A: Rationale
The Retreat is about a boy who loses his father and feels guilt about it, but learns to cope with his loss with the help from his friend. My production team and I decided to make this film because it incorporated interesting plot elements that we haven't approached before. Also from a personal standpoint, I didn't want to direct any romance stories, so this script was really appealing to me. I wanted to experiment with different camera techniques and a deeper attention to detail with this project. This film can definitely appeal to people who have experienced losses before.
Word Count: 99
B: Commentary
My role in this film was the Director, basically the one who oversees production as well as pre-production, and post-production. I was thoroughly involved with the whole project from start to finish. Although the bare-bones idea for the story came from our cinematographer, I wrote most of the script and contributed many of the ideas that tied the whole script together. During the production process, played the director, making sure everyone knew what they had to do, as well as direct the acting and crew. During the post-production process, I made sure that the editing was precise and purposeful. I unknowingly also became the Sound Designer as I was searching for sound effects and an accompanying track to go with the film and each of the scenes.
Problems that arose early on during the whole film making process was definitely coming up with an idea that would work well into a script. We tried multiple treatments that were to no avail until we finally were enlightened and we came up with a coherent concept for the film. During the script writing process, I took most of the control of the script and the types of shots we needed to shoot during production.
As a director the biggest problem was working with the acting crew. It was difficult to get the types of emotions I wanted because their acting skills were still very amateur and unrefined. I tried my best to describe to them the types of emotions that were needed for each scene, as well as occasionally acting out the scene for them.
One of the biggest challenges that arose was audio. Because I take a very involved role in the cinematography, I saw that audio was a constant struggle. Two times during our production, the shotgun mic wasn't working, another time the cables weren't fully plugged in, and most of the other times it was difficult to get audio that was crisp, clear, and without fuzz.
As a Sound Designer and a director of the editing process, I solved the problem with audio with a variety of ways. First I needed to fix the audio that came out with fuzz in the background. I accomplished this first by lowering the audio, then by adding cross fades to the beginning and end of each audio clip every time audio with fuzz was present. This helped transition the viewers to become a little more accustomed to the fuzz as the movie is playing, as well as avoiding sudden increases in fuzz during playback. Because a very vital scene was missing audio, we needed to resort to dubbing one of our shots. We did this using another camera, while watching the clip playback on the canvas. Amazingly, it wasn't even that bad. But "not even that bad" isn't good enough. Next time I intend to get everything involving audio to be perfect.
A problem with cinematography was that shots were slightly out of focus when I went back to watch the dailies. The constantly reminded my cinematographer to check the focus every time. A problem I had with him was that he would point the camera at the subject, place him in focus, then move away from him. This caused it so that the footage was slightly out of focus. This is without a doubt something that needs to be worked on our next project. Focus is key.
Editing was especially troublesome due to the processing speeds of our computers. Because our computers couldn't handle HD footage, we needed to share another computer with another group. This made it so that we couldn't always use time in class when we needed it to edit the film. And due to time constraints, we were forced to edit our entire film at home during the break on laptops, considerable less capable of handling editing. We managed to extract all of the video files from our computers at school, but we were unable to export the EDL from the project. This made it so that we needed to essentially start editing the film from scratch since none of the edits were transferred.
In terms of directing, I have many things to work on. First and foremost, I must be able to extract more emotion from my actors better. Such techniques to accomplish this is to act out the scenes for the actors so that they know where to begin with their emotions. I also need to have more control over the set and crew, because problems arise once people start to fool around. In my next film, I need to focus more on paying extreme attention to detail. I intend to perfect every shot so that the scene can play out consistently, continuously, and without errors. This may even require that I shoot scenes across separate days if needed. Either that or making a production schedule so tight yet flexible that we can accomplish all of our shooting in time AND up to my expectations. I will continue to play an involved role throughout the film, not just with the production. I believe that in order to achieve a film that fits your vision, you must be involved with the whole film making process. Starting from the inception of the idea to directing the production to editing to delivery and the final product.
I intend to incorporate moving shots in our next film much more frequently, I'd say about 70% of our shots should have some sort of movement in them. Also with motion, new problems arise. Focus must be constantly be maintained during the movement, and I realize that will definitely something we need to master. I also want to play with the depth of field and compressing space in a shot, such as using techniques like zooming in but dollying away.
One problem with the film is that many shots are shaky wen they are supposed to be still. This makes the overall quality of the film drop considerably in my opinion.
We can definitely improve our editing techniques and color correction with Color. Also since we are now dealing with HD footage, I believe that we should learn to DEAL with HD footage. HD footage works way differently than normal miniDV footage. the settings for Final Cut Pro must be changed so that it can work well with our footage.
The last and possibly most important thing to focus on with our next film is to master audio. Audio has been a constant drag because the cameras we are using record fuzzy audio. I would love it if we found a way around this so that our audio next time is flawless.
Word Count: 1110
The Retreat is about a boy who loses his father and feels guilt about it, but learns to cope with his loss with the help from his friend. My production team and I decided to make this film because it incorporated interesting plot elements that we haven't approached before. Also from a personal standpoint, I didn't want to direct any romance stories, so this script was really appealing to me. I wanted to experiment with different camera techniques and a deeper attention to detail with this project. This film can definitely appeal to people who have experienced losses before.
Word Count: 99
B: Commentary
My role in this film was the Director, basically the one who oversees production as well as pre-production, and post-production. I was thoroughly involved with the whole project from start to finish. Although the bare-bones idea for the story came from our cinematographer, I wrote most of the script and contributed many of the ideas that tied the whole script together. During the production process, played the director, making sure everyone knew what they had to do, as well as direct the acting and crew. During the post-production process, I made sure that the editing was precise and purposeful. I unknowingly also became the Sound Designer as I was searching for sound effects and an accompanying track to go with the film and each of the scenes.Problems that arose early on during the whole film making process was definitely coming up with an idea that would work well into a script. We tried multiple treatments that were to no avail until we finally were enlightened and we came up with a coherent concept for the film. During the script writing process, I took most of the control of the script and the types of shots we needed to shoot during production.
One of the biggest challenges that arose was audio. Because I take a very involved role in the cinematography, I saw that audio was a constant struggle. Two times during our production, the shotgun mic wasn't working, another time the cables weren't fully plugged in, and most of the other times it was difficult to get audio that was crisp, clear, and without fuzz.
As a Sound Designer and a director of the editing process, I solved the problem with audio with a variety of ways. First I needed to fix the audio that came out with fuzz in the background. I accomplished this first by lowering the audio, then by adding cross fades to the beginning and end of each audio clip every time audio with fuzz was present. This helped transition the viewers to become a little more accustomed to the fuzz as the movie is playing, as well as avoiding sudden increases in fuzz during playback. Because a very vital scene was missing audio, we needed to resort to dubbing one of our shots. We did this using another camera, while watching the clip playback on the canvas. Amazingly, it wasn't even that bad. But "not even that bad" isn't good enough. Next time I intend to get everything involving audio to be perfect.
Editing was especially troublesome due to the processing speeds of our computers. Because our computers couldn't handle HD footage, we needed to share another computer with another group. This made it so that we couldn't always use time in class when we needed it to edit the film. And due to time constraints, we were forced to edit our entire film at home during the break on laptops, considerable less capable of handling editing. We managed to extract all of the video files from our computers at school, but we were unable to export the EDL from the project. This made it so that we needed to essentially start editing the film from scratch since none of the edits were transferred.
In terms of directing, I have many things to work on. First and foremost, I must be able to extract more emotion from my actors better. Such techniques to accomplish this is to act out the scenes for the actors so that they know where to begin with their emotions. I also need to have more control over the set and crew, because problems arise once people start to fool around. In my next film, I need to focus more on paying extreme attention to detail. I intend to perfect every shot so that the scene can play out consistently, continuously, and without errors. This may even require that I shoot scenes across separate days if needed. Either that or making a production schedule so tight yet flexible that we can accomplish all of our shooting in time AND up to my expectations. I will continue to play an involved role throughout the film, not just with the production. I believe that in order to achieve a film that fits your vision, you must be involved with the whole film making process. Starting from the inception of the idea to directing the production to editing to delivery and the final product.I intend to incorporate moving shots in our next film much more frequently, I'd say about 70% of our shots should have some sort of movement in them. Also with motion, new problems arise. Focus must be constantly be maintained during the movement, and I realize that will definitely something we need to master. I also want to play with the depth of field and compressing space in a shot, such as using techniques like zooming in but dollying away.
We can definitely improve our editing techniques and color correction with Color. Also since we are now dealing with HD footage, I believe that we should learn to DEAL with HD footage. HD footage works way differently than normal miniDV footage. the settings for Final Cut Pro must be changed so that it can work well with our footage.
The last and possibly most important thing to focus on with our next film is to master audio. Audio has been a constant drag because the cameras we are using record fuzzy audio. I would love it if we found a way around this so that our audio next time is flawless.
Word Count: 1110
