Final (video)

Scope

For this project, we had to make a short film that had to somehow include a water bottle, a hat, an obvious source of light, and the phrase "lights out" verbally spoken.

Process

Pre-Production
First, we spent a couple days brainstorming. This took a bit of time because we bounced different ideas around but we couldn't decide on one we were happy with. Eventually, we agreed on the idea of a murder story being narrated by the dead victim. The script writer wrote most of the script outside of class, so that aspect of the project was not very collaborated on, but we were all very happy with the result. I was in charge of story boarding, which again, was mainly finished outside of class, but the first couple of shots were done by the whole group.
Production
When storyboarding was finished, it was time to film. This was definitely the most difficult and problematic part of this project. We had to deal with cars driving in our shots, getting rained on, struggling to get our whole group called out of school, our microphone not working for voiceovers, and some other little occurrences, but I think it all turned out well in the end.
Post-Production
Editing- for me at least- was quite inconvenient. First of all, we had two SD cards we filmed from, so we didn't have all of the footage we needed at first, but we eventually obtained all the shots we needed. I had to stay after school to finish editing for an hour, followed by another hour to wait for it to upload, but I am pretty happy with how my version of my film came out.

What I learned

Because of the similarity of this project from the last one, I didn't learn too much more than what I already knew. I did, however, improve my skills in terms of brainstorming, storyboarding, script writing (although I didn't take part in this particular task), filming, and especially editing. This video was probably the most difficult to edit. I think that I improved my skills of flowing clips together, and I learned how to speed up and reverse clips, which I applied to the car crash scene.

Reflection

This was personally one of my favorite projects. I loved the plot and the acting and most of the shots were well done. However, I think a few of the shots were kind of shaky and just could have been better. If I would change anything, I would probably have tried harder to get the microphone to work, or ask a teacher for help, because the voiceovers sound a little distant without it. Also, I would re-film  a couple of shots. Specifically the walking shots which were very long and drawn out, or I would have just edited them differently. Overall, I think this project was successful for our group.