I can say with all honesty, film has been a life-changing experience and this unit has challenged me like no other. At the beginning of this year, we were tasked with creating a 10-minute narrative film with dialogue. To many, this may not sound bad, but the more you learn the process behind making a film, the more you’ll understand that this was a brutal task.
To begin our narrative unit and practice our skills we were tasked with making a one-minute movie. For this project, we had to create a small storyboard movie to practice our narrative storytelling skills. With the same group, we then went and got the footage. However, once we completed the storyboard and footage we swapped our stories with another group at random. This caused us to use what skills we had to edit and portray someone else’s story through our lens. Sometimes it can be a lot easier telling a story you made, but when you are telling someone else’s you have to put yourself in their shoes and further develop your ability to tell a story.
Our second assignment was similar to a pop quiz. We came into class and BOOM. We were tasked with creating a one-period film from start to finish. This assignment played a huge role in learning how to manage our time. With only one period we had to limit ourselves in each aspect of the production of the film. In order to complete everything you cannot let yourself get too fixated on one thing and ruin your shoots. Throughout all of film, this has been a skill I have really had to develop. Throughout many of my shoots, I find that I’ll spend a long time attempting one shot that would look REALLY cool rather than spreading my efforts and devoting more time to getting all the shots I need. Even though throughout this project we completed the majority of our footage and editing, we never got to add sound. It’s not accounting for small things like this that can have a major impact on your final product. Even though Im super satisfied with the final product and I think it tells a story, It would be all that more engaging with a soundtrack.
To complete our mini projects we were introduced to a new skill. Lighting. Before we were given lights we were taught how to manipulate natural light in order to incorporate it into our film visuals. In this assignment, however, we were given actual lights that we would be using throughout the production of our big Senior narrative film. We were taught many techniques and challenged to put all of them to use in this video.
Senior narrative
After spending a lot of time honing our skills and refreshing what we did JR year, It was time to begin our Senior Narrative. I was introduced to this project as it being one of the hardest things I would ever do, and although it was not the most painful thing, It has definitely been the most effort I’ve ever put into a single project.
We began by all coming to class with a logline and an Idea for a story. Once we spent various classes drafting, sharing, and editing Ideas we had to find a partner whose story we liked. These would eventually become our Co-Directors for a long time. I based my original Idea off the movie “Chef” which was about a food truck and cooking. I really liked the cultural aspect of the film so I decided to do something similar to my original Idea. It was called “SoulFritas”.
Logline:
When a homeless teenager finally catches his big break and finds a job, an unexpected mentor helps him kindle an undiscovered passion for cooking, and teaches him to live from the soul.
What started as a little film Idea in class would eventually become one of the focuses of my life for over half of the school year.
To get the film started and on the road, we jumped right into planning and created a mock-list of the basics that go into a narrative
Once we got our story on the road there were still skills that needed to be practiced, such as working with a film crew. Theres a lot more than meets the eye on a film set and a variety of jobs in the industry. Mr.Taylor gave us a screenplay, a group, and all the equipment and tasked us with creating a full-effect dialogue scene. This lesson taught us a lot about how sound works with the boom mikes and how little changes can cause your audio to sound very different between cuts.
Now that we had all the skills necessary to create a movie, it was in our hands. To finish off our first semester in film it was time to really bring our movie to fruition. In order to flesh out our movie further from the mock-up we wrote an entire screenplay. For me, this was one of the more enjoyable parts of the creation because my partner, Yhali, and I had very similar Ideas so we built off one another and at one point in the writing process it felt like we were thinking exactly the same. This may go unnoticed when you see a film but the person whom you are working with can either greatly expedite or hinder the process based on agreement and disagreement.
After creating our screenplay we went through the script and planned out all of our shots. This step is really important because it saves you a lot of time later on during the production process. For each scene, we thought of how we wanted to tell the story and what shots would go into that. This was cool because it felt like I was really making a movie all myself and it excited me for when the actual filming began.
The final step of pre-production for our film was creating a schedule for our shoots. During this, we grouped scenes together that were shot with similar locations, actors, and props. This would allow us to more efficiently shoot all of the scenes we need without making extra unnecessary trips. This really taught me that filming doesn’t happen in chronological order but rather in the most efficient and logical order. All of this planning took a super long time and thought for it to actually pan out and be useful in the long run.
Production
Once we got into actual filming it was a MAJOR task. In our first shoot we did it on time and were at the top of our game. This was super cool because this was the first fully independent opportunity we got to create and actually film something that we made all on our own. We got to use Yhali’s dad’s office at google to substitute for a burger king interview room.
After our first shoot came many more. Even though we had a lot planned out nothing ever truly goes according to plan so we had to do a ton of location scouting. We filmed at various different places for our different scenes however once we found our main location I feel the meat of the film really began. We decided to film next to a Mexican restaurant with an outdoor patio area with benches that happened to fit our vibe perfectly.
We designed and actually fully built from scratch the main prop in our film, The Soulfritas foodcart. There were many long days and hours spent at this location filming and we would constantly run into challenges. I learned a lot from this about patience, time management, and the difficulties of working in a team.
The filming for this movie took longer than the entire second semester and just a few days ago we finally wrapped our footage.
We still have a lot of editing ahead of us but I have learned to trust the process and that I will get a product equal to the amount of work I put in. So with that, I’m happy to say our final product will truly reflect it.