Our latest assignment in Video was to take a movie trailer (specifically one with a high-school setting, since I imagine that assigning a bunch of sophomores to recreate Pacific Rim or Star Wars would be just a little out of our league) and recreate it. The team I was in decided to recreate Napoleon Dynamite. It was a simple project, but I've got a lot to say, so why don't we get started?
Pre-production was easy enough. We just had to make a film schedule with dates, props, and all that, which was simple but needed heavy revisions throughout the film process. Next up was the storyboard and script. Since Google Docs is a horrible program that has no purpose other than seeing me suffer, I compiled all the screenshots I took into the program, printed it out, and wrote on the notes myself. Needless to say, it was painful. The script was easy enough -- I just took any necessary notes and copied the lines.
Then came actual filming. We did any in-school shots after classes for the day ended (on a constantly shifting date because no one had a clear schedule and it upset me greatly), and any at-home shots were filmed at my house in my basement. The first day of home filming went smoothly for a total of three seconds, before me and my giant clumsy sausage finger went and broke the mic. So we were forced to film all the shots that didn't require sound, effectively splitting filming in half. But we were able to persevere and get everything filmed.
The roles in the trailer were all filmed by members of the group -- Seth was Napoleon, Maddie was the female lead whose name I forgot, and I had to film every other role with the power of wigs, fake mustaches, and determination since my friend list is extremely limited. The props were easy enough to get our hands on, and certain scenes were improvised due to things out of our control (such as the tetherball scene being replaced with moonwalking and the bike scene being filled in by me, since Seth had recently undergone leg surgery. Another thing we replaced were the car hydraulics, which were substituted with a funny horn).
Finally, we had to each edit our own version of the trailer, because your teammate saying they're too "busy" to edit their own and subsequently trying to pass yours off as their own is one of the most infuriating things (I speak from experience) and the pain of the situation is too great and never fades away (this happened to me first quarter, and I'm still salty, but not visibly because it's my best friend). Editing was simple -- I pulled animated intros and transitions out of the trailer itself, and tried my best to make sure everything mirrored the trailer to the best of my abilities. The music and sounds aren't perfect, but there's only so much you can do.
This project was able to refresh my knowledge of camera use, proper filming, microphone use, and clean editing (packed in with audio balancing), along with being able to work on a group schedule -- which are all essential skills in the video world.
Some more unorthodox things I learned were how to take responsibility when you accidentally break a piece of equipment despite the pure and unadulterated fear you may feel, and where not to put a sheet of fake mustaches so that they don't end up in the road on the other side of the neighborhood.
If I did this project again, I would keep everything the same, aside from a few differences in timing, clip size, audio, and color balance -- along with re-filming the bike shot because it's shakier than my entire body before a big due date (and that's saying something).
The next project is the short film -- and all I have to say about it is...
I'm only slightly terrified.
Thanks for reading,
-Tate
(Heck. I got copyright claimed. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.)
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