AICE Media Studies

          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    

                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 cl...

              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 li...

            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 l...

          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 ...

        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 repeti...

         Filming on January 20th was so stressful to me at first. I know waiting last minute did not help even though it was not my fault I still held myself accountable. I haven't filmed anything in so long and that got to me. However, after I filmed a couple scenes and got back the hang of it. It was easier to film with a family member. My mom is a natural actor so it was easy to work with her. When it came to directing I did not have to waste my time repeating myself. This saved us time when it came to filming. The only thing we both struggled with was sticking to the script fully. We ended up adding a couple new words to some scenes. This is because in the moment it just felt more natural to say them which added to the emotion aspect of the film. However, in some scenes curse words slipped out so we had to do another take for those parts. The emotional part was the most important key to the film being successful. Therefore, we had to make sure we did anythin...

       On January 20th, I finally started to officially film. I took a covid test and the results came back negative so now I am able to film. I filmed at my house because it was the easiest option. Plus, my house has all the settings and props needed for these scenes. I filmed the mother and daughter scenes only today. I used myself and a family member to act it out. I had my actual mother act and me play the daughter. I did most of the recording for the scenes. It was easy to act out these scenes since we were actually mother and daughter in real life. We kept on having to record the walking in the house scene because we kept on getting interrupted by my other family members. It took us almost 4 tries to get that scene right without interruptions or breaking character. Then, we took break in between to read the screenplay to make sure we were saying the right stuff. I got the kitchen scene ready and put "dirty" dishes in the sink and food wasting on the floor. This...

            The short film which is called Dear Mother website is finally up and running. The website is complete now. I waited to add the photos last to the website. I did this because I felt like that was the easiest thing to edit on the website. I added pictures that match the words on the tab. For example, the Rewards & Reviews tab where I mention that the short film won the Golden Horse Award and added a picture of the award. Next, I added pictures of the crew to the Cast & Crew tab. The crew is supposed to include the actual people that was apart of the making of Dear Mother. Therefore, I add to get personal pictures of everybody to add to this tab and everybody sent one. Moreover, it was fun seeing everybody send in picture without a mask. I reminisced on the times where mask was not apart of an everyday wear. Now most pictures nowadays include people wearing a mask. Back to the website and adding photos to it. I added a picture of the theatr...

         I decided to edit the website little by little. The tabs I could edit without having to film is what I mainly focused on. The first tab I edited was the home and social media ones. The social media tab was more of a one and done type of editing. All I did was click the edit platform button. Then, I added our social medias and a Facebook QR code. However, the home tab was more of an editing here and there. This is because I did not have pictures from our film to upload to it yet. I only added information about the film and the directors/producers on the home page so far. When I get behind the scene pictures and videos I will add them and finish editing it. Then, I edited the about tab and it's just words. This tab just included information about C & R Productions. The next tab was the rewards and reviews tab. This tab consisted of  reviews of the film Dear Mother and the awards it won. This tab was a little tricky for me because of the reviews p...

         On January 8th, I was going to film the mother and daughter scenes. I got all the props together and notified my actors the day before. The props in the scenes I was going to film were dishes and a phone. The settings for the scenes was going to be the kitchen, living room, and bathroom. I was going to film at my house and use it as the abusive mother house. Moreover, my actual mother was going to play the part of the verbal abusive mother in the film, Dear Mother. I was going to play the daughter in the film. My sister was going to play the friend that calls the mother's phone. Some scenes were going to be filmed by me and some scenes were going to be filmed by my sister. Also, some of the scenes I was going to film would use a tripod. However, things did not go to plan. Filming those scenes never happened because I had to cancel. I cancelled because I found out I tested positive for covid-19. I got a message from CVS the night before saying I tested p...

I decided to create the website out of Ciaya and I. I am a very creative person so I thought it would be the best opportunity for me to create it. I have never created a website before so I was nervous. I used a website called wix.com which creates websites for people for free. This is my first time creating a website and using Wix. As I was making decisions on how to create the website I was learning something new. The beginning was more Wix doing than mines. It helped me pick a theme and tabs for the short film website. Wix asked me a whole bunch of questions and my answers created our website. I went with a more movie like and bright theme. The tabs of the website is so people can directly find what they are looking for without searching for anything. There are seven tabs for our website. The tabs are called home, about, rewards & reviews, contact, cast & crew, social media, and gallery. Any information a person is looking for there is a tab guiding them into the right direc...

                      For Ciaya and I short film I took the initiative to make a postcard for it. I used a website called Canva to create one. This was not my first time using this website, I've used it many times in the past. Therefore, I knew how to maneuver it and find things easily. The only hard part was choosing a theme for our short film. I wanted to go with something that gives a motherly feel and a light tone color. This is because the film is called Dear Mother and about a mother and daughter relationship. My image for the postcard is giving the feel like the daughter made the postcard for the mother. I wanted the potential audience to feel involved in the movie so giving them a postcard like this would do the job. I finally decided on a flower theme with a light pink color. I went with the flower theme because it gives a soft and caring feel like how a mother should be. The light pink color just brought everything togethe...