Reflecting on my film

At the beginning of this course, I was excited to learn about different films, genres, directors, and styles. However, what I was most excited about was the final project; being able to make a film from scratch. I had made a few films in the past, but when I made those films I didn’t have the knowledge that I gained from taking this class. My group was equally eager to make a good film. With this eagerness, however, came many ideas. Normally so many ideas would be helpful to the creative process, but everyone had equal faith in their ideas that they each wanted to make them work. One good thing was that we all had similar aspirations in mind, but we didn’t quite know how to accommodate everyone’s ideas. Some of us wanted to make a serious film, to leave our usual style and show the class that we were capable of tackling a serious topic. Others wanted to play it safe and make a comedy. We decided on a serious, more dramatic film, but early into pre-production we realized that no matter how hard we tried, no matter how serious the topic was that we were filming, we wouldn’t be taken seriously. So, we quickly decided to work with our strengths – improvisation and comedy. Not being too original, Ben B. came up with the idea of a High School news team and everyone else quickly jumped on that bandwagon. I was skeptical at first because it seemed like we weren’t trying hard to come up with our own ideas. I didn’t like, at first, that we were content with working off of an already made story. Despite my skepticism, we were ready to start the production phase of filming. I was made director of the project, which I was very pleased with. I’ve noticed over the years that I always need to be the guy in the group who everyone bounces ideas off of, the guy who is in charge, more or less. Of course I willingly take ideas from other people, but I like to be the one that people can count on. This is why the director role was good for me. Anyway, being a new director, I decided that we should just start filming and see what would happen. We were so bent on getting a reaction from Mr. Reader on film and in our movie that we cared about little else. Because of this, the first few days were very slow. It took a day or two of everyone thinking about the project and deciding to want to work hard for the process to get under way. We didn’t write a script, we didn’t make storyboards, and we didn’t really do any preparation before filming. All of the actors (which happened to be everyone in our group including the editor, Josh, and me, the director) were given a brief explanation of what each scene would be about and the key things they needed to address in their lines. Other than that, the whole script was off-the-cuff and improvised. Because of this we had a lot of extra footage, due to so many takes. But, that extra footage would prove to be invaluable later on in the editing process. After we had captured a majority of the film, we reviewed it and decided we needed one main story that would carry the plot. I delegated Ben W. and Brandon to write the main ideas of that story and truly prepare it for filming. They came up with the idea of an in-school cheating scandal that was deeply hurting the reputation of the school. It worked perfectly for a film about a fake news team. Now, we had all of the raw footage, but our film would have been nothing if it hadn’t been for Josh, his editing, and his computer with Final Cut Pro on it. He took about an hour’s worth of mindless footage and morphed it into a film with a plot and direction. I would say Josh is our MVP because of what he did for our film. His knowledge of film and especially editing gave our film structure and meaning. That takes me to the strengths and weaknesses of our film. The strength lies in the cinematography. The camera work and editing combined to make this film what it is. A great example of this is my favorite scene, which happens to be the one that I star in, the Jesus scene. It was shot on a slow production day. Because of the fact that my camera was low on batteries we had to film this scene indoors. So, we chose to use the auditorium. On a whim of creativity, I noticed how the light came in through the auditorium doors and realized it was perfect for Jesus’ entrance. The light created a silhouette of my body and portrayed the holiness of the scene. We then gave the footage to Josh and when he put that great music clip in, the scene became solid gold. This was my favorite scene because it had to incorporate many aspects to make it great. The only weakness of our film was the drive of our group. Some days we had so much energy, but other days we just didn’t want to work. The sad part about this was that it showed up on film, in some places, but only we who were working on the film could see that. One example of this was the scene of the secret informer of the cheating scandal. Ben was interviewing me, but we were both tired and just wanted to take a break for the day. However, we needed to get this scene filmed, so we trekked on. The questions he asked were alright, but my answers didn’t do much for the scene. Thankfully we shot enough footage that Josh had a few clips to work with. The good editing disguised our laziness on that day of shooting. I am proud of the way this film turned out and I enjoy the fact that everyone participated to make this film great. I loved this project because it was a great learning experience. I learned what to do and what not to do when making a film and when working in a group. I learned about the limitations of my ability and the equipment. I learned how to turn bad footage into a good scene. And, I learned what music can do to make a scene that much more compelling. I also learned a lot about what it takes to make a film, from the filming to the editing. This project showed me that I enjoy being creative in this way and truly enjoy making films. Who knows, maybe I’ll be doing this in twenty years. Thank you, Mr. D, for this class and for this opportunity,