Have you ever had that nightmare where you worked really hard on a movie, and just as you were finishing up, the movie became corrupt and the people at Apple told you it couldn’t be saved? No? Well, I didn’t have that nightmare, I lived it.
I almost cried at the thought that our project was lost in cyberspace forever. My group and I had spent over a month meeting, filming, and re-filming, and I had spent many days staying up as late as four a.m., trying to edit every minute detail to perfection. None of this was easy for anyone in the group and that is why the thought of losing all our work traumatized us all. Believe me when I say that it was truly a glorious day in my life when I recovered my work and continued working on the project.
My role in this project was cinematographer, which has its upside and downside. On the upside, being a cinematographer means working behind the camera, which is good for camera shy people like me. Filming was really fun for me and often I would keep the camera rolling even when the acting stopped, just because I could catch my group members in their moments of silliness. I also edited this footage after filming, and this is where the downside to being a cinematographer comes in.
Editing, as I found out, is a LOT harder than it looks. On one hand, it’s really fun because you get to go through all the clips and try to put them into a coherent scene. On the other hand, you can run into problems trying to make them coherent. I remember that I would take about three or four different shots of one scene, thinking that I had plenty of material to work with. When I actually tried to edit the footage, however, I would find that there were components of my shots that just didn’t match up. Sometimes I needed a clip from a particular take but it would be too shaky. Or I would try to combine two clips from two different takes and make it look like I did it in one shot, but the lighting and angle were so different that it was very obvious that it wasn’t filmed in one shot. Based on this experience, I have a much bigger respect now for cinematographers. They have to film many different shots of the same scene and then make sure that they don’t run into the same problems that I ran into. It’s unbelievable how amazing some filmmakers can make their scenes come out. I know that even after editing, there are discrepancies in the film that I couldn’t erase, and I only hope that I edited a fraction as well as real filmmakers do.
According to my group members, however, I edited the film well. And that means the world to me. It really does. I spent six weeks with my group members- Marianna, Will, Nicole, and Janine- and I have to say that the moments that I shared with them were my favorite moments of the filmmaking process. I got to know them a lot better than I otherwise would have and see silly, goofy sides of them that always had me laughing. Even as I was editing the film and showing my group my progress, I would find it such a joy to laugh with them as we watched our work. I never thought that watching a person go down an escalator could be so funny, but I found it hilarious to sit with my group and watch that scene. Every time I had edited a new scene, I would eagerly wait to show my group what I had done so that we could watch and laugh together. In these moments, even though we were working very hard, I felt like we were having some of the most fun that we would ever have for a final.
This film project meant something personal to me. When I was younger, I had dreams of being in the film industry. I imagined winning Oscars and the awe of millions of people. I abandoned that dream a few years ago, but this project gave me the chance to re-visit my dreams and see if I could really make it in the film business. My conclusion is that I probably couldn’t. One thing that I realized while filming is that it’s important to have a vision of a scene in your head before you start filming it. This goes for everyone- the costume designer, the director, etc. However, I usually couldn’t imagine a scene until after we had filmed it and I was at home, editing it. This experience has given me much greater wonder for everyone who does this type of work, from the director, to the actors, to the writers. I can’t imagine what Nicole, Marianna, Will, and Janine must have gone through. However, I can say that they were all exceptional because they made the movie work. From the script, to the costumes, to the acting, and to Janine’s prologue, I am impressed by my group’s talents.
I will always remember this film project and even though it was difficult, I think that many years from now, I will watch my group’s film and still laugh just as much as I do now. I am proud of my group and I think that I could not have picked a better group to work with.
