Narrative Visual Perspective in Film

Introduction

The Senior Narrative is the infamous beast for Freestyle film students. You pitch October 1st, and your film has to be done before exhibition on February 14th. Four and a half months of schedules, film equipment, casting calls, script pages, and the premiere pro start-up screen. This narrative is different from the Junior narrative as it requires sound and lighting. It’s a much more complex project that requires more extreme planning, learning a plethora of new skills for film making. Shot lists, lined scripts, and screenplays are just some of the newly introduced pieces.
The point of the Senior Narrative to me is to learn how movies are made in the industry, how to use film equipment, and how to plan, organize, and execute a large project. So scroll along on this journey from script to screen!

Pitch, Logline, and Synopsis

Pitch
I don’t have my pitch written down anywhere, I had practiced what I wanted to say over and over and edited it in my head, pitching it to people and having them give me feedback. The basics of the pitch went like this:
It’s a boy’s birthday, but he seems really really unhappy about it. His twin sister is super excited about it and is trying to cheer him up, but he just isn’t having it. His mom also tried to cheer him up or sing happy birthday, but he walks right out the door. Something isn’t right. At school, kids whisper about him or point at him. A kid tries to say happy birthday, but another kid tells him to shut up. A teacher asks him if he’s okay, that she knows he’s having a hard day. That’s it. The boy snaps and leaves the room, trailed by his sister, who had been with him the whole day. As he stalks home, he and his sister get into an argument and it’s revealed that the sister is dead, and she died on their birthday a year ago. Since then, she’s been a ghost haunting him who can’t remember anything that’s happened since the accident. She thinks it’s their birthday every day, and the boy can’t handle it anymore. After the fight, the boy realizes his mistake, and he tries to find his sister. He eventually finds her at her grave in the graveyard, where they have a heart-to-heart and he lets her go.

Logline
Here is the logline that I wrote on the notes app in my phone: A boy and his annoying twin sister go through a day at school, but it’s clear something about this day and his sister is not what it seems – Persistence

Synopsis
Here is the original synopsis. You may notice when reading that it is very different from the finished film. We went through a very extensive revision process when creating our final draft, so most things changed. However, it’s fun to see our roots.

Acting Scene

Before the narrative unit, we had a short acting unit tasking us with finding a two-person scene to perform with a randomly assigned partner, memorize the scene, and then perform it over and over again with different direction from Mr.T. This was to help us understand what our actors would be going through so we could direct them better. This activity was pretty fun, though our acting wasn’t great and we messed up a bunch. When editing, we learned how to sync audio to and edit with a two camera set up. Below you can check out all our attempts at acting.

Video coming soon!

Dialogue Scene

When learning how to use the audio equipment, our class was split into groups and given a script. Our job was to film the scene with audio after lining and breaking down the script. All the groups were four people, except my group, which was only 3. And then when shooting day came around, a member of our group was sick. So it was me and Sydney Tamasello against the world. We nicknamed ourselves Sydney squared, and then tried to figure out how to film a dialogue scene where we were both acting, recording video, and recording audio all at the same time.

Video coming soon!

Screenplay

The process of writing this screenplay was a long one. In total we went through three drafts, which went from okay, to bad, to really good. I love storytelling, but the complexities that come with making sure the dialogue is realistic and the story beats work and the organization were hard. I am very proud of the final product though. I think it shows our hard work.

Here is a PDF of our final script.

Pre-production: Shot lists, Schedules, and Breakdowns

Pre-production was a bit stressful. I was in charge of schedules, emails, and script breakdowns, while my partner Bella did the shot list and the the lined script. Sending random people emails asking them to be in our movie made me anxious, but I got through it and we had great actors for our finished product. Here are some screenshots of our pre-production.

Lighting Scavenger Hunt

While learning about production, we were introduced to lights. We learned about the three different lights offered to us, fluorescent, tungsten, and LED, and how to use them. We were then given a list of lighting situations to film and compile into a lighting scavenger hunt video. I worked with Sydney T and Jose, and we came up with this amazing, cursed, messy video. But hey, we had fun!

Video coming soon!

On Location and Editing

This part of the process has a lot less documents to read. With all the pre-production done, we moved onto shooting. I managed to take a few pictures every so often on location, so you can see the set-up of all our shots. After that, we moved onto editing, which we have even less footage of. But you can see the mess that is our premier pro workspace after the production photos.

Trailer

We were asked to make a short trailer for our film while editing. I used the original song that we used for the movie’s credits. I had a hard time with this, as I didn’t really know how to edit something dramatic, but I think I did pretty well.

The Finished Film

Here it is! The final product! The piece de resistance! The cumulation of all the work we did in Freestyle film class from October until February. That’s 5 months of work. So please enjoy Growth.

Reflection

Senior narrative was probably one of the most ambitious tasks I have ever taken on in my life. A pair of amateur film students teaming up to make a whole short film, complete with lighting, sound, scripts, shot lists, all of it. I look back on this project, and I can barely remember my first pitch. Honestly, right now, I am just so glad it’s over. Finally having a finished product and being able to see all our hard work in one video is a fantastic experience. But it was also full of stress, long days, and eyes glazing over from looking at the editing screen too long. I didn’t sleep in a single day in January, I got up at 6am on multiple Saturdays and Sundays to film. I ruined a pair of ugg boots, cried about not having shots, pulled my hair out re-casting an actress who ghosted us, and fell asleep on the couches in the Freestyle quad. This project was insane.
But I did learn a lot from it. How to plan, and what to do if the plan goes awry. How to break down what seems like an impossible task into doable steps. How to get things done, rather than getting them perfect. Being okay with mistakes, and understanding that nothing is going to be Hollywood level. How to be happy with the work I’m doing while still striving to improve. Senior narrative was an experience. I would never, ever, do it again, but I also wouldn’t change a thing.