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Christine Franco

Mrs. Lazarski

Video Production III

09 January 2023

Film Festival Reflection

My initial pitch was a comedic short film. My story, titled Silly Gewse, was about a boy

named Arnie who had an idea for a revolutionary product. The entire script was based around

testimonials from people who interact with Arnie daily, who lowkey bash him and make fun of

him. They basically think he is ridiculous and do not believe in him. In the end, he proves them

totally wrong. My final project was about the Harlem Wizards game held here at PCTI, getting

interviews from various people who were involved and even two young audience members.

Pre-production is where everything starts. You start with your pitch, which is an

explanation of your concept to entice other people and make them want to see it come to life.

Then you put your idea on paper and start mapping out the specifics of your film. This includes

your script, storyboards, shot sheet, and more. I completed a pitch, a narrative-style script, which

was fun for my genre, and a shot sheet. Beginning the script was a bit hard because you have

your idea and you know what big events you want to write about, but the start of the film is

tricky. I could have overcome this obstacle by thinking of how to introduce the film first, rather

than all the conflict and exciting points. Having an engaging beginning is important for a video.

Having a shot sheet is a great tool because instead of a two-column script, it goes in the order of
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what scenes you’re filming. It includes locations and helps you organize where you need to be.

Also, it’s a more technical version where you can add notes about how you want to shoot the

scene and the shot types. Color coding was fun too, made it pretty to look at!

The production phase is when you film your actual script. This includes gathering your

actors and going on location to shoot. During this phase, having a shot sheet and script at hand,

makes it very easy and clean. I think the hardest part of this phase is setting up and getting

everything perfect, or close to perfect. It was difficult for me because my shots didn’t look like

how I imagined them to. This is a harsh reality you have to be prepared for and just accept. You

never know exactly what the lighting is going to be like, and how the weather is going to be.

This was also especially hard for me because when I imagine one of my scripts in my head, I

imagine it as how it would look if it was filmed professionally. Like in a movie. So, when you

are a high school student working with what you have, it looks very different. This has always

been a problem for me, and it often discourages me. I think I can overcome this by working the

best with what I have and knowing that after working hard and trying to move up in this industry,

I can make things look how I want them to.

The post-production phase is editing your project. This includes importing your clips,

organizing them into bins, and putting them together in your timeline. After you do this, you go

on to color-correction and inserting your titles and credits. For my Harlem Wizards video, I took

a while to organize clips and cut them down to what I wanted. Since it was a basketball game, it

was so long, and there were so many clips. Making bins was especially helpful because when
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you are going through clips and cutting them into bins, you can tend to forget what you put in

there. So, if I am editing and think, “I need a gameplay clip from this certain angle” I can go to

my “Gameplay” bin in the folder of a specific camera and find many great clips that I had

forgotten about! Adding markers is also such an amazing tool because you can quickly go to a

specific time or event you filmed. For me, I marked the intros of players, the beginning of the

game, and some events like the dancing and sword fighting. I loved it because if I needed a clip

of a certain player for an interview, I can go to intros and find them entering the court. Or, if an

interviewee spoke about an even like some dancing, I can quickly go to my marker and make a

subclip from there. I think the difficult side of editing is seeing your clips on the screen and

having them not look as good as you wanted, or maybe the audio isn’t very good. And

sometimes you want to do a nice smooth transition but one clip doesn’t look as good as the other

and you have to throw the idea away. Those are just things you have to learn to work with,

though sometimes it is disappointing.

My favorite part of the production process is editing and production. I love the more

technical side of film, and I am planning to go into the broadcast field of film. So, these two

processes are very interesting to me. I love filming and working with the camera, and I want to

gain more experience working with it and learning all the parts of it. I also love the side of

production where everything is under your control, and you are giving orders. When we did the

broadcast practice earlier in the year, I personally loved directing. It was exhilarating for me. I

want to practice and get better at it. I love editing because it is technical, but artistic. I love the

feeling of being in the groove of editing and knowing exactly what you are doing and not
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wanting to look away from the screen, even when your eyes are burning up. Writing is difficult

for me, but once I have an idea I think it comes easier. It’s just thinking of that idea that is hard.

I think my weakness is not being able to balance my film festival and editing Harlem

Wizards, especially since it was such a big project with so much footage. I think I could have

been more focused throughout the entire process. I think my strength was having an idea of how

I wanted things to be formatted. I also think I was very organized, with my shot sheet and

creating various bins during editing. I think that makes everything so much easier, and it is worth

your time. I think I can strengthen my weaknesses by understanding what I can handle and

focusing on one project at a time. But also I want to get better at multitasking because I think that

would benefit me later on. But, I have to work up to it. I think I can share my strengths by telling

others how beneficial being organized is when editing. It really helped so much.

I did not meet my program objective, because I did not go through with my original script

and plan. In a way I am sort of glad that I didn’t finish it because I really like my script. And the

way things were going, I know I wouldn’t like how my video ended up. So many things were

happening in my life during production I didn’t even get all my clips and it just messed with my

head. I am proud of my script and planning on submitting it to the Emerging Screenwriters

competition I was told about. I do plan on finishing Silly Gewse though since it is such a fun and

quirky concept that reminds me of other shows I hold dear in my heart.

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