Sunday, April 18, 2021

Critical Reflection

    As I take a moment to reflect upon my portfolio project, I realize that what truly drove my work was the search in finding my own story. Likewise, my short film Cutting Room Floor is exactly about that journey.

    The beginning of this creative endeavor started with an observation I had about how teenagers today tend to obsess with romanticizing their lives. This trend can especially be found on social media, where users describe themselves waiting for their “coming-of-age” movie moment to come to fruition. What made this interesting to me was my perspective as a content creator, and how common filmmaking techniques such as writing, acting, cinematography, and sound had become part of a collective aspiration of how to live one’s life. After having this realization, I knew that I wanted to develop a piece that would serve as a commentary on how people try to find themselves through fiction and other media. The best way to represent this was through making the concept literal, and making my short film about how an actual movie character discovers who they are through several film genres and stories.

    The concept rapidly progressed past my original focus of the relationship between self-discovery and media, and had evolved into a piece that uses media to tell an atypical narrative of self-discovery. While expanding upon this idea, my group and I took major inspiration from the 2006 film Stranger than Fiction. The movie is about how an IRS agent faces a life-threatening crisis after a mysterious narrator begins describing and plotting his impending death, which corners him into having to figure out how to stop his fate. The film’s narrative, technique, and creativity served as the foundation for our own production. We took the bashful dynamic between the protagonist and the god-like narrator and rewrote it to fit the framework of the rejection of societal standards and exploration of the self. In our film, these two are simply named the Protagonist and the Narrator. Like in Stranger than Fiction, the Narrator is also the author behind the events that happen to the protagonist, which in this case meant the writer of the different screenplays covered during the short film. Our Protagonist is rebellious towards the Narrator’s scripts due to not being able to personally connect with the generic lines written on the pages. This results in the recurring gag of the Protagonist interrupting these scenes to argue how they are basic and do not fit their character, which leads to the underlying argument of how they should have authority in picking a role that is representative of who they truly are. 

    The fictional screenplays in Cutting Room Floor cover a variety of genres, including action, comedy, horror, romance, and even different formats, such as a silent film and storyboard section to further embrace the meta we play with in terms of filmmaking. Due to the previous inspiration from social media, we thought it made perfect sense for the piece to begin with a coming-of age-scene. This also tied into how the short film was a coming-of-age tale in itself, as the Protagonist goes through their personal self-discovery while acting in the different scripts and eventually writing their own story instead of the one being fed to them by the Narrator. With the wide array of genres, nailing their conventions down was crucial. We mostly did this through incorporating clichés in our writing, cinematography, mise-en-scène, editing, and even music selection that reflected the genre of the scene. A perfect example of these elements can be found in the action segment of Cutting Room Floor. Between the intense music, gritty lighting, cowboy shots, heroic but cheesy lines, and the Protagonist’s costume paired with aviator sunglasses, it is clearly illustrated that this part of the production is a parody of blockbuster hits. On a separate note, since at the end of these scenes the Protagonist refuses to act and instead argues with the Narrator, it can be said that we both celebrate yet reject genre conventions within the short film.

    The absurd concept combined with the cleverness and intelligence of the piece makes it a true burst of creative expression. For this reason, I would describe our target audience to be a relatively younger and imaginative crowd interested in avant-garde productions and highbrow comedy. The short film will also heavily appeal to film buffs and other filmmakers due to many jokes and situations being developed through filmmaking techniques such as screenplay formatting and storyboarding. This also applies to the title, as Cutting Room Floor is a reference to when editors in the film industry decades ago would cut out pieces of film that would then be scrapped or unused. Altogether, we want the film to make viewers laugh, think, and be surprised at each turn it takes, as it progresses across different genres and ends with the emotional finale of the Protagonist taking full control of their narrative. 

    Furthermore, the sentiment of being in charge of one’s personal narrative is what we based our brand on. Not only can this be identified at the ending of our short film, but also on our social media page where this exact point of view is embodied subtly across most posts as a hint towards the plot. The page is self-aware and comedic when we share stills from the piece, but on the other hand for behind the scenes exclusives, it takes a community-based approach of talking directly to our followers about how we made this independent student production. 

    The brand proves itself strong through the uniform creative design across all of the products we developed. This is most notably accomplished through the implementation of the Cutting Room Floor logo. This logo was inspired by classic film title cards, which can be seen in the formatting where the production company or distributor “presents” the film and the vintage yet flashy font choice of the main text. The design serves as the actual title card for the short film and the logo seen on the postcard. The postcard is meant to attract audiences to watch the premiere of the film and provides the handle for our social media account for them to check out if they want to learn more. While it is intentionally minimal to conceal plot details, the postcard subtly illustrates the Protagonist taking on different roles and controlling the story as seen through the production credits and photograph on the front side. As a whole, the frequent use of movie-related imagery across all three components of the portfolio project embeds our brand into film culture. 

    Despite this direction, there are improvements to be made with the branding. For one, it is difficult to market the short film considering how dense it is. The brand image is largely held together by its use of film references and meta content, as finding another cohesive way to market all the genres into one package is tough. Our solution for the social media account was to have posts of the scenes be distinct in content to match the specified genre, yet consistent due to the composition of the page. Each row of posts for a scene is covered left-to-right with the scene heading, a line from the Narrator, and another line from the Protagonist. Through the self-referential captioning written for these posts, we were also able to connect each scene to the secret narrative of the film in an amusing manner. This tactic built a sense of humor, diversity, and mystery around the production, but if perceived poorly, it might ultimately lead to confusion. In order for the brand to work, those viewing our products will need to understand that it is a fusion of these concepts instead of being misled into thinking they are separate. On the whole, I think we did our best with branding regardless of these issues and hope that it is effectively communicated to audiences.

    By the same token, we desire that audiences are as well able to understand that our short film, through an unconventional lens, discusses the uncertainty of self-identity while being trapped into a box by the expectations of modern-day society. A substantial amount of young people can relate to the same struggle of feeling lost in understanding who they are. This includes the Protagonist of the piece, who is incessantly being forced by the Narrator into different roles to fit any given script. The conclusion of the film, which has the Protagonist commence writing their own narrative with complete creative freedom, is representative of the desire to break free from these expectations and to truly become one’s self. I believe my group and I were able to build upon this topic in an extremely creative manner that is unique from other films that tackle these struggles of self-discovery. Our goal is that audience members will not only enjoy the short, but also be reminded that they should live on their terms and tell their own story. 

    In conclusion, my portfolio project is an inventive take on the coming-of-age formula that is told through the world of film. It is striking, introspective, and passionate. I have never dedicated as much time, thought, and effort into any single production in my creative career as I have with this one, and is a production I completely dedicated myself to. As I now release my work into the world, I am confident that this is the end of another chapter in my own story.


 


Saturday, April 17, 2021

Portfolio Project

The moment you have all been waiting for. 

Months of blog posts leading up to this single moment. 

[deep breath in]

I present to everyone my Portfolio Project! ENJOY!!! 







Friday, April 16, 2021

Final Thoughts

Hey everyone! Sorry for not keeping you guys posted for a second there. I have good reason though, as this week has been a nonstop grind to perfect Cutting Room Floor, and to as well develop our other products for the project. 

The biggest news is that Cutting Room Floor, unless any sudden changes come our way, is ready for the world to see. The visual effects and text graphics have been added, lines were rerecorded, and a multitude of other changes were made to make the short film as cohesive of an experience as possible. Seeing the pieces of this puzzle finally falling into place is a beautiful moment when glancing back at the hard work my team and I put in these past few months. 

For one, this concept is highly ambitious, as developing a short film that covered a plethora of genres, stories, locations, and design elements was a huge undertaking for me as an independent student filmmaker. The scope of the project did not end here, as being able to convey that push-and-pull dynamic between a literal movie character and narrator in a way that was not only comedic but also meaningful was extremely difficult. This is why I am so glad to be working with such like-minded creatives that share the same vision as I do. The conference calls we spent discussing what this short film should be were spontaneous and instant, with ideas being thrown around that most people would either shrug off or consider to be too difficult to pull off. Not for us, though. It was not long before the concept transformed into the Frankenstein's monster that we now know as Cutting Room Floor. 

To continue, the concept took a while to write and plan. There are countless rough drafts sitting around on my computer with vastly different variations of scenes. The hours spent writing then translated to many more hours spent filming. It was a back-to-back shoot that by the end was exhausting, but ultimately rewarding as we were able to begin bringing the pages to life. This leads into the editing process, which was intense with the massive amount of shots, transitions, text animations and graphics, visual effects, sound, color grades, and overall arrangement necessary to tell the story we wanted to tell. And wow, what a story it came out to be. 

Cutting Room Floor is a fantastic and engaging short film of pure creativity and heart. I am extremely excited for you guys to soon watch this piece of self-aware cinematic art. As soon as even... TOMORROW! That's right, Cutting Room Floor and all other products of the portfolio project will be posted tomorrow for you all to enjoy. Stay (especially) tuned and remember to bring popcorn!


Sunday, April 11, 2021

Editing: Rough Cut

Oliver and I linked up yesterday to edit the short film into a full and nearly complete rough cut, including color grading, sound, and a completed sequence from start to finish. Here's an overview of the session.


The Editing Session

We spent over 13 hours together piecing everything together. The process started with us combining each of the rough scenes we edited into a single project. From here we split the work and edited on separate computers. I was in charge of all things audio while Oliver was handling color grading. For me this meant music, sound design, and mixing. Audio is crucial to this production, as a lot of the genre conventions and comedy comes from what sounds are used. In order to find these sounds, I signed up for a free trial for Epidemic Sound, an extremely useful service that provides royalty free music tracks and SFX that can be downloaded in the click of a button. I am very impressed with it, and has definitely upgraded the short film into a living and breathing piece of media. I then adjusted the volume levels to make sure it was as clean as possible. Afterwards, the two of us once again combined projects, except this time was with our new additions. The final step in yesterday's editing session was putting in the Narrator dialogue Oliver recorded a couple days ago. By the end of the day, our session changed the short film from a couple of basic scenes into a rough cut that is nearly finalized and a creation that we both are super satisfied with. Check it out!


Conclusion

As we begin finishing editing, we only have a couple more things to add. For one, we are missing the screenplay text, a title card, the dialogue screen for the silent film, and the Narrator visual effects for the void scene. I plan to complete those with some graphic design help from Edward in the upcoming days. Edward is also starting work on the postcard and the social media page, so expect to hear more about them shortly. Oliver and I will continue to tighten the project until it feels ready for the world to see (or in this case in a week as our project is due then).  The end is near, but so is an awesome short film. I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Editing: Action & Void Scenes

After diving into Premiere Pro for a couple of hours, I am back with more (very) rough cuts for all of you guys to see!


Action Scene

First up is the action scene. Before getting down to business, I knew that this scene would be the most dense in terms of arrangement, sound, and visual effects. Because of this, I took extra time in this rough cut to establish certain design choices before working on the full cut. For instance, I put a lot of effort into the sound design. I filled it up with a bunch of intense, atmospheric drones and impacts to help develop a gritty atmosphere. Another example can be in one of the shots, which has extreme close-ups of both character's eyes sliding into the center of the frame, almost as if it was a comic book. I had the idea for this shot back when we were writing the scene so I wanted to make sure I had it right early into the post-production stage. Overall, I am very happy with how this scene is shaping up.


Void Scene

Next I did a rough edit of the void scene. My main focus was to make the void itself seem like a convincing space. To achieve this, I made a mask around Edward. This removed everything around the selection and was especially useful to remove any visible parts of the garage that appeared in some of the shots. From here I boosted the contrast of the clips to get rid of any wrinkles or light reflections from the black backdrop we set up. These editing techniques were extremely successful in transforming our small set into a plane of eternal darkness. The rest of the edit consisted of the arrangement of the scene and a much necessary impact sound to help convey that a table had suddenly appeared after the Protagonist had voiced their plea. You can view it here.


Conclusion

In other news, you might have noticed that the Narrator has been absent from these rough cuts. Fear not, as Oliver will voice act each scene tomorrow. After that, we plan on locking in to put together the full rough cut of the short film by combining our progress with the other scenes into a single project. Expect to see it next time on the blog!

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Editing: Planning & Teen Scene

Hey everyone! Last week was hectic as I told you all on the blog. We filmed all of the scenes for our short film Cutting Room Floor back to back, checking all of the boxes in the production phase. Now the fun really begins, as it is time to edit this beast into a cohesive short film. Here we go! 


Planning

To begin with, the editing process is going to be split between Oliver and I. We will both utilize Adobe Premiere Pro, a fantastic editing software that both of us are certified in. The advantage of both of us using it is that we can easily exchange project files. Speaking of files, both of us already took the time to go through each of the video and audio recordings and label them according to which scene they are from. It was a bit boring as there were hundred of different files to deal with, but necessary for our workflow.  

Look at all of those raw files! 😳

We decided that we would each do our own share for the rough edits of the scenes. I will personally be putting together the opening/teen scene, the action scene, and the final/void scene. Oliver will do the rest, which is the romance scene and the entirety of the montage. This way we can edit faster in order to meet our upcoming deadline. 


Teen Scene

I already have finished my cut of the teen scene. It is very primitive, as it has no proper audio mixing, color grading, visual effects, or even the narrator dialogue. It is also missing the nature shots as we were not able to get those yet. Regardless, this is a good look at the vision I have for the scene and the short film as a whole. I hope you all enjoy this first look!



Saturday, April 3, 2021

Filming - Day 4


Friday was our final day of production! It was a long and grueling process as we spent an entire day in Oliver’s garage, but the end result was priceless.

B.T.S. shots from the action and void scenes.

First was the action scene. We dressed the set to make it as close to an interrogation as possible. This was done by placing a plastic table covered with hardware tools in one corner of the garage as if they were supposed to be weapons.What made this scene difficult to film was the fact that Oliver and I had to act at the same. This made it tough to record shots and audio, which was further extended due to this scene having the most shots out of the rest. Regardless, this scene came out very bombastic and comedic through the over the top dialogue and stylistic video. 

A still of the Protagonist laughing at how ridiculous the action scene is.

The final part of production was capturing the void scene. We set up the black backdrop against the garage door using tape and clamps, and then set up lighting to give Edward depth while standing against it. As a result, the eternal darkness effect we were going for came out great in camera. While recording the end of this scene, Edward brought up that the final line “Once upon a time there was... No, that's too generic” felt a bit awkward and forced. After taking a couple minutes to reconsider what would be more appropriate, we came up with a simple line that went “Alright, I think I got this”. It leaves what is being written into the screenplay up to interpretation and is more considered than trying to say something that felt comedic or cool. Regardless, we captured both versions in case we change our mind again later.

   A still of the Protagonist controlling their own narrative.

As production has wrapped up, I am proud of what we were able to capture these past couple of days. The cinematography is top notch, the audio is crisp, and the acting is great for the amateurs we are. With that being said, this short film will really come together while editing, which is possibly my favorite part of the whole filmmaking process. Post production here we come!


Thursday, April 1, 2021

Filming - Day 3

The montage has been covered from front to back during today’s shoot!

A behind the scenes look of the comedy set.

With the montage being a short collection of different genres and formats, we had to move between a variety of locations and set up each accordingly. First was the silent film section, which was only a single shot, but took a while to film due to cars passing by in the neighborhood. While recording the shot, we made sure that Edward walked slowly so it could be sped up in post to match the fast yet jittery nature that films in the 1920s had. Next was the comedy section, which required lighting to be set up, but was overall an easy process to film. Lastly was the horror section, which we filmed at a park right before it turned dark outside. We had to move quickly to capture each shot as we only had a small light with us, making it a race against the sun. We were able to get the last shot in time before the sun had set completely and also before a major rainstorm started pouring down. Talk about beating the odds!

A still of the Protagonist exploring the terrifying forest.


Next up is the action and void scenes. I predict these will take the most time to film, so I will make sure to get some rest for the long day ahead. Bye for now!