Sentio: A Short Film

So we made this and recently presented to the class. This was the short film me and the group (Brett, Lizzie, Damien, and Brandan) created. We each had our own ideas for a short film, but we chose to make Brett's because we thought his was the most compelling, yet doable for a high school project. And then we got to the process.

Pre-Production

We started by splitting production team roles. Brett was the director, screenwriter, and editor. Damien was the cinematographer. Lizzie was the production designer and makeup artist. Brendan was in charge of sound. I was the art director and location scout. To find actors, we decided to hold auditions. However, we only posted flyers day of, so we ended up having to go around the school and find people willing to audition. Yet, we managed to find good actors.

The storyboards took a while, since the script was 18 pages. Lizzie drew up most of them, but we all drew a few scenes to help get them done.

Then I went out to scout a location for the restaurant. It's actually a church youth-group room. The lack of windows meant we could make it dim and evening-like while filming in the middle of the day. The only tables they had were quite big, but that's easy to compromise. The other location was at Brett's house.

Production

This only took two days. The first day we all showed up to the church in the morning. Korbin and Avery were dressed formal for the scene, while Connor put on the entity costume (and scared us all when he emerged from the hallway). Brett and Damien had the DSLR camera with some changing lenses. I was in charge of continuity, so for those scenes it meant keeping track of whether or not they had food in front of them in the shot. While this was happening, Lizzie was practicing her makeup skills for when we would need them. The first day went very well and we were done within 3 hours.

The second day I could only be there for an hour. This was at Brett's house. Lizzie couldn't be there at all, so Damien and Brett were the only crew members seeing it through. That day, we had the boom mic, so I was operating that while I was there. I heard the rest of the filming went well.

Post-Production

This was pretty straightforward. Brett is a self-sufficient editor, so there wasn't much for me to do at this time. Still, I made a few suggestions. At this time, we found out that some of our audio was too quiet. Brett met up with the actors to redo those shots. Since we finished production quickly though, we had a lot of time to edit and really make it good.

In Conclusion

I am super happy with the way this turned out. I daresay it's probably the best short film I've ever worked on.

Public Service Announcement

My First Project as a Junior!

Hello everybody, it's good to see you again after a long summer. I'm now a junior in entertainment video, and in a class with both juniors and seniors. You've got a lot to look forward to this year. To start the year though, we got into groups and made a PSA of our choosing. Between us, we could either do internet addiction, bee protection, suicide prevention, or teen smoking. We chose the latter. So now I'll take you through the process.

Pre-Production

So of course the very first thing we did in our groups was write down our ideas and pitch them to each other. The idea we decided to go with was Lizzie's. She wanted to do an anti-smoking PSA based off a video she saw:

Well, as much as we wanted to use a fire extinguisher, we couldn't. So instead we decided to use a water cup.

Then we assigned roles. Since it was Lizzie's vision, we decided it was best she was the director and production designer. I called the role as screenplay writer. My friend Damien was the cinematographer. My friend Piper was the art director and one of the actors. And last but not least, Darby was the main editor (we all had to do our own edits, but her's was the one we showed the class). We also got a note for another actor, Nick, who is in another class.

So then I wrote the script and Lizzie drew the storyboard. The storyboards were pretty forward, but I had to revise the script a few times. I discovered you have to read the lines aloud and decide if a character would naturally say that. In the end though, it was pretty good.

After we had both of those done though, we were ready to move onto:

Production

The morning before we filmed, we brought all the props we needed to school. The main prop was fake cigarettes from Party City. To make the smoke we needed for some of the shots, we used Pixie Stix dust. And finally, a water cup Lizzie has.

The first day, we got a few shots. However, we could not get a tripod or dolly, so the first few shots were quite shaky. Then the second day, we had a camera with a messed up exposure. So believe it or not, 99% of the shots used in the PSA were shot on an iPhone. Surprisingly, shots on the iPhone looked better than shots on the film camera; they were stabler and clearer.

Nick actually did not remember to wear the same shirt for the shoot, so we had to reshoot everything. That was good though, we ended up with more high-quality shots. We managed to film everything the second day.

Post Production

Darby was the official editor, so we showed her edit to the class. However, we all had to do our own edits.

Editing was pretty straightforward for me. However, my goal this year is to create more cinematic videos, so I paid more attention to everything in editing. Unlike last year, all the shots are color corrected. Raw footage films are something I'd like to leave in the past. I also want to practice cutting more precisely, so the actor's movement flows more naturally.

The only problem I really had was at the very end, when Nick says,"Before you light up." The water cup hitting the ground was very loud, so I tried to lower the volume for that specific area. However, when I did, you can hardly hear that line. I had to decide between the audience yelling in pain because of the sudden crash, or lowering the volume and hardly hearing what Nick said. Obviously, I chose the latter. I tried to make it up by writing the same message at the end. Sorry guys.

This is also the time I looked for statistics about smoking to put on the last few cards. Smoking is scary people, don't do it.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm quite proud with how this turned out. Sure, it's not quite up to the par I set for myself this year, but hey, it's really good for the first project of the year. The only thing I would do differently is to be aware of sound during production, and I just explained why.

Well, that's all I have for now. Can't wait to make more films!

Animation Final Reflection

Well, now I will post my animation final reflection. I'm not going to continue animation, since I already chose entertainment video as my main focus, but here is one of my last blogs.

Valuable Takeaways

This one is a bit different from the video final. I'll address each focus of eComm (Technology, Collaboration, Communication, Project Management, and Leadership) and how this class helped me grow in each.

Technology

There's a lot I learned here. I learned pretty much most of Adobe After Effects, whether it came to how to start a new project, or chromakey (a fancy word for green screen). I also learned some 3D modeling and animating in Maya. Our teacher showed us how to do most of it. To me, this stuff is important because it didn't only get me an A in this class, but no doubt I'll also use these concepts in video. However, it was hard sometimes, mainly because Maya likes to crash. But other than that, I learned a lot.

Collaboration

This is a skill that every person has a little or lots of knowledge for, because we live in a world surrounded by other people. In work, it means working with your coworkers, and not hurting them in the process. In eComm, we worked on a group project for a short film using special effects and chromakey. Even when we weren't working on the group project, sometimes I was stuck and asked for the help of people around me. Other times, they were stuck, and I helped them. Other times, we all didn't know what we were doing, and had to ask the teacher or look at the instructions.

Communication

This is another skill that everyone has to some degree. In eComm, we had to communicate a lot. I mean, it's in the name: eCommunication. When we worked on that group project I told you earlier about, we had to text our partners when we wouldn't be able to film or if we have a camera. Communication is what makes everything run.

Project Management

This is an important skill for school and work. If we want to succeed in anything, we have to get all our projects and assignments done and turned in. So we all had some experience with it. With eComm though, it was about getting through our group and individual work. I did pretty well on this, but a few times I had to come in early or stay after school to get things done. So I learned to use class time well.

Leadership

It doesn't matter if your a natural leader or have to rehearse conversations with people, all of us will have to lead something sometime in our lives. In eComm we had to show people what to do and how to do it, and organize locations for our group to shoot. Animation is a bit more individual than video, so our leadership was mainly helping people who were having trouble.

What I'll Do with All This

Of course, I'll bring it all into next year, and then expand my knowledge for it. Then when I graduate, I'll go into college with a head start. I'll still expand my knowledge of these skills there. Then I'll graduate and go into the workplace, and I'll still expand my knowledge of these over my life.

Conclusion

Well, I suppose that's enough of this. Have a great summer everyone, and I'll see you next year when I'm a junior!

Video Final Reflection

Well, school is almost out, and I can't wait for summer. But before that, we have to do finals... so here I am for one last blog post for my video class. This semester, I worked in entertainment, and made three main videos: a music video, high school film trailer, and short film.

We Didn't Start the Fire Unofficial Music Video

Well, here is the first entertainment project we worked on. It's a music video for the song "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel. We were planning it for a few days, took one day to shoot it, and then it took about a week to edit it. The main challenge was, ironically, starting the fire. It was windy and cold that day. But with persistence and lots of lighter fluid, we mananged it. Another challenge was just making something out of footage of verses and a lot of fire clips, while keeping it interesting. I had to learn to cut the same shot differently, so to speak. It was well liked throughout the class, although a few people said I could have some other things besides fire shots. Overall though, I think it was the best out of everything on this reflection.

The Duff Student Trailer

This project was a trailer remake for the movie "The Duff." It took a few days to plan this, and it was the first video which I wrote a script for. It took about a week to film, and a week to edit. The main challenge I had was working with extras, especially for the party scene. The set had to be quiet enough to hear the two main characters speak, but everyone almost treated it like a real party. We didn't get as much as we wanted to film that day. Plus, I lost those clips and my friend tried exporting them from her Premiere project, but I lost the audio. The feedback was mainly about that aspect. There was also feedback from the teacher about how some clips were not in focus. Honestly, I didn't really like this project overall. I found it uncreative and unoriginal, but I did it anyway. It didn't turn out the way I would've liked it, but I'll accept it.

Short Film: The Reunion

This is the most recent project we did, and the longest. It took about a month overall: a week of pre-production, two weeks of production, and one week of post production. I was the cinematographer, as well as working a little bit on the storyboarding and editing. Some challenges faced was planning. We originally wanted to film in an airport, but they didn't give us a call back the day we were filming, so we had to find a place at the last minute. One of our actresses knew people at a coffeehouse, and they let us film there. The feedback we got praised the story and our variety of shots. I liked this story, and the way we executed it. It was fun to do.

Using Time in/out of Class

I didn't work every single day. Well, if I had work to do, I would do it. I mean if I have free time and have no work to do. I usually spent it watching other short films on YouTube to see what shots they used, and how the screen looked cinematically. Other times, I would look up tutorials on how to do certain things film-wise, like how to write a script or achieve a cinematic look. Outside of class, I used my camera to take random shots of my house. Not to use in a project, but just to practice filming.

Strengths

My main strength this year, I think, was definitely having an artistic eye. I paid attention to things like the rule of thirds, shot type, and focus to get the shot I wanted. If I didn't have the shot I wanted the first time, I would call for another time.

Weaknesses

My main weakness this year was probably time management, especially when it came to editing. I had a few projects overdue from trying to edit them. Often I took too long for production (or didn't get production done on time) and had to rush to edit.

Summary

I really liked this semester. I loved doing entertainment video, and will go into next year. If I could go back though, I would probably use more cinematic editing, and that will be my goal for next year. Well, I just have to do my animation reflection tomorrow, and that will be my last blog post for the year. Well, until then, see you all!

Music Video

Well, here is our first project in the entertainment semester. We were assigned to create a music video from a song, and it could either be a recreation of the official music video, or our own cinematography. So we chose to create our own. I teamed up with Liz and our other classmates: Austin and Brett.

Austin's grandma had a lot of land, so we decided to film the music video over there on the weekend. The trouble was though, that it was a cold, windy, and slightly damp day. Somehow though, with a lot of determination and lighter fluid, we managed to get a good fire burning. But we came upon another problem: we barely had any footage when it was getting dark. We only had two verses and a few fire shots. The third verse was rushed and I tried my best to fix the lighting. So we decided that we had to make a few changes, like using the fire as a light source for the final verses.

Most of our b-roll was just fire shots, so it was a bit hard to fill up all of the non-verses and keep it interesting. I think I managed pretty well, though. It did reuse some footage, but used effects and different cuts of it to make each clip look new. A lesson learned: get a better variety of b-roll, and don't procrastinate when it comes to outdoor filming.

The Duff Student Trailer

Here is something we did for entertainment video, before the big short film. The concept was to find a movie with a high school theme, and recreate the trailer. Most of us did movies like The Breakfast Club, Mean Girls, and things like that. A girl in our group named Mackenzie recommended that we do The Duff. Before, I had never seen nor heard of the movie, but I rented it and watched it for this project. We did a section of trailer #4 and most of the actors and extras are from our class for convenience's sake.

However, we were never free from problems, whether it was the wind, loud extras, or the one part where I didn't get sound (since I couldn't find the SD card with the original clips, I had to export them from Lizzie's premiere project. The sound couldn't export successfully. At this point, I was so done I just said "Whatever!" and added captions). As you can probably tell, it wasn't my favorite project of the year. But, I still got it in and done. And I learned one valuable lesson: Export clips the day you film them.

Semester One Portfolio in Animation

A Worm

Here is my favorite and smoothest animation, a worm guy. I decided to convert it to a gif, so it keeps playing! For this, we learned how to manipulate and bend 2D objects, and use a null. Isn't he just a cute worm? Possible Future Disney Animator, right here. I said this is my smoothest animation, although the more I watch it, the more noticeable that bump that means the animation cycle is repeating becomes. I kind of want to smooth it out more. But hey, I still like it.

A Pen

This one isn't a moving animation, but it teaches a skill required to be a modern animator: 3D modeling. Everyone's pen looks a little different, that's because we base it off of our real life pens. For 3D modeling, we learned a lot: polygons, booleans, texturing, and lighting to name a few. Most of the time, I was having trouble with Maya, but this pen didn't turn out so bad. It looks like a pen you would see in a 3D animated movie, and that is good enough for me. However, some parts should be more transparent, but I've finished it.

A Ball

Here is a remake of something I made in Freshman year, and something I was drawing on paper long before that: A Bouncy Ball. Only this time, I used Adobe After Effects for the first time. I learned how to use keyframes for animation, instead of just drawing every single frame. It definitely looks more realistic than my Freshman animation, the squish and stretch method is a bit more subtle. It stops when it reaches its highest point though, and that does annoy me a bit. All in all though, I like it.

A Panorama

This is probably my most majestic animation. We studied Bambi, and learned that Walt Disney used a panorama machine for the opening shot. This made the forest move with the camera, while the sky stayed still, like looking out the window of a moving car. Instead of a big machine though, we used layers in Photoshop, some of them longer and traveling faster than others. The only problem I had was this (and it was very minor) is that I can't draw. So the grass in just a brush option, the moon and sky aren't blended very well, and the wolf was attempted. But the most important part of animation is appeal, so I added music to complement the night sky. I was also going to add trees, but ran out of time. But I still really like it.

A Story

This one has its own blog post about the whole process of making it, and I really like it. I may be, well, not good at drawing, but I definitely hit the appeal principle. This was putting everything I learned in Adobe After Effects together to create a short film. Although a few things could be improved, like opening the setting a bit more, I'm really proud of it.