A1 – A4
- One of the most challenging aspects of this projects was the small time constraint. As you can see in my writing 4, my vision changed drastically from what I wanted. The time constraint forced me to reevaluate and eliminate some parts from the story, and even completely re haul it so constrict the longer story I had in mind at the start.
- I think the most enjoyable part was actually what I said above. Although challenging, cutting the story down to the bare minimum parts necessary was interesting, as there’s so much fat to cut off of an idea once you start looking for expendable areas. You never really think about how much of the ideas that one has, although good they may be, just don’t really matter to the plot.
- I was most proud of creating a cohesive, entertaining story. I hate watching stuff that feels like a waste of time and wanted it to be funny and entertaining to watch, so I screened it to a couple of my friends including the other actor, Casey, to see what their reactions were. They all enjoyed it and gave me constructive criticism that I used. Short films are very important in the era of YouTube videos, and some of my favorite and most memorable moments with friends when I was younger was watching and making funny sketch videos. I think if I showed 12 year old me this project, he would probably think its pretty funny, and that’s a success in my book.
- I learned that I am not very comfortable at acting yet. I barely acted/was on camera in most of the previous projects, and mostly either recorded audio, shot video, or edited. I think I did a decent job though for my first time, and I think the practice of acting is something very interesting that I never really thought about before. Considering the way your face and body move and the ways we make our eyes convey emotion didn’t really have much effect on this project, but it something that up until now I didn’t pay much mind to.
Video Analysis
When I was thinking of ideas for this short film, I thought about what props to use. I remembered that I had an old Halloween costume in my closet and then tried to build my short movie around that object. For this project, I used my Go Pro Hero 5 to film the video/audio. The Field of view is pretty wide, which made it a little harder to do close up shots. Apart from a lack of those, I think the composition is alright for what I had. There could’ve been more use of angles, and since it was only me and my friend filming, it was kind of hard to dictate how I wanted him to hold the camera when he shot me. The Go Pro has a decent resolution, but like the FOV, could be better. I wasn’t able to make it over to campus to rent equipment during the couple days of filming availability, but I still think it looks good. I didn’t notice any shots out of focus, which actually is a benefit of using the Go Pro, which is made for shots of varying focus such as snowboarding down large mountain landscapes. The music is The Outfield’s – “Your Love”. Me and Casey chose this song because it made the video feel like a montage of two friends having a good time. I understand copyright rules and know that the song is copyrighted, but since the YouTube video is unable to be found without the link, the video is not for any profit, and the song was too perfect to not use, I had to put it in. The audio was also recorded via the Go Pro. The microphone on it isn’t anything crazy, but it was able to record us pretty well. The only problem came when the windy weather that day made a couple parts of the track have a sudden audio peak. Luckily I was able to edit the audio and make most of it sound fine, but there is a couple parts that were tough to fix, such as it being hard to understand what Casey is saying at the beginning of his sentence at 0:22, (“dude a ‘furter and a beer?, hell yeah bro”) The audio issues did allow me to get a lot of experience in audio restoration, such as using external programs from premiere like audacity. The dialogue moves the story forward, and is usually just talking back and forth. I think the editing is paced pretty well, and I tried to use the editing the assist the story if need be. For example, some of the people who I screened the video to said it was hard to see what I was wearing after I jumped over the car, so I slowed it down so the hot dog suit was more recognizable. However, I wished I could’ve changed a couple things, such as making it more clear that the disappearing sunglasses at 0:35 was joke, and not a technical oversight. Maybe adding a sound effect could’ve solved this, which I wish I would’ve thought about before turning it in already! One other small continuity error was at the part where I slide over the cars hood from the passenger side, despite being at the drivers wheel in the previous shot. I think the slow pacing of the edits builds up for the car accident scene, which is probably the most jarring moment. Apart from a couple of the small blunders mentioned above, I am really happy with how this project turned out. If I planned out my filming schedule a little bit better, I would’ve got a better camera and/or a LAV mic which would’ve solved the wind issues. These gear additions also would require another person to help, and I regret not getting an actor to replace me or asking a fellow student or friend to help with audio capture while handled the camera. This project made me appreciate the groups we had on previous ones, and helped me learn more about what I need to work on as a filmmaker.
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