Hi, my name is Owen Daniels and I am a film student at Freestyle Academy. I love to create and watch movies. I don’t really specialize in anything, but I do put the majority of my effort in production and post production when I work on films. Outside of school I like biking, video games, and martial arts.

 

For my Showcase, I have decided to show my Senior Narrative and my Zenith Project. My Senior Narrative was a project where my partner and I worked on a film from pre-production to post-production. The film is about a girl who struggled with the death of her mother and dealt with it through video games. I shot most of the scenes, except for the Zombie Boxer Scene. I also edited all of the video game scenes except for the Zombie Boxer Scene. I hope to gain feedback on the editing and effects. During my Zenith, my partners and I created it rather differently, where we each directed and edited different chunks of the film. What i’ve shown in my showcase is work that I have directed, shot, and edited. However, I did not write the dialogue. I hope to gain feedback on my Direction, Cinematography, and Editing from the Zenith.

 

Overall, based on the two films, I’m looking for feedback mainly on my cinematography and editing, however I am open to any other comments you have on the projects.

 

Next year, I will be continuing film through clubs and activities, and maybe even part time work. I’m still not 100% sure on what I want to do with my life, but I still enjoy making movies. I hope to discover my film making style, and create at least 4 short movies a year in order to fulfill my creative drive.

 

Project 1: Senior Narrative

ARVE Error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode

The Senior narrative was the biggest project I ever worked on in freestyle. It was a story about a girl struggling with the loss of her mother, and how she dealt with it. During this film, I did everything from pre-production to post – production, with the help of my partner.

During this project, I found that I grew mostly in post production. Specifically in editing and special effects. Before I made this, I had only toyed around with after effects, and didn’t have much experience. I edited all the video game scenes, except for the zombie boxer, so I had a lot on my plate. However, although it was extremely time consuming and draining, it was also really fun! The scene I’m most proud of, even though it doesn’t look great, is the final boss fight. Because of my lack of experience, I filmed that entire scene without thinking about the special effects. Then, when I began making the effects, I realized how difficult it would be. I had to manually add the background effects for every single frame in that scene. Although it came out looking kind of bad, I am proud of the effort that I put in.

For this project, I would like to get feedback mostly on the Zog Fight Scene in general, as that was the scene I put the most effort into, and I want to know how it can be improved!

Project 2: Zenith

ARVE Error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode

This project was a collaborative effort between myself and two other people. We made a choose your own adventure movie. Once you click the link, every single clip between the ‘Hug’  scene and the credits was shot, edited, and directed by me. However, I did not write the dialogue.

During this project, I think I grew mostly as a director and cameraman, as I was able to use someone else’s writing to elevate my film making. I’m not very good at writing, so working off someone else’s work was great! It felt far more collaborative than most of the other projects I did, since I usually helped in the writing process. Since I wasn’t bogged down by my own personal writing issues, I was able to expand as a director, making them act exactly as I wanted. I think I improved on directing, as our actors seemed to be enjoying themselves and really getting into their performances. As a cameraman, this experience was interesting, because I had to shoot in a parodical style, where I was making fun of the cinematography of both Police Dramas and Soap Operas. Personally it was a fun challenge trying to imitate a filming style and I learned a lot through that experience. I hope to take what I’ve learned from this project and apply it to the college clubs and my own personal films I plan on making in my near *hopefully bright* future.