Introduction

What is Zenith?

“There is no real ending. Its just a place where you stop the story.” – Frank Herbert

I feel as if this quote summarizes the essence of the Zenith project, while this is my final Freestyle project it’s just a temporary stopping point that shows my skills and interests at this given moment. Zenith is said to be the culmination of our Freestyle experience, one last dance to show our growth and skills that we have developed over the past two years while also hinting at what our future may look like.

My Zenith Project Overview

To achieve this goal of creating my “Ultimate Freestyle Project” I decided to reflect on my future. Next year I will be starting a four year journey at The University of Edinburgh where I will be getting my masters degree in History and Economics. So in order to connect my past two years to my next four years I decided to use my film skills when making a video explaining the history of film. This project introduced new challenges such as attempting to add a wide array of effects however I wanted to keep the general concept of the project simple and familiar with my filmmaking style.

Process

By far the most important part of getting Zenith done was extensively planning each week of my project. To achieve this I made a conscience calendar (since our class spent a large amount of time on narrative) planning out how I would spend each week of the alloted time in order to finish the project.

Calendar

April 30: Research Document/Script Done
May 7th: Dailies 1
May 14th: Production Done
May 21st: Rough Cut Done
May 26: ZENITH PROJECT COMPLETED!!!! (Final Edit Done)

Process Pictures

Week 1
This is my first set of research where I went from moving pictures all the way to the color age.
Week 2
This is part of my first script draft where I put my research into a digestible format, this week I also recorded the audio version of my script.
Week 3
This is me recording my video dailies that made up the end of the video. This particular shot was the shot of me in the grass talking to the camera.
Week 4
This is my rough cut editing timeline where I created the structure of my video prior to any visual effects.
Week 5
This was the week where I finalized my edit and added visual effects such as the “old graphics” on top of my clips. I did this by blending the two layers and placing my effect clip on top of my content clips.

Final Product

Reflection

This is an audio recording of me reflecting on my Zenith project as a whole.