Commercial Blog Post October 2020

 

Monopoly Commercial Reflection

    The product our team agreed on was the board game Monopoly. The original concept was that we would recreate a game of Monopoly in real life, then at the end reveal that it was all in the imagination of the people playing Monopoly. There was some disagreement on how exactly this would be made. I thought we should cut from the players playing monopoly to the real life version of what they were doing but everyone else thought it would be better to surprise the viewer so we went with that. We began filming this commercial but then we scrapped it to do the current commercial instead: A comedic game of monopoly.

    I was the editor for this project. Once the video was filmed, I was a bit time constrained editing it because I had one day to edit and turn it in, but it wasn't a huge deal because I didn't really need to do very advanced editing for this video. It was hard to get to exactly 1 minute for this because when I edited it the way I thought would look best, it ended up being about 45 seconds, which meant I had to lengthen a few clips, mainly the zoom in on Alex's face. After I was done editing and turned the video in, I came back later to add the whip pan effect which made the commercial a lot better.

In conclusion, creating this video was a bit of a messy process and I think what we lacked was a clear vision of what the commercial would be. If we put more effort into planning the video, I think it could've turned out a lot better.

1st Semester 2020 Film Reel

1st Semester Junior Film Reel

When making the film reel, I aimed to make it lighthearted and fun. That's the reason the background music for the duration of the video is upbeat. Of course I also had to choose shots that fit with the music, so most of the shots are either humorous or fun. The switch commercial showed two friends playing games together, so that easily fit with the music. Franklin's Cake is a comedy, so some of those shots worked as well; such as when Franklin throws an orange in the batter. When editing, I only used stable shots with good lighting and white balance. Many shots in Franklin's Cake were poorly white balanced, and some shots in the Switch commercial were poorly lit, so I didn't use those shots. I tried to make sure all my videos were evenly spread across the video, so one part didn't emphasize too much on one video.

In this reel, I wanted to show my main production roles as editor/cinematographer by using good shots, putting them together in a coherent way, and for good measure I put my production roles at the very end of the reel. Looking back on the reel now, I think I used the best clips I could've. Something I would've done differently, however, is the music. It fits the mood I was going for, but it's kind of bland and repetitive. Another mistake was exporting in 1080p instead of 720p. This reel was better than my previous one, but it still doesn't feel complete. Once I film more quality videos, I think I'll be able to add more substance to my film reels because as of now it feels generic.

Music Video Professional Review

Summary

The music video for Carried Away is about a dysfunctional relationship between two individuals. They try to make it work and even have some good times together, but there are some things that are said that can't be unsaid. When the male protagonist says "you make me sick," it highlights how their relationship will probably never work out.

Element to Apply to My Work

The editing was really clever. Although a lot of it isn't something I would be able to recreate, there's definitely a lot to take away from it. I like how the music video started and ended at the get-together where their relationship falls apart. In between is a mixture of happy memories and not so happy memories. The good and bad memories contrast each other and add a lot to the music video. At the climax of the music video where the guy says "you make me sick," it visibly shows the girl holding onto the words and when the guy says he's sorry, the sentence falls apart onto the floor. This shows how some things can't be unsaid. 

What the Creator Did Best

The creator of the music video did a really good job of storytelling. It's hard to convey a story in an interesting way, but this video really captured my interest. There was a really unique dynamic between the two characters and you can understand them as people. The guy says lots of things he regrets saying and the girl has trouble accepting his apologies. You can understand why they stay together even though their relationship is dysfunctional because the music video sprinkles in good moments in their relationship. 

How it Could've Improved

There's not a lot of bad things I have to say about the music video, but I will say that I prefer music videos that tell the story through visuals instead of subtitles. It's a little lazy, but I personally don't mind it too much for this video because of the climax where you see all the mean things the two have said to each other.

Franklin's Cake Blog

The Script

For this project, we chose the treatment that I wrote. I also wrote the script. The concept for the short film was that a man forgets his anniversary with his girlfriend every year and this year he forgets again, but doesn't want to anger his girlfriend again. He makes a last-minute cake that becomes sentient because the man spills chemicals in the batter. The cake tries is murderous but the man stops the cake before it causes harm.

The Process

During pre-production, I worked on the script with some help writing dialogue. We agreed on production roles minutes after our group got together. I was the writer and director. Ryan was the editor. Greyson did art direction. Ethan and John operated the cameras. As for storyboards, nobody wanted to do them, so we split them up across the group. We all participated in finding the locations, actors, and creating the schedule. Then, we were ready to film.

The first filming day was on a Thursday at Olathe North. We were filming most of Act II, the scene where the protagonist Franklin brings the cake to life. Murphy's law really came into play here. We showed up at the school around 4. They let us in the building, luckily, but we forgot to bring a few props. Some people went to get the items while we planned the shoot. While setting up the shots, we realized that we didn't grab the SD cards, so we messaged the group members who were getting supplies. They didn't see the message before getting back, so they had to leave again to get SD cards. Meanwhile, our actor was somewhat patiently waiting. After that, we were finally recording. The shots were pretty much improvised because we didn't know what the science rooms at North looked like beforehand. My voice was super hoarse from the start so I could barely speak. Directing with a hoarse voice is less than optimal. I really strained my voice on this recording day, something I don't plan on doing ever again. John was a big help, and was like an unofficial co-director. Once we started filming, it went smoothly. We finished filming right before 7, which was our original prediction.

The next filming session was at John's house. The scenes shot here took up most of the short film, so we had a lot more filming to do. Once the crew and actors arrived, we prepared the first shot. We had a slow start once again, but we sped up over time. People had to leave at a certain time, so we really were rushing while filming the last of the shots. We got it done just in time, and surprisingly took about the same amount of time to record as at Olathe North, even though we filmed a lot more at John's house. Finally, we were done with production.

Technical Problems

Once we were in post-production, we immediately noticed a major issue. All the shots upstairs at John's house had really bad white balance. Everything was orange/yellow and it looked awful. Ryan spent a lot of time fixing the colors, and even then the colors look weird at some points while watching the film. Also, after recording the voice lines for the cake, we realized we had to redo a line. Those were our main issues during post-production.

Role

I was the director and screenwriter for this film, two roles I was unfamiliar with. I'm not much of a leader, and I never have been. Writing is something I'm better at; I just haven't written many scripts. As for directing, I feel I could have helped the actors more because they were fairly unfamiliar with the script when we started filming. I did guide the video crew well though. I think I did a pretty good job with the writing. The dialogue progressed the story in the most natural way a story about a murderous talking cake could possibly be. The jokes were alright too.