RUN! And Don’t Look Back

Now that things are somewhat back to normal and everyday life is slowly moving on the right track, this means schools have reopened but many safety precautions have been put in play. So this year, instead of having four classes a day from 8:30 to 3:00 it’s been modified to a quarter system meaning we only have the same two classes a day for ten weeks; and we have already made it to the second quarter. For a little back story, my first two classes were Physical Education and French, now in the grand scheme of things, these are two very light classes so transitioning from my two easiest classes to arguably the hardest has been quite the change. So strolling into class on Wednesday, in classic PLP fashion we got busy right from the get go and at this point, I knew I was in for a wild ride. 

To kick off our PLP 9 year we started with a project titled “Running A Remake,” lead by our driving question “how might we learn video skills by recreating a short film?” On top of the task of recreating RUN shot for shot, this had to be fully complete in 3 days which really got us on edge. Usually we’d have that amount of time, if not more to complete one milestone but as I said earlier, we only have 10 weeks so we had to get a move on. 

To launch us into this project and to practice our video skills we were tasked with creating a introduction video explaining a hobby of ours using the story spine and this was all to be done in the Apple app Clips. To give us a little bit of a helping hand we saw an example from the “Everyone Can Create Video Book” At first this didn’t seem very hard but when I got to creating I was completely lost on how to make it interesting with a story. I had no idea on how I was supposed to make a story out of me saying I enjoy playing soccer. So needless to say, my first draft was terrible. After a bit of thinking I came up with plenty ideas but none of them were achievable because they all required videos of me playing soccer and surprisingly I didn’t have any; I also couldn’t go out and get any because it now gets pitch black at 4 o’clock which didn’t help at all. I resulted to using what I had but if I had some more time I believe I could create something quite good. 

It was now time to actually start on the main task, recreating the short film RUN. We were assigned groups and mine consisted of Amy, Sophia and Ethan. As a team, we broke down the horror film and made sure we knew what shots we needed to get the next day. We also created a list of roles and tasks that needed to be completed, this included the sounds, the costumes, the angles and basically everything in order to get the best result possible.

We finally reached the big moment, shooting. After all of our preparation we set out first thing in the morning to start filming. Since I was the main character I really felt it was my time to shine and bring this project together. From past experience I knew acting and shooting a movie isn’t easy in the slightest, it takes much longer than expected and is very tedious; however everything seemed so well and after about an hour and a half it was editing time. In my opinion the editing process is what makes or breaks the video and in our first attempt I wouldn’t say it was too bad. On the same day we shared what we’ve created with the class and my whole group watched the teachers tear apart what we thought was a good attempt at recreating the film. What we learned from all the critique was that literally everything needs to be perfect, from the white stripes on the main actor’s sweater to a little knot in the log. Luckily we were told we get a second chance which would hopefully be better. So once again we planned out what we needed to fix to make it perfect. 

They next day arrived and I think it’s safe to say everyone had butterflies in their stomach’s hoping that all would go well. The second time it was a bit easier because we knew what was wrong in the first attempt so we mainly focused on the pieces of our film that weren’t quite right. Although, we didn’t really improve, everyone was rushed and the whole day just didn’t go well. Annoyingly, I felt that I did my part quite well but the acting only makes 50% of the film and the rest is to do with the angles and editing. We all knew it wasn’t much of an improvement and I can say for myself that it was very frustrating.

When we go back to that driving question of “how might we learn video skills by recreating a short film” and see how I’ve built those skills throughout the course of this 3 day project, I would say I’ve learnt the hard way. While going through the whole production process I’ve learned these skills by collaborating with a team, planning every step that needs to be taken and repeatedly revising until you get it right; and in our case we still haven’t properly got it right.

When we look at the one competency, “Innovative Designer” and see how I’ve designed a solution I would say I created a solution by carefully analyzing the short film run and making sure that I as the main actor would see what he does in every single frame. I also took critique from classmates and teachers and was open to what they had to say. What I learned was that there are many small details that go into any film and even if you get one small thing incorrect it won’t be right; so next time I need to make sure everything is perfectly matched up and if there is one little thing wrong I’d need to reshoot it. 

This was quite the project to start on, but although it didn’t go as planned I’m glad I pushed through and learnt a lot that I can apply to my next project. It also goes to show how much it really takes to create a film like this.