My Role in the film was the Dramaturg. I researched the time period in which our movie was going to be based on as well as the style make up and attire. Although Noelia was in charge of costume design, I used her ideas to complete my costume. For the first two days I did not act because spiders role came in on the third day. For the first two days I was co-directing with Jalissa and Chris and we all gave our ideas as to what would look best on screen. We changed some of the scenery and told the actors of that day what to adjust or add.

In regards to the filmmaking process, I have to give props to all actors’ directors and producers that make movies. This process was a pain. I know I am not cut out for the acting life. It was very difficult to memorize lines with no consistency or plot. I was Spider and I had more of a continuous plot yet I was still having trouble. I wasn’t really a fan of the script. It was a little monotonous and confusing. I understand the authors point of view however its a little irritating that its open to so many interpretations. I guess that’s the beauty of it.

The location that we were able to find for our interpretation of the play was beautiful and the costumes were also very nice I thought it would be fun to preform and show off my “skills” but after a while it was getting frustrated and i could feel the pressure. I couldn’t help but laugh when i messed up and that took away about 5 mins every time. The crew was getting a little annoyed as well. I was happy that we were bale to pull it off but i wasn’t expecting it to take three days when every other group was able to do it in one. My favorite part of this was the few times we actually all worked together on a scene. Other than that i didn’t really have that great of an experience even though i was pretty optimistic about it.

When you give students free range on a project (with the handcuffing limitation of an altogether WEIRD script), this is the byproduct: drugs experimentation, talking to one’s own personified conscience, and weird costumes. So, what was it like making this rather weird film? To say it politely, it was difficult.

So, what was this film about? Well basically the concept we tried to portray was that Blu, after drug use, goes through paranoia while talking to his personified conscience, Galvez. Then, Spider (a real person) comes in and has no idea that Galvez is there since it is just Blu’s imagination. Spider, though, goes through the same paranoia that Blu does. In the end, we realize that New York’s colorful history is what is actually causing these reactions. So, do you think we were successful in making this theme understandable using a script we weren’t allowed to alter? Considering our limiting factors, I think we did a pretty nice job.

This film was the ultimate group project: either you come out loving your group or hating the entire world. While I can’t speak for the rest of my group, I think fighting through the crazy hours (and script), hunger induced anger, and impossible task of memorizing lines (which we hardly did) actually brought us all together. Allow me to set the scene: our production of the film actually was filmed at The Douglaston Manor, the catering hall I work at as a waiter. We filmed in one of the bridal suites (which is 100% haunted: ask the group/anyone who works there). Although it seemed to be a good place to film in theory, in practice it was difficult not only because of timing, but also because of it’s location. It is in Douglaston, which is the north-east-most part of Queens (yes yes it’s still Queens), which was not easy for most of the group to get to. Also, our time was extremely limited: we needed a night which satisfied every need of ours: I had to not have work that night, there had to not be a party going on in which the bridal suite would be needed, and the Manor actually closes somewhat early on nights without parties. So, after that was sorted out and we started filming, we realized that this script was incredibly hard to memorize since half of it is literally “who,” “what,” and “yikes.” One night actually, there was a party going on, and not only were we often interrupted by my coworkers coming in and laughing, but I was also asked to come down to the kitchen (in full costume) and help with dinner service for about 300 people, which needless to say, used a big chuck of our time that night. On top of all of that, each day we filmed, we basically survived on water and pizza each time, eating pizza from different pizzerias every night. On the last day of filming, which took almost 9 hours, we actually didn’t eat at all… maybe that’s why the end of the film goes all cuckoo-cuckoo! So, did we actually memorize our lines? OF COURSE NOT! As a group, we spent so much time with camera angles to hide the fact that scripts (on the computer and on paper) were actually hidden all over the scene. (This can be seen in the window scene, where we actually held scripts under the cloth over the windowpane).

My favorite part of the film-making process was actually finishing it: the end product was so much better than I thought it was going to be (because my acting sucks so much!). Honestly I give the whole end product’s credit to Noelia for actually editing the whole movie and making it seem like it was actually a good film! After adding the music, I feel that although it was incredibly frustrating to film, we actually produced a good film (in my opinion).

From a seemingly meaningless script, our production actually did have a meaning to me after our group added our own artistic liberating qualities. What does it mean to me? Well, I feel that New York’s past builds upon itself, similarly to the steps of a pyramid, except it doesn’t have just one direction: it grows in all directions in all types of speeds. In the film, all time periods converge and affect everyone in ways that we yet seem to fully understand.

When I first heard that we were going to create a film for our final I was super excited. “Yessss! One less test that I have to study for!” I thought this project would be a piece of cake, but I learned quickly that creating a film isn’t all that easy.

Waseem, Arlene, Steven, and Arwa are all members of my group. At the beginning of the project we had each chosen different roles. Arwa was the director, Waseem was the cinematographer, Steven was the dramaturg, Arlene was the editor and I was the production designer. Throughout the film making process, each of us contributed in ways other than our roles had described. We each helped each other where we could and eventually we realized that these roles weren’t very accurate of all of the hard work that we had done. At the end of the film, when we were writing who had which role in the credits, we were all stuck. We all helped in so many ways that it was hard to put one specific name on each person. So, we did the best we could to figure out who would fit into these boxes.

The most difficult part for me was memorizing lines. It’s harder than it seems! I can’t even count how many times we had to redo scenes because one of us would mess up our lines. It was also challenging for me to play the role of my character. I played the role of Blu, who I am very different from, so getting into character and being sassy and arguing with others was a new experience.

To be completely honest, my favorite part of the process was getting to know each of my group members more personally. Working together and trying to achieve a task when none of us are expects at film making was a fun experience. Through all of the drama on stage we were all able to connect in one way or another. Steven and I became obsessed with playing Trivia Crack (a game on our phones), I learned all about Waseem’s praying schedule, I got to witness Arwa’s artistic talents in action, and I found out how much Arlene loves Penne Ala Vodka. It was nice to get to know my classmates outside of the classroom.

All in all, we all worked together really well and did a great job helping one another. There were obviously moments when we were so frustrated that we began to bicker, but overall we made a great team. Each of us had our own unique ideas and opinions and we brought them all together to create the film. I’m glad I had the chance to partake in something that I would have never thought I would see myself doing. I stepped out of my comfort zone and learned a lot about myself, my classmates, and the entire film making process.

As I write this blog, the tip of my thumb is extremely sore because I spent too many hours X-acto knife-ing our names out of card stock.  

Lately I’ve been really into watching low budget films by small producers and published on youtube. A personal favorite of mine has been Casey Niestat; I really enjoy his creative touch to a simple video. I was inspired to add a similar touch to our film and the title and credits allowed me the most opportunity to stray from the direction of the script.  

Speaking of the script…what was that? Perhaps I’m a bigger fan of more traditional scripts…or perhaps that script simply made no sense. I think the most difficult part for me was connecting myself with script. It was difficult to play my character because I didn’t understand her. It bothered me a little that the sex of the character was ambiguous and for that reason I took some creative liberty with that and played the character as a female. There was a very specific dress choice in that the character of Galvez and Kel wore parallel outfits. As Galvez, I wore a royal purple silk dress shirt while Victoria wore a similar color cotton dress shirt. We made the choice that the characters were parallels in their separate universes and decided to hint at it with our outfit choices. The parallel is more explicit with the idea that the couple in the beginning of the film (Kel and Cris) are looking at an adoption website while Blue is holding a baby throughout the film.

My favorite moments were those when I got to stray from what was on the paper. Because I had so much difficult connecting to the script, every once in a while I would try to add in a bit of humor or something silly. It didn’t always work and sometimes, Miriam who was behind the camera would get frustrated but every once in a while it came out pretty funny. My favorite moment in the process of filming is an easter egg of sorts, you probably wouldn’t notice it if it wasn’t pointed out. In this scene Freda is sitting on the ground and she feels quite uncomfortable in her bathrobe. The movie was filmed in the basement of my parent’s house and we chose to keep a supply cabinet in the scene. So my character is yelling at Blue to pack her bags and leave this dingy apartment. So I walk over to the supply cabinet and start packing things into a bag. If you look closely I’m putting a gallon of oil, a box of foil, some utensils and then finally a basket from a deep fryer. The scene is about ten seconds long but took us at least thirty minutes to shoot because we were in hysterics filming it.

While I learned a lot about the difficult work that goes into putting together a film, I also learned the importance of a great team. Miriam, Linda, and I had worked together in the past and Freda, Victoria, and Eleni had worked together on their pod walks. Having worked with each other before we knew each others strengths and tried to maximize the outcome from the potential. Although initially the script had very little importance to me, working with a group of dedicated and hard working students and putting in hours of effort has made it hard for the film to lack meaning to me. I want to thank them all for their patience, commitment, effort, and for making the experience an enjoyable one.

This assignment was like no other I have done before. I have put on little plays and skits for various classes, but nothing was ever filmed. Working in front of a camera is much more nerve wrecking. I have performed in enormous crowds, but the camera for some reason has so much more power over bringing out my anxious side.

Working in groups to put on this film was actually a lot of fun. When we were brainstorming about how we wanted to interpret the script everyone was so excited. I remember how I told everyone that since we just had to follow the script we could add a part in the beginning and show Cris and Kel before getting into the dialogue. Everyone was smiling at me and saying how great of an idea it was. I felt really proud; it is often harder for me to come up with creative ideas because I have never really been pushed in that area. We all worked very well together from the start, giving each other new ideas constantly. I think this project was different than others because it required true collaboration. We each had some kind of input for every decision that had to be made, and we could not move on without knowing if the others were on board with the idea.

One of the most difficult parts was performing in front of the camera. Even after memorizing my lines and rehearsing them over and over again, when it came time to film it was as if I had never even looked at the script. I did have a lot of fun memorizing my lines with Victoria because we just kept going over them and laughing at how we made the same mistakes constantly. It is really hard to overcome challenges like that because although you know exactly where you are messing up, it is very hard to fix it. I hate to admit it because the whole group is making fun of me for it, but when I happened to brush Victoria’s arm in the first scene was one of my favorite moments. We all watched the clip right after and we laughed so hard. They still make fun of me for it weeks later and I imagine they will until senior year, but it was the funniest moment in our filming.

I am looking forward to viewing the other movies and seeing how the other groups chose to create it. This project taught me that words could be interpreted in so many ways. Without viewing the other movies, from how our group functioned I noticed how we all thought differently of each little part. In the end we worked together to decide how we wanted the audience to view it, but in the beginning we all had a variety of views. If I was part of a different group I am sure that even with the same ideas I contributed to our movie, the final product would turn out very differently. As each of the group members’ ideas are taken into account the image of the film shifts a little. This will definitely be one of the projects that I will remember and be talking about years from now.

You know how sometimes watching TV you look at movie stars working behind the scenes, at awards shows, and think wow I wonder what it would be like if I did that? Being the movie fiend I am, this is one feeling I get every now and then. I mean I love movies and learning about them, however, after doing this project I can now say I don’t want to be an actor. Don’t worry I haven’t totally lost my love for film, in fact my experience in making this movie makes me more appreciative in a way of the hard work actors put in to their work. For Inhabited I played a very small role, of which remembering the lines took some effort and multiple takes, yet probably only amasses to five minutes in the finished project. Through this I’ve learned that memorizing lines and being on camera was not something I really liked. However, I really enjoyed working behind the camera as Script Supervisor. It was so much fun working with Mariyanthie, Rebekah, and Alleya as they ran through lines. Sometimes I had to get tough and take away their scripts to see if they could get through the scene. They would look at me with scared looks on their faces but I was determined to make sure they knew their parts.

One of the funniest things to happen while making the film would have been on the first day of shooting, when it was Rebekah (the director), Allison (camerawoman), Allison’s roommate (playing Kel) , Mariyanthie, and I. Since we were filming in the hallway of the dorm, we had the occasional passerby to worry about. We were towards the end of the hallway so one of “crew members” had to serve as a lookout for when people came around the corner. This position fell on Mariyanthie, who served as a bodyguard on our film set. For some reason this has hilarious to me because she threatened to get ‘very scary’ if someone interrupted. Now, for those who know Mariyanthie you know she is as soft as a marshmallow, for her to be mean, is just not possible. She’s just too nice! However the abuse she threatened to throw at these unsuspecting people was so funny we had to cut twice because I would start laughing during the take.

Though sometimes it was hard (especially for our amazing camerawoman Allison) , this project was so much fun to be apart of. Before starting this class I always wanted to be apart of a production of some kind and work behind the scenes, and this gave me the opportunity to do so. I even got to hold the camera at one point! Not only did I get the chance to do this but I’m more interested in doing something like this again, and can’t wait to find somewhere I can.

Being a part of this short film was quite an interesting experience.  I did not expect to be casted as an extremely masculine male character.  However, being that I joined my group a little late, I did not have any control over the role I would take… and so I ended up being casted as Spider, the character no other girl in my group wanted to be.

At first, I was not excited.  I knew that my director, Miriam, wanted to draw a beard on me, to make me look as masculine as possible.  I even put on makeup before the shoot to try and avoid this. Nevertheless, Miriam and Elizabeth just kept on insisting that I had the beard, so I had to suck it up and allow them to use eyeliner to draw facial hair on my extremely feminine face.  Once done, I ran to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror and as soon as I saw my face, I could not help but laugh because of how ridiculous I looked.  “Here we go…” I thought to myself as I exited the bathroom and walked into the shooting area to begin acting in this extremely obscure play.

Acting in this film turned out to be more hilarious and fun than I anticipated.  Although, I did not want to play as Spider in the beginning, once I started acting in front of the camera, playing this role ended up becoming quite enjoyable to me.  It was fun for me to be the comical and vulgar character in this film, and I really liked adding my own sassiness to the role.  The most difficult task for me while acting in this film, was being able to spew out the long lines Spider had both precisely and in a fast pace.  In the script, Spider often had so much to say, and it was difficult for me to get his lines out all in one take, without making mistakes.  In fact, Miriam often had to reshoot me over and over again because of the amount of times I would mess up.  However, over time and through practice, I got most of the long lines correct.  My favorite moment while shooting this film was when I first entered the shooting area. The reactions Elizabeth, Miriam, and Freda had at the sight of me was hilarious and they really could not take me seriously for the first half-hour.  Acting in front of them was really hard at first because it was difficult for them to not laugh at the way I looked. But eventually, they got used to my ways of portraying Spider and then we were able to work through the film diligently and without any distractions.

Overall, being a part of this film was a very fun and interesting experience, and I will always remember it as the one opportunity where I had no choice but to act as a man.  Altogether, I think my group and I really pulled the film off, and I’m really happy with the results.  I’ll be sure to watch our rendition of “Inhabited” whenever I need a laugh.

Doing group projects in college sure is different than doing group projects in high school. Back then, I would do pretty much all of the work. For this project, everyone actually participated and had a say. Maybe it’s because this is college, or maybe it’s because this was a project full of other Macaulay students…probably the latter. It’s true what they say about teamwork, no matter how cliché is might be: Teamwork makes the dream work!

Working on this project exposed me to a lot of the different aspects of collaboration. Here we are, five people, with five different ideas that we somehow have to smash together to create one solid idea that can actually come to fruition. Obviously, everyone is vying for their own ideas to stay prominent, but eventually we all reach an agreement and it feels good to know that your voice is heard and that even an inkling of your presence has remained. On the other hand, ideas keep evolving and sooner or later, the original is forgotten. My group had particular special effects that we wanted to use, which we late discovered were not possible for the skill and software level we had. But the project became something that I am very proud of.

My favorite moment of the process was definitely mastering a set of lines that we kept messing up. It’s the scene where Spider has just entered and is going on and on about all of the issues with the apartment and hallway: the rats, bedbugs, infestation. We must have tried to film that scene at least fifty times, messing up in some way or another in each take. The most memorable moment was when we finally got about 95% through the scene, only for me to forget my one line! I was so upset with myself, but it was also SO funny! But finally, we did it, we finished it! As stressful as filming and memorizing lines could be, it was so much fun!

inhabited was a difficult play to memorize, mostly because there was so much interruption between lines and so many repetitive phrases. I tried to read into my character, Galvez, to see her motivations. There wasn’t much I could tell about her from her lines, only that she panics easily like I do. The best way I could think to portray her was as a worry-wart, lots of pacing and stressed-out expressions. I can’t really say that the play or any of the characters meant much to me because I didn’t form any strong connections or attachments. It’s just humorous that I get to see myself freaking out so much; at least now I know what I look like when panicking.