I am a MOVIE STAR. Therefore you care what I have to say.

Making a movie is HARD WORK!!!! I now have such a great appreciation for movies and TV shows that are professionally done because I’ve experienced about 1% of what they go through, and I cant imagine how they do it.  I used to think, “Yeah, what’s so hard about making a movie?  The actors say their lines and the cameraman stands there and films it. Even I could do it!”  Well, let me state for the record that I can’t do it.  I am unable to make a professional two-hour box-office-hit movie.  Trust me, I tried.

There were so many things that I learned through making this movie- so many things you need to consider, such as: how to balance dialogue and action?  In the beginning we found that our movie was very dialogue-y, so we had to add in some parts of silent actions and make use of music.  And that is much harder than it looks.  You need to make sure to pick the right music for the mood; serious, satirical, etc. because music is a very powerful tool and can make or break a scene.  Another issue I never thought about before was the use of different angles and perspectives.  In movies the camera always films from different angles, so the viewer gets to see multiple perspectives and take in the scene.  I never realized that they did this, it was just something I took for granted when I watched a movie.  So when we started filming we only used the same angle, and when we watched it we found it kinda boring.  Once we pinpointed our problem we tried to film at different angles with multiple cameramen, but then we kept getting cameramen in the shots!  So finally what we did was shoot each scene in mini steps and for each “mini-scene” we used a different angle.  This was a major improvement in our movie.

Another thing that was really hard was the acting and staying in character!  It’s so awkward when you’re pretending to be angry in a scene and you’re shouting at each other, so it is so tempting to laugh due to nervous energy and awkwardness. But honestly, after a while I found it easier to get into character and not laugh as much.  But the MOST awkward part of the whole filmmaking process is watching yourself in the movie.  I now understand why famous people don’t watch their own movies, or why artists don’t listen to their songs on the radio.

I know that so far in this blog I was just talking about the complications of making a film, but the truth is that I enjoyed every minute of it (even the minutes after 2:05 AM).  It was so much fun learning about everything that goes into making a movie, and I saw significant improvements in my group’s film from beginning to end.  This also changed the way I watch movies- now I notice the camera angle, the choice of clothing, speech inflections, etc.

My favorite parts of making this film were choosing costumes and acting. It was so much fun getting dressed up and even though I said the acting was awkward at first, it was so much fun acting with my friends because it was fun to laugh at ourselves and made for some good bloopers.

I also loved my group and we worked really well together.  I feel like our movie really was a group effort and we all worked together to come up with the plot, the storyboard and the actual movie.  Even though my official title was “Production Designer,” I felt like I really participated in all areas of the film and that we all helped each other instead of us each being confined to the tasks designated by our titles. None of us felt uncomfortable voicing our opinions on whether we liked how something turned out or not, and I think that really helped us make the best film we could make.

I know some people think that putting an artist’s opinion and making a statement in a piece of art, like our film, is really difficult, but I actually found it surprisingly helpful.  Once we picked our angle (that of a social critic criticizing modern society’s depiction of love), everything fell in to place because our agenda gave us direction and purpose.  When we weren’t sure what was the next step to take in writing the script or filming the scenes, our agenda as a social critic pushed us in the right way.  It also made our movie have a purpose, as well as (hopefully!) being entertaining.  This is what we’ve been talking about all semester- it is great when artwork is pleasing and entertaining, but it is so much more powerful and worthwhile when it also makes a strong, clear statement.  My group and I tried to follow this thought as best as we could in our movie.

My favorite moment in making this film was learning that there are PURPLE skittles, not BROWN.  On a more serious note, I also realized how much time you had to spend filming to get one scene of good footage!  Sometimes after two hours of filming we would only have gotten two minutes of footage.

So, even though this multimedia project has been taking over my life these past few weeks, I am so grateful that this was our final project (not only because it is so much cooler than writing a paper).  It was an awesome experience and surprisingly, I really enjoyed it.  Thanks Professor Healey for an awesome semester, and to all you other groups out there, I can’t wait to see how your movies turned out!!!