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.

Short Film Marathon Assignment

I will update this post with every short film posted.

"Hunting"

1.  In "Hunting," the main character changes after his father says he'll be back later than planned.  In this last scene, the formerly pacifist main character asks his brother for a chance to shoot the deer.  When the brother stops him from shooting it, a tense moment follows where the two brothers have switched places and the older brother fails to comfort the younger.  The camera angles and dialogue mirror those of the scene in the beginning where the inverse happened.  The actors' expression as well as the mirrored elements communicate the change in relationship between them.  

"The Black Hole"

1. When the man is eating the Snickers bar, his mind changes.  The theft of the candy bar has opened his mind to larger-scale thefts using his new black hole.  This is signaled by an increase in the volume level.
2. The black hole has its own sound effect because it is essentially its own character.  Its influence changes the main character, eventually leading him to his death.  Every time he uses the Black Hole, it changes him a little, and this is signified by the little noise it makes.

"The Man at the Counter"

1. The use of narration in "The Man at the Counter" makes the story much more personal, as it is told from the first-person perspective of the main character.
2. A teenage boy works at a coffee shop but doesn't find much meaning in his life.  One day an old man walks in and orders a plain coffee, winks, leaves a tip, and takes several sugar packets on his way out.  The same exact thing happens several days in a row.  Eventually, when asked, the old man says that his wife of 50 years is sick and wants something sweet.  He doesn't show up again.  Two weeks later he appears in the obituaries, and in the description it says that he died two weeks after his wife.  At the coffee shop the next day, the main character sees a happy couple.  In the very last shot, the boy is older and is proposing to his girlfriend, telling this story to her to express that his love for her is like the old man's love for his wife.