Zenith

For my Zenith I collaborated with CJ Hoo, another second year Film Senior, to create an experimental short film titled “This Film is About You”. This film initially began as a book adaptation of the dystopian novella “I Who Have Never Known Men” by Jacqueline Harpman, and although we ultimately decided to create something entirely from scratch, we drew from the book as inspiration for the Worldbuilding aspect of the film. CJ and I have collaborated frequently throughout our time at Freestyle, and have been close friends since we were 10 years old. For our final project, we wanted to find a way to represent our feelings about graduation, growing up, and starting anew, while also finding ways to pay homage to our friendship. We went through a fully fledged pre-production, production, and post-production in under two months. Each of us had a specific focus as we navigated the process, CJ’s being color grading and mine being cinematography and film language.

Pre-production

Curating a Creative Vision

The pre-production process was an integral part of this process, and required both me and CJ to step out of our creative comfort zones. As I mentioned earlier, we began with the idea of a book adaptation, and much of our visual inspiration for our final film comes from the ideas we brainstormed initially. It was also a new challenge to create an image of a world that did not exist. We used Pinterest in order to curate a color palette, gather inspiration for framing and shots, and create an overall “vibe” or feeling for our film that we both agreed on. This step helped us overcome any differences in our creative visions that could slow us down later in the process.

Screenplay

For our screenplay we used a software that our Film class used for Senior Narrative called Studio Binder. In Studio Binder, we created a properly formatted screenplay using the techniques we learned about screenwriting this year. Our screenplay ended up being roughly four pages, and large amounts of the original dialogue were chopped from the film, but the final film was just about 8 minutes, which truly exemplifies how much of the film and story relied on visual imagery rather than dialogue.

Storyboard

We completed our storyboard by creating thumbnail sketches of key shots in the film, which helped us stay on track and focused during production as we referred to them frequently. This part of the process also helped us gather necessary props and costumes, especially small ones, like the color of a characters socks or their shoes, that could have slipped our minds had we not drawn out what would be explicitly seen in the shot. It also was one of the ways that I engaged in my individual focus: cinematography. Through completing the storyboard, I was able to hone in on the tactics I could use in order to evoke feeling and tell a story with minimal dialogue. Below are several of our storyboards

Costumes

The most strenuous but rewarding part of the pre-production process was, without a doubt, the costumes. Initially we intended on thrifting two dresses to match the names of the characters (named ambiguously as Red and Blue), but after multiple thrift store trips without success, we decided that we did not want to compromise our creative visions so early in the process, and decided to make the costumes instead. Neither of us had ever sewn a project so large ever before, so the process included many moments of learning. We began at Joann Fabrics, and, with the help of my grandmother on the phone, bought two yards of each color of fabric. Then, we created a rough sketch of each piece of the dress as well as the intended final product. It was an inexact process, but both of us learned a lot about sewing, measurements, and the design process overall. We created two slits on the side of the dress and created a triangle shape to create a smaller top and a larger bottom that the actors could comfortably move, which worked super well.

Production

Due to the amount of time we took on preparation and pre-production, the production went smoothly. We used Monte Bello Open Space Preserve and some locations around Skyline to shoot the outdoor scenes, as well as a house of one of our friends and Cuesta Park for the dream sequence. For the house scene, we used an abandoned house that had been rotting away. These experiences provided the perfect atmosphere of isolation that we hoped to achieve. This part of the process was the most memorable part of the experience.

Post-production

During post-production, we did several SFX using the skills we learned in class and using Lumetri scopes, beginning with color grading their dresses. We used the color-replace effect on Premiere Pro in order to remove the color from their surroundings and bring out only the red and blue of the dresses. We also used the Keylight tool on After Effects to create the illusion of Red, our main character, sticking her hand out of a box.

Overall, this project was extremely rewarding for the both of us, and I am proud of how we were able to showcase all the skills we have learned thus far in Freestyle. This is our final video and I hope that you enjoy it, because we definitely do.

Below you can find my reflection on this project.