Introduction
Hello, welcome to my Zenith page! My name is Aya Iwata, and I am a first-year film student at Freestyle Academy. As my background, I love to dance and hang out with my friends in my free time. I also have an excessive obsession with Ghibli movies. My favorite Ghibli movies are Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Kiki’s Delivery Service.
What is a Zenith Project? Zenith project is our last “ULTIMATE” freestyle project where students get to choose what they want to do. Students can use the skills they have learned at freestyle or outside of school or try something new; the outcome can be anything. With this freedom, I decided to make a video that could inspire the audience. It took me some time to think about what to talk about in the video because I wanted it to be something that could be relatable to the audience. Then I thought of a film analysis video because it can inspire the audience to watch a movie again, and if I talk about a famous movie, it can also attract the audience more because they will feel relatable because they know exactly what I’m talking about. Therefore, I made a film analysis video and chose Spirited Away as a movie to analyze. Throughout the project, I was passionate about this because I always told my friends to watch Spirited Away because it is the best movie I have ever seen.
This project was a new challenge because I worked on it alone. I analyzed the film, made a script, and worked on the camera, lighting, green screen setting, and sound. Since I worked with a partner for my senior narrative assignment, I thought this was a good opportunity to try something new. Lighting was challenging for me because I couldn’t make any shadows on the green screen. The audio recording was also a hard part because I wanted to use a boom mic to sound better, and I had my mother to help support the boom mic, yet I operated by myself. Shooting went pretty fast and smooth, and since I learned how to edit the green screen in film class, the editing went smoothly except for the shadow adjustment.
