The End of the End

I feel my final project went well and I enjoyed making the film. We gave presentations this week and I enjoyed seeing everyone's projects and all the different approches they had for each thing they did. I feel mine was a little below most of them but that doesn't bother me. I will post a link to the film when it gets uploaded but I am having problems with my USB port right now.

here is my fianl write up for my project read if you want:
What Are Friends For?
My project was a series of scenes with small visual changes in each one. The scenes were closely related to the previous scene and carried the same message of friendship. I shot each scene with my own camcorder in a fixed position except for one of the scenes where I moved the camera around. I wanted to start off with someone in the room and having one of them already in there reading was the only solution because a TV show wasn’t going to remain constant in each scene.
Scene 1(Base):
This was the base scene for the rest of the movie. I had the camera in the fixed position and the actors were wearing normal clothes to reflected an everyday mood. The fixed position was a strong visual tie between the scenes.
Scene 2(Clothes):
This scene was the same as the last except for the shirts they are wearing. They have colors on that reflect the mood they are in, dark blue for gloomy and tie-died for cheerful. I was hoping that the color change would help promote the mood the actor was in during the scene. The camera remained in the fixed position to tie back into the last scene.
Scene 3(Camera):
In this scene the actors went back to what they were wearing in the first scene and the camera is removed from its fixed position. I tried not to focus on one person too long and put them in the center of the camera. I did this because I think it helps you feel more a part of the scene. You aren’t going to focus on both of them in real life so the camera moves back and forth in the scene.
Scene 4(Locations):
In the final scene I removed them from the base location and they remained wearing the same clothes from the base scene. There were no other major changes in this scene except that you view the actors from behind. It makes you feel as if you are in the car but the camera remains in a fixed position. I left in the long walk to the car to make it seem like the actor is taking his time because of his mood.
Credits:
I did a very small montage of “bloopers” from the film to give a sense of the mood that was around when we were shooting. The song I chose was “We are not going to make it” by The Presidents of The United States of America. Whenever I listen to this song I get this feeling of friendship, meaning that no matter what happens we are together and we are having fun. The text remained in the same position and the same through out the film to have the constant visual aspect I was going for to help tie into the movie. The block lettering gives this informative mood that stands out but I feel it adds a bit of necessary contrast to the joking nature of the script.
I wanted to do a movie because I have never taken on a film project. Also, I thought of this comedy routine I had seen before that did the same thing. Over a series of the same scene they did the same thing but at a faster pace each time ending with them running around and screaming. I wanted to do something along these lines but try to only focus on visual changes. I feel I did this well and still keep some comedy in the present in the scene. The script is reminiscent of some conversations I have had with friends in the ending humor of the scene.
The first major problem I had was writing the script. I felt like I couldn’t write anything that would make sense and avoided it for a while. I would write a few lines then not think they were able to do what I wanted for the scene. I finally pulled myself together and wrote the whole script. I had my roommate who is in the movie proof read it and point out a few things that didn’t make sense. The second problem was planning the shoot date and time. I had projects or regattas or one of the people was out of town. We finally shot most of it before Thanksgiving Break and finished soon after we came back. The final problem that was the most stressing was computer (and user) error when I accidentally deleted the whole project off my computer. Luckily there wasn’t an over bearing amount of editing to be done because the scenes were all done in one take.
In conclusion I feel the message of friendship is strong and if this had been a larger scale project I would have been able to make stronger visual changes. I also feel its hard to visually change the message of friendship. Maybe if I had actual actors the mood would have been conveyed stronger but I feel their slip ups add to the mood and feeling of a cheap, short independent film. I had fun and now know much more work goes into making even a short film than I had previously thought.