Tressa McIff Blogs

For this project, my group chose to replicate the Napoleon Dynamite  trailer. This was a fairly simple trailer, but it still incorporated a lot of key elements of filmmaking. The lighting was pretty easy, but I struggled a lot with audio. We didn't get audio in one scene, so we had to do voiceovers for the audio that we missed. Most of the angles used were easy, so we were able to get most of them shot correctly. The whole process started with selecting the trailer that we were going to recreate, then creating a storyboard and script. We also had to create a production schedule and find actors. Most of this pre-production process went smoothly, until it came to finding a main actor. We originally had one actor, but another group was using him for their video, so we had to find someone different. We then found another actor and filmed about half of the scenes with him. However, he got grounded and was not allowed to finish filming with us. At this point, we were very close to the...

Videos I watched a few videos to start learning about typography. Although they weren't always the most exciting, I did learn a lot that I didn't even realize I needed to know. I learned about how critical fonts can be in getting a message across and how they are often the first impression that a consumer gets of a product. I then started to learn a lot about the technical side of typography. I learned that bracketed serifs are curved whereas unbracketed serifs are sharper. I learned what type families are and how you can properly use them to their full potential. I learned that kerning is the adjustment of space between two letters, and tracking is the overall amount of space applied within a body of text. I also learned that leading is the space between lines of text and that it is typically two points greater than the font size. Finally, I learned about expressive typography and how you can really use typography as its own art form. The biggest thing I took a...