Hey, everyone! So I guess my previous blog wasn’t the “official” last one. This blog post is, however, the final one (I’m not joking…sad I know). When I found out our final was to create our own film, my mind was thinking “YES! No Exam.” I remember last year I made a movie with some friends on the book The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka for my English Literature class. To be creative our group decided to make a parody of the book and it worked! Knowing the amount of fun I had making this movie made me twice as excited to form another film for the play Inhabited. Frankly, I found Garces’ Inhabited to be quite mysterious and full of suspense when I read it the first time. I was thinking, “What on earth is going on in this play?” Furthermore, the name of the characters were interesting, as well. “I mean who calls themselves Spider, seriously?” (yes, I’m quoting from the play, hehe).When we first worked on the film we definitely had some issues in the beginning. For example, since most of the characters used profanity in the play I thought that I should not include myself in the film, since I do not have an affinity for such language. Nevertheless, I discovered that neither Chris nor Kel cursed, so I decided to become Kel. I’m glad I found some way to be in the film! Now let me go into some specifics of our film process.
After we completed our filming for the play, I thought that this definitely wasn’t an easy task. The amount of work we put into making this movie was far greater than the first movie I made. Fortunately, all my group members and I had many chances to meet due to our similar schedules. Subsequent to finishing this film, I gained a greater appreciation for the film-making industry. The tremendous amount of lines these movie stars have to memorize, the repetitive actions performed, and their effort to make the movie as perfect as possible is truly remarkable. Memorizing lines is definitely not a simple task. I recall how many start overs we had to do to just get one scene right. Also, it was tough getting the appropriate camera angles and a lot of change of position was involved. Good news was, we found a friend of ours, whose name is Luis Vega, to play the role of Spider. We think he did an AWESOME job! Thank you, Louis for your kind help! I really enjoyed the amount of passion Luis, Rawan, and Aamir put into the roles of their characters. I don’t know how to act, but I tried my best. Me and acting don’t go together, haha. Thanks to Rui Yan, we were successfully able to edit the film and fortunately we had my dorm for the setting of the film. I feel that the only thing I disliked about the film process was memorizing the lines. Even though the lines for this play were rather short, I remember the trouble Aamir and Rawan had to get their lines perfectly. Even the small lines can be tricky to memorize. Otherwise, I think that the film making project was full of fun and laughter, especially when we made mistakes. Good times. I enjoyed every aspect of it and this project gave me an opportunity to get closer to some of my fellow Macaulay classmates.
For me, the film held much significance because it embodied the indefatigable effort we put into making the film successful. In addition, we were able to incorporate the black and white scenes well thanks to Tsai Shiou’s generous help. This film taught me to think more creatively and utilize my camera better. Moreover, I didn’t know how difficult it would be to find a suitable soundtrack for this film. Took forever! Some music sounded soooo creeepy, some just plain bad, and others just didn’t hit the mark. We tried to find the kind of music that would set the mood for the film. Also, I loved Rui Yan’s actual tenement shots she took for our film because it made the setting seem more realistic. I believe that bonding more closely with my friends during this project was my favorite part. We learned more about each other and had some hilarious bloopers, which made this project really enjoyable. Yes, a lot of work is involved in making a movie, but there is also a lot of FUN! If you put the time and effort into something, the results will be good. Our group knew a lot of work was required and I’m glad we started immediately. Honestly, I really had a wonderful time working with my group and am very grateful to Ms. Healey for letting us do this film. Through this project I gained much insight about the film-industry and will always keep in mind how much work anyone committed to theater and drama has to do. Now that our film is complete, I can’t wait to watch the masterpieces my other peers have produced 😀
