Introduction
So. What is Zenith? Zenith is supposedly the ultimate project of the accumulation of all our skills learned at Freestyle, in which we were given the choice to focus on anything we wanted that related to our elective. I decided I wanted to focus on doing a fight scene for my Zenith.
I chose the idea for my project because action has always been my favorite genre. Having done many fight scenes in the past and even producing a Junior narrative revolving around the genre, I never had the opportunity to truly focus on just a fight scene alone, which is why I would like to do it now for Zenith. Previously, since fight scenes weren’t our main focus, they were not too professional and it was clear they were not done like the way action movies do. Given the opportunity to focus on just the fight scene enabled me and my groupmates to produce a (hopefully) high quality, entertaining, and believable fight scene. To research for this project, I watched many different clips of fight scenes from my group mates’ and my favorite movies and TV Shows, like Punisher, Daredevil, John Wick, Kingsman, and Extraction. We envisioned a cyberpunk futuristic setting, similar to Blade Runner 2049, and incorporated and took inspiration from said movies above.
This project was a new challenge for me due to the high ambitions of a professional quality fight scene we envisioned, with fights choreographed to music and finding actors who may have fighting experience as well. Additionally, with Narrative 2 also taking up much of my time, I had a very tight schedule and had to fit many commitments into only a few weeks.
For my Production Class (Film), I used all of the skills we’ve learned so far including working the camera, collaborating with a group, editing, and much much more. A specific skill that may be a little unconventional and not done by every film student would be fight choreography. While everyone loves fight scenes, they are very difficult to pull off due to having to plan out the movements, find skilled actors, and even post production editing clips. From what we have already discussed so far, I wanted to use certain existing skills we’ve learned so far: storyboarding, pre-production(screenplay perhaps), and casting actors. I also incorporated acting skills I delved into once when we had our in class acting assignment, practicing lines and getting into character.
Process
Throughout the Zenith unit, there were pre-production, production, and post-production elements we had to use. The first would of course be notes and research, which eventually lead me to a final screenplay.
Above are the notes and half of a script, and below is a more professional, finished screenplay.
The next was to actually start production – first step was to contact actors and create a list for our first shooting day. I’ve learned planning and organization is incredibly important to film, and without any of the above steps, production would be very stressful and difficult.
And finally, production. Below is a gallery of all sorts of different behind the scenes pictures I was able to take during downtime.
The Final Product
Below is the final, edited, and complete version of my Zenith. I hope you enjoy it!
Now of course, fighting – especially fake fighting – is not easy. We had our fair share of mistakes, funny inconveniences, and strange acting, leading to a full blooper reel I have made below. I hope you get a laugh out of this one!
Post production could possibly have been the most time consuming part of this project; editing to each frame, finding hundreds of different sound effects, and cutting at the right time to follow continuity. I do think editing a fight scene is a lot harder compared to a normal dialogue scene, as it is much more important and less lenient when editing each frame. However, post production is still my most favorite step, I really enjoy editing and adding my own twists to a project.
Reflection
Collaborating with others, we each had a different focus on what part of the scene we wanted to work on individually, and in the end we combined our skills to create something of a higher level than a one person project. Specifically, Tyler was director and cinematographer, Uch worked on practical effects like blood effects, Sky worked on special effects, and I worked on acting and choreographing. Task delegation was a challenge at first, due to our group having similar interests(for example: everyone wanting to direct/work the camera). To hold one another accountable for our roles, we communicated daily and made sure our weekly tasks were done, not just with Mr. Taylor but with each other as well. I think what I wanted to focus on, going back to fight choreography, actually turning my envisioned fight scenes to reality, not only through pre-production but production – I wanted to act. Years ago, I had thought acting would be an easy job and wouldn’t require much work; however, through Film production class I realized I was completely wrong. Having acted in a few short class assignments and watching casted actors in my own movie, I understand why Hollywood gets paid so much. Given more time in this Zenith project, I want to put more focus into becoming my character and not having to cringe seeing myself on a screen when it’s post production.
Of course, the 21st Century skill I improved the most on during Zenith was collaboration and communication, as in many previous projects I would end up taking on too many roles or not enough roles, making film collaboration difficult as it was unbalanced. Collaborating actually ended up working out very well for us, as each of us showed up on shooting days as well and could provide much more extra help and input when filming. Something unsuccessful could be that many of our final products will be similar, as we are all working on one scene; however, I do think it will be exciting to see different editing styles and interpretations of the same scene. A skill I may have improved upon the least would be flexibility, I had a very tight schedule due to several other commitments and our film shoots may have been slightly rushed. If I was more flexible, there is a chance our final product could have had a better choreographed fight scene, although I am satisfied with the way it has turned out. There is always room for improvement!
In the future, I will be using a variety of learning experiences, some of the most important being planning and organization. I learned that without these, your day of work will be incredibly difficult, rigid, and stressful. A few examples of what I did to plan were making a list of actors and crew members on a spreadsheet, practicing my part of the fight choreography at home, and communicating with actors and my groupmates daily. I feel like I accomplished one very big project objective: to create my ultimate Freestyle project. If I could only show one project from my entire two years at Freestyle, it would be my Zenith. It’s not long enough to get boring, and not short enough to keep you unsatisfied, and I enjoy watching it every time. If I could do this project over, one thing I would do differently is to completely focus only on one or two different fights. We have around four to five right now, and while they all look entertaining on screen, I have a feeling if we specialized on just a couple it would look even cooler. However, with riveting sound effects, realistic special effects, and intense choreography and cinematography, I am very proud of the way my final project has turned out.