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Category Archives: Final Project Reflections
Final Movie Blog
When I first learned we were making a movie for our final project I was not excited. But what made it worse was after reading the script in class I had no idea what I just read. I had to read the script at home again and the play was still not clear to me- it was so choppy and fast paced. I didn’t know how we were to make this into a movie. But creating the storyboard and jumping into filming cleared the confusion. Now that we’ve created our film I realized that this process was very challenging yet enjoyable.
Since I did not want to be visually in the film I was the video editor. Video editing was very time-consuming and frustrating, but above all rewarding. It was pretty nerve wracking knowing all the footage lay in my hands and that it was up to me to put it together. In the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think that the computer would randomly shut off and erase my work or that I would accidentally press the wrong button and delete all the footage. But nothing of the sort happened and all is well.
I enjoyed the creative challenge of putting the pieces together. It was especially tricky to figure out how to represent the change from past to future. I don’t think I’ll ever make another movie, but if I do I’ve learned a lot of skills. One of the hardest things for me was accepting the fact that there are limitations and I could not fix all the mistakes. Also, sometimes I wished that we had fewer and better takes or that we changed things while filming. But at the end of the day we all tried our best and as I look back at the film I am proud of our work.
I really enjoyed working with my group- they were a funny bunch. But I have to say that overall, my favorite part in this entire process would probably be putting the bloopers together. I must have watched the bloopers about twenty times. Also, I thought it was really cool to listen to everyones different ideas about how we should do a certain scene or represent our overarching message.
However, there were things about this movie that got on my nerves. One thing that I did not like was going through all the takes and deciding which worked. The whole movie making process was long and laborious. As the video editor I went through over 200 (yes over 200) scenes of the film. I chose the best scenes or combined scenes and so on. Because each scene was done so many times I had to watch them all then pick the top 3 and then try each of the three and see which worked best with the film. Not only did this take forever but I knew the scenes so well I started memorizing them.
The whole movie-making process is much harder than it seems. I never really thought about how long or hard it is to make a movie before but I now have some idea. Now I am much more aware of how much time and effort was put into every film I watched- how many times one scene must be done and redone until its perfect and the effort that goes into stitching the pieces together. But more than all, putting this movie together reminded me that challenges could also be fun and exciting.
Thank you Professor Healey and classmates for a great semester! 🙂
Final Project Blog
The filmmaking process was a very interesting experience. When we were first given the script in class, I had a million thoughts rushing through my head of all the possible interpretations of the script. However, it seemed that I wasn’t the only one who had a bunch of different visualizations for the film. After coming together with my group, I discovered that each member had her own vision for how she wanted the script to be acted out. But we knew that we all needed to come to a consensus with one main plan for the film.
We all agreed to collectively contribute to various aspects of the film. We began by combining all of our different ideas to come up with a single plan. My favorite idea that was incorporated into the film was to have the contemporary couple (Cris and Kel) be portrayed as a gay couple, in color, (Victoria and Eleni) and the traditional couple (Elizabeth and Freda) portrayed in black and white. I was able to bring up the idea of incorporating an adoption agency website into the first scene which brought another interesting addition to the film. I thought our interpretation of the film was very unique and I was glad that we were able to make it work. Although my character’s part was small, I enjoyed acting and actually had fun shooting my part. Throughout many scenes, it was difficult not to laugh. In fact, MANY scenes required multiple takes because someone either laughed or missed a line. However, everything ended up working out pretty well after the editing and filming was complete.
I was happy to see how well everything turned out with everyone’s ideas being incorporated into the film. But I would be lying if I said that the whole filmmaking process was a smooth one. The most difficult task of this experience would probably have to be trying to act out the lines word for word. While it may seem easy to just perform words on a page, I can honestly say it is NOT! It is difficult to recite all of the lines exactly how they are written. Since my part wasn’t that big, I did memorize my character’s lines. Nonetheless, it was challenging to recite the lines exactly how they are stated when acting. This was a huge difficulty that all of the actors in our film had to overcome.
This film was important to me because as we were filming, I realized how much work actually goes into any performance. Throughout the semester, we have watched many performances and analyzed them in various ways. Nonetheless, I don’t think that enough credit is given to every person involved in the production of any performance. Being involved in this film made me realize the importance of everyone’s role in a production. From the people behind the scenes to the actors, each member is vital to make the production a success. This filmmaking experience also made me realize how much time and work goes into any artwork.
On a final note, I am very proud of how the film came along and how well my group worked together. There were many aspects of the filmmaking process that I enjoyed but I have gained a huge knowledge of how much time and effort is actually put into the creation of any production. Although my group and I have shared hours of stress, I believe that it was well worth it.
