The senior Zenith project is supposed to represent the peak of our time at Freestyle. It’s supposed to be our best work. We have the freedom to do what we want with it, as long as it somehow relates to our elective. As film students, we needed to use the three production steps in our projects: pre-production, production, and post-production.
For my Zenith, I chose to create a dance film. I’m a dancer and have always been so inspired by other people who combine dance and film. I wanted to create something similar but add my own twist to it. I had originally thought the piece would appear on a stage, but it didn’t work out, so I restructured some things to make it apply to a film medium when Zenith rolled around. It was such a wonderful opportunity to mix a lot of different art forms. I had to consider everything from choreography to set dressing, so it was definitely a challenge, but such a fun one.
The Process
PRE PRODUCTION:
- The Story: I found inspiration from other dance films and music. Then I came up with an idea that connected to themes from popular movies/stories that have always bugged me, specifially the Twilight and Dracula.
- Choreography: I choreographed the whole piece, although the duet was more of a challenge since I only had one body to choreograph with.
- Music Recording: I contacted musicians to record covers of the two songs I used.
- Costuming: I ordered costumes for my two lead characters and thrifted the dresses I used for the less significant characters.
- Rehearsals: And finally I had a rehearsal with my two leads to learn their duet before we filmed it. I also rehearsed the camera movement I would be doing during the shoot.
PRODUCTION:
- Filming: We filmed on three separate days, one day in the first location, and two days in the second. The second shoot always had to be at night, so we had limited time compared to the first set.
- Costume Distressing: Over the course of the film, the main character gets more and more bloody. I had a ton of fake blood on set that we had to continue applying to her dress and body.
- Makeup: Along with costume distressing, we had to make sure the girls had the puncture wounds on their necks. The leads were also dancing a lot, so we had to reapply their makeup over the course of the shoots.
- Set Dressing/Props: There are a ton of props throughout the film, as well as very distinct locations. I took a lot of the props from my house and thrifted some of the other ones I needed. Then we set up the different sets and locations to make sure it captured the image I was thinking of. The most challenging part of this was decorating the table for the final scene of the film. That alone took us about an hour.
- Camera Choreography: I had to figure out how to follow the actors in a way that conveyed the message I was going for, and this choreography changed so much over the filming process. A lot of the shots were me experimenting, while some were pre-choregraphed. It was a challenge!
POST-PRODUCTION
- Editing: Finally, I had to edit! This was an extremely difficult process since the film is very intricately paced with the music, and the two different settings are so entirely different so it was hard to make them mesh well. It was super fun to figure out how everything should fit together, but it was an incredibly challenging task.
- Music Mixing: After recording the two songs, I had to mix the tracks to make sure everything sounded good. This was easily the hardest part of the entire project. I used Pro Tools to mix, and I learned a lot throughout the process. The first song was easier to mix since it contained only a vocalist and a pianist, however the second song was much more difficult. It included a vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and drummer, so getting them all to mix well was exhausting. But it worked out in the end!
- Sound Design: There are a lot of added sound and music effects in the film that I added during editing. I found each of them online and mixed the volume levels in order to match the music. Finding the best effects to match the songs was surpringinly difficult.
- Time: lastly, I only had about four days to edit this entire project. Scheduling with my actors was tricky since we were all in a dance show together at the time, so we didn’t end up filming. until later in the project. I had around four days after we wrapped to do the whole post-production process. It was a lot! But I’m very happy with how it turned out.
Final Product: Sweet Heart
Sweet Heart Presentation
In the last month of school, we present our Zenith project to all of freestyle. If you want to learn more about my though process and the story for this film, watch the presentation: