Hi blog! This project's objective was to successfully produce a 60-90 second long film that expresses the essence of an assigned word. There could not be any talking or dialogue throughout the film, as we were instructed to only use instrumental audio or sound effects in the final draft. The main goal was to clearly express the word using shots, angles, composition, and editing. We were also expected to create a brainstorm and a storyboard prior to filming and editing the project to get a clear understanding of what techniques we would utilize to effectively convey the message of the film. The story that we chose to tell had to be realistically able to occur in the time span of the feature, as creating a montage of events was not the objective of the project.
My assigned word was "cruel", so my partner and I chose to create a storyline that was easy to comprehend so that the intent behind the word was clear. Our story consisted of two characters, Character A, who was innocently drawing, and the Character B who cruelly approached Character A while they were drawing, and ripped up the paper into tiny pieces.
We started our brainstorming by listing the different shots that we wanted to utilize to describe each of the character's personas. For example, we chose to shoot Character B from low angles to make them seem more powerful in juxtaposition to Character A's shots being taken from high angles as well as close ups to connect the audience to Character A's position in the story.
We planned out 15 shots that we knew we definitely wanted to include in the project and drew them out on our storyboard. This step allowed us to visualize how it was going to appear on the screen, and gave us a clearer understanding of how to better express the two sides. We ended up going back and changing some of the shots after we concluded the storyboard to make the shots flow together better and have a wider variety.
We filmed all of the scenes in our classroom and used different kinds of stabilizers to ensure a well-produced video. Once we edited all of the clips together on Adobe Premiere Pro, we finished the editing process by adding some transitions in between clips to make the drawing scene feel more whimsical and weightless.
In my project, I believe that I did a good job of using the shots and angles to express the characters' relationship. Me and my partner also put extensive thought and effort into making sure that we had enough footage with a variety of takes to ensure that the final product ran smoothly together. However, I wish that I would have added some sound effects to further express that it took place in a school and help the tone of the story be presented better. I wish we also would have been able to spend more time editing to make the transitions between the shots more extensive.
