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CR for Dear Mother

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    How do your products represent social groups or  issues?  The film Dear Mother represents a common social issue that occurs in households. The social issue is verbal abuse. More specifically verbal abuse by a parent to their child. Most parents do not realize or notice that the words they are saying to their child is abuse. Verbal abuse is not taken as seriously as physical abuse since you cannot physically see the damage it is doing. However, verbal abuse does do some mental damage. The damage caused by it, can actually last longer than physical scars. This social issue is very common in black households because it is categorized as tough love but it is not in fact that. This social issue has been going on for years because not a lot of awareness is brought to it. Nowadays, this social issue is worse because social media. Some parents even take it to the extreme and verbal abuse their own child on the internet. The film showcases how much words hurt and can bring so much pain hear
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Final Movie

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          Dear Mother - A short Film   Bringing awareness to verbal abuse especially between a parent and child in the short film was a good experience for me. This was a good opportunity for me and I enjoyed every moment of it. Making this short film helped me realize that even though it was all acting for me, some people go through this in real life every day.    Dear Mother's Official Website    
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Another day of filming, another day of acting

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                On January 25, I started to film the friend and the daughter scenes. I filmed these in a different room of my house. It was during the day time. Also, I cut the scene where the friend picks her up from the park. It took up too much time. Plus, that scene had no effect on the story plot. This scene took many takes. Both actors kept messing up. We messed up so much that we couldn’t even edit the mess ups out. Therefore, we had to keep filming the scenes over until we got it right. It didn’t take long though. After the third take, we stopped messing up. Our final and last take was the fourth one and we didn’t mess up as much . We messed up a little bit but it was fixable by editing those scenes. The filming that day took 20 minutes. This was definitely the longest time I spent filming throughout this whole project. Since it was also the last I had to make sure the short film with all the scene was enough time. I started to just put clips in this editing software called iMo
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Filming in the car + Insights of my opinion

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              On January 24, I ended up filming the car scene of Roxy (the daughter) and Emily’s (the friend) mother. I filmed this scene during the night like at 8 pm. This setting was only for one scene. It was the quickest take take too. This is because it only lasted a couple seconds. For this scene it only had one take, we did it and was satisfied with it. This scene was to show a conversation between the friend’s mother and the daughter . It is to show she has somebody helping her and supporting her from getting out of this verbal abusive relationship with her mother. The angle in this scene focuses mainly on Roxy. You can hear the mother speaking to Roxy but not see the mother.This is to draw attention to Roxy’s facial expressions. She’s supposed to look grateful and glad somebody cares and/or loves her.             The screenplay was very good to me. The issue of verbal abuse is a global problem. However, I felt like I didn’t represent this issue as good as I could. The film do
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Staying in Character

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            Personally the remembering the script is not the hard part for me. The staying in character the whole time is the hardest part for me. When I act it is hard to stay in character because I laugh about everything. Since this is a film about a serious issue, I cannot be laughing or smiling. However, in most of the bloopers you can see me cracking a little smirk in them. In one scene I looked too happy but I just played it off as that was my mood before the actor for Ms.Jackie started yelling at me, who plays Roxy. The scene ended up coming out good even though, me smiling was not planned. This unintentional act just added to how the daughter is happy then the mom ruins her mood. Also, my  laughing was getting contagious and spreading to the other actor at some point. We just kept filming though because all these things could just be edited out. Another scene that I have something to about was the car scene. I told my sister in law to play Emma's mother for this. When she s
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The specifics of the props for Dear Mother

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          The beginning of the short film contained a lot props but gladly I already had everything at my house. For the first scene I had to get a container with nothing it for the actor to use it as their lunch dish. Then, for the kitchen scenes I had to make a mess. My kitchen garbage was empty so I filled it up with paper tissue and boxes to take up space. This made it seem like the garbage was full even though it was not. Then, for the sink there was already a dirty utensils and a cup in there. All I did was reorganized them in the sink so it could look more messy. For the spilled food scene, I did not actually want to make a big mess or waste food. So, I got some stale chips, black pepper seasoning, wrapped cheese, and water. I mixed it together to make the food spilled. This was easy to clean up afterwards since nothing was sticky or left any crumbs. I just had to wipe up the mess with a napkin and that's it. Then, I ended up using 3 different phones for the bathroom scene.
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Editing the first part of the film

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        At first I was worried that the film would not be five minutes. However, now I am worried about it being over five minutes. While editing I noticed there was a lot of long pauses. These long pauses took up too much time for this to be a short film. The first officially scene of the short film I made into a plot screen. This scene shows the mom just coming home and the daughter sleeping which happens at the same time. Therefore, I cut those long pauses out the film. Then, the scene where I was crying, there was not enough sobbing sounds for me. I decided to add an already recorded sobbing sound to that part. This way instead of doing another take of that scene, I could just use that one take. Moreover, for dramatic effect I added a recording of suspenseful music to the scene where the mother calls the daughter ugly. I also duplicated the scene when the mother says the word ugly. The original is in color then the duplicated one is in black and white. The repetition and scene colo
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