AICE Media Studies

Hey everyone! Hope you’re all doing amazing. The Wix website is almost ready to go live, and I couldn’t be more excited! We spent the last few days polishing everything—checking every page, fixing broken links, and making sure the layout looks good on both desktop and mobile. The mobile version gave me some trouble ( again ), but I finally got everything to scale properly. One of my favorite new additions? A blog section! Yep, just like this one. We’ll be posting updates on the film’s progress, behind-the-scenes moments, and maybe even some funny outtakes. It’s a great way to keep everyone in the loop. I also added a password-protected page for the cast and crew. This way, we can upload scripts, schedules, and important notes without sharing them with the whole world. It’s a small touch, but super useful. Now, the final step: testing everything. We’re clicking through every single button, form, and link to make sure nothing’s broken. Once that’s done, we’re officially launching! I ca...

 Hey everyone! Hope you’re all having a great day. We’ve made solid progress on our Wix website, but today I hit a very frustrating roadblock—getting all the interactive elements to work properly. First up, the contact form. Wix makes it super easy to add one, but when I tested it, I never got the emails. Turns out, I had the wrong settings enabled ( oops ). Fixed that, and now we’re good to go. Next, the “Meet the Cast & Crew” page. I wanted each name to link to a mini bio pop-up, but Wix doesn’t have a built-in feature for that. After some trial and error, I figured out a workaround using lightboxes—basically, pop-up windows that open when you click a button. It took forever, but it finally works! The most exciting part? We added a submission form for actors who might want to audition for future projects. It’s simple—just a name, email, and a place to upload a short video—but it makes the site feel real. Like, people could actually engage with our film outside of just watc...

 Hey everyone! Hope you’re all doing well. We’re making steady progress on our Wix website, but today’s challenge? Nailing the vibe. Our film has a moody, cinematic feel, and I want the website to reflect that. Wix has a ton of color palettes, but none of them feel exactly right. So, I’m customizing the theme with deep blues, subtle gradients, and a touch of gold for contrast. Sounds fancy, right? Well, not when you spend an hour adjusting shades only to realize they clash with the background images. Speaking of backgrounds, I tried using a video loop for the homepage. It looked super cool… until I realized it slowed the site down a lot. Back to the drawing board. Instead, I switched to a high-res image with a subtle animation effect—much smoother and still cinematic. Font choices were another unexpected struggle. I wanted something bold and modern, but some of the fonts were way too hard to read. After testing a few, I landed on a clean, minimal sans-serif that keeps things sty...

 Hey everyone! Hope you’re all doing great. Filmmaking is always an adventure, and today I want to share a different kind of challenge—building a website for our teen film production! We decided to use Wix because it’s beginner-friendly, and honestly, I didn’t want to deal with coding from scratch. But even with drag-and-drop tools, getting everything to look professional is harder than I thought. The first step? Picking a template. I spent way too long scrolling through designs before finally settling on one that feels cinematic but still easy to navigate. The biggest challenge so far has been organizing the content. We want to showcase behind-the-scenes photos, cast and crew bios, and—of course—updates on the film’s progress. But figuring out how to structure all that without making the site overwhelming? Not as simple as I expected. I’ve been experimenting with Wix’s gallery features for our behind-the-scenes section, but some layouts crop our images in weird ways. Now, I’m man...

Hey y’all! I know I said I might have some stuff to say about filming in this blog, but my schedule hasn't fit in with the others'. Because we need to keep the ball rolling though, they just got it all done without me. So, while everyone’s been busy filming, I’ve been hard at work on something just as important—our film’s website! I know I've mentioned a little about what I've been doing for the site, but I wanted to go a bit more in depth about my creative process here. So, basically, I'll just be talking about my creative decisions and ideas with my little project.  I wanted the site to be more than just a place to dump updates. It’s going to be our central hub, where anyone interested in the project can find out everything they need to know. I’m talking story details, cast and crew info, and, eventually, the official trailer. The design has been my biggest focus. I want it to have a sleek, cinematic feel that matches the film’s tone—clean layouts, dark themes, an...

Hi everyone! If you don't remember my last coding blog, I'll give you a little refresher. Basically, I tried to build the website for our movie from scratch. Safe to say, it did NOT work. I wasted a bunch of time working through mistakes and errors and eventually got so frustrated that I gave up.  So, instead, I've decided to use an free online website maker.  I looked into a bunch of different options that I saw online. There are some free ones that are a little too limited, and some pretty nice ones that I would have to pay for. Unfortunatly, I don't really have the money to be able to pay for anything, so I stuck to a free one.   I'm working with Wix.com right now. It's pretty simple in design, so I've been able to figure it out for the most part. I've been experimenting with different templates and layouts to find the best way to showcase our work. The drag-and-drop features make it much easier than writing everything from scratch. I haven't star...

Hey everyone! Guess what? We finally started filming with Olivia, our female lead! After all the scheduling hiccups, it feels amazing to get the cameras rolling. Our first scenes with Olivia were the car ride sequences, which were super important for setting the film’s tone. Since we had already shot some background footage, we had to blend her performance into it seamlessly. She nailed it—bringing this quiet tension that made the whole scene feel alive. Filming in a moving car? Yeah, not exactly a walk in the park. We captured close-ups of Olivia staring out the window, letting her emotions speak without dialogue. Over-the-shoulder shots from the backseat helped show her perspective, making everything feel more intimate. Lighting was a huge challenge. Some shots ended up darker than expected, but we tweaked the camera settings and played with angles until we got it right. In post-production, we’ll enhance the lighting to bring out more details. After the car scenes, we tackled the roo...

  Hey everyone! Hope you’re all doing great. Filmmaking is always an adventure, and today I want to share some of the challenges we’ve been facing—especially with scheduling. We’ve made solid progress on our opening scene, but things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. Our biggest hurdle right now? Finding our female lead. We originally planned to film with an actress, but scheduling conflicts made that impossible, so we’ve had to adjust. Instead of waiting around, we decided to film background and transition shots first. The issue is that without our lead, some key scenes are on hold, which has slowed our momentum. On top of that, getting everyone’s schedules to line up has been tricky. With jobs, classes, and sports, it feels like every time we set a date, someone has a last-minute conflict. We’ve had to reschedule more times than I can count, and even when we do get together, unexpected things still come up. And then there’s the weather. We had planned an outdoor car scene, ...

Hi everyone! Another day back at it. Today, we're going to take a step back from the "movie making" of it all and dive into some side projects I've been working on! As I'm sure you know, part of our final task requirement is having a website for our production. Unfortunately, since I'm in AP Comp Sci, I've been put to the task of creating said website. From what you're about to hear in this blog though, you're going to agree with me that I should not have been the one in charge of this. Conner literally got a higher grade than me in Comp Sci! Anyways, let me walk you through my first attempt. So, to make sure I was doing it correctly, I spent hours watching videos on how to code a website from scratch. Then, I called my brother to ask him for his advice, since he does it professionally. He gave me a bunch of tips and easy starting points I can use to keep it simple but looking good.  Then, I started my code. I would write like a bunch of lines and ...

^ A silly little picture of Conner somehow watching the America's Cup!?! Hey ya'll! How's it going? I'm so excited to say that we've finally started filming for our movie! If you don't remember, I'll give you a little refresher on what it's about. Basically, our main character faces the loss of someone important to him, and tragedy follows.  We started with drone shots of a boat parade, then transitioned to a car ride with our female lead. We chose to use a drone to shoot the parade because Conner had one he needed to make use of. I think the clip looked pretty cool!  This is where we got into a sticky situation. We haven't technically figured out who's going to play the female lead, since we've run into a few scheduling conflicts, which is why we started with the scenes that don't include people. Obviously, we started with the drone shots. We had some debates on our filming locations. I wanted to go to Dania Pier, but we ended up comprom...