Process Diary: Where I Am

WEEK 1 OF GOA FILMMAKING:

In the first week of my global online film class, we were tasked with creating a film of thirty one second shots that illustrated and painted a picture of where we live. Here's my Where I Am film:  

  

I knew that I wanted my film to be about my typical day in Seattle, and that I wanted to have a good mix of the people I spend time with and the places I frequent. I ended up waiting for school to start to begin filming, because the only places I went to on Monday and Tuesday were the gym and my house. I also discovered that there was no way I could shoot anything before school started, because I spend my mornings running around and making sure everything is organized. However, when school started, I was met with a big disappointment: phones aren't allowed in any of my classes. I had really been hoping to get some great candid shots of the teamwork at my school and my friends in class. 

Fortunately, after that, things got better. I got some cool shots of the smoke and red sun, neither of which I had ever seen in Seattle before this summer. I made sure to take shots periodically over the course of a few days, so that I could paint a clear picture of the things I do throughout my day. I was also fortunate enough to pick my brother up from soccer and I managed to get some great shots of him and his friends. After taking those shots, I had the idea to get a close up shot of him kicking a soccer ball and he was willing to do it. It's my favourite shot and I'm really glad I took it.

During this past week, I definitely learned one thing: storyboarding is much more important than I thought it was. I have a tendency to spend way too much time planning and thinking about something rather than actually doing it. This week, however, I decided I was going to skip that stage all together, because I knew I was going to have a lot going on with the start of the school year. As a result, I took my phone with me everywhere and shot literally everything. I read that having a lot of footage is a good thing...

I'm not one hundred percent sure how accurate it is, but check out this blog (click HERE). It has some facts about the ratio of raw footage to final length of the film for some popular movies.

...but I think I shot way too much. This made editing a little difficult because I had to sort through all of it before I could even begin to put the film together. Storyboarding would've saved me a lot of time. 

From my critique this week--thanks to all who left a critique, your feedback was most definitely heard and very helpful--I learned not to force a shot. If it's a bad shot, or just doesn't fit, cut it. I had this one shot of Husky Stadium that I really wanted to work because I pass it almost everyday, and I think it's visually appealing. In addition, I wanted a transportation shot every time I switched location to make it obvious in that film that we were going to a new place. However, it was a bad shot to begin with and some things went awfully wrong in Movie Maker while editing it. Despite being unhappy with it, I thought I could leave it in and no one would notice. I was wrong...

The critiques were great because they gave me an outside perspective and let me know what others saw, like the shot I mentioned above, which people said drew them out of the film. From here on out, I'm only going to use shots that I truly like (you all might want to wish me luck on that one 😉).

NOTE: I had a moment so I sort of fixed the Husky Stadium shot. Unfortunately I didn't have time to go in and replace it with another one.

Also, I believe I forgot to add the music into the end credits. The music is called "Way to Success" by Addict Sound on jamendo.com

Until next week!

-Emma