Creative Critical Reflection A-Level

Link: https://youtu.be/DU3YoYTU6LU

Minimalist Short Film Package

Link to Short Film: https://youtu.be/wtZIcVYwd_I

  Website: https://minimalistshortfil.wixsite.com/shortfilm

Front:

Back:

Reflecting

This project is finally over and I’m pretty proud of what I made. There were definitely some ups and downs but I learned a lot and put in a lot of work.

I started off really rough since it was incredibly difficult to land on a decent story. Once the story was found, a microscopic villain named Coronavirus decided that my original idea did not deserve to get made. I made a pretty impressive pivot and I honestly believe the idea that I came up with during corona season is probably way more personal and I had way more fun than I would have ever had making a different film.

I have never tried to make a film all by myself and it was a pretty enlightening experience. It is pretty unique to have complete creative control over your film and there is no time wasted trying to explain your vision to other people.

I like to get fancy with camera movements or blocking, but since I was alone I had to add a little more flavor to the film by messing with other aspects, mostly sound and graphics. I would have never made a film that included a time-lapse, stop-motion, and changing aspect ratios because I am pretty vanilla about those kinds of things. I usually don’t like to distract from the film with obstructive editing techniques.

Aside from editing, I did also balance out my inability to move the camera with extensive production design. I spent a couple days creating a perfect set. It wasn’t too difficult because it was just designing the set to fit two extremes: an empty room and a cluttered room. That being said, moving heavy furniture for days on end is a strenuous workout.

My biggest issue, as always, is sound. I simply do not have the patience to create a good soundscape. My ears are really not designed for it. I added a lot of music to keep a fast pace, but aside from that, I just let the white noise play. My microphone that I plug into my camera also broke, so I was left with many clips that had no sound. I could not be asked to do foley because it is impossible in my house. It is very difficult for my family to understand that even if they are talking softly or lower the volume on the TV, my sound recorder can pick it up easily. 

The title cards are probably the thing I am most proud of. I spent a couple hours designing my “minimalist” font and cutting it to the beat of the music.

Ultimately, I am proud of what I accomplished because it was literally all me (though I didn’t create the music), so this is a product of my own creativity and hard work.

Website Design

I created my website. Wix is supposedly the most user-friendly website builder, but it is incredibly annoying to try and maneuver.

Website it available at https://minimalistshortfil.wixsite.com/shortfilm

The top of the page is a still from the short film with a title above it and a caption that the short film was made by me.

I also added a screenings tab and a gallery of still photos from the short film. The screenings are there so people can know where and when to go watch the movie in a festival/theater. The gallery is to give viewers a taste as to what the movie is going to look like (even though it is all-over-the-place at times).

The bottom of the page is just a wee little logline describing what the short film is about and then a little about me and what Minimalism means to me as well as detailing the fact that this was made during the pandemic.

Postcard Final

I found a really good slideshow that showed great examples of conventions for postcards for film festivals.

I learned some great stuff but it was mostly common sense. I checked out some of the sample projects that my teacher posted and noticed many people followed the exact same format.

I decided to go with the same thing, but with a 'minimalist' twist. Making this postcard was probably the easiest part since the premise of the film is to have as little detail as possible.

Front:

Back:

The Minimalist Title Cards

I wanted to get real fancy with the title cards because I had a really good idea. I am going to have the title cards change from a complex/fancy font and dumb it down to basic shapes.

Unfortunately, I could not find a free 'minimalist' font, so I used basic shapes to create my own font on Canva.

As you can see, there are two different fonts and the jagged, broken one is the one I created. This came out exactly how I wanted it to and will make an incredible addition to the film and serves to tie the topic of the film to even the titles.

I'm starting to edit the title card now and it has a very Birdman feel. I would show you, but exporting would take too long.

Editing

Editing time has come around and I am very organized. Finding disappearing files is an absolute nightmare, so I always keep everything in one folder that is broken up into more folders.

When I go to import into Premiere Pro, all the files will be sorted the exact same way and help me stay organized while editing.

After editing a bit of the film, here are the problems I have encountered so far:

• I have to stack many layers of clips, which causes a lot of lagging
• I created an adjustment layer to switch up the aspect ratio. This adjustment layer is constantly moving and I have to make sure it doesn't move and overwrite other clips.
• Sound is basically out of the picture. While reviewing some clips. I noticed the microphone was not working. I think the microphone I connected to my camera is broken.

Clean up time.

I made a mess. My house looks like a literal crime scene. I basically stuffed everything from my sisters' room into our tiny hallway and my room. I also just threw all the clothes that I used in my scene on the floor of my room whilst I was filming the other scenes.

This is the aftermath. I had a lot of cleaning up to do and I took a time lapse of me trying to reorganize my room, but ultimately I had to end it because I was tired and needed to sleep.

I spent the next day (today) finally making sure that everything was back to normal. I finally got some help from my dad who is so bored, he wanted to move furniture around for a couple hours.

F I L M I N G

I spent a couple of days prepping and shooting this film and it was honestly extremely exhausted. I got way too ambitious and I should have just come up with a dumb story that I could have shot in an hour, but instead I came up with a dumb story that took about a week.

The setup for each shot took a very long time, but about halfway through I decided to speed up the process and started using the Panasonic Image App. I explain my process the video:

Overall, the shooting process was quite annoying and inconvenient. Having to do every single thing and not being able to delegate any task is so irritating. I could only really do a couple of shots a day before the sun went down. I ended up cutting out a good chunk of the shots I had originally planned to do because I literally don't have the time to try being Edgar Wright.

I was also waking up at 1:00 PM but that is besides the point.

I wanted to open and close the film with a push in and back out of me in an empty room, but it became apparent that was not going to be possible. I slapped my camera onto a tripod and then stuffed the tripod into a suitcase. Suitcases have the smoothest wheels on the planet, so I was sure it would work. The only problem is that the wheels turn. I took two kebab skewers and tied them to the wheels to keep them from turning and it didn't work. Ultimately the moving shots came out shaky and gross.

I am so incredibly upset with myself. Every time I make a film, I forget to have a photoshoot at the end or something for thumbnails and promos. I promised myself I would not forget to take pictures because I knew that I needed it for the post card, but I forgot anyway.

I will just have to make do with the stills that I have from shooting. I think this still works fine and I can use it for a postcard or the website.

4K and a slow computer

Hi. I have a pretty old mac with about 7gb left of storage on the disk and 8gb of RAM. I'm not a computer nerd and I don't pretend to be, but every single online support and internet forum says that these conditions are extremely difficult to edit with.

I knew that I had a very slow computer, but I thought... you know what? I'm going to shoot this film in 4k anyway. I really like how the 4k looks on my camera. I shot my AS-Level project in 4k and loved how it turned out. The image is impeccable, but it takes me probably 4-5 times longer to edit in 4k than normal 1080p.

I did a little research and it turns out the answer is simple: just create proxies. Proxies are apparently lower quality versions of the 4k file that are easier to edit on. PERFECT! All I had to was shoot in 4k and then proxies would save me.

I shot my first day entirely in 4k and I was so impressed by the results.

Here's a shot. No color correction/grade yet.

I ended up with about 18gb of footage, which really was like 5 minutes of footage. I wanted to start editing to get an idea of what the film would look like and I started to ingest the videos and create the proxies. 

I thought these proxies were going to be a quick and easy fix, but Premiere Pro estimated about 5 hours to create the proxies then crashed after 20 minutes.

4k is out the window. I will be reshooting most of the shots from my first day in 1080p. 

Production Design AKA Trashing the House

This took way too long. I wanted to shoot in my sisters' room because they are gone and they have white walls, which will look super cool for when the character gets rid of everything. The big problem with shooting in my sisters' room is that it has essentially become a storage unit for all kinds of stuff we don't want. 

I had to breakdown a bed and move a bunch of mattresses and other furniture. Also the bookshelf needed to be tweaked because I don't actually read books. I hung up a bunch of random stuff on the walls to make the place feel very full and cluttered. There are little bits of symbolism here and there with some of the posters and props that comment on politics, consumerism, etc. and it makes it seem like I know what I am doing, but really they're just happy accidents.

I was planning on drawing out a design for the room and meticulously placing things, but it would have been a waste of time to do that so I just started throwing things around that felt right.

It took about seven hours because I had to figure out where to store all the extra stuff that was now out of the room. The battery on my camera died several times and I found out timelapses are hard.