Production

We had a full day editing workshop for Adobe Premier Pro on the 25th of May. I learned how to colour grade, insert text, and use transitions. I hope to be able to get more opportunities to experiment with colour grading as well as how to change and add sound easier in the future. Below is my final product from the workshop.

Here are some brainstorms that we had done in class in order to come up with our film’s premise.

My group members created a moodboard in order to create a clearer idea of our film’s atmosphere and ideas.

In class we delegated responsibilities for our film, though when needed, group members would help to fill in for others if they were not available or busy with other tasks.

Below are our roles.

• Casting director- Celina
• Health and safety- Coco
• Storyboarding- Chloe, Coco
• Script writer- Chloe
• Location scout- Celina
• Costume designer- Celina
• Editor- Chloe
• Blair- Chloe
• Eve- Coco

Using our newfound experience in creating storyboards from previous preliminary tasks, Coco and I created several storyboards for our film opening.

This is an initial rough draft that was created in Microsoft Paint in order to get an idea of events in the opening.

Though a rough script had been created, it was too long for 2 minutes and so, while filming, majority of the dialogue was improvised.

Filming locations were scouted by Celina:

• A bedroom in her house
• The parking lot of a playground across from Mitre10

When we arrived at the initial parking lot we had decided on, we found that there were several health and safety hazards, so then decided to change to a different parking lot near a bus station. Unfortunately, a biker/car meetup was taking place there shortly after we had begun filming, so we eventually returned to a parking lot close to our original filming location.

As a group, we agreed that Celina and I would meet at her house first to film the beginning scenes, then meet Coco at the parking lot to film the rest.

Celina decided on costumes, however there were no specific costumes that were required as the characters are regular people. We did decide that Blair should wear darker clothes to reflect her spiralling while Eve should wear lighter clothing to reflect her naivety to the situation.

We developed the characters as we wrote the script and created the storyboard, though from the beginning we knew that they would be best friends. I eventually had the idea that Eve should be wearing a bracelet that would break or fall off whenever she died.

As for casting, our entire group was open to the idea of playing a role in the film, though we eventually decided on Coco and I to play the 2 characters.

Below is our first version of our film comprised entirely of clips from our first filming session. We gathered feedback for it and later used this feedback to improve the film in our second filming session for our final version.

My personal ‘next time’ goals are to work more efficiently via being more prepared on the filming day itself (eg. comprehensive shot list, clear storyboards) as during filming we had faced several challenges such as scheduling constraints, difficulty finding a suitable location that matched our vision, and equipment malfunctions (our lighting equipment did not work)

First filming session

It was rather difficult to find good filming times, as majority of our group’s schedule did not line up very well with each other. Luckily, we decided on Sunday to film on as we were all free.

On our first filming session, Celina and I met up at her house in the afternoon to get all the initial (and final) bedroom scenes.

We had wanted to make use of all the gear that we had brought (tripod, gimbal, and film light) though we came across some difficulty with getting the film light to work, and ultimately ended up not using it.

Afterwards, we met with Coco at our planned filming location, the Albany bus station, but once again were met with roadblocks as we had accidentally found ourselves at the location of a car/bike meetup. Eventually, we decided to move to filming at the nearby parking lot of the Albany skate park.

Due to the time of day we had chosen to film, many of our shots were brighter than others, and there were several inconsistencies between them.

Overall, this day was useful as we gathered the shots that would be more difficult to get in later filming days as well as gained experience to know what we could improve on next time.

Below are some of our unused shots from this filming session.

Second filming session

After gathering feedback for our first draft, we decided to meet up once more to refilm several scenes, notably the ones in the park.

This filming session went a lot more smoothly than our previous one as we had both a clear idea of what we needed to get done as well as how to use our equipment.

Ultimately, we spent around 1 hour refilming our scenes before wrapping up with little issues.

Below are some of our unused shots for this filming session.

During class we brainstormed together to create a production company logo, at which I then took our final draft on paper and created an animated logo in Alight Motion.

We used our previous research on famous production company logos in order to create ours, pulling inspiration mainly from A24’s simplicity.

Below is the first draft of the animated logo.

After receiving feedback, we decided to reverse the direction of the clock hands so as to align more properly with our company name: ‘Rewind Cinema’

Below is the final draft of the animated logo.

After showing our class the draft version of our film, we gave them a form to fill out to receive feedback from our peers.

• Some classmates were confused about the story from what was shown, so we aimed to refilm some scenes to create a clearer narrative.
• We were also told that some of the colour grading in certain scenes, as they were too dull.
• Virtually all feedback relating to our company logo was positive.
• Most were able to guess our film’s genres based off of our opening and use of conventions (mystery, thriller)