Zenith

What is Zenith?

The Zenith project here at Freestyle is basically a self driven senior project. We are given the opportunity to create a project that is completely ours, from the due dates for progress to the concept behind it all together. The definition of the word Zenith; “the time at which something is most powerful or successful”. This resonates with our project because it’s designed to be the ultimate Freestyle project, bringing all skills we have learned here at Freestyle together. 


What is MY Zenith?

My original Zenith Project was a short drama narrative. This medium is real passion for me as this genre is something I’m looking into pursuing as a career. The final form of the film I’m aiming for is a 10ish minute narrative with maximum realness and believability. I believed that this project will be really good to test myself on my abilities and see if I can create something I’m really proud of in a short amount of time. Unfortunately I was a little pressed for time due to the high speed nature of the Zenith project, so I had to get creative. I ended up changing my idea to be a single-take one-shot dramatic narrative film. A one shot is an entire short film that was shot in a singular camera clip. This type of project demanded absolute perfection and extensive planning, so once again, I was in over my head. I planned the film and it wasn’t until I came to casting did I realize my over ambition on this idea. I ended up, due to self-inflicted time restraints, changing my idea again. I decided to make a satirical mockumentary on a “top secret” alien base.

 

What will be my risks and challenges?

This Zenith project is a new challenge for me as I’m aiming to do a project that is probably a little ambitious in the given amount of time, but most of my challenges were internal. I was coming off the success of Senior Narrative and the sense of completion I felt after I was really happy with how my film turned out. The biggest challenge I faced was having the reoccurring thought that whatever I made wouldn’t even be close to what I created for Senior Narrative. This unsureness and lack of self-confidence in my work ended up being my downfall on my project. So rather it wasn’t the project that was the hardest part, it was the motivation (or lack thereof) required to attempt to make something amazing and perfect.

 

What skills will I learn and master?

For my Production Class (Film), I’ll be building on all my skills I learned in the class, including screenwriting, camera techniques and ability to edit and create a story. Everything I learned during Senior Narrative and all of our other projects will build on this film. I also continued my ongoing search to learn how to healthily deal with failure, disappointment, and perseverance when it comes to creating.

 

Pre-production

This was interesting. I wrote my original film idea pretty quickly, and after revisions with feedback, I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to create. I wrote a 6 page screenplay for the idea, 2 pages of which shown here:

But after heavy consideration, I decided to scrap that script. Which was my first mistake.

 

I ended up writing a whole new script for the one take idea. This incredibly difficult and precise idea seemed great to me at the time. Here is a couple pages from that:

I then scrapped that one as well. Because in my mind, it became impossible in the timeframe I had left.

 

My new Hail Mary idea was the mockumentary on the aliens. The writing process started with coming up with the idea for the base, and it kind of blossomed from there. I worked with my good friend and fellow Film student Tyler Buhr (played Brayden in 20,000 ears) during the process of writing. A lot of the ideas for the characters were outlined, but the humor of the details of the characters came alive during improvisation during shooting.

 

You can watch the final film here:

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