After three long, fun, and somehow also stressful weeks the infamous mid-term project is finally done. I am actually really proud of the final product and excited to start on the final (after lots of rest during winter break of course). Hannah, Paris, and I once again teamed up to execute this project and I really think we did well for our first full project. Here is a quick rundown on the plot: Nessa (Paris) and Maylene (Hannah) are two best friends with completely opposite styles and mannerisms (Nessa is an all-pink, girly-girl while Maylene is more grunge/punk style). Even despite their differences, they blend so well together and have been friends for some time with years of fun and adventures under their belts. Their next endeavor is a plan for them to get rich quick and it's quite simple, steal some of the ever-popular Pokemon cards from Target and sell them for a profit. In hindsight it's a very silly scheme but one they are willing to try. They make it to the front of Target and while they are working up the courage to walk in Target a man they have never seen before runs out with a bag and alarms going off. The man confuses the two girls with two people he is supposed to meet up with (who so happen to match their exact description) for a very real and very serious heist. He hands them a bag of freshly stolen goods and money and grabs them by the arm to run towards the getaway car. Once in the car, the two girls meet yet another member of this heist, a very bubbly getaway driver who tends to bicker with the very serious man who dragged them in the car. The girls realize that they have been dragged into an active crime a little too late and now have to decide how to act from there. If you would like to read our script here is the link: Elite Four Script. A fair warning though, we did not follow the script to the letter it was mostly guidelines of what needed to be done.
We decided early on that we wanted to do a comedy movie opening since we thought all of us together outside of class might have a hard time staying serious when it came to filming so we went with a comedy so it would make sense if a few smiles made it into the final cut. We also wanted to do a twist coming-of-age movie since we thought the coming-of-age genre would be a popular one among the class. So, the beginning of our film is very reminiscent of early 2000s teen movies, such as "Freaky Friday," showing the two characters getting ready and the twist was the unexpected turn to a comedy heist film. Why Pokémon cards you ask, well there was really no reason for it. While planning we were coming up with a placeholder item and Hannah randomly suggested Pokémon cards and we just ran with it since we all liked Pokémon and because it was just random enough to fit in with our comedy aspects.
When it came to roles for the film, we all chipped in when it came to what needed to be done but mostly Paris took care of designing characters, make-up, and sets, Hannah took care of planning and directing, and I took care of cinematography and editing. For our finale, we might have more defined roles just to help with the organization. Another reason why I would like to do this is because I was the one who took on the editing for the whole project and I did not realize till after the fact just how much work that entails and because of our time constraints our project ended up suffering a bit. I think for our finale if everyone does a little it will overall improve the end result since there will be more eyes on it to catch mistakes and help prevent anyone from becoming burned out.
When it came to character design we wanted to highlight characters who were foils to one another. We especially wanted to highlight the differences between Nessa and Maylene since we opened with a cross-cut of them getting ready. Not only does this provide some humor to see the calm and relaxed morning routine of Nesssa compared to the hectic and messy morning of Maylene but it also provides a variety in the shots. If the two girls were very similar in character and style, cutting back and forth between the two would be dull. We also wanted to make the two members of the actual heist to be foils of shorts for a comedic aspect. We had Rob, the man who dragged Nessa and Maylene into the heist, be a guy who is takes his job very seriously and is a little on edge while the getaway driver Samantha (played by me) has a bubbly and laid-back personality. Costume and make-up for Rob and Samantha were fairly simple, all black with a bit of eyeliner. This was done to help convey their nefarious motives without outright stating it.
The filming day overall went really smoothly even though there were a few hiccups. The biggest one was that Paris had a doctor's appointment and had to leave early from shooting so we had to film most of her scenes first. Ultimately, we decided to shoot the Target scenes first and our start time would be about 7:30 in the morning since we wanted to film before many people got to Target so we would not disturb anyone. We ended up going to the far corner of the parking lot to avoid any customers going into the store. We also wanted to film this scene first because this is the only scene that included our friend Sebastian (who plays Rob) and because he is not in our class and was only helping out because we are friends, we wanted to get him out of filming as soon as possible so we would not further inconvenience him. Sebastian was genuinely really helpful and a good sport about everything (could be the fact I bribed him with Starbucks) and I really appreciated his help. He even said he would be happy to help act in our final so he might make another cameo. So our plan was to film at Target, then Paris' house, then Hannah's house (by this time both Paris and Sebastian would have left), and a week later we filmed the outside scenes with both Hannah and Paris.
Then came probably the most challenging part, editing. Since everything was filmed on Hannah's DSLR camera, she was the one who uploaded and labeled all the files onto a USB drive. I then sorted through everything and picked out what made the final cut. Cutting everything together and timing out scenes was one of the easiest parts for me. Then I adjusted any shots if necessary such as zooming in or out of shots. Then I started to work on layering sounds such as background music, sound effects, and the background sounds from shots. This was definitely the hardest part of the process. There was a balance to denoise the shots that would leave the background noise out without muffling the main sound and I was having a hard time reaching it. For example, out scenes outside have a wind noise that I did my best to minimize but it can still be heard and because of our time restraints, we did not have enough time to reshoot the scene. For our final, I hope to improve with sound editing and since we will have more time to film I would really like to schedule a whole day just for reshoots (we will probably not include many outside shots as well). Finally, I added the credits, title, and freeze frame, and the project was done! For the credits and title, I was lucky to find a font that looks close to the Pokémon font and I changed the colors to match with the logo. We chose the title "Elite Four" because there were four main characters and it is a reference to the boss group in the Pokémon games with the same name; the Elite Four.
Overall, the project was loads of fun to produce and through our trials and errors, we learned a lot when it comes to what we will do for our final. Below is a link to our video and to some photos taken on set, enjoy!
I hope you all have a great winter break and holiday season, see you in 2024.
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment