Thursday, January 21, 2010

Turds to Birds Reflection: Lauren Eichhorn

My role in the film Turds to Birds was that of the main character. My co-star’s were, Sherin Jacob, Gavin Pang and Jessica Mazurkiewicz. My role as the main character was the young girl who wanted to lose weight; she subscribed to the turds to birds workout plan after seeing an infomercial about the plan and its deals. Gavin, Sherin and Jessica all worked for the Turds to Birds work out corporation. Gavin, Sherin and Jessica were also a big part of the movie in the scheme of acting. Our screenwriter, editor and director for Turds to Birds was the famous Benjamin Ratner. Ben took on the role of perfecting and catching certain moments in the film with great cinematic effects. The groups MVP I have to say must be Ben. Our two-time Oscar winning director Ben was there to catch our amazing acting and bring it to life.
The group as a whole worked very cohesively, we had many similar ideas and everyone in our group was flexible. Pre Production we all brain stormed in the library a bunch of great ideas, after brainstorming we decided to incorporate all our ideas together. The group put together ideas including, dance, commercial and a story put together to make one brilliant short film. The production was one of the hardest parts of making the film, aside from the editing which Ben had did the production was a long and tiring process. We took many takes and learned some new things like dance and even step aerobics. Ideas and other little scenes to make the film unique also took many takes for perfection. In the end the group had fun during the process we hadn’t disagreed or fought. It was the most relaxing filming could get. Postproduction was really about Ben making four drafts of our film. After each draft was complete we would review and give Ben music and tips on what to add and cut from the film, I would like to say we all helped edit but most editing credit is due to Ben.
The Inspiration for our group’s film was really just to produce a movie that will make people laugh and for them to really appreciate the hard work put into it. There was really no one inspiration; it was kind of a bunch of ideas that inspired us to make something enjoyable. The film Turds to Birds is a comedy; the film has a story behind it as well. The moral of our story is never to trust what you see on TV and what promises infomercials put out to the public. In the film I am the young girl who is looking to lose weight. I found the workout plan Turds to Birds on TV and decide to join for just 9 dollars a month. I find out by the end of the film that I gained weight, that the teachers were not trained and therefore realized I got scammed out of my money.
My favorite scene in the film has to be the ending when I take all my frustrations out by talking directly into the camera. I like this scene the most because there was a build up of suspense through out the movie, you were just waiting for me to blow up, and I did. What didn’t turn out the way I hoped was just the music and some transitions in the film. I had wished in certain scenes the music was louder to engage the viewer more. In addition better fluidity between some scenes. What I think I will do differently when I’m in my next film is most definitely get better props and costumes. I feel that our group also could have gotten better props and costume. It was our first film and there always has to be some room for to change. Costume, props and set can make a film just as well as the acting and storyline can.
I defiantly learned that the art of film is a lot harder then it looks. There is really so much to be though about before even beginning to film, the pre film processes is just as important and takes just as much time as even filming can. The equipment to capture some shots are also very complex, movies cost a lot of money and by making my own short film I really see where you can spend a lot of money. For the film Turds to Birds we used a number of different cinematic effects. My favorite technique, which was influenced from my learning’s in the RoTMI class are the high angle shot and the low angle shot. The low angle shot makes the viewers feel small and the person talking feel big, while the high angle shot makes the viewers view the person as being weak. We also used for our film a jump cut, cutting from one section fast forwarding to what’s going to happen momentarily. Parallel editing is another one we used to show different peoples reactions to a situation at the same point in time. At the end we put a split screen to show the credits to make our film stand out. All in all we worked very hard as a group on our film and I hope you enjoy it.

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