Introduction
Hello and welcome to my Showcase! My name is Aya Iwata and I’m a first-year film student at Freestyle Academy. During quarantine, I taught myself how to use Premiere Pro and that’s when I started to have an interest in film production. I enjoy making vlogs when I go on a trip or when I hang out with my friends. Even though this was my first year at Freestyle Academy, I accomplished and learned so many new techniques and filmmaking skills, which was such an amazing experience and I enjoyed every single class.
Showcase Video
For my showcase video, I chose the Senior Narrative Film. Senior Narrative was a big project for all of the film students because we worked on it for almost seven months. It took me and my partner almost the same amount of time for the pre-production, production, and post-production process. Since my partner was a second-year film student, I had a lot of things to catch on. However, we took good communication to work on it. The part we struggled with the most in the pre-production process was having one solid and big theme. We revised our screenplay four times in total and two shotlists. As a result, we ended up having a good story with a solid theme and character arc, that both of us were satisfied with. Editing also required a lot of revisions and reflections from others. After finishing a rough cut, we balanced out the screen time each character has, adjusted the pace between dialogues, and incorporated a technique I learned from Mr. Taylor, L, and J cuts. There were so many things I discovered from each process and I had a lot of fun working on this big project!
My future plan for college is to major in Political Science at the University of California, Irvine and my current future dream is to become an international lawyer. It sounds like has nothing to do with things I studied in Freestyle, but I will for sure keep making videos as a hobby and staying creative.
Thank you for visiting my Showcase Website.
You can reach me out at aya.1029.angela@gmail.com OR 650-537-9499 for any further questions or information.
Showcase Reel
In my showcase reel, I introduced seven Freestyle work in total. This includes my Senior Narrative, Reflection Video, Zenith Project, Muti-Camera Edit (Acting as well), Monthly Photo Blog, 1 Minute Movie, and Lighting Looks assignments. Everything except the monthly photo blog were film assignments. I’m most proud of my Zenith Project because I had a lot of research to prepare and worked on the camera, lighting, and sound all by myself. I also used a green screen for the first time and it was fun to edit after. Hope you my work at Freestyle Academy!
Reflection
Each project and assignment was very entertaining. Senior Narrative project strengthed me with communication and time management skills. Communication skills were highly required in every stage of production, especially pre-production to make a screenplay and to contact actors. Time managing skills included setting all the schedules for the production team and the actors. This skill was also required for my Zenith project and Digital Media work. For my Zenith Project, I thought I would go at a slow pace since I was working on it alone, but the reality was that it took more time to operate everything by myself. The digital media work probably enhanced my time managing skills the most because there were a lot of steps in each assignment.
Also, one thing I have learned throughout the year is that not everything is about the “Filmmaking process”. It’s more about how you communicate and collaborate with your peers and teachers. I am so delighted that I’m part of the PM film because everyone supports each other. My senior year wouldn’t be the same without Freestyle.