The Journey of the Film
I really struggled with finding a good story to tell with my contraints of no dialogue and only having five minutes. In the end, I landed on three story options. I ended up sending these ideas out to five to six different people and ended up choosing one of my scripts. I then went on and refined that script to make it more fleshed out.
I created a lookbook slide alongside other pre-production material to communicate and outline the visual look of how I wanted this film to come out.
Like with my midterm, I am still not very experienced with storyboarding, and I tend not to like drawing. So this part wasn't amazing this time either. But I did manage to get together a storyboard that was coherent. Again, I like to say I have a good visionary brain, and despite not having a super clear storyboard, I was able to put together a very clear shotlist, and subsequently, a clear shooting schedule.
I had trouble with locations for my midterm. So for my final, I wrote the script with my apartment in mind. I wrote using this location and was able to put together the script as such. Again, there were a few scenes I wish I could shoot elsewhere, as my apartment has horrendous lighting, but overall I think it worked well.
This time I directed two actors. While one's face was never seen, I still had to direct movements. For the most part, directing went great. Both my actresses are very talented people, but in retrospect there are a few things that I wish I did better in terms of directing them. The performance was definitely great but there were points where I feel like I could have asked for something different or something more. Lessons learned for next time!
Once again, like my midterm, lighting and room setup were huge. My living room had to be production designed up to work with the vibe I wanted. I had to sort of build the set of the room to work, including hiding pills and whatnot around the house. This ultimately leads to the twist (which I don't quite want to spoil)! My assistant director did well with set design and production design, especially for my final scene.
Time management was so much better this time around compared to my midterm. Where for my midterm it took us almost an hour and a half extra, we finished twenty minutes earlier than expected this time around. This time I made a very strict, minute-by-minute schedule that we adhered to. This a lesson I took from my midterm that really worked out here.
In terms of continuity, I was much better off than in my midterm. The rough cut took twenty minutes. This time, I was way more cognizant of continuity issues and addressed them more effectively during shooting.
This time, I shot the entire film in LOG, which gave me much more flexibility in post-production. I was able to correct the white balance and achieve the look I wanted more effectively than in my midterm. While it was still challenging, the results were noticeably better. However, there were definitely a lot of difficulties with color grading. In addition, I realized after the rough cut that I probably should have graded in DaVinci, but I ended up grading the footage in Premiere instead.
Sound editing was quite challenging. There were issues with inconsistent audio levels, background noise, and syncing SFX. Specifically, as a byproduct of working in NYC, there was a lot of contruction noises toward the second half of filming. I was able to work around it, but it was quite annoying to deal with in post.
