Final Thoughts

This class has effected my ideas about being a filmmaker in a number of ways. First of all, this is the first film production class I've taken and pretty much my first experience actually putting together and collaborating with others on films. Before starting this class, I had such little knowledge about things like coverage and lighting, and now I know how extremely important elements like that are. Also, since I never had much experience I wasn't sure what kind of films I would like to make (except documentaries.) Now I know that I have an affinity towards not only documentary, but experimental film as well. I also learned to love working with sound and realized just how important it is. I learned that I still am not really into making narrative films, except maybe writing the screenplays. Overall, I feel as if I ended this class with enough basic knowledge to begin working on projects outside of school. I was doubtful about becoming a filmmaker but now I am a little more confident in myself and my creative abilities.

Wild Card Crew Position

I was assigned director for the wild card project. At first, I was pretty overwhelmed because this project allows for more creativity - which is great - but I knew it would be hard to come up with a final idea. We ended up deciding to do an experimental narrative, and I'm pretty excited to make it happen. After the last project, I realized that I really like making experimental films so I'm super excited about that aspect of our project. I don't have much experience for narrative, but I'm glad I get to get more practice by working on a narrative project as well. I think I have a solid vision for the film and our group is cooperating really well; we seem to have the same or complementary ideas.
I'm especially excited about the dream sequence/alternate reality shots in our film. We're thinking of using filters and maybe some slow-motion shots to get the dreamy, otherworldly feeling. Overall, I'm very excited about this project and finally being director, I'm determined to make it my best one yet.

Wild Card

Our previsualization materials:

Unrevised Storyboard:

Marked Script:

Shot List:

Overheads:

Budget: 

Forms:

Editing 3B

I enjoyed editing 3b much more than I thought I would. I didn't really have much experience using Premiere or working with sound, but once I tried it I got the hang of it and it was actually really fun. The only problem we ran into is, when Troy was editing, Premiere unexpectedly closed twice, causing our project to be lost. In the future, we can avoid this by utilizing the auto save feature.
I found it really fun to listen to the sounds and put random ones together, layer them, speed them up, etc. I think manipulating sound made the visuals so interesting, especially making some sounds sound like something completely different. Since we did two soundscapes, it was a little tricky making the audio coordinate with both, but I ended up loving both of our parts. We put a lot of time into editing and overall, I'm extremely happy with the outcome. This was probably my favorite project thus far, which is funny because I thought it would be my least favorite. After editing, I feel more comfortable using Premiere and I even feel inspired to do more experimental and sound work.

Recording Sound

My group met Monday and Wednesday to record some sounds and overall it went well. It was really fun recording and trying to make sounds interesting; I think the dialogue clips ended up being rather funny and I'm excited to see how they're used. It was awesome to use such seemingly insignificant, everyday objects and then hear the sounds that came from them. I feel like sound is something very easily disregarded and this project helped me notice the sounds around me and what it adds to life in general. My favorite clip is probably the sound of a rubber band being flicked, it makes kind of an interesting beat and sounds really cool on the h4n. I also thought it was cool how some sounds that were made with objects mimicked the sounds of things like someone's footsteps, grinding metal, etc. I think a lot of the sounds can be interpreted by the listener and I'm interested in hearing how people use them.

Master Shot Editing

My group got together and edited the rough cut of our project on Wednesday. Most of the shots came out nice, but some cuts were a little jarring so we are trying to make the transitions smoother. Some of our shots didn't really work out, such as our close up of the phone. Unfortunately, we found out the camera and the H4N didn't stop recording at the same time, therefore the sound will be pretty hard for our sound editor, Adam, to sync up. We had to switch up a few shots because they didn't sequence very well, but we followed our storyboard for the most part. I think the lighting looks awesome and our project won't need much editing in that aspect. I also think we're adding some extra sounds to provide some background noise fitting a speed dating event.

Overall, the editing process went smoothly and even though we had a few minor setbacks, I believe the final product will be a success.

Pre-Visualization

Our group got our pre-visualization materials together last Monday and I think we have a pretty great plan. We made a final decision on the subject, which will be speed dating, and came up with interesting ideas for shots. We all threw in ideas about camera movement and which character would say what lines. I was assigned the role of Director of Photography and I drew the storyboard. Luqi, the producer, made the budget; Jacob, the director, made the shot list, and Adam, the sound editor made the overheads and helped us out by throwing in some ideas about equipment to use.
I find the pre-visualization materials very helpful. I feel like the project is much more organized and the shot list and storyboard really help me get an image of what the final product should look like. The most difficult part to me was drawing the storyboard, but I was probably just putting too much thought into it. I had never put together a storyboard before but my group was very helpful and I definitely find it a useful part of pre-production planning. Now that we have a detailed plan, I'm ready to start shooting and see how the project will turn out.