Short Film Production Portfolio

A. Rationale
The film we made was a movie about cyberbullying and how these type of choices lead to unwanted outcomes by the victim. We wanted to inform people that this is a serious issue that goes on worldwide and it can't just be ignored. Because very day teens are committing suicide or hurting themselves because of what other people say. The audience we were making the film for was mainly teens because this is where the problem is the worst; amoung high school teenagers. This film is used as those teens unspoken words calling for help. Those 3 simple words "I need help" may be the hardest to say when going through this kind of stuff, but in this film we see how Selena, a high school teenager, gets the courage and help needed in order to admit those words.

B. Written Commentary
For this film, my group was just made up of two. We had to give each other 2 roles each since we didn't have other people. My partner took the roles of the director and writer. Whereas, I took the roles of the editor and cinematographer. We both came up with the film concept during the pitch stage. I came up with the idea and then the writer extended the idea and wrote up the whole script. My original idea really never changed when we had to write up our own treatments. We pretty much just added more detail to the story and what not. We had trouble coming up with a prank that was reasonable to our story line and climatic moment. After reviewing our idea with our teacher we finally came up with a prank that involved toilet paper being stuck to her butt.

There were quite a few problems/challenges that arose during the film and editing process. One of the challenges that came across that didn't have to do with my role in general was developing the climatic moment. We needed to show more development to the characters breaking point. I feel like the writing process is where we could of took another day or two to develop these kind of mistakes that we missed.

Another problem that I faced during shooting was the lighting. When I went into final cut pro to start editing, I looked at footage of when Selena is in her room and between two shots, the lighting is different. I wanted to go back and reshoot these scenes so that the lighting and the mood which be constant, but our actresses never had time to re-shoot scenes. What I ended up having to do was to use color correction on the scenes that the lighting looked orange in order for it to match the lighting in the other scenes This ended up working for the most part, but I could still see a little difference. There was 2 other continuity issues that we came across. One was something we couldn't control, which was the weather. During our outside school scenes, we had problems with continuity in weather. One day it was sunny out when we were filming and then two days later when we went to finish filming a scene it was cloudy. I realized this in the editing process. Only one shot was cloudy outside, so we decided to get our actresses together and re-shoot that scene. This scene would of literally took 5 minutes to shoot, but our actresses weren't giving us that 5 minutes to shoot it. This frustrated me a lot because we ended up having to stick with the footage we already had.


Another continuity issue we ran across was a door being closed in one scene and being open in another. The door is closed when Selena walks down her stairs to her room when she first gets home. The door "magically" opens when Tiffany comes running in to help Selena. I don't think many people realized it in the final film, but it bothered me in the editing process.

Overall I thought the film was well thought through for the most past. But evaluating it is where I see all the mistakes that could of made our film better. First off we had a couple scenes that dragged on too long and were necessary. It was mainly the travel scenes that would could of cut shorter. Also something that would of been necessary would of been too add flashbacks during the travel scenes to show how much bullying she has been through. This would of helped showed why she was making the decisions she did. This would of made the climatic moment more realistic.

I believe that our strongest point of our film was our cinematography. I made sure I captured the emotions in each scene and got a variety of different shots to help show the story. There was a lot of good close ups in our film like the mirror scene. I feel like the mirror scene and on is our best footage and editing techniques. Everything is cut good, especially when Selena throws the mirror on the ground. The match action cut used there is perfect! I also like the use of the classroom scene and how we used different camera movement in that scene. In that scene I just did a close up of the first girl mentioning the toilet paper on Selena's butt and then as the rumors kept spreading around, I walked around with the camera showing how the rumors keeping spreading around Selena since she was in the middle of it all.

















We only had one sound effect out of the whole film. The sound effect that we used was the school bell. We didn't have a recording of our actual school bell, so we had to go into the video main folder in our classroom and look for a bell. What we used in our film, was the closest thing we could find to sounding like an actual bell. For the musical side of the film, we had trouble finding a musical score that perfectly fits the movie. We ended up going into Logic Pro, which is like garage band but 1000x better. We ended  up putting together some violins and drums together. We were mainly looking for orchestral music to fit in with the emotions and actions of the film. In the very last scene where Tiffany is running to help Selena and when she gets there, there was already a score mixed together in logic called pendulum. When I heard it, I had to make sure the sound designer/director put it somewhere in our film. After reviewing it with her, we put it in the end of the film. It matched up pretty well with what was happening in the film.

For the most part we didn't have to direct our actors to act a certain way or what not. Our actresses have been apart of the drama class at our school, so they have been involved in plays and acting experiences before. We even told them to improve a little to the way they think it would sound best. In our own mistake some of the script was repetitive because we had our actresses saying something that they were already showing through their actions. This could of been an improvement by taking some dialogue out that wasn't necessary. Looking back on the film as a whole, we rarely had problems with our actresses and acting, but we did have scheduling problems here and there, but we worked around it.

Overall, I think our film was pretty good. I mean we definitely could of taken a little more time during the script part because it would of helped to notice our mistakes in the dialogue. It would of also helped to add more in order to make the climatic moment more intense. These little mistakes do count in the end, because by adding flashbacks, it would of helped developed her insecurities and why she lead herself to the decision she tried to make. In conclusion, I think the film was good and I'm proud of it.

Short Film Trailer- OFFLINE

OFFLINE SHORT FILM TRAILER

2 COLUMN STORYBOARD

Shots	Shot Description/Audio
FADE IN, FADE TO BLACK	A title on the screen fades in saying “CYBERBULLYING: acts done on the internet that are not thought through with unwanted consequences.... Also a serious issue that causes around 4,000 suicides every year”
FADE IN, FADE TO BLACK	Another title on the screen fades in saying “This is where it needs to come to a stop”.
FADE IN TO CU	(INT- CLASSROOM) Close up of a cell phone taking a picture of a girl with toilet paper on her butt. STUDENTS WHISPERING (OS).
WS	(EXT.- SCHOOL) Selena and Tiffany are talking outside about what happened in class. Orchastral music arises at a low volume in the background.
WS, FADE TO BLACK	(INT- Tiffanys room) Tiffany at home on her computer, notices a comment that Selena put on a social networking site. (This shows the climatic moment for the characters).
FADE IN TO ECU	(INT- Selena’s room) Selena is looking into a mirror as she hears voices from people talking about her eariler that day. Tension starts to build as music starts to increase. STUDENTS (O.C.)
CU	Selena’s frustration reaches a boiling point where she throws the mirror on the ground and breaks it.
ANGLE ON	The broken mirror is shown on the floor. ANGLE ON the broken mirror.
SPLIT SCREEN, FADE TO BLACK	Split screen two way shot is shown of Selena attempting to hurt herself while the other shows Tiffany racing to help Selena.
FADE IN, FADE OUT VO	Title fades into black background with VO “Time can only tell...” NARRATOR (O.C.)
FADE IN, FADE OUT	Title fades into black background. “OFFLINE” Music fades out in the background

Trailer Review- Moneyball

1. Narrative
The film Moneyball is based on a true story about the Oakland Athletics major league baseball team. This sports drama is about the Oakland A's manager Billy Beane's attempt to put together a successful baseball team on a low budget. He ends up hiring a computer-generated analysis to draft his players. The narrator of the story is Billy Beane because we see through the trailer that he is the main character. We also see that the film focuses on his side of the story and how he tries to create a winning baseball team. Time is presented in chronological order- first when the problem arises about the budget and then the managers mission to work around the budget in order to create a successful team with the resources the budget allows him to have. Th film is definitely realist because its based on a true story. These event all happened in history. This film shows the struggles of the economy that goes on and how even when money is low, you still can be successful just by using the resources around you to the best of your knowledge.

2. Cinematography

The cinematographer uses a lot of of CU's and LS's to establish the mood of the film and the setting/location. There are a lot of CU's in the film to help emphasize the main characters stress and worry about the team and wether or not what he's doing is going to work out in the end. We also see that in one scene where the manager is sitting in the stands by himself in the empty stadium, that the lighting is low and dark which helps to show his hopes fading away. I personally like this scene shown in the trailer because we see that he is sitting in the stadium alone which symbolizes that he is the only one that has hopes for the team. He stands (technically he sits in the shot) alone. Throughout the film, most of the shots were stationary; there isn't many scenes where it is handheld or shaky. Actually, thinking about it, I don't think there was any shots that looked handheld.

3. Editing

In the beginning of the trailer, there wasn't many cuts because the content of the scenes needed to be expressed but as the trailer went on, things started to slow down. Towards the end of the trailer the cuts between each shot were taking longer to transition because of the mood of the scenes being shown. The shots in the trailer are pretty straight forwards because they give you the information needed in order to grasp the whole concept of the film. The rhythm of the trailer is pretty constant throughout the whole thing. This is necessary so that the audience can react emotionally to the events that are taking place in the film. Towards the end of the trailer the cuts between each shot/scene come more together and not so drawn out because we can tell that the managers work starts to bring everything together.

4. Sound- Score and FX
There are no distorted sounds in the film because it is a realistic film (based on a true story). In the beginning of the trailer the score is up beat from the use of drums and an electric guitar/bass. This shows that their every day life keeps moving faster as the managers job may be coming to an end based on what he can do with the team. Towards the end of the trailer, the sound slows down with sounds from a violin, drum, and an electric guitar. But this time the sounds are lower and not as fast paced. This expresses the mood of the film in certain areas as tensions start to rise between the people and the faith they have in the manager. Through out the trailer, there is constant music and audio being played. There is rarely any moments of complete silence.

Run Lola Run presentation critique

I. Interpretation of the film as it related to your assigned section and use of film language.
My assigned section for the film run lola run was writing. There wasn't many film terms that I could incorporate into my presentation. I mainly focused of the point of view of the film, the narrator's rapport, and the literary adaption. I talked about how the point of view in the film was Lola's and how the director wrote this character to develop a new look on female figures in society. The narrator's rapport is when two or more characters feel like. We see this shown throughout the whole movie between Manni and Lola. Lastly, the literary adaption of the film is loose because of the story structure that the writers wrote for the film. 


II. Strengths of your presentation
Based on my powerpoint and my actual presentation, I would give it a 19. I believe that my presentation would have analysis and good use of examples from the film. This shows a good awareness of the film's genre. Also, because I knew how to use some film language terms but not a whole lot. I thought I went in depth with some of the ideas on in my presentation. My teacher talked about some of the things I could of added in order to make my presentation stronger, which is another reason why I gave my presentation a 19. Some key ideas were left out that I should of added. 


III. Challenges and Areas for Improvement
I definitely have a couple of flaws that I can improve on. For example, I have a hard time with clarifying my ideas and analysis. I've always had a hard time with expressing my ideas in a clear manner. Also expanding on ideas is another thing I need to improve on. Overall, clarity is my biggest issue that I need to improve on from here on out. 

Short Film Treatment- Offline

Log Line: A girl allows other peoples harmful words to characterize herself; therefore leading her to believing that there is only one way out of her situation, and her friend has to beat the clock in order to save her.

Two-way screen shot of two girls walking through a hall way in school. The two girls both look content with their lives. Crowded hall ways, loud voices, posters on the wall; all resembles the usual high school setting.

The two girls finally meet up outside the school and talk about their day. We see their instant connection. We also see that they are both wearing friendship necklaces showing that they are best friends.

The girls names are Selena and Tiffany. Tiffany asks Selena, "Did anything happened today and how are you holding up". Selena responded "No and I'm doing fine... just fine". Through Selena's facial expressions, there seems to be discomfort arising. On that not, Selena quickly says, "I have to go, bye"and gets on her bike and rides away without looking back.

Without any notice, Tiffany ignores the instant goodbye and heads the opposite way.

Selena rides her bike up the driveway of a two story house. As she enters the front door, no one seems to be present in the house. Selena runs upstairs and approaches a door with her name on it. Instantly we know that she lives in this house with her family.

As she enters the semi-dark room, she dashes over to her laptop and turns in on. "Come on, turn on fast you damn computer", Selena says this while anxiously waiting.

The next thing we see is the computer screen on a social networking site. Selena starts to close her eyes in hope that everything she sees will disappear.

As she keeps scrolling down, we see nasty comments being posted about her back and forth among a couple of people.

Tears start to roll down her face without hesitation. Selena's hand slowly leaves her face ,that was wiping away the tears, and covers up her left wrist. She looks down at her wrist with scars on it and then back up at the comments on the screen. Screaming at the top of her lungs, "AHHHH!!!!".

She frantically gets up and goes to the bathroom. "WHAM!" the bathroom door is slammed  shut. The tears from Selena's hopeless soul starts to continue pouring out. She looks up at the mirror, makeup is running down her face.

Broken voices start to fade in and surround her. You’re so ugly. Why are you so fat? You have no friends, you’re such an outcast. You should just kill yourself. No one will care. No one will miss you.

As the voices get louder, the faint images of the people who hate her start to float around, present in the mirror.

Selena starts to breath quickly in panic and she turns around, trying to see if they are really there, standing behind her talking to her.

She turns back toward the mirror and the voices get louder and faster and start to overlap.
Selena shuts her eyes tightly, trying to block them out but to no avail. The faces get closer to her image in the mirror and she opens her mouth to scream.

The mirror cracks in her hands and she opens her eyes to see her own reflection distorted in the different cracks of the mirror.

"The mirror is broken, it can’t be fixed. There is nothing left of it." Selena says to herself in distress. The cell phone in her back pocket rings. She takes it out and sees that Tiffany is calling. She forwards the call to voicemail.

Selena then turns off her cell phone. Tiffany keeps trying to call hoping that Selena will pick up. When Tiffany doesn't get any ringer, she knows something is up because Selena never ignores her calls.

As the tension keeps rising, Selena keeps moving towards her conclusion of ending everything and anything.

Tiffany then notices that Selena deactivated all her social networking sites besides one. And on that one, she posted "Goodbye world".

Tiffany realizes that Selena is going to commit suicide. Tiffany dials Selena's mom number; she doesn't get any answer and leaves a voice message. "I think Selena is trying to kill herself. I'm going to the house! Get help!"

Knowing that there is little time she grabs her keys and heads out the door to her car. She frantically tries to put the keys in the ignition. Once she gets it in, the car’s  battery is dead and won’t start. This gives Tiffany the only choice but to run.


A split screen is used again to show Tiffany running to help save Selena's life while Selena is gathering her last thoughts before she severs all ties.

The tension and anxiety between the two keeps rising. As Selena is literally about to finish what she thinks others wish they could do to her, Tiffany brakes through the door. "STOP!!!"

As Tiffany huffs and puffs, she recollects her breaths and explains to Selena that, "It's not worth it, let the haters hate. So what? All you need is to surround yourself with positive thoughts and people... You need to admit to getting help Selena."

Selena silently looks to down at what lies in her hands.

Momentarily she says, "Tiffany, I need help". She drops the objects, resembling her letting go of the past and hoping to move forward by getting the necessary help.

New Bell Schedule Segment Critique

 

My partner Isabella and I came up with the idea of doing a segment on our high school's new bell schedule. We came up with this idea by looking at the differences in our school over the past couple of years. One of the first things that popped in our mind was the new bell schedule. The research that we had to do was to find out exactly why the bell schedule was changed. In order to find our answer, we had to go to the principal to ask her a few questions. We found our interviewers by finding people that we would get the most information out of. So we went to the principal for the reasoning behind the bell schedule, a teacher for her input and 2 students for their input as well. We wanted to get the views about the bell schedule from  different people. Our questions were most definitely focused and direct. Because our segment was about the new bell schedule the only b-roll I could really intend on getting was of a clock and class rooms with students working. The b-roll came out really well with the different angles we had. 

Our location was our high school. For the interviews it depended. For instance, when we interviewed the principal, we had her in her house sitting at her desk with books, diploma's, and papers in the background. Then for the teacher we had her in her classroom with displays of what class it was in the background. Lastly the students we interviewed outside around the campus. One interview we had a mustang in the back resembling the school mascot and the other one we used part of the campus as the background. I think our most creative shot of our b-roll was an ECU of a student writing in her planner. We also had another creative shot, which was a CU of two students and in between then you could see the teacher teaching in front of them. We didn't have a lot of camera movements besides framing and panning, but for the most part our camera movements were smooth. There definitely wasn't any excessive zooming or panning in our shots. We would zoom into an object or person before we would record the shot so that we wouldn't run into shaky zoom shots. For all of our shots, we used natural lighting. We didn't have to use a lighting kit at all because during the days we shot, the natural lighting was just right. It wasn't too bright and it wasn't too dark. In my past film projects I have run into problems with the audio, but for the first time our audio was synched together correctly and the audio level was perfect. We didn't really have to adjust the interview audio. 

In the beginning of our segment we used voice-over to describe what our segment was going to explore. We said that we were going to look into why we got a new bell schedule and what the students/faculty would get out of it. I believe our segment was informative because not all the students knew the reasons behind the new bell schedule and thats what we wanted to inform them on. We wanted them to have some background information on it before they went around saying how much they disliked it and so on.  In the end of our segment we informed the students and faculty what the new bell schedule was. So we made a scrolling text saying each day of the week and what classes were dropped (since our schedule was dropping classes almost every day). And we also informed them on what days they were getting out early and at what times. After the whole segment was about the motives for the new bell schedule we wanted the students to actually see what the schedule was like and what the principal meant by a compromise between last year and this years bell schedule. 

Our b-roll reflects the voice over of some of the interviews because it's continuity. For example, as one of the students talk about this new bell schedule having more consistent time to see your teachers, b-roll of a class is shown. Also when on of the students talked about how the schedule makes the load of binders and books heavier, footage is shown of a backpack and a bunch of books and binders next to it. The transitions we used for the video were mostly fade out-fade in. We used this when switching between interviews. On the other hand for the audio transitions were cross fades; i believe we only used that in the beginning and end of our segment. We didn't use any animations or filters in our segment. And we also didn't have any jump-cuts or glitches in our edit. The only thing we had to fix and edit out was unnecessary footage and interviews that was repetitive and over- drawn. 

What I like best from our segment is probably the b-roll and the framing of the interviews. I feel like their all a deep focus and have details to them. If we had more time, I would probably re-do the interviews and the questions. I would want to go more in-depth with the topic and try to get under-the-surface questions. After working on this project, the most important lesson I can take with me is to go more in-depth with ideas and go under-the-surface because thats when segments or films attract the audience. I will also remember to make sure to try and use cinematography as one of my main elements in a film. And lastly I will take with me to remember to think more on the positive side of things and not focus mainly on the negatives. 

Character In Time

A boy, roughly around the age of 19 sits at the window looking out into this unfamiliar city that he now resides in. All he can hear is his own guilty conscious and the honking of horns from the cars that are down below. As he looks out into this city, flashbacks occur through his mind. Time rewinds slowly through his head. It all started with the day he turned 18. (Flashbacks occurs) He is the kind of high school teenager who doesn't take school seriously and hangs out with the wrong group of kids; always looking for trouble. The police are apart of his life, ever since freshmen year. Once he turned 18 his family said to him that, they didn't want to deal with anymore of his trouble making and that he needs to learn how to depend on himself and no one else. So he went and got a minimum-wage paying job. It wasn't the easiest way to make money, but he knew that it was all he could get with his poor grades. Things went well for a couple months, until he got back into his old habits. Sooner then later he got fired from his job and was about to be evicted from his small apartment. Not knowing where to run to for help, he knew this was a reality check from himself.

He realized that he needed to move to another city to start fresh, meet new people, and get away from the old ones. He snaps back into reality where he now sits at the window looking out into this big city feeling alone; not knowing where to start. This is his new beginning; a beginning to a better, successful lifestyle.