Hi! I am Jonah Greenebaum and a Film Production student at Freestyle Academy. At this school, I’ve taken classes in film (obviously), but also Digital Media and English with a more creative writing emphasis. English and film especially combine two of my biggest passions, film, and writing, and allowed me to write and create stories, inside and outside of school, something I have loved for as long as I can remember. When I was small, it was writing short stories, or the beginnings of whole novels (that would, of course, never come to pass), and then I grew a love for film and how that visual and audio medium can convey bigger stories in a more sensorily stunning way. Storytelling has always been a big part of my life, and with Freestyle, I was able to spend much more time on that.

Outside of Freestyle, my life is mostly spent reading, writing, and doing my school’s top-level choir, the Madrigals. While we are extremely busy singers, spending time inside and outside of school rehearsing or performing varying amounts (sometimes it’s just practicing on your own outside of school and sometimes it is 50+ concerts in 3 weeks), the main thing I enjoy about it is the community aspect. My choir tends to be a really tight-knit community, with some people having sung together for all 4 years of high school in the same section. Some of my favorite memories of it are the times after concerts getting food with friends, or stargazing on an early night on tour. Little moments that bring the experience together.

For my two projects, I chose to present those that I feel represent my ability to capture beauty in vastly different ways. One is my visual narrative from junior year that we made while still in the pandemic. For this project, I didn’t have a ton of input on the story, but did most of the directing and cinematography as well as color editing, so I tried to capture the feelings being portrayed using that. My second one was my zenith project this year, where I took a Super 8 Camera on my choir tour to Switzerland, and shot it with 3 rolls of film, then created a video essay.

Thank you for taking the time to look over my work!

Visual Narrative

This first project is my Jr or Visual Narrative, called Friendship Bound.

My main challenge for this was to create something from a story I wasn’t particularly inspired by in a fairly ordinary setting. I wanted to use colors and light in interesting ways and to compliment the main character’s emotion while still allowing it to be aesthetically pleasing. At this point in film, we didn’t have any lighting equipment, so I had to be strategic with how I used natural lighting, and the LED strip I had in the wall in my room. I put the actors in places where the shadows wouldn’t be too harsh and the light would still work correctly. I tried to use time of day well, where we could be in places in shadow or at sunset, which might work symbolically, but also create interesting partings of the natural light an artificial light (especially at the train station). Though this worked for a lot of the film, something like the final sequence, it most definitely did not.

I also directed the actors in this movie. The main character was played by my friend Ryan who had already acted in things of mine before and is going into the acting. The other character was played by Lincoln, someone who had very little acting experience before this, although has been in 3 theater productions since. The main direction I stuck for for his character was getting the specific emotions right for what we needed, rather than thinking as a character like I might with Ryan.

For feedback, I would love to know how I can improve my use of lighting and colors, especially in a smaller film like this where I might not be able to get fancy colors or super specific set ups. I would also love feedback on my direction, and just generally how I can direct actors in smaller roles for the future, or those without maybe much experience.

Zenith

My zenith was a Super 8 video essay. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of Super 8 travel films on YouTube, and, after learning Madrigals were going to Switzerland, wanted to create my own to capture the experiences and dreamlike feel it might have. Except, I wanted to make it a little different. Many of those Super 8 videos get stale. While they are often nostalgic and special due to the differing contents, in structure and practice, they end up often feeling very similar. Most of the time, they end up being the collection of clips taken with little or no editing with a Tom Rosenthal or random indie-pop song put over it. There generally doesn’t seem to be much thought into them, so I wanted to change that. 

One of my favorite Super 8 videos is called “If We All Die Tomorrow.” While, yes, it is a Tom Rosenthal song put over a bunch of clips, it feels like there is much more purpose to it. The Super 8 footage is still well composed, and has a great blend of silliness and nostalgia. There are shots of people but also of the location and general feel. The cinematography is very specifically shot, somehow having depth and showing great moments from the trip. It feels like you’re sucked into the trip amongst them and remembering what it was like to just have fun with your friends in that way. And unlike most, there are also narration bits of sorts. Structured as writing a letter to the creator’s friend who went on the trip, it discusses the pandemic and how long ago those good moments of freedom felt, yet how crucial it is to be reminded of them. The narration makes the video feel infinitely more personal and, at least to me, engaging. It makes you, again, feel placed in the middle of the thought process and really glues together the video into a cohesive narrative.

I wanted to do something essentially like this: create a video that both felt somewhat new and from my own voice, yet also captures a memory. How it feels to live in this moment as a senior about to go through a big change, almost like a journal entry. If I could get feedback for this, it would be how I could use that limited technology with very specific capabilities to tell a story better? In what was can I use technology more to its advantage?

For this one my technical prowess was not particularly on display, using Final Cut Pro to edit a fairly simple video and really being only at the whim of the conditions of the trip, so the key I want to know if how to use those conditions and limitations.

Reflection

My time at Freestyle has encompassed many ups and many more downs, but if it has done one thing, it has allowed me to spread my creative muscles in ways I would have never been able to otherwise. I learned how to play with light and color, and use a variety of different tools to help tell a story. These two projects really encompass the two different sides of that knowledge; the one far more planned out with my normal camera that also tells a somewhat impersonal story, and another far more personal narrative with tools that allow for much less flexibility. Something that makes film special compared to most other art forms are the variety of ways not just light and color, but also movement and framing can create a feeling. Next year I plan to attend CSU Long Beach for Film and Electronic Arts where I want to continue using these skills and improving. I want to be able to tell that full, personal story with a thoughtful touch, and allow people to understand what I want to achieve, creating something that hopefully touches them in the same way.