through with my group members. The past month before May 3 was filled with intense amounts of planning, shooting, and editing. Mostly editing.
The three Grade 11 films, Gameboy, Sooper-hiro and Hellogoodbye were made for the art show.
Hellogoodbye was a great film which unfortunately didn't make it in. While Gameboy was a short film telling the story of a young teen's struggle with losing his most prized possession and instead end up
finding friendship/true love, Sooper-hiro was a mockumentary about a person who claims/wants to be a real life superhero finding his own true love against the perceptions of the student body. Hellogoodbye told the
story about a young couple faced with many issues: leaving each other and finally reuniting but another problem comes up. I thought that these films were great in their own respects and dealt with issues many teens faced making it appealing.
A film which I thought were especially meaningful and also well-shot was "Plug In, Baby!". I thought that Plug In, Baby! was different and thus, innovative. Throughout the film, we don't see the characters talking to each other in real life. Instead we see them talking to each other through IM, text and other social media sites which is how many teens are communicating in today's world. The audience sees what they text and type displayed onscreen. The "Mom" scene was pretty hilarious too when the character referenced the Blackberry mistakenly called a "strawberry". All in all, the cinematography, colours, lighting were visually appealing. And the little details such as the pings and other sound effects helped to develop the whole environment of texting.
Some pixelations which I thought were interesting were The Friend Zone and With You. The Friend Zone was interesting because the music matched the video. I especially liked the vibrant and saturated colours, it had. It made the school look even brighter than it should! It carried a story about how a boy can't go out with a girl because he's more of a brother than than boyfriend material to the girl, per se. With You was pretty innovative too. Innovative, in the sense that it did pixelation and stop motion but through everyday electronic devices. There was a scene with a hand scrolling pictures with an iPhone, pictures on a laptop's slideshow, photos from a DSLR. At the end, the viewer sees a person calling on the iPhone. Again, With You was innovative but I had to squint my eyes at times to adjust to the glare on the DSLR's screen. Other than that, I thought it flowed very well.
Viewing a film on the computer after editing and screening a film to the public evoke two different feelings altogether. While I was viewing the finished product of Gameboy on the computer with my group, I felt accomplished (mostly because we were finally done) and relieved (because we were done). We laughed together at the parts and we noticed our mistakes in continuity. Viewing it among your peers is a totally different perspective. With your peers, it's a case, best described by Andy Warhol's "30 seconds of fame" phrase. We casted some friends as extras and during the film, they would say "DUDE, I WAS THERE! I'M SITTING IN THE BACK! I POURED THE WATER!" At the same time, more people laughed because they saw a familiar face on screen. In terms of screening to an audience, void of knowledge of the main characters, it's different. They laughed at the funny parts and even the not-so-funny parts. While I sat amongst them within the crowd, I heard their reactions. They whispered and murmured words of praise. Overall, they enjoyed the movie and thought that it was a great love story and "cute". Which was what we aimed for. During the art show, I even had the opportunity to present it and screen it to a younger audience, which were the elementary schools. I gave an introduction and described the premise basically. Afterwards, I facilitated a discussion. During the screening, the elementary kids laughed at basically every scene: dream sequence, Gameboy breaking scene, and even the mom scene. They thought Gameboy was funny. Mission Accomplished. But they didn't have many questions to ask about production and video-editing.
All in all, screening films was fun and I can't wait for the IDP/Film/Engish course next year. :Db
