Intern Portfolio

Hey everyone. As some of you may or may not know, during my time at Emma Willard, I interned for the communications office. Basically, I filmed and edited videos for the school. These videos were either put on the school's YouTube channel, put in the school newsletter, or sent to prospective students. Though I currently don't have access to the videos that were put in the newsletter or the videos that were sent to the prospective students, I still have access to the videos on the YouTube channel. I had the freedom to plan each video, so most of these were planned, organized, film, and edited by me unless stated otherwise.

 

This was my first video I filmed and edited for the school. Basically, I was still trying to figure out technique and way of working and filming students and faculty. 

I started to understand the importance of the environment when filming students.

This is part of a six part series. I did not record this, but I did edit it. 

The next few videos are just more interviews, just and gaining experience in general       

I made this video when I went on a field trip to New York City, because the field trip was funded by donations given by parents and alumni. 

This was the last video I filmed and edited on my own.

This was the last video I helped film, before I graduated Emma Willard in 2016. 

I just thought I'd make a blogpost dedicated to my work that I've done during my time as an intern for the communications office, so I'd have a portfolio easily accessible. Interning at Emma Willard was probably the most stressful, enjoyable, and most important part of my filming career. Doing this helped me realize that I love making videos, and hopefully I'll have an opportunity to have another experience like this again. 

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: