Post-production Part 1

Starting the editing process is scary; you don't know what you are going to find, it can be bad or it can be good. Unfortunately, that happened to us... We filmed with an app called BlackMagic, and I accidentally recorded with the wrong format.... 

Fortunately, I was able to fix it by scaling the clips to fit the format, but with this particular shot, I can't do that because it will cut the character's face or the pens.

On another note, I worked on the color grading. Here is how it looked before:

After color grading: 

(We want to show everything as pale and neutral, which will later contrast with the conversation with Mrs. Larsson.)

Research CCR Question #1

 Hi blog, our teacher introduced us to the CCR part of our project this week. I started the research on the first question:

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

A. The psychological drama genre usually uses conventions like mentally unstable characters, identity crisis, and conflicts with one character or between characters.

For example, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was one of our biggest inspirations since it adapts the genre perfectly by developing the idea that sometimes these issues are hidden within a story, the main character thinks what he’s doing is normal, but it really is not okay.

 It is like Tunnels (insert picture of Ana) since Ana thinks she is fine when the therapist is implying that she is overworking herself.

Tunnels also focus on recent conventions of high school students. Nowadays, most schools are very competitive academically; that involves class rank, GPA, SAT scores, and much more. Stereotypically, teenagers tend to overwork themselves and feel the need to have perfect grades, extracurriculars, and scores to get into a good university.

 Tunnels represent this issue by illustrating a character who, by doing this, is facing the consequences of mental health issues and isolating herself from her loved ones. This is represented by hints like the phone calls/texts from her loved ones and Ana being alone at lunch. Eventually, later in the film, Ana will get to a point where she is all alone.

Another common convention is what I like to call: “The dramatic death of a loved one”. Most drama movies have someone close to the main character die; in Tunnels, we establish this by giving hints about Amelia, her sister who died in a car accident. Again, car accidents are super chicle. But in the film's opening, we don’t establish that that is Ana’s sister, creating mystery and leaving the audience wondering who Amelia is and why Ana is so triggered when Mrs. Larsson asks her about her. (insert picture of conversation)

So, we decided to use conventions that you would normally see in a psychological drama film because the cinematography and visuals of this genre highlight emotions with extreme close-ups, color theory (in many cases), and settings like locations (insert Ana in the library and bedroom alone)  that reflect the character's isolation from the world.

Sources: What defines psychological drama

https://www.imdb.com/interest/in0000086/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0111-y

I will adjust this answer depending on the type of media product I'm making, and will, of course, add more images and do some more in-depth analysis when the film opening is completely done.

Tunnels Production Day #2 (re-shoot)

 Hello blog! This week, we are wrapping up our production and starting the editing process. 

So we went through all the clips from the previous day, and well..... not great. Most of the shots were unfocused, and again, the shadows were too noticeable

You see.... terrible

I was so frustrated. It was my first time using my camera for a film, so I had little knowledge, but anyway, we were not letting this get in our way. I downloaded an app called Blackmagic on my phone, and it's basically a camera app with cinematic features. It's easier to use the focus, and you can even add filters without color grading.

It was honestly a lifesaver. We decided to reshoot tuesday and it went great. We took pictures of the props so they were in the same place as the footage that was in focus from the first production day. 

I also did some more research on lighting and modified the mistakes we made the first day. 

Here are some pics:

Now, what we have left is the therapist conversation scene. We have the shooting day set for Saturday morning in the library. I will update when we finish! 

Group Meeting #2

 Today in class, we did our second group meeting. I presented my progress to my classmates, and this is the feedback they gave me.

So I told them about the production process and struggles with the lighting. One of my classmates told me I should try using a softer light, like a book light, so the white light doesn't look so bright. 

Apart from the lighting issues, they said the shots were nice, and they really liked the props and set design

For the CCR, I learned that we need to do 2 different productions, so I got some ideas from my peers, like an interview, a podcast, or an award show.

Here is a pic of the meeting:

Tunnels Production Part 2 (lighting issues...)

 Part 2 of the production of Day 1, it was... something. I knew lighting was going to be our biggest challenge, but I did not expect it to be this hard and frustrating.

Turns out to shoot inside and rely on one cheap white light and a not-so-cheap blue light its really hard to do as beginners. We tried our best to take advantage of the lights that were on in the room, but it was too difficult to find one that had a balance with the blue light. 

Every shot we did there seemed to have a shadow or a reflection of the lights. 

Here, you can clearly see that the white light is behind her, and it doesn't look natural

The blue shadow is very obvious and well, although you can't see it in the picture, the light moves with the camera because it's attached to it.

We tried without being attached, but this is how it turned out 

It's hard to spot with this picture, but in the footage is very clear that some shadows are still there 

Also, all the footage of the closeups of the objects is like this;

 (This was my bad for not checking the footage)

So this one actually turned out pretty good, again, I think what made it hard was filming at night with only two/ three light sources.

Overall, I think this day was a great way to start off. We also got so many ideas that were not planned, so looking forward, it looks like we have to reshoot some shots and learn more about how to use lighting.

Tunnels Production Part 1(set design)

Hello, blog! Today we started production of Tunnels!

My partner and I decided to shoot the bedroom scene on one day and the school scenes on another day. 

My partner and I arrived at the location, our main actress's house, at 5pm. 

We decided to start this late because the shots had to appear as if she were working all night.

First, we started to organize all of our set elements. Here are some pictures.

Then we asked our actress to find something to wear that I had in mind in my previous blogs.

She is wearing a black hoodie and some light blue and gray 

And this is how Ana's desk looks

Pic of me setting up the tripod

This is some of our equipment

This was the main idea I've had in my head for weeks!! 

In my next post, I'm going to dive in deeper about how we worked with the lighting.

Credits and Title Fonts

 Hello blog, to make my life easier in the post-production, we are going to decide what font we are going to use for the credits and title. I did my research on credit sequences a few weeks ago, but didn't talk much about the type of font we wanted use, so today is the day!

I browsed through some fonts in Adobe After Effects. Here are our choices for the title: (I just realized I spelled Tunnels wrong, I'm sorry Cambridge!) 

These are our top choices:

This one for the title

And this one for the credits

So I'm new to using After Effects, but I want to try to make something like a shadow that passes through the text title. I've been researching on YouTube to see if I can find a tutorial, but I haven't found what I'm looking for 

But on another note, we were thinking of making the text gray or beige, keeping a simple neutral color to match the vibe of the film.

Ok, so I did some research on TikTok, and I found the effect that I wanted!! 

Here is a sneak peek :)

Our production logo

It's production week! Today, we were working on creating our production company logo. We decided to keep it simple, using our initials as the main logo. Here are some of the options that we assembled. (ignore all the circle frames in the corners, we tried many options)

After some thought, we decided we wanted to add color to the logo, so here is the final product!

Sound Elements for Tunnels

 Hello blog, to wrap up this week I’m going to talk a little bit about sound. Sound is usually ignored by many but it truly makes a difference in a film. 

First we are going to talk about foley

In our first scene in Ana’s bedroom I was thinking we could add the sound of pencil writing, keyboards clicks, papers, basically all the diegetic sounds that you would hear in the environment. While the background music plays. 

I was also thinking when we switch scenes we could add a minimal sting or something that lingers and disappears the second the next scene starts. For example switching between the hallway and office scenes.

Now, one of the most important things is the music we choose for the begging of the opening. Me and my partner looked through copyright free songs but we couldn’t find one that fits right with the vibe of our opening, so we decided to look for underground artist, it was tough to find something that fits and to see if the artists was achievable to contact. 

After hours of looking through thousands of songs we narrowed it down to 3 songs from 3 different artists. We immediately contacted them and so far we got one response giving us permission!! 

These are the songs: (Source: Spotify)

“Jane” gives and empty vibe of Ana’s life and it’s a little upbeat compared to the other 2 but we could match the beats with the shots which could be cool.

“Nons” gives the perfect melancholic feeling we were looking for, we think it could be a great option because it can be a nice background song we can blend with the diegetic sounds. 

We love “stranger to you” because it connects to the story by symbolising that the “stranger” is the person Ana is becoming and how she is slowly losing herself and becoming the person her loved ones don’t recognise anymore because of how much she’s thrown away her social life. (This is the one we got approval by the way :) 

This is the email we got from Ebril

We still need to confirm with our teacher if we have official approval or if we need to do any other steps or paperwork to have full permission. Even with this, we are still looking for other copyright-free options in case anything goes wrong.

Update 2/18/26: WE GOT PERMISSION FROM ALL THREE ARTISTS!!!!

Mise-en-scene Lighting

 This is part 2 of mise-en-scene development. One of our biggest challenges with the production of this film opening is lighting. For the first scene, we are going to shoot in the afternoon/night, so it's going look something like this 

lightpoet. (n.d.). Portrait beautiful black girl uses computer [Stock photograph]. Shutterstock. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-beautiful-black-girl-uses-computer-1458803384

Since I wanted to incorporate color theory, this scene is where I could really play around with that, so using color lighting would help me achieve that. I did a quick test to see how the lighting would be positioned. I watched a couple of videos to get knowledge of how to use lighting techniques, especially indoors at night. 

Videos: 

Lighting continuity 

Color emotions 

The ultimate guide to lighting

 This is the light I bought

Here is how my test turned out:

Ignore how ridiculously I look, but I was holding the blue light on the side, and my phone resembled the computer light. On the day of the production, I'm going to have to see where I can position the lights, but this at least gives me an idea of what the shots are going to look like.

Mise-en-scene in the set

The production of Tunnels stars next week, so we have to think about costuming and set design. Here is the list of what we need:

• Medals

• University Flags

• Polaroid photos of Ana's childhood

• Computer

• Headphones

• Calc, APUSH homework

• Clothing for Ana (simple, neutral colors)

• Clothing for Mrs.Larsson 

• Sandwich

Most of the props are used in the first location: Ana's bedroom. Our main actress is providing the location and the medals, computer, flags, photos, and homework. I can provide the headphones, and my partner will take care of the sandwich. 

The only thing that we need to do is assemble the outfits. My partner is familiar with our actress, so she says her wardrobe is simple and has neutral colors. 

Here is what I picture for the school scenes:

Bebeneustadt. (n.d.). [Girl in blue sweater and jeans standing in a bedroom] [Photograph]. Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/26951297766364388/

random. (n.d.). [Girl in oversized blue sweatshirt and black pants taking a mirror selfie] [Photograph]. Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/117375134032676856/

Mrs. Larsson, the outfit has to look very mature because we still need to cast our actress. We have a few options, but they are all teenagers, and we are worried her character is not going to look older than Ana. So this is what I picture for Mrs. Larson's character. We were also thinking about giving her glasses. 

Brooks Brothers. (2026). Notch collar coat in water-repellent brushed-twill wool [Photograph]. https://www.brooksbrothers.com/notch-collar-coat-in-water-repellent-brushed-twill-wool/WW00355_____BRWN_14_______.html