I Hate It

Week Eight: Time Crunch  

    I have been thinking, thinking hard, and... I don't like the opening. Of course, it isn't a final copy, but it seems more like a two-minute short film focused around a concept, that concept being teenagers. That's a problem. Openings don't give away the film in two minutes. Most of the movies I have seen contain very minimalistic film openings. And you may be thinking, "Hey! Maybe she just watches bad movies!" No, most of the movies I watch are coming-of-age, which is terrible BECAUSE THAT IS MY FILM OPENING GENRE. And it is not like I am breaking genre conventions or thinking outside of the box. It is simply a bunch of shots and information thrown at our viewers. 

    I feel defeated, but I am not entirely hopeless. I need to speak with Hannah. Half of being a teenager and growing up is your environment, where you live, and who you interact with. So maybe we edit it to focus less on the storyline/concept and more on the initial stage of who these girls are. In short, who are Maxx and Sami, and what makes them who they are. Before we began this project, our instructor, Mrs.Stoklosa, showed us a TedTalk on creating ideas from scratch. "2 plus 2 but not 4" was the big takeaway. Our current opening SCREAMS FOUR. When I tried mentioning this to Hannah, she almost seemed insulted, or maybe she felt helpless too. I can't blame her. We are running out of time, so how would we fix it? 

The current opening has six sections: 
Beginning nature shots, bike riding, running into the house, records, reading, love attack on to the bed, girls pause and have an intimate moment. 

I think it needs more in between, more details embedded into the significant sections. Also, remove one extensive selection. The long, drawn-out pause and Maxx brushing Sami's hair to the side. I know. I sound like I have lost my mind, but hear me out.

1. Nature Shots

2. Bike Riding 

3. Arrive at House/Run Inside

4. More Nature/Setting Shots

5. Sami Looks through Vinyl

6. Shots of Maxx's Room

7. Maxx Reads a Book

8. More Shots of Maxx's Room 

(This is where it gets rough)

9. Love Attack Scene 

10. Laughter from Maxx and Sami 

11. "It's Complicated."

Everything I listed above has already been filmed. It would simply be a matter of re-ordering our footage and dragging out certain shots to emphasize location or a character trait. Instead of the ending revealing that the girls are lesbian, that would be revealed or hinted at through Maxx's room shots. If this were to be developed into a full-length production, the details would be developed later in the story. I am glad I could write all my thoughts out. Tomorrow I see Hannah, and we have the entire class period to work on it, so I will re-order the shots and hope for the best. 

Editing Dilemmas and CCR Crazy

Week Eight: Time Crunch

Hannah and I compiled all of our footage and initially created a really rough copy. This first draft highlighted continuity errors and issues within our opening. We noticed two mistakes right away and had to decide if we wanted to reshoot or edit around them. If you've been following along, scheduling a production date was horrific; therefore, we chose to edit around the problems.

ERROR 1:

Gomez is riding her bike ahead of me, indicating that she will arrive on the grass before me.

I arrive on the grass before Gomez. 

ERROR 2:

Wrestling Gomez in a medium shot.

Immediately cuts to this close-up high-angle shot. There's no flow. It's too abrupt. 

Hannah gave me most of the footage, and I am still playing around with it to tweak the errors. As I continue editing, it flows smoother, so I am not too worried. Basically, the opening is done. We just need to add the credits and overlap the opening with royalty-free whimsical music.

CREATIVE CRITICAL REFLECTION

I have begun writing my script for my CCR. I can answer most of the questions based on research from my blogs or my own knowledge from the filming process. I want to make it uniquely me. I am thinking of doing lots of cuts and sprucing the script up with my annoying verbiage. I want to devote one sitting to filming my CCR, so I plan on doing it one day over the weekend, especially since our film opening will be finalized by then. Side note, I am glad the CCR is done independently. Through this experience, I have learned that my creativity feels inhibited when I work with a partner. Now that's a reflective point. 

Production Day Part 2

Week Seven: It's Coming Together

Happy Sunday! As I promised yesterday, let me talk about the bike scene/nature scenes. Hannah and I didn't have bikes, but Gomez did, so we took a little trip to Gomez's house and filmed there. We needed four people for this process. Hannah to film, Gomez to play Sami, Me to play Maxx, and Gomez's mother, Dawn, drive a car forward. We stayed safe, guys, I promise! Hannah sat in the vehicle's trunk with the trunk open. As the car moved forward, so did Gomez and me.

Hannah safe in the car, waiting to film.

The bike scene! YAY!

The bike scene took a few tries. There were cars in the way and people driving by, but once we got a good take, we were satisfied. Then, we filmed the running in the house scene, which didn't take long, but we wanted a few of the same shots just in case. As you can see, I hate continuity errors. And then we filmed some nature shots. 

Hannah and nature shots!

And that was the second half of the production process! It took around three hours and then we got lunch. Now, we edit. We will compile a few REALLY rough drafts and go from there. Talk soon!

Production Day Part 1

 Week Seven: It's Coming Together

What a day! We all woke up bright and early to film. Hannah and Gianna Gomez arrived at my house at ten in the morning. Hannah came bearing gifts, coffee, of course. We couldn't have done it without you, Starbucks! Not to stereotype me, but my room is very spot-on for a grunge teenager (that statement was gross). They entered my room, and I first gave Gianna Gomez a complete run-down on the storyline. When I asked if she could be filmed, I gave Gomez an overview, but I wanted to clarify anything she may have been confused about or uncomfortable with. I then asked Hannah if there was anything in my room that would be out of place for our character Maxx. We took down one item. My pride flag. Unfortunately, there is nothing closeted about having a pride flag in your bedroom, and Maxx isn't out, so it wouldn't make sense. 

My pride flag literally ended up in my closet. How ironic!

I also wanted to point out that I texted Gomez what I needed her to wear on Friday night. Gomez sent me a bunch of options. I knew that I would wear baggy jeans and a band t-shirt with converse, so I wanted a little bit of disparity without making it too obvious. 

Gomez, our Sami, ended up wearing boots, cargo pants, a crop top, and sunglasses. Although Hannah was behind the camera, she came dressed up too. We all looked cute. 

The bedroom scenes were... fun?! We started by taking shots of my room and then moved on to the girls interacting. Having to be both in front of and behind the camera was aggravating. I am a bit of a control freak, so trusting Hannah wasn't easy. There was a lot of bickering. 

Statements that left my mouth:
"Film me at this angle." 
"Okay, let me see."
"No. Twist the camera this way."
"A little higher."
"A little lower."
"Switch spots with me. Let me show you."

Me filming my room scenes.

Hannah filming me reading. 

Me correcting Hannah. Sorry, Han!

And then... the intimate scene. Full disclosure, Gianna Gomez has been my best friend since I was 12, so this scene was a little hard to film, but we both act, so it wasn't complicated. We had to reshoot it a few times because the pillows made our heads look abnormal on camera, and Gomez and I kept laughing. 

Sami jumping on Maxx. 

We got one REALLY great shot of this scene, but it wasn't close enough, which made the moment too distant from a potential viewer; therefore, we had to redo it. I almost cried, but we ended up getting it. The whole process took roughly three hours, and then we drove to the second location. The bike scene (BUM BUM BUM)
I will talk about that tomorrow. Goodnight Shoes!

Overthinking

Week Seven: It's Coming Together 

We film on Saturday and, since we are on a time crunch, we cannot afford to have errors. I am thinking of all the ways to bypass problems. We want the opening to start with the girls biking. It seems more authentic if the shot were to be the front of the bikes rather than the sides of the bikes, that way, you could see the girls swerving and having fun. I am using the front-facing bike riding scenes from Normal People (2020) and Call Me by Your Name (2017) as my inspiration.

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

Normal People (2020)

But these aren't amateur productions. I'm sure they used a dolly, drone, or Steadicam mount. My idea is to have Hannah sit in the trunk of a car (I know this sounds bizarre but bear with me), have a parent drive forward at a very slow speed, and have the girls ride bikes. We will switch to a car scene if this doesn't work, but I think it will work. We will also film extra footage just in case our opening is too short or doesn't flow smoothly. Aside from that, there really shouldn't be any issues. We plan on filming the whole opening Saturday morning at 10 AM. Spending around three hours in one location, the bedroom, and spending three hours in the second location, the outdoors. I already confirmed with Gianna Gomez and Hannah; therefore, we are right on schedule. 

When In Doubt... Do Something

Week Six: Under Pressure

If you tuned into yesterday's blog post, you would know I am upset. I would use more vulgar terms, but this is a school project. So, "upset" will suffice. Since we cannot film until next week, I have been thinking an awful lot about editing. I am a tiny bit scared. Will I embrace the fear? Of course. But why not overthink now? I have been thinking about color grading, making our opening a little bluer than the camera can pick up. I saw a picture from a scene from Joker, and that was it. 

I feel like being a teenager is sad. Yeah, yeah, "hormones." But, genuinely, as exuberant as life can get, it is equally balanced by loneliness and sadness. Maybe that's just my perspective, but considering that I am a teenager and have consulted many others my age, I feel pretty qualified to give my opinion on this topic. 

So, yeah. Blue it is. But a brighter when Maxx is with Sami. Sami is Maxx's yellow and visa versa. We color grade to emphasize a tone and color grade we will. Now, regarding fonts, I was thinking of capitalized and messy letters for the title but more uniform and smaller letters for the credits. I thought I didn't want the viewers to see any "funk" yet. They are two ordinary teenage girls who are friends until they are not, and messy font would give that away too early. 

TITLE

Here were the testers. For obvious reasons, there were flaws.

Now, these. These are darling. I really like the first but they all look very similar, you get the first. It is messy but not scribbles. 

WHAT WE DON'T WANT

This is way too dramatic. Not light enough.

CREDITS

Formal, light, teenage, not too bold.

I feel less upset. Goodnight my shoes :)

I Am Upset

Week Six: Under Pressure

Why does everything have to be so complicated? Were we supposed to film two days ago? Yes. Did we? No. Why? Gianna, our lead actress, had to film her AICE Media Project. Believe me. We tried to find backups, but you want to hear something comical. There was a high school states thespians festival this weekend. So, all the drama nerds (I am one, so I can say it) were gone, Hannah had no friends, and all my friends were at the festival. And any other people we could find out of desperation were on vacation. The good news is, Gianna is coming back next Friday, March 25th, so we are filming on March 26th. I promise. We literally cannot change that. We need to film, or we will get nowhere.  

March 26th we film, there's no changing that. We film it all. It shouldn't take too long since we have our storyboard, and then we begin editing and choosing the fonts and fine details. I am not too stressed... yet. Obviously, not being able to film was a bummer but we TRIED EVERYTHING. On that note, see you tomorrow. I am starting to think of fonts and editing tricks, so I will let you know!