MP 2 In Review

Intention Definition & Exploration of Ideas: 

At the beginning of the semester, I needed to decide what concept of art that I was going to focus on for the year. I had plenty to choose from, but I decided to make films about the internal feelings and struggles that are shared silently between everyone. After making that decision, I then chose to make a story about loss:

https://ct.counseling.org/2015/03/a-visual-picture-of-the-human-psyche/

"As I did last year, I would like the concept that I focus on for this year to be that of looking inwards into the human experience. Most of all in stories, I like how the sharing of life and hard to explain feelings and experiences are covered in films. As a viewer of films -both movies and shows- I gain experience and ideas of what life is like for others when I watch films that cover internal problems that are overcame or succumbed to. Watching the lives of characters in films is comparable to watching the lives of my friends when they have problems or something happening in their lives; both situations give me knowledge of what it means to live and how I can live with knowledge of how others live in both real life and in fiction. The lives of real people and the lives of characters are tantamount in my eyes when considering the worth of the life lessons or basic improvements in understanding that can be derived from witnessing them. So, as a creator of such media, I want to share life experiences that others can derive meaning or second-hand experience from as well. I want to make stories that not only entertain viewers and have them give emotional responses to my work, but also gives them something meaningful -no matter how small- that they can take with them outside of the story I make. Similar to what I want to make, my inspiration for how I want to make my own films is to strive for both entertainment and well thought out messages and themes that give people new perspectives the lives we live. A great example of this for me is the extremely long animated series Naruto. While it serves mainly as an action show, where characters use whatever special powers they have to fight each other in a world of ninjas, there is more than just action that takes place in the show. There are underlying themes about various ideas, ways of life, and philosophies that are explored in both smaller seasons and throughout the entire length of the series. Other examples of shows or movies that I've watched that have both directly stated and underlying themes about internal problems that we deal with along with how to overcome them include Avatar: The Last Airbender, One Piece and Star Wars the Original Trilogy.

https://www.creditonebank.com/articles/how-a-loved-ones-death-could-impact-you-financially

The first project I want to do this year is a look at how a character deals with loss of a close friend. The way that this connects to the theme is that mutual feeling of loss that everyone experiences at some point in their lives. Through the internal pain of a fictional person, viewers would ideally feel similar emotions. However, I would like the story to not just be loss, but rather be about loss instead. With that kind of story, depth is added. I want to write stories with depth, and stories that deal with the sometimes indescribable internal changes we deal with that focus on the human experience will be what I want to do projects on for now. The story will include the entertainment and sadness of watching a light hearted friendship develop and subsequently be taken away, but will also feature something more to be taken away as well. I want to attempt to discuss briefly how one would deal with grief in general, and that will be accomplished by means of the character overcoming their grief from the loss of a dear friend."

Planning: 

Planning for my film was a lot of scripting and storyboarding, however the main difficulty was considering what I wanted to do with my film in the first place. I went on for a while, trying to figure out what I wanted to create a story about, until I decided that I wanted to focus on the idea of loss and how one deals with it. I came up with an idea for a character that would start alone, meet someone who raises him up and teaches him what he needs to know, but then loses that same person later on. The character would need to then deal with that loss by implementing what he had learned from that friend, and goes onto cope with the loss by being for a new person what his friend was for him.

I then went on with my script to really flesh out what was going to happen.

And then I visualized my script into drawings to storyboard what I wanted to film and how.

Producing:

I recorded my audio

I recorded my footage at the same time

I edited it all together, and ended up with this as my final product

Evaluation

In terms of a Self-Reflection on what I've made, I'd say I'm not as satisfied as I had hoped to be when all was said and done. I think it's hard to say if the final product is good or not because a lot didn't go how I originally planned and as the creator of the film who spent over 20-30 hours total making it, I've spent a lot of time focusing on the imperfections of my film rather than what makes it good - there is bias in my opinions here then. I think what I really don't like about my film goes a lot about how I planned and executed it. That isn't to say that it was horribly planned and horribly executed, but just rather that I could have and should have done better. This was my first time picking back up a DSLR camera after about 9 months, my first time using audio equipment, and my first time writing a full on story that required planning around the schedules of multiple people. Because of that, there were some difficulties. I should have better formatted my storyboard because I ended up being inefficient with how long it took to set up scenes, I should have had scripts printed out for the actors to follow so that transitioning between shots would have been easier, and I should have planned an extra day to film for retakes. Along with that, the video quality in some shots were bad and it was too late by the time I noticed it. Not to mention, when I ended up filming a scene outside during a weekend when we had limited time to film, the batteries to both my zoom recorder and my camera both died and broke, so I had to end up holding my phone awkwardly for side angles (that the phone automatically color corrected poor during the recording multiple times) and use another phone for audio. I did however learn a lot from my experience filming this. I know now to plan better ahead of time on all accounts, how to set up quicker, and general experience using film equipment again. I think the majority of what I learned in this film was editing experience. I learned several techniques that I did not previously know to get certain shots the way I wanted them with moving assets that cut off or that stay bound to certain areas, etc. etc. As I rewatch the film I can see the difference in quality of what I edited when I started the post-production process versus later on in my process.

For my Self-Critique, here is a list of things I would like to mention about what I think I did good and bad:

• I think starting with an opener that introduces that topic is good, the music is good with it, and the transition is alright into the actual story

• The lighting for the first couple shots is poor

• I like the cut to black and audio with Ward talking for the first time

• The first shot Ward is actually in feels kind of weird and poorly paced

• I think a lot of the first scene before the montage is poorly paced

• Ward's transition from drawing to person feels too fast and once again poorly paced

• Dolly can be heard in the dolly shot

• All of the drawings are pretty good (though I didn't make them)

• Some drawings are very well edited in and cropped and others aren't and sometimes don't even attach correctly to the sticky note paper behind it

• Unfocused in one of the shots in the classroom during the montage

• I think the transition into the house and cut to black after seeing Nick is probably the best sequence in the film

• Shaky camera during the car scene (which is because I had to hold the camera as a phone with my arm extended from behind the seat because the camera was broken and we didn't have time to do it a different time)

• I think that the monologue from Ward is well spoken, but kind of comes out of nowhere

• The car coming in as a non-descript object kind of looks silly, and the car crash happening itself can be seen as kind of stupid too

• I don't know if I went too far with the blue color tint during the sad montage

• The foot of the drawing in the first part of the sad montage is poorly cropped

• The music in the sad montage is a good part of the atmosphere

• The transition from black to Thomas with the piano is good

• Camera movement from Thomas talking to the student for the first time is good

• Audio quality is pretty good throughout I think (except for maybe Ward's in the first scene)

• The last shot with Thomas learning to be happy again is too quickly brought on along with credits that end too quickly I think (both had to be edited that way because the final shot was recorded with too quick a zoom out and the song ends too quickly as well for longer credits)

I also have a few comments from peer-reviews, here is what was mentioned from those:

• The transitions between scenes were good

• Color grading was interesting

• The shot where the car pulled up to a stop was well done

• The way I had the car that crashed into the characters being an abstract object was interesting

• Mixed opinions on how the window pane cutting off characters makes it so we can't see as much but also that could be a good thing so that the characters aren't too well known

• The addition of animation in the film was cool

Integrating: 

As I said previously, I think my biggest shortcoming throughout all of my process was a lack of specific planning of what to do when and how. My storyboard and script were made, but I didn't think about how long certain shots would take or how they would actually be able to be done. Inexperience was the main problem with this lack of foreknowledge. My understanding of how long things would take, my ability to think about how I would shoot things, noticing smaller details that could lead to bigger problems -there were all these things that aren't huge problems on their own but become overwhelming when combined into a mess of problems. In the future, I'll know better what to spend more time planning ahead, and I'll be able to look out better for problems that I wouldn't have given caution previously. Also, I learned various editing techniques while making this. I learned how to use After Effects. how to get rid of grain in videos, and what was very useful was learning how to use the Nest function on Premiere Pro. All these little things that I've learned all will help contribute to an optimization of how I work in the future.