I hear.... therefore I am Pt2

Music in my opening. 

Music... in my opening

Music in my... opening

(I couldn't think of a title)

The process of picking music for the opening was actually surprisingly easier than I thought. I went to one of my favorite websites for copyright free music called bulletproofbear.com, typed in "Western Music" and I listened to a couple tracks. One that stood out to me was "Gunfire at Sundown". I'm not sure exactly what made it so appealing to me. Maybe it was the harmonious strings in the background that many of my researched Western's incorporated. Maybe it was the slow start and quick ending, matching the vibe of our opening. Or, more likely, it was the cool ending note that really signified something big was bound to happen. 

After I downloaded it, I plugged it into my Premiere Pro timeline and it actually fit fairly well.

Video I took to send to my group immediately after I put it in premiere

The consensus around it was that it fit. And Renn, ever the researcher, confirmed that it did in fact align with many of the Westerns we scouted. 

I had to edit the song a bit because it was a bit shy of our runtime, so I spliced it where there were repeating notes, copied it, and overlayed it on itself to continue it. I stretched it out so we could have the final note I loved so much act as a closer for the video on screen. My words don't do it justice so here's what I'm talking about. 

Impressive, I know.

CALL THE CHIROPRACTER... im back :)

I'm back from Tampa with a trophy. I won first place directing Crazy 8 Vertical Short Film, and I broke down in tears. 

Me with my first-place trophy :)

After that insane high, I remembered I actually had work to do, so here I am writing my blog post on the bus ride home. 

For my last production post, let's talk about some of the stuff we forgot to film :(

Picture of Nico (so handsome)

When we filmed for the first time about 2 weeks ago, I forgot to print this out, so now there is a big gap in my beautiful line edit holding space (that's my line 💚) for a shot where Emi is holding this picture. 

I am not a religious person so perhaps it was my subconscious speaking to me when we forgot to get a shot of Emi twisting the cross around her neck. In the shot, Emi grabs the necklace and contemplates her own morals and ethics (because she just killed a guy). 

Another shot we forgot to get was Emi walking to plant the cross in the ground. As of now, it's a pretty rough cut from the making of the cross to the planting of it, so we need a shot of Emi actually walking to plant it. 

Maybe it's because I'm in the middle of nowhere Florida on a bus next to one of my besties Aneesa who is sound asleep, or because I just experienced one of the best moments of my life in directing the best vertical short film in the country, but I really want to go take a nap, so bye. 😘 

adapting a storyboard

 A storyboard can only take you so far. After all, it’s whole purpose is to be a stepping stone for a larger production, and that never goes to plan. So let’s take a look at some of the changes we made while filming.

First, the wide shots of Emi walking took up far too much time. Those were scenes we filmed but ultimately cut in post. It flows much better with just a couple seconds of walking rather than a whole minute and a half. 

Next, we changed the order of some of the shots. We had Emi take off her hat before she wiped the sweat instead of before. We felt it’d make more sense for her to take off her hat before digging, and it’d show more of a passage of time. 

Finally, we changed the shots where the body is seen. We made the mistake of not buying enough dirt, so we couldn’t cover the body bag at the park.

We had to shoot around that and change up some shots to better fit what we had. This was done using force perspective. We put the camera right up against the dirt and made it seem like there was depth to the pile. It masked our lack of dirt and even looked better than what was on the storyboard.

Why is this public park filled with people

 During filming, another one of the problems we faced was the volume of people on a run that would interrupt our shot. As a stylistic western that does not include bystanders in the background, we waited a painstakingly long time for each runner to pass, filming in between the gaps in their runs.

Some of the runners we had to wait for

It took us a lot longer than we first planned to film for. We originally slotted 8-11 to film, but we finished around 1 because of how often we had to stop and wait for people to pass. I’m actually kind of glad we had to wait, because it forced us to think about some of the decisions we were making. It led to a better final product, and our film is better for it. 

problems during production

 I’m in Tampa, but let’s talk about one issue we had trying to be historically accurate while filming. 

Nowhere in our research did it say anything about old west cowboys having purple nails, so when Emi showed up to film with the brightest purple nails possible, we knew we have failed in that regard. We first tried scraping them off, but that got us nowhere.

We then had to resort to trying to get shots that worked around Emi’s nails. This included Renn acting as Emi’s hands for a shot. 

With some clever camera tricks and a few workarounds, we were able to successfully hide her nails, and keep the illusion of an old west woman alive. 

i am tired but here’s my plan

 Since I’m already finished filming, and I have to pack for Tampa, I’ll quickly go over my plans for post production.

I’ve already started on my like edit, and over the next week I’ll find the right type of music to go over the video. When my team and I get back from Tampa, we’ll do some reshoots and do our voiceovers to fully finish the filming process. 

My line edit flows well, and there’s only a few minor switches I have to make once I get  new footage. 

Video sped up so I can upload. 

I’m gonna go because I have to pack. Sorry this has been so short. 

let this white boy and his camera shoot?

          We have a banger storyboard and we filmed

Said Banger Storyboard

With my very cool Sony A74 (thank u mom and dad), we filmed today. I'm genuinely very happy with how our shots turned out. In our research, we found that a lot of Westerns began very slowly, often with extreme longshots that faded into one another. We aimed to mimic that. The lighting was nothing short of heavenly, which gave us the opportunity for some insane shots that I am very proud of. 

Still from one of the long shots that

 begin our opening

Renn and I switched off filming (he filmed for the most part). I'll share some of the shots that I love. A lot of them are low angle shots we implemented to show a power imbalance of Emi character (now named Charlotte) over the man she killed. Some of the other ones I loved are shots where we had dirt or flowers in the foreground in focus, and the subejct (Charlotte) out of focus doing some sort of action. Keep in mind these are not color graded or edited so some of it might be a bit off.

                                                          Charlotte looks out over the horizon,       

                                                                      ready for what's next         

Charlotte plants a cross at the burial site

 

Charlotte ties the cross while standing over the dead body, projecting power

Charlotte buries the body. 

We focus on a flower in the foreground, contrasting life and death

Charlotte grits her teeth while digging

Shots are insane and so am I. I leave on Thursday for STN in Tampa. I will win. I will win. I do not like Christopher Columbus 

mise en scene? more like miss and some... im sorry im rlly tired

Colors

Western in desert so Western yellow. That about sums up the extent of the color theory I'll do for the openings' location. Costuming is a bit more interesting, however. Our main character is wearing a red vest because we felt it was the type of bold color an independent woman like herself would sport (and not because it was the only thing we could get that we didn't have to pay for). 

Costume

For props, we went with a very dry brownish yellow color for rope and potato sacks (used to hold the body). 

da rope

This Kendrick Lamar song is really good sorry I just needed to write that.

Since I know you're probably begging, I'll elaborate more on the location. We're filming at Vista View Park, the only place in Florida that hasn't been viciously absorbed by developers (thank u Henry Flagler). It's a dry place because we've gone a few weeks without rain. It looks dead, perfect for the vibes of the old West we want. 

park but it looks more dead right now

I'm gonna saturate this and warm it to hell to make it look yellow, and we should end up with a pretty accurate Western vibe.

I got a haircut what do u think Cambridge do u like it 

Works Cited

Flame (Leah), Working the. “Clothing & Fashion in the Old West (What Was Worn?).” Working the Flame, 13 Aug. 2023, workingtheflame.com/old-west-fashion/.

Formichella, Janice. “Pioneer Clothing: What Women Wore in the Western Frontier.” Recollections Blog, 4 Feb. 2020, recollections.biz/blog/pioneer-clothing-what-women-wore-in-the-western-frontier/.

character development ( life... amiright)

    Character development within a 2-minute excerpt of a film is hard to manifest in reality, so we have to hint at a change that would come later in the story. The main character of our story (name TBD-I will refer to them as Emi's character) is a woman in a man's world. Disguising herself as a man is the only way to survive and live. In our open, we hint at this by showing her in a fairly male outfit. The audience cannot tell she is a woman. In our sequence, she removes a hat, revealing her long, waving hair. This is a significant moment in our opening, the climax of a cinematic story. 

    The character kind of developed out of nowhere. We wanted her to be an independent woman from the start, and the more we talked about our unnamed character's attributes, the more we thought of Disney's "Mulan", a character that disguises herself as a man to fight in the military. It was her strong will and determination that drew us toward that character archetype, and I think we reflect it well within our own open. 

Mulan (1998)

We do have another character, but he is not seen in this open, merely mentioned. It is the son of the man Emi murdered. The plot of the story revolves around her making amends to the son. He is not that developed simply because we didn't see a need to make his character that large of a focus in our already busy schedule. 

Nico (the other character)

I leave for Tampa in 8 days to Direct a short film, and the next week is hell. Will Emi's character develop more than mine this week, we'll see. 

I hear... therfore I am ?

 "Audio makes the world go round" or something like that. Honestly, audio in productions has kind of become second nature for me ever since I won best short film at the Student Television Network National Convention doing audio for my team (slight but needed flex).

Me with my 2 (two) 2 first place trophies

Me on the set of a short film doing audio

   

 But this production presents a new challenge...planning. Unlike past productions, I actually have time to think about the soundscape and auditory elements I want to incorporate within the film opening. Because it's a Western, I want to incorporate lots of nat sound. This includes sounds like the wind whistling, footsteps crunching along the hills, birds chirping, dirt flying, and shovels breaking ground. 

    I want to play into the Western motif, so I plan on incorporating strung, acoustic instruments as a backtrack to the scene. These elements would create a tranquil yet mysterious vibe around the first 2 minutes of the production. I'll use my nice Lavalier mics to capture the audio and sound effects databases like pixabay.com or bulletproofbear.com  to fully enthrall the viewer within the world of my production.

Audio is vastly more important than video, and I plan on making it worthwhile. 

Some samples of sounds I want to include: 

music options