The Final Blog (Blog #12)

I think it’s safe to say that I never want to make another documentary after this class. I feel very comfortable with making narrative films. I know quite a few students in my Intro to Film Production class are interested in going into the documentary field. They can go do that, but I’m going to stay in my own field. Sure, documentaries are very interesting to watch, but now that I’ve had experience making one, I feel more comfortable with narrative films.

What did I learn about myself as a filmmaker? I had a good idea before I took this class, but this class just made me realized that my original assumption of myself was right. I thought that I was a little controlling, but open for collaboration if the idea wasn’t bad. I knew I wanted to be a director and a cinematographer before this class. After taking this class, I am really excited about becoming a cinematographer, but I could use a little more experience as a director before I direct a feature film of any kind. Cinematography seems to come natural to me. I like working with cameras and making things look good. Directing is a whole other story. It takes a lot to become a director. I’m positive that I am doing fine a director, but I feel like there’s a lot that I’m forgetting to do as the head honcho on set.

What did I learn about filmmaking in general? Making a film is HARD. Of course, I wouldn’t need to take this class to find that out. I had never made a documentary or an experimental film before this class. It was interesting to learn what it took to make those kinds of films. When making the documentary, I was concerned about editing it. I asked myself “How do I edit this to get the point across?” and eventually I just pushed through it and it ended up doing fairly well. The experimental project, I didn’t know what direction to take this, and I just randomly placed clips onto the timeline in Adobe Premiere. I finally knew what to do when I saw the rough-cut play through. So to sum it up, I learned that almost every film you work on will have its problems that will make you ask yourself “What am I going to do? And how am I going to do it?” Eventually you’ll have those projects that are so controlled that your work is cut out for you.

Visions Film Festival - Film Blocks 1 & 2

In the first film block, the short film Caught was undoubtedly my favorite from that block. The film was really relatable for anyone who had their toys taken away from them during elementary school. I remember getting Pokémon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, footballs, and other things taken away from me by teachers, during recess. Caught was pretty accurate when it came to visually displaying my plot to get back what the teachers took from me. However, I was always a good kid and never went through with it, and the teachers always gave back playing cards at the end of the day. But still, I thought about it, and I’m sure everyone else thought about ways to get their playing cards back. 

In the second block, I was a big fan of the film Straight Down Low. It had to be my favorite that was played at Visions this year. It had that cop-drama vibe to it that I really dug since I'm into that genre. It was like the main character was portraying a Sherlock Holmes-ish kind of character. 

The film definitely went in places that I wasn't expecting. I think, as a movie-goer, that makes the whole film ten times better when then film finds a way to carry the viewer into places they wouldn't expect. I knew the main character was going to get to the bottom of the situation before the cops did, but every time I thought he would go one way, he went the other. I'm not sure about everybody else, but I liked the plot twist where it was just a suicide covered up as a gang killing. Plot twists are always favored, at least in my opinion. Most would disagree with me because plot twists aren't done right most of the time, or because it's hard to get a clever and/or mind-blowing twist. Most films can't reproduce a plot twist as good as The Empire Strikes Back or Memento. But Straight Down Low definitely excelled.

The cinematography of SDL was definitely my style as well. As an aspiring cinematographer, I want to establish my style early so I can excel at making it look good on the big screen. I'm a big fan of punchy coloring and contrast. Just watch Taxi Driver and you'll know what I mean, that film is the epitome of my style of cinematography. The camera movements weren't too special, at least I don't remember them to be, but the performances on screen kept me involved. Overall, the look of the film was great for their specific film style they were going for.

Wild Card, the light at the end of the tunnel is visible (Blog #11)

The final project of Intro to Film Production. I kind of wished I had a director or, preferably, a DP position. But no, I'm the producer on this one. Which is not a bad thing. Producers have a lot of input into the making the film. And I think I can offer my help to my fellow crew members in their general areas.

I hope to do some screenwriting for this project. I know the director will have the final say on what the 5-minute film will be about. But I at least want to help solidify the script and make it good. My group has already begun working on the next drafts of the script. Our director, Anthony, wrote the base script, and I went through it with a fine-tooth comb and fixed the grammatical errors, and then went and fixed/added dialogue and actions that would be beneficial to the script. The film will be a mockumentary/comedy of making a student film. What's great about this is that our group will be inserting a lot of our own stories that we had while making films for our Intro to Film Production class.

I've never been a producer by myself, but when it comes to film, I'm always willing to try new things. I hope to accomplish getting everything that my group needs to make this project, gets us the perfect location to shoot, and make sure everything is in place from start to the finish of this project. I hope to be the best producer I could possibly be. I like treating every film related project seriously. I think it will improve the turn out of the film.

Editing an Experimental (Blog #10)

"I'm beginning to get a little embarrassed by all this because other people are starting to come in"

That was the sentence, out of a book, that my group had to center our final experimental soundscape around. My first initial thought was "How the hell are we going to do this?"I had no experience making experimental films, and I had never made a soundscape before. The only thing I knew about experimental was that there should be no logical connection between each shot, in other words, it should make no sense. That was kind of a saving grace for novice experimental filmmakers. 

I laid down the base soundscape on my computer with some ambient noises and figured that my group and myself will build from that. We went to the editing lab and we went through the footage that we had acquired. I wanted a slow start to the film, then pick up the pace all of the sudden. By this, we had longer shots in the first half of the film, then had a rapid-fire sequence of images. The concept behind the visual portion of this project is to "paint with light" along with "paint with sound." I felt all of the shots had very different lighting and that we would be essentially creating rapid lighting changes throughout the two-minute film. Mike had this technique of taking one of the clips and randomly cutting it into pieces and dropping them into the two-minute work area in Adobe Premiere. That worked out well for the rapid fire sequence.

I came into the project thinking "How the hell are we going to do this?", then while going through the sound files I thought "I kind of know what to do, but still, how the hell are we going to do this?" It wasn't until we sat back and watched the rough cut of the film from beginning to end, then I thought "Now we have something, and I'm liking it." I just wanted to do more and add more images to make the flow of them seem more and more random. 

The final product had a soundscape made mostly of ambient tracks. There were a few sound effects, but there were no voice-based sounds in our final soundscape project.

Sound Recording (Blog #9)

The overall experience of recording sound was interesting. Since we weren't getting very specific sounds, us students had the creative freedom to record whatever we wanted to. I know the official assignment guidelines said for the groups to record sound together as a group, but my group was a bit tricky this time around. First, our DP had dropped the class, so our group was narrowed down to just Chic, Michael, and myself. Which wasn't overly a problem, since a DP wouldn't exactly be doing the normal job of a DP.

As director, I wasn't exactly sure how to approach this project. I thought that we should all assist with the sound recording, as in, each group member getting their own time with the H4n and record sounds. I figured with all of us putting in input, we would be getting plenty of sounds to choose from. And luckily, we didn't break the 30 minute limit, but the combination of 25 sound effects, 10 voice-based, and 5 ambient sounds didn't quite meet the 10-minute mark.  First, Mike and I went to Sharky's Game Room in the Fischer Union and recorded some sounds of billiards. The next day, Chic took the sound recorder and got some noises from his work place, a copy shop. Then Mike took the H4n and recorded a few voice-based sound effects. And finally, I had the H4n last and recorded some sound effects and voice based ones.

But I feel our groups sound library was very diverse. We didn't have 25 sound effects from one general place. And after listening to the other sound libraries, I felt, for the most part, every group did that. But some had a majority of similar sounds.

Editing the Master Shot Sequence (Blog #8)

On the previous Sunday, my group and I filmed for our current Master Shot narrative project. The next step in the project is to edit everything together. While I, the sound editor, am syncing up all the audio, the director and DP made a rough cut to see the sequence play out. While we did match our storyboards, perfectly, the sequence played out oddly. After swapping out a few shots, the video started fitting together. 

We decided that the final cut of our project will not need any color correction done. Not even saturating the colors to make the image 'pop'. During the filming, we got the lighting just right and the raw image looks good as is. 

For sound, right now I just have to finish syncing the audio. Then my group and I will be getting some extra noises. Mostly ADR of people talking to make the environment of the scene seem like a restaurant. Then some foley sound effects to add in later. Finally, Jacob, the director, found a great soundtrack to play over the sequence. 

The editing process has gone smoothly, so far. Aside from a few shots that are a little out of focus, everything else is fitting together nicely.

Pre-visualization (Blog #7)

So on Monday, my group and I got together to decide on an idea for our master shot sequence. After that, we knocked out all of the previsualization. Since I'm doing sound for the project, there's not much I could do to pre-visualize for it. So I offered my help to the Director and the Director of Photography. Megan, our DP, drew up the storyboards. Jacob, the director, was making the shotlist. Luqi, the producer, made the budget. And I, the sound guy, offered my help to them since most of my job takes place during filming and in post production. I've gone through the process of making shotlists, storyboards, and overheads many times in recent months. So Jacob asked if I could make the overheads from the storyboards, which I did. So now that we have all of the previsualization done, we just have to find a suitable location, shoot, then edit.

I think the previsualization materials (shotlist, storyboards, overheads, and budget) are very helpful in the pre-production stage of filmmaking. Even for something short, like our project, it will help out in a huge way. Now we will film our project with a plan, and we're not just improvising shots on set. Everyone will be on the same page. I've been in quite a few productions (like I mentioned earlier), and having a very detailed plan before shooting is definitely the way to go. I don't even think just a shotlist is enough, at least overheads or storyboard sketches should accompany the shotlist. I've had many past experiences where he camera crew spent too much time trying to figure out where to set up  each shot. But that's just my personal opinion.