Final words

Now that my movie has finally been shown publicly... it's time to close up? I don't know. Anyway, let me write about a bunch of stuff that I need to write for this assignment (~:

So lots of my blog posts talk about the challenges I've faced during my project, so I feel like I don't need to say every single challenge. I will say, however, that during this project, I've learned how to quickly adapt to changes - which is quite a good thing to learn in life. I was able to make an alternate title, I found another way to use sound in the movie... things like that.

I think the proudest moment of my project was after I showed the movie during the presentation. I did not expect the reactions I received (people telling me that the movie made them laugh.. in a good way, etc.), and it made all of the challenges and fear worth it. Yes. Fear. I was scared that people would not like the movie at all. But my mentor kept trying to reassure me, but... me being me... I didn't believe him. Ha.

So during the actual presentation, I was nervous. I was so nervous that I felt my legs shaking, and I couldn't stop it. And I was wearing heels! I was trying to play it cool, hoping no one noticed, and I don't think anyone did. Also, I think my voice shook a bit. But the more I talked, the more comfortable I was talking on stage in front of a bunch of people. I've always had a fear of public speaking - to the point where I used to cry before going up - but that didn't happen this time! But overall, I think I did well during the presentation. I made people laugh a little, which was good. I always aim to get some laughter out of people.

So here is some advice I would give to a future Signature student, specifically if they want to produce a movie:

• Be excited about it! I know during my time of this project, I was quite humble about my movie. People told me I was too humble. And I see that now. Be enthusiastic.. you're creating something amazing. 
• There might be a time where everything is going wrong. Keep going, no matter how annoying and frustrating it is. If being a filmmaker was easy, I'm sure everyone would do it. 
• Also, organization is nice. Seriously. 

So that's it. My film is completed, and this Signature project is done. My movie will be shown at the Emma movie night (Which is on the 28th, by the way). I don't know what else to say. I know when 2015 started, I told myself that I'd make a short film as a ~new years resolution~. I made SOMETHING, but I wasn't satisfied with it. I'm glad I took up this Signature project, because I'm definitely satisfied with Stuck in Neutral (except I've seen it hundreds of times due to the amount of editing and I need a break from seeing it ha ha ha).  

Anyway, I'm going to end this blog with a quote from Hayao Miyazaki:

"It's not me who makes the film. The film makes itself and I have no choice but to follow."

I'm a big fan of this quote, not only because it's good advice for me when I make future films, but because it's a nice metaphor for life.♡♡ 

Update

After a long eight (nine? who knows) months, I have finally exported the final version of my movie. I'm not quite sure what to say about it, except that I'm glad that I have finished, and I'm extremely happy with the final product. I had a chance to add music to it, which was a big plus for me. Music is a really important part of a film, in my opinion. Music has the ability to set the tone of any film. I tried out many different types of music, and the movie changed with each song. I guess the only thing left to do is finish my PowerPoint presentation for reunion weekend.

Free Trials and Errors

Turns out my movie is longer than I expected it to be.
I finished a draft of the movie, and it's currently 9 minutes and 19 seconds. I'm quite happy about this. When I was filming it (I might have mentioned before) I thought it was going to be less than five minutes. In this case, I'm glad I was wrong.
Okay, let me backtrack a little bit. I was working with Premiere Pro with this one. A Premiere Pro one month free trial to be exact. I wanted to learn it before I decided to buy it, so I thought that this editing movie was a perfect opportunity to learn this program. After a few trials and errors, I got the hang of it. Unsurprisingly it is very different to iMovie and Final Cut Pro. Premiere Pro gave me more options and it also made everything as complex as it could be. I am sure there are reasons for that, but right now.... I don't know what they are.
Anyway,
I'm going to show my mentor what I have right now. After a little bit more editing in Premiere Pro, I'm planning to move my work to Speed Grade, where I will color correct my movie. To make it look more..... cinematic looking. If that makes sense.

More Disappointments

End of February/all of March was full of learning experiences. When I started to edit my movie, I decided on a few things.

1. I was going to teach myself new programs (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Speed Grade) to edit my movie.
2. My movie title will be "Stuck in Neutral".
3. I wanted a nice animation for my title. 

However, though #3 took most of my time, I wasn't able to use it in the end. I learned how to use After Effects (well, the basic techniques), and I didn't have a problem at all. When I finished my animation, I had trouble exporting it to a media file. Which was/is very inconvenient. I spent a week or so (totally not procrastinating the actual editing part of the movie) trying to use different settings to get my beautiful animation to export. But alas, nothing worked. 

I'm still trying to figure this out, but I've already used my alternative plan. 

You live and learn, I guess. 

Here is what it WAS supposed to look like (before technology decided to rebel against me) 

Excess, or not.

Following through with plans was harder than I thought.

When I first started, I was going by my chart I mentioned in a previous post. I wanted this day to go as organized and clean as possible. I went shot by shot, until I got to shot 3. After shot 3, I started to film more than I had to. I started to shoot from more angles than I planned. I almost completely left my chart behind.
I started to overlap shots together because it seemed like it would look better. I just started to leave my charts and planning to go with my gut. It was different being in the car and actually filming, rather than drawing my scenes and organizing them.
When we finished up, I ended up with 92 shots. This doesn't seem like a lot -- but I used a phone as a microphone. Which means I'm going to have to try to find the matching audio to 92 different footages (is the plural of 'footage' 'footages'? who knows.). And I will have to do that 92 times. I don't even have 92 different audio files. I have 77.

Like I said. This day went as best as it could have been. I didn't expect to NOT run into any problems, and I'm surprised I don't have more problems. To be honest, having 77 audio files and 92 shots isn't that bad of a problem for me.
I'm very happy with how this day went.

Here is the first sneak peak of my movie!

Behind the scenes.

Yesterday was the day I finally filmed my movie.
When I started, I felt like I was the most organized I could have been. I got everything ready - the car, the phones, the cameras, the teen angst.
I had to trash the car. I had coffee cups, donut boxes, magazines, blankets, hats, shoes -- things teenage girls would probably have in their car. It was a pain trying to film in all of that junk, but I managed.
While filming, however, I ran into lots of problems:

1. The phone that was supposed to be FaceTiming was dying.
2. The phone I was using as a microphone was dying. 
3. There were random strangers with children in the background at some point.   

Though all of these problems were easily fixable, these were just inconvenient things I had to deal with. At the end of the day, I learned a few things. Like bringing portable chargers. always.

Here are some pictures from the day:

Back to Characters

In all of this chaotic planning, I've decided to talk about one of my characters a bit. I may or may not have mentioned this in a previous blog post, but the three characters in this movie are all extremely exaggerated parts of my personality... if that even makes sense. It probably doesn't. Anyway.

Right now I'm talking about Sam (I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I've altered the characters' names so that they all don't have three syllables and end with 'a').

While I was creating my characters, I had to go through this long and annoying process of writing full biographies. For each. Single. One. Good thing there are only three characters, right?
Anyway, I had to talk about their "interior life" and their "exterior life".
The interior life just included the broad story -- born here, went to school there, lived over there, has three brothers, all of that. Things that other people who would meet this character wouldn't know off the bat.
The exterior life included three categories. Private life, professional life, and personal life. Private life is more of what the character does when they are alone, professional life includes school and/or work, and personal life talks about the character's relationship with people.

I've decided to share a bit of each life in this blog throughout my process.
Whoever reads these little biographies then watches my movie, or vice versa, might appreciate the film a bit more, with some of this "secret" information.
So here's Sam. (All of this is just snippets of my character notes)

Interior life:
"Female, born and lives in New York. She had one brother, but passed away as soon as he was born. Her mother and father were distant in her late childhood because they had to work all the time. Her childhood was ok, not happy or sad. Her schoolmates picked her on sometimes. She won’t admit that being teased hurt her, so she pretends to be strong and apathetic. Her outgoingness was part of the reason why she was teased so much, so she started to become an introvert in her late elementary years."

Exterior life:
Professional life: "SAM is a junior in high school. She keeps pushing this fact away, but she’s not very content with her life. She wishes that she could just start over. She never has arguments with anyone, because she is just a presence, not actually talking. She is an extreme perfectionist, and she thinks everything she does isn’t perfect. She’s afraid of failure most of the time."

Personal life: "SAM has never had a boyfriend before, even though there are boys who admire her. She thinks that being in a relationship would ruin her for life, because she doesn’t trust boys. When SAM is home, she does homework, reads, and writes. Sometimes she plays the violin. She doesn’t really like the violin, but her parents do."

Private life: "When SAM is alone, she does the same thing when she is home -- homework, read, or write. She listens to music when she does all of this. She listens to alternative or rock, anything really, except for country. She despises country."

Things Change.

Wow, there were lots of things going on in January. So here's what has been happening:

• I thought I found a car I would be able to use to film in. 
• I thought I figured out a date I'd be able to film on. 

Unfortunately,  things happen, schedules conflict, and life gets in the way. SO, I'm back to where I was in the beginning of January. Car-less and date-less.

On the bright side, I've been working on Excel to organize my storyboard and shots (who knew Excel skills would be used for anything other than math?). Why do I have to do this? Because there are more than 100 shots that I have to film. There are lots of angles I want to get to. And with all of those shots, I might drown in post it notes.
Here's what my ""'organization'"" looks like:


I'm going to do this for the whole screenplay. Yay. Organization.

On a completely different and positive note, while I was working on this chart, I started thinking of names for this unnamed movie.
Two possibilities:
"Stuck in Neutral"
or
"Life in Park"

But who knows? Things change.