THE QUEEN'S VENGEANCE- FINAL CUT

CCR Post

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

Our film challenges conventions by potraying the game in fantastical way, while adding elements of the horror and thriller genres. This typically isn't seen with the game as most of the time it is viewed as a game only and a sophisticated one at that. In terms of social groups represented, it was mainly comprised of black women whic is stark contrast to the mainly white male dominated world of professional chess.

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

When I started, I had minimal experience as an editor. The projects I had worked on before only involved me cutting scenes and adding transitions and titles in iMovie. During production, I became more versitile as an editor by learning how to work Adobe Rush on my iPhone, making me versed in another editing software. I also developed my color grading skills as this was my first time employing the technique. I realized just how much change the editor can make to the film and was able to develop my understanding of the role more.

How did you integrate technologies -software, hardware, online- in this project?

For software, we used was many applications that could found on an iPhone. This includes Blackmagic Cam which was used for most of the shots except the dolly zoom, Adobe Rush, and iMovie. We made use of the Messages app to communicate with each other through out the project and had a shared photo album so we all had access to the footage. Hardware used was the cinematographer's iPhone, mine for editing, the tripod kit lended to us by Mr. Aaronson, and a harddrive for exporting the film. Online resources was only YouTube, we used it to watch clips for inspiration, tutorials on how to do our jobs, and used it to upload our final cut.

CCR Planning

Learning about the Creative Critical Reflection got some ideas flowing about how to do it. Different formats that could be done are: commentaries, an interview, making a recut, and a how to video. The semi-recent interview with Denis Villeneuve on The Late Show served as a good basis for what I could make a interview like, though I don't yet know for which question.

When I looked at the questions, I was confused on one of the questions. On the second one it mention about the film being distributed as "real media text", and I was confused as to what that meant. So I cleared it up with Mr. Aaronson and I now know it just means as a real film. As of now, I plan to say that it would be released through film festivals and YouTube. There is still more I have to do, but I think what I have right now is a good start. It is also a lot more calming to get these confusions out of the way ahead of time instead of asking at the last minute like I did with previous assignments.

Bringing in Old Shots and Improving Transitions

When looking over the film, when the it transitions from the real world to the chess world it was very choppy and I worried that it wouldn't click with audiences that we are now in the chess world. I then remembered that we had a shot that zoomed into the chess board and I thought that could improve the transition. I replaced the previous shot with the zoom and I thought it portrayed what was happening better, so I consulted the director about it. She agreed that the transition needed to be better and that the zoom was a better fit.

The zoom allows for a clearer transition between the real world and Chesstopia.

Color Grading

During editing, me and the director were discussing ways to differentiate the chess world from the real world in the film. For context, in the film, while the two players are playing the game, the pieces are in their own war-torn world. The director wanted to make the chess world look dystopian like so it was up to me as the editor to color grade it. As I was looking through Rush's color tab, I saw they had preset filters so I naturally I looked to see if any of them were good. And they were, I was considering a lot of the presets until I saw a filter called SL Matrix. And it made the footage look it was from The Matrix which is one of the classic dystopian movies. I showed it to the director and she liked it so it looked like were sticking with it. After consulting the cinematographer, we concluded the Matrix filter was too dark. So, I adjusted the exposure, tint, temperature, saturation, shadows and vibrance to brighten the image.

Before

After