Introduction
For the Explorations unit at Freestyle Academy, all students explore a passion of their own and of any skill they want. For me the only restrictions on this project is that it needs to be related to film since that’s my elective. At first I thought I wanted to do a research project on Tim Burton or Wes Anderson however, I knew I wanted something more hands on. During Zenith presentations one of my peers used a lot of the film equipment such as the gimbal, which intrigued me. Thus I discovered that I wanted to try filming an action scene using the gimbal, I knew it would test my self directing, visual literacy, collaborative, and risk taking skills.
Action Scenes
To begin my journey of Action scenes, I watched John Wick, Marvel, and Jackie Chan movies to take inspiration from how they do theirs. It was apparent that more recent action scenes are done with high frame rate cameras, lots of cgi for budget cuts, and have many moving parts. Since my crew was just me and my 2 actors, I understood I would have to go for a more old school approach. Simple practical stunts, good cuts in editing, catchy music, and intriguing characters.
After my research I test shot with the Gimbal outside to get used to the equipment, how to balance the camera, and be swift with set up. I confirmed all the dates with my humble crew of twins and me during a hangout as shown below, and got to cracking! When wrapping up pre-production with storyboarding, I then scheduled my 1 week for production and got to cracking with only 2 days available for shooting.
Reflecting back, I would have tried to budget a shoot day just for choreography and test shooting. This would include reviewing and editing the storyboard with my actors to ensure a realistic fight. I also would have really enjoyed using the gimbal with my actors to practice more on how to work with moving objects not just stationary ones for practice.
Music Recording
Starting this project was a bit daunting since most of us haven’t had much experience musically, so when we got into our trio we started collaborating and brainstorming on how to work around our strengths and weaknesses. All of us wanted a song that was lighter, had drums for Zoya, piano for Sophie, and vocals for Estelle. As we went through all the songs we were thinking; we decided on A Night To Remember by Laufey and Beabadoobee. We liked the jazzy tone of the song, and the slower pacing that would be easier for us to keep up with.
However as Zoya and Sophie tried to practice the instruments for the song, they figured our cover would sound better if they sang vocals too. Due to everyone’s schedules becoming busy, we only had 15 minutes to practice before our recording session, however we harmonized the best we could and adapted quickly. It took us about 4 recording attempts to come to something we were satisfied with once we got in the studio. It was interesting seeing how the emotion of the lyrics is what really sells the music. All art is some tangible form of emotion, as a film student Estelle was used to understanding that we get sold a feeling whenever we watch a movie. Although, it never quite occurred to her that we did the same with music, so all lyrics need to be sung with intention and make listeners feel something and be in the moment with you.
Relaxing in the recording studio and just singing for enjoyment made us all feel inspired. It’s fun to just mess around with friends and laugh over mistakes with no pressure. We think environments like that are healing for creatives when they’re used to their talents becoming a job or a chore. We look forward to more memories in the recording studio.
Reflecting more on this project, it was a little bit intimidating because none of us like singing solo in public but we learned that singing with a group wasn’t awful. Our voices harmonized pretty well for the first time singing together.
Poetry
During this poetry unit, it was a pleasure to work with Ms. More on the grand landscape of poetry. We did a poem based on a newspaper we read, a cento poem made of other poems, and an Ars Poetica where we discussed the meaning of poetry. In class we also workshopped on how to brainstorm ideas, like blurting ideas that align together, or thinking about what inspires us.
Ars Poetica
This prompt was about what poetry meant to us, for me I always viewed poetry as something more abstract. It doesn’t need to be about many rules or certain ideas to make something good. It’s all about feelings and imagery, it doesn’t need to be anything specific.
Cento
The cento poem was the most lengthy poetry workshop, where we read many poems of other poets and took a little of each to create a unique poem. It was fun seeing where the matching and mixing took me in my story making. It ended up being an intriguing story about immigration.
Newspaper
Every morning someone reads a newspaper, and as an artist it’s vital to be inspired by others to create your own art. the article I had read to base this poem off of was a MVHS competitive swimmer, who told her story of triumph through the difficult times of balancing school, friends, and sport.
Final Poem:
All of this prep work lead to my final poem that’s about how people develop differently from their childhoods. I believe that survival of the fittest is a term that still relevant to our current lives even with modern technology, so I tried to dive into that with my poem.
