Reflection on Turds to Birds

The members in our group consist of Ben Ratner, Sherin Jacob, Lauren Eichhorn and Jessica Mazurkiewcs. We called ourselves the Jerk Production. At first our movie was going to be about a love triangle between Sherin, Lauren and I but at a second glance the topic was too complicated and too hard to convey. Instead of making a film about a serious topic such as love we decided to have a little fun and filmed about the parodies of infomercials and how often they lie to the audience watching them. We decided to film about a work out plan that consists of trainers: Sherin, Jessica, and I, which would come to Laurens house to help her lose ten pounds before summer.

Right at the start of the film Lauren is explaining to the audience how fat she is and why all the workouts she did during the past ten years did not help her lose a single pound of weight. We began with a close-up/medium shot because it showed the audience she was emotional about her weight. She did not like to be fat and she would want to lose it. Then as Lauren went through each of her weight loss class we filmed her on her first day being at class and we filmed her two weeks later. We want to do this to show the audience that she has improved so much that she is doing better than the teachers/trainers but still has not lost any weight. When Lauren was in my weight class it starts with a split screen. She lifts the 8 pound dumbbells and I lift the 1 pound dumbbell. It is ironic how I am the trainer and I am using less weight than her. We did this to add a little humor to the film. We also put it in a split screen to show how much Lauren is struggling at first. But then two weeks past and she is lifting weights more than me. A high angle shot was used on Lauren during my class when she gives up and drops the weights, she then later cries about how she broke her nail. We did this to show that Lauren does not have any power in this situation. I respond back with a low angle show to show her whose boss and that she can’t give up.

My favorite scene in this film is close to the end when Lauren is complaining about how she did not lose any fat from all these weight and dancing classes. We only filmed it twice and there was no script. This is my favorite because it portrays Lauren’s true funny side. I think the film was a great success because each and every group member corporate. We did not waste time and was very determined to make film the greatest we can.

The greatest part about our team work was that we created a successful film without any scripts or preplanning. Everything was impromptu. This film brought out our real personalities and therefore our personalities have created a successful film. And to end the film we of course danced to Teach me How to Jerk a Los Angeles dance movement that started in 2008 to show that we are the Jerk Productions.