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  For our class, we were tasked with making a "sneak peek" of the first 30~ seconds of our opening, and ask for any feedback on the quality of the opening, like font choice, color grading, clip length, etcetera. After showing our sneak peek, we got high praise from the class on our lighting techniques and pacing, as well as the contrast between the garage scene and the park scene. There were a few pieces of feedback however, and it was centered around the text displayed on screen and the sound effects.  Many people had an issue reading the "Directed by: Nicolas Gutierrez" text at the start of the park scene, due to the low contrast between the text and the light background. To rectify this, we increased the drop shadow on the text, and added a small outline to the bottom of the text, to increase its readability. During many of the scenes we filmed, there was a lot of extra sound in the space we filmed, leading to the natural foley we planned on using becoming obsole...

 While shooting the opening, we encountered several problems, and this blog will describe how we dealt with those. The first problem we encountered was actually weather-related. First of all, we planned for the park to be sunny while we filmed, to create contrast between the garage scenes and the park scene. However, as we were finishing up the last couple of shots at the park, it started raining pretty badly, which put the equipment at risk of being damaged, so we had to quickly pack up and wait under a pavilion for about 10 minutes. This put us further behind schedule, as we were already behind from our kidnapper William running almost an hour late. However, we wanted to keep filming as to not take too long filming at the park, so we took an umbrella from the car and kept filming. Luckily, the shot we got had a lot of tree cover, so it's not very noticeable on video.   This photo here is from the garage scene, where the girl is writing in her diary. This shot took a long tim...

This week in preparation for our short film opener, we planned what props we'd need, where to get filming equipment, confirming our filming date, and more. To get our filming equipment, we rented equipment from an organization called Shortcuts TV, a televisionprogram that aids high-school students in making their own short films, and rents out equipment to students to do exactly that. I went and picked up a camera, a tripod, and an RGB light on Wednesday, so we would have high-quality filming equipment for this project, and to ensure a higher quality film in the process. To find our props, we looked on several websites. However, for the lamp, we wanted something basic and maybe a little vintage. The light level wouldn't matter since we'd mostly be using the RGB light as the primary light source in the garage, and the lamp's light would mostly be a facade. We settled on using one from Katherine's grandmother, who has a spare lamp we're allowed to use.  For the ra...

Attached above I have included our animatic, which is our storyboard set to music and a voiceover.  While I was working on the storyboard, I had a specific pace in mind. The beginning would be tense and personal, the shots would be close and hold for a bit. Then the flashback would slow down and take its time, zooming out a bit and changing shots relatively slowly. Finally, the climax would be fast-paced and heart-pounding. When we tried to recreate this in the animatic, it actually worked as I intended for the most part. The only thing I realized was that with the pace I created it would be a little short, and not reach as far into the 2 minute time-limit as I hoped. So to remedy this, I may incorporate one or two extra shots in the beginning scene to build up more tension and create a longer experience. Completing the animatic also helped me get an idea of how to incorporate music and sound effects, as once the pacing is decided, the music should fall right into place. I knew at ...

 

Before we get started on the actual creation of our film opening, we have to first get our idea approved. We prepared a short presentation going through all of the details surrounding this opening, story, mise-en-scene, locations, budget, etc. Through this we learned the planning element of filming a project, and how to think things through ahead of time, so we're prepared for the day of filming long before it happens.