Creative Critical Reflection

Here is my creative critical reflection, which I created using Voicethread.

RUN

Ah it's finally done! I'm so incredibly happy with how everything turned out. I'm really proud of myself and my actress, Natalie, for creating this. I finally decided on a name, the name of my short film from last year, RUN.

Thank you to everyone that supported me in making this project. Thank you to my teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, for teaching me about film and the media world. I've learned so much, and I've grown as a person and creator. I'm so thankful for this opportunity.




Without further ado, this is RUN.

Things Are Coming to a Close

Aw my last vlog, so sad!

Finalized Script

Since I've been editing a bit this week, I have to get my voice over ready. As I mentioned a little while back, I'm going to do the voice over myself rather than having Natalie do it. I wrote the script, so I know what I want it to sound like. Also, I can time it with the editing and music. When I record voice overs I never record it from the speaker on the computer because the quality is really low and it doesn't pick up all of the noise detail.   

I previously attached a rough draft of the script. Since then I've made some changes, and added on. I'll go through what I have now, and how I plan on pairing it with the visuals.

 

It keeps happening. 
The voice over will come in while the screen is still black, after the opening credits. It will be overlaid with the heavy breathing and footstep audio. After this, the first visual will appear, and the music will start softly then rise.

They keep popping into my mind. Little memories. 

When "little memories" is said, that is when the first inserts will appear. The information from the voice over, and the mise-en-scene elements (colors and shot perspective) will help to get across the idea that the inserts are memories. 

They’re kind of like fireworks; there’s a spark and all of this stuff is happening, then it’s gone. 

More inserts will occur, and you can start to see the distress in the main character. Maybe if it flows, I'll add a faint sound effect of fireworks popping, to complete the comparison. 

It’s hard to remember what they mean or what’s happening in them. But I don’t think that I want to remember.

The inserts keep getting faster and the main character is getting more and more frustrated. At this point, the editing starts will start to come at a faster pace.
 
Sometimes so many of them come rushing in all at once, there’s so many things happening, it hurts. It’s so overwhelming, I feel like I’m going to explode. 
Now it will be obvious the editing is faster that before, with really quick little shots and maybe some jump cuts, that will be synced with the music. The frequency of the inserts will be at its peak.

There’s only one escape... 
This is when I want to have the close up rotation around the main character, into the shot of her about to scream, but then cuts to black.

...to run. 
There will be no more visuals, just the black screen. As I "run" I want the title to appear. I'm not sure if I want it to fade in, or to abruptly cut in. 



I'll probably record the voice over tonight so I can have it done and ready for whenever I need it in the editing process. 

Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy!

So this is the last week to work on the project and the stress is starting to set in. I planned on filming the rest of my inserts tonight with Natalie but unfortunately she woke up sick, and unable to film. She said she thought she would be okay to film by tomorrow, but we both have a big history test the next day so we'll have to get together to film and study. But in reality, we won't be able to balance both and one grade will take a major hit.

 I figured that I would still be fine because I would finish filming this week and edit throughout, then complete the creative critical reflection on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. What I forgot to account for was the Relay for Life. It's a big fundraising walk at school run by the American Cancer Society, and teams keeping walking all night and doing fun activities. I'm participating this year;  I was looking forward to it but I didn't even realize that it's the day before the project is due. This means I need to be VERY productive on Friday and Saturday afternoon so I don't have a bunch of stuff left for Sunday. I was hoping to only have a couple small things to do on Sunday so I could just submit it and not be stressed, but we all know that sounds too good to be true.

The computer that I always edit on, my trusty sidekick, has not been so trusty lately. She's (I do in fact personify my computer throughout this paragraph, that was not done on accident) pretty old, maybe six or seven years, and her storage is running out, making the whole thing really slow and she's been freezing a lot. I already uploaded all of the footage to the computer and had everything all ready on iMovie so I can go home after school and edit like crazy, which won't be the case. She does still work but sometimes when I'm in the middle of editing she'll freeze then I have to restart her (usually more than one or two times) making the whole editing process much more time consuming and dreadful. Worse case scenario, I'll kidnap my friend's laptop for the next couple of days (sorry Claire, hope you didn't plan on doing any computer work) because iMovie is already on there. Cross your fingers that my baby (yes I refer to my computer as my baby, she's very important to me) gets her act together and helps me finish this project.

I've been talking to a bunch of people in my class to see how they're doing, and everyone's either done or not close at all. When I hear people talking about how they're already done editing, it makes me really nervous because all I want is to be done editing, but I'm not even finished filming!! I'm going to just hope that the Film Gods are on my side and everything works out (but they usually aren't so I'm bracing myself for a rough week).

Second Day of Filming

The vlog above is from Saturday night, but I was sick yesterday so I didn't get around to posting it. I uploaded the footage to iMovie, and from what I've looked over, the shots seem to be better than the first time. As I mentioned in the vlog, I had Natalie wear a red/burgundy shirt this time around and I ended up really liking how it looked within the shots. The color contrast brought attention to her and in terms of color psychology, the red symbolized her emotional frenzy.

Behind the scenes shot of me directing
Natalie as I dangle out of my trunk (photo by
Adriana Sasso)

While filming I had my shot list to keep me focused, but I got some good shots that I wasn't planning on. For one in particular, I was sitting in the back seat of the car and wanted to a dolly shot from the side of Natalie running. I didn't realize it but I had the camera too zoomed in, so I only got her arms swinging. It actually looked really good so I kept going. In another shot, as Natalie ran away from me I tilted the camera into a dutch angle. I'm not sure if those shots will make the final cut, but I thought it looked cool and added to the theme of confusion and chaos.


Another part that I'm excited about is the ending. I achieved that transition of a long shot to a close up, having Natalie run into the camera, and kept her in the close up. I ended that shot, but kept Natalie in the same position and got a medium shot where I rotated around her, as her emotions kept building and building. I'm thinking I might do a jump-cut type editing between the forward facing close up, and the rotating medium shot, paired with the quick inserts. If I execute it well, hopefully all of the shots combined will create a sense of chaos within the character.

Fun little panorama from shooting (photo by Claire Friedman)

Overall, I'm really happy with how the second day of filming went. I think that I was able to fix the mistakes I had made previously, which made for a better product. I used same friends to be part of the crew so they were also more comfortable with their jobs the second time around. I'm going to go home tonight and look over what I have again so I can make some progress in the editing process because ya girl likes a lot of time for editing (which I hope I can actually have!!)

Vote!

I just created a poll in the sidebar to help me decide what I should call my film opening. It would be greatly appreciated if you contributed :) So go vote, it's your democratic duty!!

Also, if you have any other title ideas that aren't on the poll, feel free to leave a comment on this post!

Maybe Second Time's the Charm

Today's Friday, and later I'm going to be acting in a film opening for a friend. I'm very excited because she's extremely talented so she's a pleasure to work with, and I always get inspired. I need me some good inspiration because tomorrow I'm filming! Last week, I was kind of stressed while filming because the sun was going and couldn't gather all my thoughts together and get the shots that I wanted. So to be proactive, I made a shot list to keep me on track and organized. I have specific shots for both the running and memory sequences.


I'll attach a photo so you can see my (messy) ideas:

Not This Time, Satan

I'm planning on refilming this weekend, and I want to avoid my past mistakes and achieve my vision. I've been thinking about how I want to execute the memory insert shots. I envision the editing starting off kind of slow but then increasingly getting faster as all of the memories bombard the main character. I want to build the suspense up and stop it abruptly. I had this little vision one night of how I wanted to end the opening: the main character is clearly becoming overwhelmed so she stops running, she runs into a close up, and opens her mouth to scream but before any noise can come out it cuts to black, and the title fades in (still need a title, oh boy!).

As mentioned previously, I want to add a different filter or effect to these shots so it's clear they are memories. In addition to using a cooler color scheme, I thought it would look cool if I made the shots look dreamy and hazy. It's really easy to make this look cheesy so I have to be careful. 

Also for the inserts, I want the voice of the boy to linger in a creepy, echoing way. This will imply that the voice keeps running (ahh see what I did there, because she's running!! Too good, too good) through her mind, haunting her and driving her crazy.

I'm going to work on these ideas before I film and hopefully when I film the parts, everything will come together!