Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Fortune Cookie Blinded Love

I think that this was an interesting final project for class. This was my first experience actually going about a film. I didn’t think it would be so exhausting. The re-takes were the worst part of making the film because it gets tiring of taking the same shot over and over again.

At the beginning of our first meeting I didn’t know what to expect. The first meeting in class we had was so unproductive because everyone had different ideas. Our group didn’t know which story to pick, so we narrowed it down to two movies. We had to pick either a scary movie or love story. We all didn’t know which to pick because Jin kept on bringing up suggestions that we should do a scary movie, but then we decided not to because it was more difficult than we thought it would be. For example Jin wanted one of us to walk down the stairs upside down like in the movie “Grudge”. We decided to go with Sabrina’s idea. Her story is about a guy in school who has amazing grades but he can’t get a girl. Eventually he sums up the courage to ask her out but he gets a little surprise. We really didn’t have any planning for this. We basically asked if everyone could stay after to film. Even though it was a spontaneous to ask people to stay after school and film. We had planned most of the scenes out on paper. We planned out that, two of the scenes were going to be in the cafeteria but then we went up stairs to film it was closed. I believe that was the most disappointing part about our film. One of the scenes we had to take about 15 takes on that one scene because we either laughed too much or we forgot the lines. One of the scenes we randomly added to the film to make it more interesting. After we were done filming for the day, I felt really tired. I thought that we did a good job for an indie film.

Everyone in our production group had a job to do. I had the role of help direct the film, help with the screenplay, write a script for one of the scenes, and was the cinematographer for a few scenes as well. At first I didn’t know what to do at all but then I just started helping Sabrina with whatever she needed help with. I think it’s obvious that our MVP is Sabrina. I think without Sabrina’s editing skills we wouldn’t have made it, most of the people in our production group doesn’t know how to use any editing program, I felt that she really saved our grades.

I felt that our film was very successful in that we accomplished our first movie as a production group. I think our acting was good, but the only part I think was pretty bad was when she didn’t know who Jin was; she kept on repeating a part that only needed to be said once. I think my favorite part of the film was when Leslie played “Mary had a Little Lamb” on the piano and the conversation he had between Jin. That was my favorite part because I wrote the script for the scene and I loved how Jin just added little parts to make it funnier, like Jin picking his nose. I think next time I make a film I’m going to plan everything our and make arrangements so things don’t happen like when we couldn’t use the cafeteria.

I learned multiple things from making this movie. I realized that making a film or even a short clip takes a lot of time, effort and makes you tired. We incorporated many cinematic aspects in our film. We used multiple medium shots during the film. For example when she shot the part of Jin and Leslie talking to each other. We used a medium shot to show revealing human figure. Another Cinematic aspect is when we had a cameo shot in the film as well. We used the cameo part when the extra and the director were talking about how they did on the test. We also used close ups of people. We used a close up when the Extra didn’t know who Jin was in the movie. It showed her facial expressions and detail. We used a subjective shots; we use a subjective shot when Leslie pointed out the guy that tried to ask the extra out. The whole point of a subjective shot is to show what that person is looking at. We use a narrator during the film as well. We used the narrator to introduce the character. A Narrator is to point in a direction what the audience should be looking for. Another one is a voice over; we use a voice over at the beginning and the end of the film. The voice over is used to convey a character’s thoughts. Overall I think this film was a good film, even though it was my first ever. Everyone in this film did a good job even if they participated in the smallest parts.

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