Preliminary task 1
The purpose of this task was to begin to apply our micro element knowledge to a practical project. We worked in small groups of three and were given the prompt of “You haven’t left the house in months. If you don’t leave today, you never will”. With this prompt we had to create a concept for a 30 second scene of a film and complete a pitch for the film. In this task we brainstormed ideas, made a mood board, created a storyboard and then made and presented our pitch. Through this task I learnt that it is important to work well together in a group and not have a single person do everything. Our audience feedback was that our film was very unique. In the next prelim task where we create a concept and film it, I want to focus on more unique and avant-garde aspects of film.
Preliminary task 2
Pre-production:
For this task we are creating a one-minute film in groups of 4. Our prompt includes the following criteria: must include dialogue of “He’s gone”, must include a prop of significance, and there must be some kind of unanswered question. After brainstorming ideas based on this prompt my group and I decided on the concept of a visual simulation of young people with dementia, within the psychological drama/psychological horror genres. We then divided up our pre-production tasks and I worked with Josh, Cody, and Anna on creating a mood board/storyboard for our piece.
For our short scenes we had decided to film in the busy bean cafe. this is because the storyline consisted of a young person with dementia who suffers from short-term memory loss, specifically shown as he attempts to order a flat white multiple times, forgetting the previous ones he had already ordered. My responsibilities during this part of the process were planned to be assistant directing, lighting, and camera operator. I found the filming process fun and not too difficult as I already have experience with filming. However, some challenges we met were the camera deciding to just not work at all due to multiple issues such as no battery and lack of memory card, so we overcame this by just using the cinematic camera mode on my phone which worked really well. Based on my experiences, something I want to do differently during my coursework piece is probably film a lot more takes rather than just settling with one, so I have more options to choose from during the post-production process.
Editing and Final Cut
For my personal edit of our footage, I decided to use Adobe Premiere Pro for the visual editing/cinematography side of post-production because although I hadn’t used it previously, I have a lot of experience with similar adobe software like Photoshop and Lightroom, so figuring out how to use Premiere Pro was relatively easy. I also used Ableton Live 12 Suite for sound editing and audio engineering as I extremely familiar with the software already and have a lot of experience with it from producing/recording/mixing/mastering my own music. I am overall pleased with how the edit turned out. From this task I have learnt how to navigate and use Premiere Pro so I can use it again for the next piece of coursework.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DrJAJ4lV0wZDyQiqRZ5AA9oDY7nztibI/view?usp=sharing
Credits
Director: Cody
Assistant Director: Jackson
Storyboard Writer: Cody
Script Writer: Cody
Costume Designer: Josh
Filming/videography: Jackson
Cinematography/visual editor: Jackson
Original concept idea: Jackson
Audio Producer/Sound Engineer: Jackson
Soundtrack: Vylet Pony – Princess Cuckoo, Redinho – Simmer
Cast: Josh (Josh), Cody (Barista 1), Anna (Barista 2)