. 

Today was SAT day at school so instead of like idk going out with my friends since I'm a senior, I decided to stay home and edit. Honestly, I'm complaining now, but I won't be next Wednesday, so I think it's a fair trade. I can hang out with my friends once this project is over. Either way, I tried to get as much editing done as possible today which honestly wasn't a whole lot because I'm a slow editor but it's fine. I worked on leveling the audio and making a more dynamic edit than the original line edit with inserts and voiceover. I feel like the first minute ish is better and a little more interesting. I tried to work on sound design but it was so unpleasant. I think I used about a hundred different risers and none of them matched what I wanted. So frustrating. And don't get me started on music. Everything involved in the post production process is just so stressful and frustrating. But anyway, this blog post is supposed to be primarily about color grading since it was what I worked on the most. 

Enjoy this stupid minion meme that I found on the beautiful thing known as the internet

When we first started pre-production, we had intended to have this very hospital, cold look to the piece. But when we started shooting, we realized that it made the actors look very washed out and the color just looked ugly. I realized it was better to go with a darker, black, white, and gray color scheme. Once I started editing the footage, I realized it looked a little to bright (?) and I wanted a bit of a more moody look. 

For example, the still below is from the final scene of the film. This scene is definitely more depressing, and I felt like the color just doesn't capture that look. I decided to bring the exposure down a little bit while raising the contrast and whites. The highlights in the whites were a little too strong so I brought the highlights down a little. Then I played a little with the temperature and tint to get that color that I wanted. And I think it came out pretty cool. Final result:

It's quite subtle and not very stylistic, but I think it captures the tone of the scene so much better. 

Then I moved to color grading the opening which was a PAIN in the you know what. We shot the scene with this red light that looked good in practice but the second I opened up premiere, I realized it looked absolutely horrendous. 

UGLYYYYY

I realized pretty early on that fixing it wouldn't be possible. So, I decided to embrace that red and just work my best to white balance it as much as possible just to make that red a little more subtle and a little less of an eyesore. I started off with the automatic white balance tool on premiere which is usually pretty reliable. Only problem was that there was nothing actually white in the shot so I had to go with the metallic thing on the clipboard. Luckily, it did actually fix the color a lot. I brought down that exposure a little for that moody look and brought up the contrast for stronger shadows. I also brought up the greens a little to contrast the reds, which I don't fully love the greens but I think it balances out those reds a lot. Either way, I think it looks SO much better now and I can look at it without wanting to vomit on my computer. Final result: 

Little fun story time. When I was at STN, I had a free day and decided to attend a workshop. But on the way there, I got distracted talking to some college representatives of a school that I got accepted into and was considering. When we finished talking, I realized that the workshop was supposed to start in two minutes so I ran over to the room and it was completely full like not a single seat empty. Since I had nothing better to do, I ended up walking into a random other workshop without knowing what it was. I accidentally had walked into Color Correction on Final Cut Pro. Mind you, I've never opened Final Cut Pro in my life. But I decided to stay. Mostly cause I felt bad leaving mid workshop. And to be completely honest, it taught me a lot. I feel like my color grading skills still aren't incredible, but they're so much better than last year. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of these final results.