So this is the second post about an A level project. This time the post is going to focus on my Distribution Project. This was a project where we worked in unison with the Creative Writing Class, taking one of their scripts and then making a distribution plan as if it were an actual film. I remember when we got our choices we honestly had a tough time because my group, consisting of Sophia, Paola, and I, weren't too excited about any of the stories. However we did end up choosing a slice of life story... initially.
The originally chose a story about a teenage high school couple, one of them being pregnant. It basically checked off all of the boxes you would expect from a story like this. They don't know how to go forward with the news, the parents are giving them a hard time, and they are trying to balance all parts of their lives. I remember thinking that it was the choice that made the most sense at the time, it wouldn't be too difficult to film and part of it could be done in class, saving us a lot of time. The thing was, we just weren't into the story at all. There was another story that was a psychological horror, but it was a little to hard of a concept. As we began researching drama films I made the decision to try to persuade the other group member because I felt we would have had a better time making something a little more challenging and with something we enjoyed more than the first story. We eventually decided on the horror story, Rot, instead.
This story focused on two characters and one of them trying to get away from the other. It was a much simpler premise story-wise, but we gravitated to it more. Once we finalized our decision came what we actually wanted to do with the story. Our goals ended up becoming make a plan that works for the film and one we can learn from for our own projects, make an interesting trailer that adheres to our personal opinions on how horror trailers should be, and simply to get a good grade haha. I ended up doing the editing for the trailer in the project so my added goal became to try and get a good pace for the trailer, this is because that was something I usually struggled with in my opinion. My pieces normally have had pacing I wasn't happy with.
Now planning, our planning basically had us be done with the basic research a few days in. Then we would finish our presentation in class before the weekend was over and then film everything Friday night. Then that would give me two days to edit. Easy right? Oh no it did not go that smoothly. The first two parts actually did keep with the schedule, the research and presentation were done in class. The filming however, that is where things started to go, lets put it nicely and say not so great. Guess what that means, we are in the production part of the project now.
The actual filming of the scenes didn't go as smoothly as we anticipated. One of our biggest problems was not being able to direct the actors properly, they would frequently ask questions like "how do you want me to say this?" or "what does this mean?" That is when we realized, we have no idea what we want because we don't know what we can get away with. I gonna try to see if I can find one of the clips of us struggling to explain what we wanted. Well I actually found two videos, one of them about how the characters are supposed to be and the other more about the technical aspect of the piece.
They are humorous but the point is that we did not have good directing skills. This issue caused us to slow down and we had to shoot more Saturday night. The editing itself honestly was not that bad. I paced myself much better and the work was split more evenly, I did once again slow down a little but it wasn't nearly as bad as with the documentary project. Here is my biggest contribution to the project for anyone interested, the trailer.
I think the biggest take away from this project is to work on my direction. I am actually just now realizing that it also was a weak part of my project in the documentary so that is something I definitely need to keep note of. Get better, alright got it. In all seriousness I was able to walk away from this project with a better understanding of distribution plans and some of my weaknesses in the production aspect of projects. That I will definitely be going over in the transition post.
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