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:

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.

Good News & Bad News

Good news: I have found my actresses for my movie! I'm SO happy with these people, because I think they really fit these characters well. To be honest, I'm not sure if I can reveal their names. I probably will when I start filming. I'm excited to actually start the filming process. It's going to be great.

Bad news: Location and weather aren't going as planned. I was planning to film in a CVS parking lot, because they're always not too empty and not too full. Then I realized that I would probably get in trouble if I didn't ask for permissions from certain people and I just don't feel like getting kicked out of a parking lot. So I'm just going to find a parking lot on campus and go from there. As for weather... I was thinking of a snowy day for this film. Of course, the one time I want it to snow, it doesn't. I heard that it's going to start snowing after winter break is over, so I'm just hoping for that. If not, I guess I'll have to deal with a windy/rainy/not snowy day.

I suppose that's all the news I have for December. I have my script, my story board, my actresses. I'm ready to go.
Pity how there seems to be more bad news than good. I can make all the bad news go away, I'll make it work.

Auditions and Cookies

Tomorrow is the day I hold auditions for my movie!

I am quite nervous, but I know there are at least a few people coming to audition for sure. I'm going to be filming each audition so I can really look at how they are in front of the camera, and also so I can look back at everyone's auditions while I'm deciding who gets what part. 

One thing I'm worried about is the actual decision making. To be honest, I don't know what makes someone a good actor. I guess this is going to be a very interesting learning experience. 

My plan is to have them read parts of the script that I have picked out. If I think that they would work well with someone else, I'm going to have those two read. I guess I'm going to shuffle people around and see who works best with who and what part.

I baked cookies for this audition, by the way.

Here is the flyer that I created and posted around the school. 

 

Onwards!

I have finally finished drawing out my storyboard!

I don't really have a nice picture because all ninety-something sticky notes are in a pile in my suitcase. 

I can't wait to put them up!

My next step is the casting portion, and I'm very happy that I'm right on schedule. I still have to advertise the fact that there will be auditions... I'll be putting two or three flyers up. I'll also send an email. My goal is to get these parts finalized before Revels Week, so that gives me two weeks or so. Kind of. 

I'm very excited because this is the part where I get to see my characters come to life. 

I'm also slightly nervous.

Yay progress! 

Thanksgiving "Break"

It's Thanksgiving break. When I say "break", I actually mean "time to work on my movie". I'm still working on storyboarding. It's taking a bit of time, mostly because having to think of every single angle and every single scene for this movie in my head is very time consuming. I know what I want, but actually drawing it out really challenges me to have these little images in my head a bit more detailed.

If that makes sense.

Here is what it looks like:

Annotated Bibliography

"11 Essential Camera Techniques in Filmmaking -- With Animated Images." Free Online Film School: Learn Filmmaking. N.p., 10 Nov. 2010 Web. 02 Nov. 2015.
This article gives me the basics of what kind of camera shots there are. It explains when and how I should use them.

Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. New York, NY: Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2005. Print
I trust this source with my life. Without this book, there would be no screenplay at all. This walked me through the steps of creating a character and developing the character. It helped me go through the stages of writing the story, and it told me the do's and don't's of screenwriting.

"Film Studies 101: The 30 Camera Shots Every Film Fan Needs To Know." Empire. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2015.
I love this article because in addition to the thirty camera shots they explain, they also have video examples for each one.

Landau, Neil, and Matthew Frederick. 101 Things I Learned in Film School. New York, NY: Grand Central Pub., 2010. Print.
I stumbled upon this book while I was in a bookstore. The title caught my eye, and I'm so glad I found it! It gives me little illustrations and small but helpful tips. It's a nice book to refer to once in a while.

"Storyboarding Your Film." - For Dummies. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2015.
The questions they ask is very helpful for me to consider what to sketch on each post-it note. Right now this it the most important source I am using.

Board of my story yet?

I've finished my screenplay, and now I'm just working on story-boarding all of this.
Storyboards are important because it helps me organize the story a bit better than only a screenplay. I can plan out what I want to film and how I want the angles to be.
Right now, all I have is a bunch of trees and scary looking stickmen.
It's progress..., at least.

An example of a much more professional and better and prettier storyboard:

http://meetinthelobby.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/upstoryboard1.jpg

I know I'm not Pixar... and I know it takes them about three years just to come out with one movie... but I aim to have storyboards this nice one day. (Probably not because I'm not into animation ha.)

From VHS Cameras to Glamour

I forgot to properly introduce myself. Oops.

My name is Kristina, and I like making films and videos and whatnot. I don't remember exactly when I started to become interested in film, but I think it started when I was in elementary school. Maybe even younger. I stole my mom's old video camera (okay maybe it wasn't old but it's not like she was using it) and I just recorded things. I don't remember what I recorded, and I think I'd rather not remember; but I know I always had this camera with me (I think I may have recorded over some important footage like a wedding, but eh, no one has noticed yet).  I didn't take it outside with me because one, my mom didn't know I stole it so she'd see I had a camera with me and two, I would have felt judged amongst my tiny friends.

Going into middle school, I started to make simple slideshows with music in the background, and then I decided to make a Youtube channel. To be honest, remembering my old Youtube channel makes me cringe. A lot. I think deciding to be part of Youtube at a (very) young age helped me with learning how to edit videos and also helped me go through a process of finding my own style. I mean, I haven't found my style yet, but I have come a very long way since my first Youtube channel. 

Fast forward to around seventh grade, my friend and I decided to make a lyric video. Instead of just typing the words, we decided to use Photobooth and lots of paper and markers. We took pictures of ourselves with the words, and it took us (mostly me -- I ended up doing most of the editing) until around six in the morning (from what I remember). This video is very important to me, because during the process of making this two minute video I learned a lot of new things to help me make much better videos. The eight hours I used to make this video let me explore movie-editing programs. I started to fall in love with the hours I spent filming and editing. 

I never really thought of film as something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Film was always something I did on the side. Throughout the course of my life, I've always jumped from hobby to hobby, except for film. I'm just starting to realize that I've always been interested in film. I actually wish I realized that sooner. 

So.

Basically, I started filming things from a very young age, and I started to learn how to edit as well. Over the years, I have made short videos, and now here I am. I'm going to make a short film. It's not a short video anymore. It's a short film. 

So official.

Summer time Stress (and creations)

Alright, creating a screenplay wasn't as stressful as I thought it was going to be. I started the summer with reading Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. I think I was unintentionally procrastinating, maybe because I was scared that my idea wouldn't work.

One night, around three in the morning, I decided I had to stop running away from my responsibilities, and I had to face my fears of possible failure.

I opened up a new blank document, and I stared at it for a while. I left to go stress eat, then I came back half an hour later. I typed something up, most likely some gibberish, then I erased it. I remembered that the book told me to "get to know my characters". In other words, I had to write full biographies on all of my characters. I had to write down everything -- their family life, their romantic life, their personal life, and even parts of themselves they didn't even know.

I started with Samantha, who at the time was not named yet, and I just regurgitated everything I had on my mind. She had a brother, who died as soon as he was born. Her parents were distant because they both had to work a lot. I started to write down arbitrary facts about her that did not even appear in the screenplay. She has very low self-esteem, and also goes to random coffee shops and keeps a journal full of her personal reviews of these coffee shops.

After finishing up Samantha's character, I realized that I knew what I wanted for my next character.

When I was writing Vanessa, I knew she would have to be very confident. I wanted a character that was completely opposite of Samantha. She didn't really get to know her dad, but it's not like she cared. She is content with her childhood. Though she has a close relationship with her mother, their distant family don't really keep in touch with them. It doesn't bother Vanessa nor her mother, though. She is always the one people come to for advice. Vanessa is a very "go with the flow" type of person, but also always keeping control of any situation she is in. I wanted Vanessa's and Samantha's personality to be contrasted, and then I wrote about the third and last character, Angela.

Angela isn't like Vanessa or Samantha at all. Samantha and Vanessa are the two extremes -- low and high self esteems. Angela, on the other hand, is completely average. She's quite boring, actually, mostly because she refuses to try to do anything about it. The only thing she actually talks about is how boring she is. Anyway, if I were to say anymore, it would kind of give away the movie.


After creating these three very different characters, I realized that I saw a bit of my personality in each of these characters. Sometimes I'm Samantha, when I have my bad days, and I also like to personally review every café I go to. Other times I'm Vanessa, who just goes with the flow and is confident and is okay with everything happening around her. I'm like Angela when I complain... I complain a lot.

While reading Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, I remember the book saying:

"Ask yourself -- if you were in that situation, what would you do in your character's place? This is not to say that you are your character. You may have certain things in common with your character, but I'll say it again: You are not your character." 

That passage stuck with me while I was writing the screenplay because in past creative writing experiences, I always limited the character to myself. I guess I had forgotten that creating a character means that the character gets to be anyone. 

So yes, I guess these three characters and I do have things in common, but we are all very much different.