When I was first assigned the film project, I was really excited (and mainly because I thought it would be easy and fun). Was it fun? Definitely. But was it easy? Uhhhh…hell-to-the-no! After creating this project I realized one thing: I will never look at actors the same way ever again.

Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to play the part of Blue? There were so many lines to memorize! So like the “smart girl” that I am, I arrived on set without rehearsing any of my lines, thinking that I’ll just break down my lines into smaller segments and memorize each part one at a time. Shouldn’t have been a problem, right?

Well, what REALLY happened was Elizabeth (who played Galvez) and I were memorizing 5 lines at a time! That’s right, only 5. And why? Because our brains were literally incapable of memorizing anything more than that. And the worst part of all was that we couldn’t keep a straight face! We had to play two ridiculous characters that were essentially portrayed as being a couple of paranoid freaks, frightened that something scary existed in Blue’s house. Every time we played such a serious role, we’d look at each other trying really hard to hold in our laughter, but in the end, as we were almost done acting out our last lines, we’d screw it up and burst out into laughter. I felt so bad Miriam (she was the cinematographer). She was constantly yelling “CUT!” and reshooting the scenes. If I were her, I would’ve just quit; but this brave soul stuck it out till the end. Kudos to Miriam!

Making the movie was TORTURE for me! Elizabeth came up with the BRIGHT IDEA that Blue had to act out in a robe (a short one in particular because it resembled her “youth”). So there I was, in a cold, dark basement, sitting and standing on the cold floor in nothing but a robe. And to add on to my misery, Elizabeth then came up with the great idea that I, as Blue, play a mother who has a baby from Spider. (Now that I’m writing this blog, I’m actually starting to think that Elizabeth hated me.) So during this whole movie, I was carrying around an annoying pink blanket (which was supposed to be the baby), patting it’s back for a good nine hours. After a while, when we were already done filming, I was still unconsciously patting the blanket! Talk about a mother getting attached to her baby!

Anyways, creating the movie was fun, but definitely hard. Now, I appreciate actors on a whole other level. I didn’t ever realize how difficult it is to actually get into character and memorize lines! But now I do, and I finally understand why some actors are on drugs. I just don’t know how they do it!

Inhabited – a real final project.

Our eighteen minute film of our interpretation of Inhabited was probably one of the most tedious and difficult projects I have ever had to do. It required team work and cooperation with four other people, all with different time schedules, ideas, and visions of this film. It  wasn’t until this project that I remembered why I had always hated group projects. However, as much as I may hate them, I can’t deny that I always have an amazing time watching the results of all our hard work.

So to begin this film we were a bit stuck. We had to make many decisions on how to dress up, do we decorate the room, do we use a room with no doors, do we dim the lights, do we use the lights on full brightness, and even how we will go about including those in our group who don’t want to be filmed. As we started, after maybe five lines we came across the biggest problem of them all however. How on Earth could we act and remember our two word, constantly interrupting, breaking, pausing, screaming, trembling lines? Then however aside from the remembering lines situation, came the problem of how dynamic the film would be. At one point, we had to figure out how to move the camera, the actors and actresses, how to keep to audience interested and make the piece flow. It’s incredible how unforeseen problems led to even more unforeseen problems because in figuring that out, we had to decide on the best places to cut the lines so that important lines would not be separated such as Spyder’s mega-long dialogues that seemed to go on an on. I’d say these three decisions were probably the most difficult. I’ve never had so much respect for actors since filming this project. It took maybe eight hours to film fifteen minutes. Whether the actors and actresses go through intense line memorization or have to do the constant retake because lines can’t remembered, what they do is overall incredible.

Now along with all the  movie filming problems faced came actual personal problems. Looking back at it I have to laugh, but during our five hour long sessions of filming, as stress levels and exhaustion levels increased, so did tensions amongst us all. At one point our “studio set” became a sarcastic, tense, and scream-ridden room. None of us could agree, nor empathize with one another. For example while I was getting annoyed at Waseem for expecting us to memorize an entire page within ten seconds AND also have our motions thought out, he was getting frustrated with us for forgetting lines, having to take over 10 retake for a 30 second long scene, and for laughing unprovoked while practicing lines. This movie was really a trial of patience for us all. However, after all is done, I believe we made a great movie.

After the film was done, I came to my own conclusions on how I would have changed it and will if we ever have another project similar to this one again. First of all, all the lights will be turned on and just have the brightness edited in the movie maker as well as add film effects in the movie movie maker. I would also change the filming style a bit. As opposed to cutting a scene on one persons face and then making the next scene begin on the same face in the same general area, I would Mae it so that when the scene cuts it cuts to a different view so that the film flows more smoothly. Whatever the case, the project is done now and I’m just glad it’s still came out amazing. I really enjoyed your class Professor Healey and I hope I can take a other one of your classes in the future. You really took my perspective of education away from just the common reading textbooks, studying for quizzes and tests, and writing essays. You made me consider and analyze social problems in the context of art, and that was truly mind blowing. Writing blogs, reading movies and plays, seeing live performances (whether I enjoyed them or not) was really a different educational experience, a more liberal one that I feel high school students are often deprived of. I think it often hinders their ability to be creative and to question what they are told, and I really think your class is a very untraditional one that goes against that. I can’t wait to hopefully have you again as my teacher.

My role in the movie making process was the acting out spider as well as helping my group members in any way possible during the process. I was also the dramaturg. I read through the script as it was being acted out when Blu and Galvez were the only actors, and offered my advice to help the movie make more sense to the audience.

I’ve acted before on stage where you get one shot, and one shot only to give your best performance. You can’t sit down right before you go on stage and practice your lines, let alone first memorize them. This movie-making experience was drastically different. Even though, you might get multiple takes, there are so many other variables in filming that are not present while acting on stage. The camera angle had to be perfect, the costumes had to be sufficient, emotions had to be exaggerated since the camera zooms in, and the biggest factor, the memorization of the lines had to be spot on. I would say memorizing the lines was the toughest part of this movie-making process. My group could probably have saved a couple of hours if we took out all the times somebody messed up a line or the times when we just sat and repeated our lines over and over again. That’s why this process was so time-consuming and meticulous. I never want to be an actor, because I never want to do anything like this again. I was wondering, when producers make professional movies like this, how many shots does it take to make the scene perfect? How long does it take the stars to memorize their lines?

However, all that being said, I still had a good time making the movie. There were many struggles along the way, but it still was fun making the movie. The best parts were when somebody did something funny during the scene by accident. Also, it was hilarious when we were waiting for Waseem, the camera man, to start the scene, and we would just be staring at each other, trying to get into character. Then we would crack up laughing, and these moments were the enjoyable moments of the process.

I think the best thing is seeing everything come together to be the final product. It’s cool to see all the little challenges that come up when creating the film and then see the final film after all the editing. You never think the film or project will ever be good because so many things went wrong, but then it’s amazing how everything works out in the end. When we were going through some of the footage, it surprised me that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. After the background music and the additional sounds were added to the film and the editing was done, the film really felt whole to me and complete.

Overall, the film making process was an interesting one. I am very proud of the film. It was great working with all my group members and I am grateful for how well we worked together. This experience was well worth all the time put into it.

My roles in this filmmaking process were director and actress. I was really excited to start working on this film because I saw a huge opportunity to work on both of my main interests in the world of theatre. I’ve only worked once as a director, on a high school film that I wrote and starred in, and I was really excited to try my hand at directing again. Naturally, I was also excited to have a chance to act in a medium I was majorly unfamiliar with, since acting in front of a camera is so different than acting onstage.

Our group worked really well together and we had lots of really great ideas. Unfortunately, more than once we had ideas that were just beyond the realm of being realistically possible, which could be disheartening, but we worked around it as best we could. We also went through a few different ideas of what we wanted the film to be before settling on an early nineties setting that later becomes the present day (as coolly represented with different filters). We had to compromise on some of the things we wanted, but I think our final project turned out great.

The biggest obstacle in working on someone else’s piece is the struggle between maintaining the artist’s original intentions while personalizing it. Sometimes the ambiguity of the script made it difficult to make decisions because of the fear we’d miss the artist’s intentions and change them to something he didn’t want or wouldn’t like. Personally, I had a lot of trouble memorizing my lines due to my hectic schedule outside of this class and the differences between Spider’s short lines and lengthy monologues (fondly called “douche-a-logs” by me). Due to this, I felt like I didn’t realize the character of Spider the way I wanted her to be, which makes me a little sad as an actress, but I still feel proud of the whole project.

Despite the obstacles, I really liked the challenge of making a film. I loved having the chance to act and direct and work under stressful conditions. Sometimes it was really hard to find time to try memorizing lines while working on other final projects and juggling lots of other work, but it was necessary to get all of the filming done. I also liked getting to work with my friends who were thankfully all really invested in the project and had great work ethics. I also loved watching the entire thing come together and the transition between making major choices about filming to smaller ones like what kind of music we wanted to use. I also ended up liking the script a lot because the ambiguity of it gave us a chance to make our own creative decisions about the characters and their motivations. Though my favorite part of the filming project was when we messed up lines and Ariana showed us her scary side by glaring at us over the script.

In the end, I think the film was all about learning about the creative process of art. Throughout the semester we’ve been analyzing films and talking about selling out. Now we had the opportunity to be filmmakers, making our own short indie flicks based on an unpublished, ambiguous play. It also meant learning to work cohesively and make compromises to create something great. So despite the stressful days and tiring nights, it was a lot of fun.

Before we started working on this film, I was really excited. I wanted a scary, weird and freaky movie and I even had our soundtrack picked out. But as expected, my group members wanted to do the complete opposite! Although, after hearing their ideas, I was pretty okay with changing my Silent Hill-esque vision into a psychedelic 70’s themed film instead.

Surprisingly, the editing was not as horrible as my last experience with iMovie. It was just time consuming and frustrating when I found myself, at 3 a.m., trying to match color differences in scenes where we used two different cameras to shoot, and trying to edit together a video montage for the ending, which eventually didn’t work out as nicely as I hoped. The most difficult part about this film was probably memorizing our lines! I didn’t think it’d be so hard, but fortunately, we were able to think of creative ways where we could still look at our scripts while filming – and even then, we would keep messing up. Equally frustrating was trying to act! Since I played the role of Galvez, who isn’t actually a real person, but Blu’s conscience, we knew that we had to pull it off well or no one was going to get it. It wasn’t until we started filming Spider’s parts that we realized how challenging it was going to be. There were certain lines we had to interpret as Spider talking to Blu when in reality Spider addresses Galvez. I thought that by my dressing as a popular TV character from the 70’s, it would help get the idea across. I even bought a Scooby Doo Comic and placed it in the opening scene for people to (hopefully) get a hint as to who I was supposed to be playing and what our concept was.

Aside from the stressful parts of this film, some of my favorite moments were getting all the 70’s props I ordered in the mail, trying on my wigs, bashing the ebay seller who sent me a Jimi Hendrix “poster” AKA a Jimi Hendrix stamp, and researching the historical background information when it came to choosing outfits, props, and music. My most favored moment, though, was the last hour before I finished editing the video. Even though when trying to create a video montage of important events from the 70’s to 2014 I managed to a get a computer virus, somehow kill it (????), drop my computer charger into my fish bowl and then ended up deleting the montage all in the process , it was my favorite moment because in that last hour I finally learned to step back and acknowledge that there was nothing else I could do to our movie. As much as I wished I could change the color differences, the way we acted, audio quality in some scenes, and even to go back in time to shush the set and tell ourselves that we forgot/misread lines, I knew that I did all I could. Once I realized this, I actually smiled, for the first time in days when facing this project, at the end product. This film meant A LOT of compromise, motivation (or getting the lack of motivation to change) and teamwork.

Sweat. Frustration. Anger. Hunger. Tears. This is what my role, as Actor/Editor/Costume Designer/Co-Set Designer, essentially comprised of. There were a lot of bumps along the road but I’m proud of all the work I, as well as my group members put into this film. Although, after this experience, I never ever ever want to be an actor or even act in a school project…ever!

Work Cited (for our film)

Music:

None of these songs are mine and their links can be found here,

Fields of Nephilim: “At the Gates of Silent Memory Paradise Regained”

https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1BL5Gab1M

The Beatles: “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”

https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKXfqpg-Q-k

The Beatles: “Strawberry Fields Forever”

https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeZcI4u0ZQg

Joe Cocker: “Something’s Coming On”

https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGbK5y94LOE

Video 

I take no ownership of this video.

“Lower East Side in the late 70’s-80’s”

https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j-3DxNdj2M

Images

This picture isn’t mine.

Lower East Side in 2014:

https://www.google.com/search?q=lower+east+side+2014&espv=2&biw=1308&bih=729&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Jv6WVJC9PILGsQSouICgBQ&ved

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