Horror Film: Post 1

School is about learning, and often when we learn, we make mistakes. And so I begin this blog post.

My group actually developed a reasonable idea for a film.
What it is: A blind girl switches places with her reflection, who tries to steal her life
What it's about: Coming soon

Everything was going quite well. I wrote out all the shots in boxes, rewrote them into a cleaner draft, and filmed most of it. Jessi, Emily, and Lex were excellent actors. Jessica did good makeup and script writing.

Then today I started to edit the footage and I realized a big problem. CONSISTENCY.

Let me give you an example. At the beginning of the film, the blind girl and her sister are eating cheerios for breakfast. They have a conversation where the blind girl asks her sister if she's attractive.

The conversation starts with a full shot including both characters eating cereal.

But when I focus on the blind girl, suddenly she is no longer eating cereal.

This issue occurred ALL over the footage. The issue of action inconsistency was a problem, but there was also an issue of lighting inconsistency because we filmed for two days, location inconsistency when the reflection morphs into its true form, and appearance inconsistency when the blind girl is wearing a necklace scenes where she shouldn't be. Also, there's a scene where you can see me with a camera in the mirror. And that ISN'T the scene where the blind girl is talking to her reflection in the mirror. We haven't even gotten to filming that yet.

Yeah, I'm kind of kicking myself right now, but it taught me a valuable lesson. When doing one camera film production, one must be wary of the way a character relays between shots. If someone is eating cereal in the group shot, they either have to be eating cereal in the close up, or a shot has to be placed in between them eating cereal and them talking in a close up.

Now that I've seen which shots worked and which didn't, I can create a new shot list that doesn't have these issues. The problem is, most of the footage has to be re-filmed and re-edited, and that takes a LOT of time.

The task seems big and it is somewhat discouraging. Though I think the project is fairly good, I wouldn't say that I am strongly passionate about it, which makes it difficult for me to find the energy to surmount the obstacle. At this point though, I can't really give up because I have a group that's depending on me, and I owe it to them to do my best. Also, it's a school assignment and I have to do my work.

I've taken a leadership role on the project and I've been primarily responsible for both filming and editing. Perhaps I should distribute these tasks so that I don't feel completely overwhelmed. Maybe I can film and Austin can edit.