Senior Final Exam

Four years of e-Comm has gone so quickly. It's been a blur of projects and fun times, yet a time of indescribable growth. I've learned so much throughout the years as I've failed and succeeded. I've learned technical skills such as the rule of thirds, the 180 rule and other laws of filmmaking. I've learned how to communicate with people of all different ages and backgrounds; how to work with them in a calm, efficient manner. I've learned how to take control of my own projects; how to use my artistic abilities to project my vision into a video. Casting calls, production days and pre-production have all allowed me a chance to exercise these skills in a way that is productive and true to the real world.

I've also struggled with these guarantees, such as project management. I've always been a big procrastinator and it can affect my work in major ways. Yet, I am constantly working at getting better and battling against my procrastination.

          As American actress, Lillian Russell once said "Time to open up a new chapter in life, and to explore a larger centre." I will soon be moving on to college, my next chapter and will be taking these skills with me. Communication and collaboration will come in handy as I begin working in a zookeeping team with others. leadership will also play a part in my life as I work in my teams as well. These skills are important in general life as it allows me to work better with my peers. 

Youth has probably been my favorite small project in my four years here. It made my top 3 because it gave me a chance to do an underwater shoot which I haven't seen anyone else do in e-Comm. The project was very special to me because I was able to work with Hannah Preut from last year's The Hidden. I joined this group late, so I wasn't very prominent in pre-production and filming. It went over quite well with the class, except for the people who didn't understand the concept. I personally loved this video and feel very lucky to have been a part of it.

  My film reel also made my top 3 list due to the fact that it's a showcase of all my work from the past 4 years and it makes me very nostalgic of my times here in e-Comm. I received very positive feedback. There's not much I would change, I just wish that I had some better projects my first two years of e-Comm that I could have added.

       Get Real definitely has been my favorite project of all time. It was such a fun time on set with both cast and crew and I made some great friends. This film had its challenges and its successes. Our snow days really set us behind in out schedule but we pushed though and made a great film for all to enjoy. We received great feedback. Everyone really loved our film and enjoyed it! It sets us apart from others around the country and I will always remember it. I wouldn't change a thing.  

       Class time is always been very precious to me. I use my time in class to work on projects, analyze movies and collaborate with my peers. I use my outside of class time to do photography and watch movies to learn about the industry and develop my own style. 

My Video production strengths come from the fact that I am willing to do almost any work that needs to be done which will be be very helpful as a potential employee. 
I could always use improvement though. Nobody's perfect. As previously mentioned, I struggle with procrastination and that's just something I need to work on as a person to push through and persevere. 

        

         My production roles in Get Real were Production Assistant and Social Media Manager.  As a production assistant, I was in charge of food on set such as snacks and drinks. I also helped out with other jobs that needed filled such as hair and makeup artist and sound crew. As a social media manager, I created our website, created an IMDb page and filmed clips for Scene Saturdays. In class, I worked with Katie and Anna on social media as well as updating IMDb and working on the website. Outside of class, on set, I did odd jobs, but i mostly helped with hair and makeup besides the days I helped run sound.

        Senior year has been great. Our projects this year really prevailed over the other years and I'm so proud to be in e-Comm. There isn't much I'd change besides being more on top of my projects and blogs. This year, I learned how to work with others to create something amazing and how to be proud of my hard work and the hard work of others. As I move to college, I was to take film with me and document my time as an apprentice zookeeper for the world to see.

Mrs. Smith- I have loved being your student and I'm so lucky to have had you as my teacher for the past 3 years. They have gone so quickly and I wouldn't change a thing. Thank you for believing in me and putting up with my craziness, I couldn't have done this without you. I hope that your future classes go well and that you enjoy life as the next few years pass. 

e-Comm has been such a big part of my life and I have a hard time believing it's over. It's going to be hard to leave it behind.

Signing off for the last time,

Lizzie Swartwood

          


  

Final Exam Semester 1

Final Exam Semester 1

Project #1: Commercial



This commercial was the first project I took on this year. It began as a commercial for Polaroid, but due to an issue during production, it became a commercial for Canon. Production issues can't be avoided and our required some creativity. The entire project took about two weeks or so to complete, including pre-production and editing. We began pre-production for the project by scouting locations and planning shots. We went out and filmed for two days over the weekend, one day at Shawnee Mission Park and one on the plaza with a plan to shoot more during the week. That following Monday, I misplaced the SD card with all our footage from the weekend. To this day, I still haven't found it. My group then had to scramble to find a new way to shoot our commercial in just a couple of days. In order to save time, we switched our project from Polaroid to Canon so we could have access to the featured project at any given time. The main idea was to showcase the features of canon and how well the footage comes out. Our editor, Kate was editing over the weekend when her computer died and lost all of what she had edited. Luckily, Kate is an amazing editor and was able to edit the entire thing in just 24 hours and got it turned in.Instead of following the original idea, Kate made it more entertaining by using the commercial to appeal emotionally with audiences by showing how Canon captures life.  We got positive feedback from our classmate, the only negative things I can remember had to do with color correcting, but with our lack of time to edit, the lack of color editing is understandable. Overall, I think this project turned out quite well and I'm very happy with it.

Project #2: Music Video



This second project is most definitely my favorite. The music video also had some ups and downs for me as well. My music video project began as a group of two people. We picked out a song and then realized that this was a lot to take on and it wasn't going to work very well, so we split and got put with other teams. This music video, "Youth" focuses on growing up through trauma and in this case, suicide. The music video is about a girl whose friend died and her struggling with the fact that she didn't reach out to help him.When I began on "Youth", there were only two filming days left so I didn't get to do very much. I helped out on set and pretty much took on the role of production assistant. I had a blast filming, especially since our main actress worked on the previous year's feature film with us. We got lots of positive feedback and very minimal negative feedback, mostly that people didn't understand what was happening. On that note, I feel like e-Comm film students in general, me included, have this idea that every film/music video needs to be completely understandable on the first watch. I feel like part of that is due to the fact that society tells us that everything needs to be black and white. One thing we should focus on is pulling away from the idea that something is bad because we don't understand. It's really harmful to each other when this type of feedback come out and we should work next semester on understanding hidden meanings and that some creators don't want you to understand. Other than that, the project turned out amazing.

Project #3: Short Film



"Willow" is the third main project that I participated in this semester. This project is my biggest regret so fat this semester. Not because it's bad, its amazing. I regret that I wasn't able to take on the role I had been assigned. The filming days didn't work with my personal schedule and therefore I wasn't able to participate with much of the production, so I can't comment much on this project except for how much I enjoyed the story. It got lots of great feedback about it's simplicity and it turned out very well! I would like to circle back to a point I made in the previous project about creators purposefully wanting to confuse the audience. The point of the ending of Willow is that you're not supposed to know if she's homeless or not and the ending was a source of several negative comments that people didn't understand the ending.  I would really like for our class to get out of that mindset.

Time Management

Time management is a very fluid idea for me and it's very subjective due to different definitions and objectives. I believe I manage my time in class very well, except when it comes to blogging, I'm not very good at that. I can also see how someone might critique my management skills. For instance, this semester I didn't turn in a couple blogs, my short film treatment and my short film script. For me, that boils down to writers block and poor writing skills. Through this struggle, I have found other ways to stay productive. I've been spending quite a while working on the website for the feature film. I also spend time analyzing music videos and behind the scenes videos for professional projects. These activities help me analyze my own skills as well as learning how to foster a positive production environment. When I'm not doing either of these activities, I'm teaching myself about color correcting a trying out different programs such ad DaVinci Resolve. 

Strengths/Weaknesses 

My strengths are very few and far apart, as are my weaknesses. I'm what you would call a "jack of all trades, master of none". My strengths include my positivity and dedication to this class and my fellow peers. My weaknesses include many technical skills. I can do many basic technical things such as work a camera, and do basic editing, but I'm not amazing at either. I'm just kinda there. That's why I love being production assistant, it allows me to participate in a little bit of everything while have the freedom to experiment on my own projects.

Guest Speakers

The guest speakers were very helpful this year. I enjoyed both Brandon's and Drew's presentations. I found Gordan's to be a little bland, but that's probably because it was the second time I've heard it and also Drew and Brandon are closer to my age and more relatable. Brandon's presentation will help e very much with my social media role in the feature film.  Drew's presentation on characters will be very helpful throughout life with writing and production of my own projects.

"Get Real" Production Role

For this year's feature film, I am Production Assistant and Social Media Content Creator. I'm super excited for this production. Since I was production assistant last year, I feel like I can improve even more and be more efficient this year. With social media, Im eager to sink into this new role and really promote our film and get a big turn out for this year's premiere.

Summary

This year has been a blast so far, I'm just sad that I missed most of it due to a busy schedule. The one thing I would change is to make film a higher priority, which will be happening as the feature film goes into production. My biggest takeaway from this semester is that film isn't just one idea, it's a multitude of ideas converging and dancing. They might not alway make sense, but they create something beautiful. I also learned that film is not something to be understood, it's to be felt. My goal for the upcoming semester is to make this feature film the best it can be!

Human- Professional Project Review

   
        Humans is a song by YouTube personality and songwriter Dodie Clark with vocals sung by both Tom Walker and herself. The music video is a story about a girl creating the perfect partner and then realizing he isn't what she intended him to become. The story is told through lighting and art design as well as the lyrics.

     Dodie has a history of using vague, but meaningful concepts for her music videos; Intertwined, 6/10, In The Middle and You are are examples. The cinematography is always very interesting and very purposeful while following the rules.

       This shot is very appealing to me. Ciaran O'Brian, the cinematographer used the rule of thirds very well in this shot while offering a beautiful depth of field. The lighting also adds to the mood of the video. This song gives off a bittersweet feeling and the lighting helps with that by making Dodie's side of the screen darker with most of the light focused on the face on the wall who will eventually become her significant other. This represents hope for their relationship and how she expects him to brighten up her world.

      This shot also follows the rule of thirds very nicely. The lighting is s bit orange, but it adds a vintage feel to it. Acting plays a big role in this video; throughout the shots you see that the male shows very little emotion while Dodie is seen to be smiling and much more animated, adding to the idea that she is more human and that he is more mechanical.The male character is always looking in one spot with no emotion, enforcing the fact that the relationship is very one sided.

        This is the most impactful shot of the whole video in my opinion. It is one of the most bright shots of the piece lighting-wise and since it's towards the end of what seems to be a sad ending, it seems out of place but is actually very helpful because it illuminates the hope again. Dodie has left the love that doesn't show love towards her and is going to try again. The audience see that this is not her first attempt and because we can see hope, we know this will probably not be her last. This is also the first time we really see the make character move an look around on his own accord at the doppelgangers on the floor around him. It's quite chilling to look at.

       I really enjoy the use of light in this video and will definitely use it as a model for my own work. It allows the story to be broadened and more emotion to be show. The art direction is also wonderful. There is a lack of brighter colors with most colors being neutral beside the man's eyes and Dodie's outfit with her green overalls.

        Dodie has always impressed me with her work and I can't wait to see more as she releases her 3rd EP. She has a wonderful group of friends that helps her with her videos and it reminds me of my own relationship with my classmates and our work together. It's definitely a factor to a good music video.
 

Canon Commercial Project.

        My group went through quite the gauntlet in making this commercial. Our original product was a Polaroid Camera, but we had to change products about halfway throughout the process which I can explain later. The concept for our commercial was a road trip like montage. As seen below:

All rights to above video belong to Kyle Houck on Youtube. I had no part in it's production. 
This video played a big part in our polaroid commercial, but alas, it would not come to be.


        My group filmed for 2 or 3 days for our Polaroid commercial, but that Monday, I lost our SD card with all our footage on it. We then had to scramble to put together a commercial.  In the absence of time, we decided to forgo actors and use a Canon camera instead of a Polaroid.  Our commercial focused on good close ups and how Canon helps you capture life.

        At this point, everything is going every which way.  We had production roles in the beginning, but towards the end, they were all muddled. Piper was Director, Layla was Art Director, Kate was Editor and I was Cinematographer, but after I lost the SD card, we all just worked together on the separate jobs. Piper and I filmed footage, Layla helped as a slight actor and setting up shots and Kate did the editing. Everything was turning around, then the weekend came. Kate, wonderful Kate was editing over the weekend when her computer broke and she was gone from school on Tuesday, meaning Kate had only 24 hours to edit the entire commercial again. She got it done and it looks amazing, but she didn't have time to do much color correcting. She chose a wonderful song and edited all the shots Piper and I filmed to the music. 

          Overall, I think our commercial was a success. It was entertaining and positive, especially after all the struggle we went through. I would love to try the Polaroid commercial again though!

The Hidden Experience

My Production Roles

Writer

My first job for the Hidden was writing. I worked with a team of other student to turn what was a short film into a full length feature film. The original short film was written by Brady Stanfield and then he worked with our group which includes Amanda Campbell, Ariel Seemann, Courtney Honors, Darby Christensen, Drew Conners, Piper Cumley and myself.  We began by breaking down the original script and spreading it out in order to make room for mores scenes and continuing the ending. We then sat down as a group and added more scenes and added an ending to make the film a full length film instead of a short film. We had many days where it was our group sitting in a circle writing on a whiteboard developing characters, fine-tuning the plot and other crucial points in the film. After getting all the details planned out, we wrote treatment and shared it with the entire class and got feedback. We then applied the feedback to our final script and shared it back to the class.

We faced quite a few challenges throughout the writing process. Probably the biggest one was trying to please everyone. With a class of over 20 people, everyone has different ideas and opinions and it's very hard to please everyone. In the end, I think everyone was pleased.

Along the way, I learned just of how much a process it is to write a full length script. I've never taken on such a task before and it was a cool process. Our script was almost 100 pages long! It was really fun to work with others instead of by myself. 

Production Assistant

I was a Production Assistant for the Hidden. My jobs in this role included running errands, being in charge of craft services, and helping out around set doing what was needed. In certain occasions, I made sure the dogs were quiet and other odd jobs. I think the biggest challenge I had was making sure everyone had food and water. We ate a lot on set as a consequence of not really having scheduled meals, so I had to keep up with everyone's appetites and personal tastes. This role was really fun in my opinion. It allowed me to do a little bit of everything and be working throughout almost the entire process.  I learned a lot about keeping up with a busy schedule and being in several places at once as well as all aspects of the filming process. 

Overview of my Roles

I believe I worked really hard in during this film. I'm really proud of how everything turned out. I hope everyone was happy with the food provided and I hope I helped make everyone's days go easier.

Time Managment 

I believe I used my time pretty well in class. During the writing process, I spent most of my time meeting with the other writers and working on the treatment, script, or anything else we had to write. During the rest of pre-production, I worked on figuring out food and meals. During production, I did odd jobs, ran errands, and helped out around set. There wasn't very much for me to do during post-production, so I worked on personal projects such as my website and a typography project. Those two projects are what I went back to when I had enough/extra time. This was all in class; when I wasn't in class, I didn't much of anything related to e-Comm due to a lack of time because of other classes.

My Strengths  

My strengths are pretty minimal; I'm more of a jack of all trade, a master of none type of person. I have a little skill at many things, but I'm not super good at any one job. Thats why I enjoyed be a production assistant so much. The job allowed me to do a little of everything. I plan on working this summer at maximizing my skills in editing and filming because the only way to get better is to work and practice. Practice makes progress. I'm working on music video and also some PSAs and Short films this summer!

Summary

I loved the premiere! Everything from the limo to dinner was great! It was really nice to have everyone together and to be able to hear the audience's reactions to our film and it felt good being able to see all our hard work on the big screen.  My favorite part of the whole process was the filming days in general. We all had so much fun and even though it was stressful, it was worth it. I learned a lot about teamwork and how to handle stress from this film. I'll take away that hard work is really worth it and that you can do anything you set your mind to. My one goal for next year is to get everything planned out earlier and start earlier so we aren't so stressed towards the end. I had a blast this year and while it wasn't totally ideal, I wouldn't give it up for anything.

What I learned About Being a Production Assistant.

On Wednesday, my class is premiering our film The Hidden. I held many titles throughout the steps of production  ranging from Writer to Production Assistant. Being a PA was probably one of my hardest jobs. Being a PA means doing things that no one else wants to do while also helping out where needed. Throughout the production, I was in charge of snacks on set, helping run lights, doing makeup, transporting all the equipment and just doing little odd jobs all over the place. It doesn't really sound like the job to aim for, but I had a blast! Sure, it had it's rough parts, but it was still nice to be able to go everywhere and help out in lots of different areas,.

After reading No Film School's article 7 Tips on How to Survive Being a Production Assistant, I learned a lot on how I can help myself improve at being a PA and help the future PAs in my film class to be the best they can be.

Communication

Communication is key on a film set. Everyone has jobs to do and it's important to be on top of it and communicating with others. At any given time, a PA can being doing several jobs and mus communicate with the 1st AD on how those jobs are going, if they are happening and other key details. Without proper communication, everything would be a mess. One way in the professional world to keep communication up are walkie-talkies. Being a small production where everyone on set is usually shouting distance away, we didn't have need for these high tech gadgets, but in the professional world, it's necessary. 

Being Prepared

A PA must be prepared for anything. You never know when someone might need a pen, pencil, water or batteries for their walkie-talkies (or in our case, our zoom). I was constantly running around, grabbing lights, water bottles, gathering props. Pretty much, if anyone needed anything, I was their gal. There are so many times I wasn't prepared this year, but now I know what I need to improve.

Being a PA isn't Easy

Nor do many people actually keep the job for a life time. Most PAs are aspiring cinematographers or directors or any other crew role looking to gain experience on a film set. It's a very taxing job, you're at the bottom of the crew totem pole. Besides what's mentioned above, PAs are often looked to in order to keep the set clean, organize and set up food, keep everyone quiet and many other jobs. It involves a lot of running around. During my time as a PA, I didn't do half the jobs mentioned on No Film School's website, but I still got lots of fun experience and would definitely do it again if I had to! 

Article: https://nofilmschool.com/2016/05/7-tips-how-survive-being-production-assistant

Is The Greatest Showman Really That Great?

The Greatest Showman, a musical on the life of P.T. Barnum, has people hooked. They enjoy the flair and the message and the music, but the reviews are shocking. According to Google, 95% percent of users enjoyed the movie. These are the common movie fan. Critics, however, the the movie as less than pleasing, calling it "transcendentally fake" and "artificial". Well they aren't wrong. This rag to riches story is enough to make anyone with a heart melt, until they are shown just how much is fictional or covered up.

The true P.T. Barnum was much more terrible man than that of the Barnum Hugh Jackman shows the audience. The real Barnum began his career by buying an African-American woman by the name of Joice Heth in time when slavery was illegal in the North. He went into debt in order to go through a loophole and buy another human being. At the time, Joice was being paraded around as the 161 year-old nurse of George Washington  and Barnum had hoped to make a profit off of her. He took her on a tour and had her on display for around 12 hours a day. When she died, he held a live autopsy and had people pay 50 cents to watch. He spent the rest of his career making money off of hoaxes and lies and exploiting people with difference for a profit.

The movie version of Barnum is seen giving his performers a home and family when all he did was make money off of them. He is also shown giving everyone an equal voice. one notable line from the movie comes from the character W.D. Wheeler when talking about his and Anne's act. He says something along the lines of "people won't like you putting us on stage" referencing the time period and the discrimination of people with a different skin color. Barnum replies with a line like " I'll make them like you". Wow. he's such a great guy...

The amount of whitewashing in the film also covers up just how discriminatory the real Barnum was. His tall "man" was not a white man, but rather an African-American woman by the stage name of Madame Abomah. He also exploited a set of African-American twins named Millie and Christine who were conjoined, as well as albino brothers Eko and Iko who were "wild men". All four of them were either kidnapped or sold as children.  While it is not apparent why this white washing took place, according to NBC News, it was not done out of ignorance. An excerpt from the article reads:

The filmmakers were clearly acquainted with Heth, Iko, Eko and their other contemporaries and their roles in the real-life Barnum’s success, because some are background performers in the film, bearing silent witness. I immediately recognized a dreadlocked character as Iko or Eko, the representation of Siamese twins Chang and Eng, as well as Barnum’s interpretation of a “Circassian beauty” with pale skin and a wealth of white ringlets. So ignorance does not explain this whitewashing of Barnum’s true character.

Barnum was made out to be a lovable con who makes mistakes but is always forgiven, when in reality he is the opposite. Any child who goes and see that movie without knowing the actual story is being lied to. 

On the technical side of things, the movie had it's ups and downs. For a heartstring-pulling story, there was very little emotion and what was there was covered up by a song or a funny line, giving little time for the audience to feel. I sat there for half the movie, wondering what I was doing watching it because I felt nothing. The music had a good message and all, but was horribly auto tuned and lacked the gruffness of voice that makes one feel. I have to give it points though because the composers Justin Paul and Benj Pasek also composed my favorite musical Dear Evan Hansen. The cinematography was well executed I have to say with some very interesting shots and angles. 

My rating overall is 1.5/10. 

I'm so glad I found a cheap $5 ticket at a smaller movie theater because it's not worth the $12 at AMC.