IN DEPTH REFLECTION

VIDEO: 

Oh man, oh man, oh man... the things I could say about the entire filmmaking process can go on for ages in reality. 

Script-

     I like to think of myself as a pretty okay writer when it comes to narratives, sometimes my lines of dialogue are a little formal or may not fit a character's vibe but overall I'm usually able to make a pretty good flow within discussions. Within "Growing Pains"our first draft (before Miss.Rona hit) was one of my favorite pieces of writing I have ever done for the screen. I wrote it sometime last year after my AS project was finished and wanted to prove myself as better than what I made because, in all honesty, I was way too ambitious last year with my project and it didn't turn out the way I wanted it (though it was a neat idea especially for my first time making a film). 

     My AS project failing in my eyes was mainly due to my inexperience and procrastination which Yejin and I heavily tried to avoid this time around by giving ourselves countless schedules to work off of. When we had to change the plot I was honestly heartbroken, as that story meant a lot to me coming from a poor family who had to acclimate to the real world, while also modeling the older sibling after both my older sister and brother. Yejin and I still wanted to use a similar sibling aspect, and Yejin had told me about a scene they had stuck in their head during a facetime call about a mug breaking, which immediately got a story going in my head. When regarding the story, I love it, its the best we could've done in a tight situation and it's a seemingly nice watch. For the actual script itself, I do which I changed a bit of the dialogue as it sounds a little off in some of the scenes but overall it's pretty good.

Filming/Editing-

     I'm not usually one for filming or editing, though I do prefer editing out of the two I believe I'm much better at creating stories and giving overall direction. Within our process for both of these major aspects to the film, how do I say, Yejin and I wanted to DIE. When filming we were not able to house Phillipe (Marco), or his older sister Sophie Diebold as their parents have been very cautious throughout the pandemic and didn't want to risk anyone getting sick. So our plan was to draw out every scene and have Sophie film it for us in her house and use a technique called rotoscoping, which is when you draw over a picture and place said drawing in a real environment like it apart of the surrounding world. There were some overall issues with some of the framing but Yejin and I did what we could in fixing whatever we could through animation or in post. Now we thought filming was difficult, then we started editing and knew only pain. 

     When editing any scene without Phillipe it was a breeze, making sure audio was synched and our color correction looked okay has never been a huge problem for either Yejin or I. The true pain came when editing in the animations. We both animated through Adobe photoshop, converting each video to singular frames, drawing over them, saving them all one by one as a PNG, then exporting them into EZGIF (a gif making website). Now when we put these gifs through Adobe Premiere every single one malfunctioned, leaving me to reanimating every single one through photoshop one by one. This took HOURS, and I truly wanted to scream the entire time, leaving me up to fixing our animations until FOUR AM so the next day we could just do straight editing. This was truly torture and by the end, some of them still messed up, and we couldn't do much to fix it from that point but hey! We still have some cool animations.

WEBSITE:

     Websites are cool, right? WRONG. I mean, I get it, we need to have a home for all of our media and be able to direct people on where to go. The actual construction of the website did not bother me or Yejin as we both have had experience in making one (Yejin a lot more than I). But in all honesty, I'm just not big on websites in general. I definitely know they're important and needed in life, but I'm not keen on the whole ordeal.

We included everything we thought necessary to a film website like-

• Synopsis 
• Pictures 
• Where to find

And that's pretty much it, not much to say about the website, but I'm glad it looks cool!

POSTCARD:

     From the beginning, Yejin already had a vision of what the key art should be and so did I. Because of this we were able to bang the design out pretty quickly. The key art was important because we wanted to show the most prominent factors within the film, rotoscope, Charlie and Marco, and the broken mug that carried the story. We also knew there had to be easy access to our website, the host of where people can watch our film and extras we created. To do this we made a QR code that can be scanned my phone that directs the scanner straight there.

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All in all this project was a complete whirlwind, with the world going haywire I really needed a sense of grounding throughout it all. I'm happy to say this project, though it definitely encouraged my current madness to expand, was able to do that for me. 

This is my last high school project for media, a class that's changed my life forever. Leading me to my two most favorite teachers, my major in college, and another country. This class lead me through life with a new perspective, leading me to chase my dreams in my dream program, Emerson college's Global BFA in Film art. In a couple months, I'll be living in France pursuing what I love most, I would've never pursued my greatest achievement, not without Mrs. Marchetti, Mrs.Stoklosa, or my new life long friends I met in media. 

So for everything, thank you, I hope you enjoyed my madness, and remember to look for my name on the big screen.