Process Diary: Where We Are

WEEK 2 OF GOA FILMMAKING:

This week in my GOA Filmmaking class we each took everyone's Where I Am films from last week and remixed them into a Where We Are film. Here's this week's film:

In this film I wanted it to be obvious that the shots were of many different people, but I also wanted it to be so seamless that the audience could almost imagine it being one person. I was going for a "we are one" kind of vibe.

To start this week I did a bit of "research" into effective storyboarding. What I mean is that I got distracted and read about storyboarding from the perspective of well known directors and cinematographers. What I read was fascinating, but definitely not advice. The storyboards created for big productions are a work of art. I also found a YouTube video of Ridley Scott--director of Alien, The Martian, and Black Hawk Down — talking about storyboarding and what his process is when directing films. The video is below:

 

Below this is another great (but extremely long) video I found of Sam Mendes — director of Skyfall, American Beauty, and Road to Perdition — and Conrad L. Hall — cinematographer for American Beauty and Road to Perdition — analyzing the storyboard for American Beauty. I haven't watched the whole thing, but I definitely recommend watching at least a few minutes.

Anyways, other than learning about how storyboarding works, this week I learned that it is very important to back up your films while working on them. I do this with all my films, and it came in handy this past week when Movie Maker crashed and my film just became black static. Luckily I had backed my film up half way through so I only had to redo the second half. I will most definitely not be using Movie Maker this week. We'll see how quickly I adapt to "HitFilm Express".

On a different note, I got a lot of hands on experience with volume this week. To be more specific, I discovered that when downloading film that has been shot on many different devices, the volume levels are going to be quite different. I sort of knew when I turned in my film that the volume wasn't so great, but I had given up after having had to redo the end of my film several times. However, I didn't understand why some people were louder than others, and I hadn't realized that my audience had to turn the volume up and down to hear everyone. 

Note: I think I fixed the volume issue, and I also made it so that the music continues until the end of the film. 

Now please excuse me while I go watch — sorry, "study" — some TV. 😉

-Emma