At the end of our Junior year, students were given one more opportunity to challenge themselves. The main idea behind the explorations unit was to create something that addressed a 21st century skill. How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?
For my exploration project, the 21st century skill I chose to improve on was Visual Literacy.

We had to choose a subject and then show mastery of that subject. I chose to learn about fight scenes and to display mastery of the subjects I made a presentation and at the end of it was my fight scene.

Process

If Film we were required to choose a topic that showed mastery in a skill that was related to the Film Industry. I was extremely interested in learning how to film and choreograph a fight scene.
The first step was to research and learn as much as possible before starting to script and structure my fight scene. After weeks of reading articles and watching videos, I began writing the script of my fight scene. I had made sure to research all stages of production (pre-production, production, and post-production), so every time I felt stuck I went back to my research which helped me a lot.
After I had written the first iteration of the script I began teaching it to my actors.

When teaching my actors the choreography of the fight scene, we learned it in a safe space with padding and took things very slowly. This part of pre-production is called pre-vis. It is so the stunt coordinator can help the director visualize what the scene is going to look like before they spend lots of money on actually designing the set. This is an essential step when it comes to making a fight scene. This is also when you can make minor changes to the choreography if your actors are unable to perform a stunt.

When learning a fight scene there is going to be some falling and getting knocked to the ground. So I made sure to teach my actors how to fall, the mats in the photo were also used in the film but the camera was angled in such a way that the mats were just out of the frame.

The fight scene was filmed over the course of 3 separate days, the biggest problem was the sun, we were on a rushed schedule and the best time to film was when the sun began to set so we really only had a couple of hours each day to get shots that look nice.

During the editing process, I spent most of my time color grading (because of the issues we had with the sun) and adding sound effects that would complement the visuals.
Throughout the past year, I began to hate adding and mixing sounds, but I really enjoyed working with the audio on this project.

Reflection

Overall I had a really fun time making this project, I am proud of the final product and I learned a lot about fight scenes and I definitely want to implement the skills I have learned into my future Freestyle projects. In the past most of my films were shot inside or in the shade, this was the first project where the entire shoot was outside.

Experimental Music

In Digital Media we were tasked with making experimental music. We basically were testing out any and all of the MIDI features in ProTools.

For this piece, I was inspired by open world video game soundtrack. I wanted the song to be upbeat, so my music mainly consisted of different variations of bells.

The hardest part of this project was trying to get the trumpet accompaniment to sound good with the main beat of the song. I tried to make the two work the best I could but in the future, I might choose different instruments.

Overall I really enjoyed this project, playing around with the MIDI keyboard and making up different tunes was a nice way to end the year.

Album Art

For the experimental music project, we had to make album art for our song. Though I am in film I am happy with how my art turned out. The music that was made was inspired by video game soundtracks so I continued this theme with my album art. Since I was going for an open-world feel with the music I included a bit of landscaping as well as the fictional main character you would play as, if the game was real.

I most definitely don’t think that my drawing is exceptional but I consistently try to improve my drawing especially when I am trying to draw people. Here are my multiple attempts at drawing the main character for my album art.