My Zenith Project is a choose your own adventure movie style. My group and I plan for it to be a huge collection of short videos on a youtube channel. This is a passion project for me because it seems very interesting and unique, and I think I’ll be able to have fun while making something good.

 

Pre-Production: Pre-Production is the planning that we did before we actually went out and shot the film.

Our first step that we took in pre production was making a tree diagram, with all the branching paths and ideas we wanted to make. We took a large whiteboard, and begun to create a diagram, using different colors. We decided to use different colors for the different layers and different paths. We made a normal path, an absurd path, a dramatic path, and a horror path.

From our initial diagram, we decided to remove the horror path, and make three paths due to time.

We then made a shared google document and began separately writing out the 3 paths. I wrote the Absurd path.

After we finished writing, we began scouting for locations and cast.

We settled on the location, Chilly and Munch. Visually, it was exactly what we were looking for, and the owners were kind enough to give us permission to film there, then, after finalizing our cast, we began production.

During pre production, I also began messing around with youtube, learning how the external links work, and how to private and unprivate videos.

Finalized Tree

Creating the Plot Tree

Production: Production is the actual recording process of the movie. We filmed for 3 full days, over a three week period. For our equipment we used a canon C200 to record our footage in 4k, making it look extra nice. During production, we took different roles, with the three different paths. For the normal path, I was the cameraman. For the drama path, I was the director and cameraman. For the absurd path, I was audio.

Overall, there isn’t much more to say about production. It went very smoothly, with the only issue being the train that would sometimes appear out of nowhere and ruin a shot.

 

Post Production: Post production is the piecing together all the other steps, and making the movie. I will be discussing my process, where I edited the dramatic path.

The first thing I did was synch all the clips and the audio. I then picked which takes I wanted to use, and put them in their respective group.

After I had all my clips organized, I began simply putting them together, making their dialouge match up with both their close ups, and the wide shot, and pacing each segment so the scene flowed naturally.

Once I finished the ‘rough’ edits, I went on to work on sound design. I added music and sound effects, and made sure to balance all the audio, so no sound was too loud or too quiet.

From there, I went on to add color correction, where I take the neutral footage, and alter it’s color to fit the scene better. For my segments I created a seperate effect layer, and put all my color correction into that layer. That way, I didn’t have to add the same effect on to a bunch of clips, just one big clip.

Once I finished all my clips, and my partners finished theirs as well, I took all the clips and organized them in youtube, uploading all of them and then linking all of them to their appropriate ones.

 

Final Product:

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