Reflection: CAP Hollywood

To be frank, I am nervous about my CAP Hollywood film. We started filming late. We do not have the best quality footage that we could have. My dad, who plays the main character, has no background in acting. The voiceovers that he did, which were good, were lost on Mr. Mayo's microphone. Props, sets, and costumes switched around during the course of filming, and we still had not finished casting by the time we started filming.

This could have all been mitigated or avoided completely if we simply had enough time.

We have had less than two months to do all of CAP Hollywood, from scripting to the public showing. Yes, we did a 60-second film in five days. But that was held to a far lower standard of quality than CAP Hollywood is. The 60-second film took a day to write and storyboard. We could write the script to have only teenage characters and take place in places which we could film at school. We filmed on the school cameras and built the script around the object we had to include.

CAP Hollywood is based on our short stories, which we wrote in English Class. Yes, we could have written our short stories to be better for filming, but the stories Ms. Fillman picked for us to choose between were very centered around adults and took place in somewhat hard-to-film settings.

We had to adapt a short story into a screenplay, storyboard it, cast it, film it, and create a movie poster for it in about a month. It just isn't realistic.

I realize that the dates are not moving. I simply would like to say that we did the best we could with what we had. Our editors are doing the best they can with what they have. We are making the most of our time. We will have a finished product in time, but finished does not mean perfect.

In better news, this week I worked on the movie poster and it looks good. Our group members have had access to multiple computers and are collecting music and such for the film. We do not need lots of complicated editing or special effects, and this week our editors have been churning out a nice rough cut.

Over all, I am just worried about time and the quality of our footage. But honestly, I am not expecting an award, nor do I really want one. Hopefully we can finish this film with minimal hiccups, and I can watch the other films and then forget about this whole ridiculous project.