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Showing posts from February, 2023

Production Blog: I Wasn't There....But the Videos Look Great(also, I learned about day-for-night editing!)

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  I Wasn’t There….But the Videos Look Great! So, as we all have learned, life happens. And when life happens, it can feel like the end of the world, or for me, the end of my high school career. However, life does go on. As overdramatic as that can seem, I care a lot about this class and want to succeed. Of course, this does lead to increased pressure on myself, but I’m currently working to get better at that.  In short, because of this pressure, I was a little worried about not being able to be at the filming shoot today. I wasn’t able to go because I didn’t have any transportation, which is honestly happening constantly.  As upsetting as that can be, I decided I needed to use the time I had productively. For this film, we need to be able to use a technique called “day-for-night” filming, in which all scenes are filmed during the day, but the necessary scenes are edited to look like night. I heard of this technique through a review I saw for Jordan Peele’s “Nope”, so I decided to dig d

Filming Blog: Chico is Our Star Actor!

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  We finally got to film! So today, we met up at Easterlin Park and started to scope out what we needed to do before we filmed all of our scenes with Chico. Chico is actually the name of Naliah’s chihuahua, which I did not know. I genuinely thought that was just a stereotypical chihuahua name that she just made up. But, my cluelessness aside, Chico was actually very cooperative, but I’ll focus on that later.  The first thing I want to focus on is how well Easterlin fits the vibe of our film. Not only does Easterlin have spots with the road being visible, it also has a lot of open forest. There are some paths, but it’s mostly just dark wooded areas, which fits perfectly for the nighttime scenes. Naliah told me more about the park and gave me a tour, so we could get our bearings and think about where we would film what scenes. We decided to stick to the spots that were lighter at first, then switch to the spots that were darker for the later scenes. Thinking back, I’m not sure if this wi

Production Blog: Rescheduling and Lesson Learned

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  So, long story short, life gets in the way 24/7. Naliah and I planned to film one Saturday, but due to a lack of transport on my end and a lack of time on her end, we needed to reschedule. Is this the start that I wanted to have for our short film? No, absolutely not, but we live and we learn. It honestly feels like I’ve just relearned how difficult it can be to bring schedules together. It’s worse considering the fact that we are both extremely busy high schoolers, but honestly what can you do?  I’ve basically been on a huge learning curve the entirety of my junior year, for multiple reasons. Most relevant to this class and my cambridge diploma is the fact that I’m taking A-Levels now. Are they extremely difficult? No. But is some of the content unfamiliar to me? Yes. I also essentially need to self study for this class, since there’s no exact textbook to go by. Creating these study guides can be time consuming, and it can be difficult to find exactly what you need. A specific issue

Boo! "Chico's Revenge" Storyboard!

 Here is our storyboard for Chico's Revenge, made using a digital drawing app! Glad we didn't waste paper!  Page 1- This page is the first 6 shots of the conversation that the boys have before they enter the woods. Here we see friendships and characters established.  Page 2- These shots lead up to the boys arriving at the woods, with Evan's character as the "responsible" one being made known.  Page 3- A sudden cut to the woods in the afternoon is shown, brining a sense of humor to the situation, as Evan clearly did not want to go. Their relationship with the woods is established here.  Page 4- The first "scary" event happens here, with Noah having his ankle snapped at by a goose. Humor is brought in through Noah's reaction and Sam's claim of spiritual warnings.  Page 5- This page is where things start to pick up. Noah's dead body is found and the boys start to realize that going to the woods was maybe a bad idea.  Page 6- More humor is portra