FILM FESTIVAL VIDEO PROJECT COMPLETION

SELF REFLECTION PAPER

BRENDON PARES

The initial concept for my pitch was a mother going to investigate her basement, due to
paranormal activity occurring down there. She goes down to discover all of these crazy
occurrences going on. The original pitch would’ve also included a ton of crazy over the top
special effects. However, a ton of my ideas seemed extremely unrealistic at the time, due to
what hardware I actually have access to. So I scrapped that idea, and morphed it into the story
in which I'm using to this day! The final project is ultimately about a daughter missing her long
lost father. Throughout the day, the daughter starts performing tasks and activities that trigger
certain memories and emotions regarding her and her father. I did keep the basement ghost
scene that I had in the initial concept, but with significantly less special effects, and more visual
storytelling.

Some interesting activities occurred during the pre-production phase. One of these
activities consisted of having difficulty with constructing the script as a whole. During the writing
process, I was having trouble writing down what exactly it was that I wanted the story to be. I
had tons of ideas floating around. One of them being a ghost related story. Eventually I tied that
in with my mom’s father, and everything came together in the end. Overcoming this obstacle
wasn’t as challenging as I thought it would’ve been. This was probably due to how my mom
already had a written past with her father, so turning her memories and life into a script wasn’t
that hard of a translation. Overall, the pre-production phase went smoothly, and I'm glad it went
the way it did.

Out of all the phases, the production phase had to be the most interesting to handle.
From the filming locations, to the events that followed when actually filming, the production
phase was the most interesting overall. We actually did a ton of filming down in the spring lake
area by the shore. Unfortunately, most if not all of the footage was scrapped. It was my mom's
idea to film down by the shore, due to how some parts of the script tied in with memories of her
and her father. They had some memorable moments at spring lake. I really hoped that the
spring lake footage could’ve been included, however, in the end, the spring lake footage just
didn’t make that much sense in the story. Some other obstacles during the production phase
were quite miniscule, yet really annoying at times. When filming, a car would inconveniently
pass by and ruin the shot. Overall though, production went pretty nicely. I still wish we could’ve
incorporated more of the spring lake footage, it was quite beautiful to look at.

Finally we have post production, the final phase of making a film. Post production for me
was a mixed bag of good, bad, and very questionable decision making. One of the biggest
gripes that I had with myself was the fact that I filmed the entire movie in 4K quality. Due to the
4k, editing on my mid-range computer was a pain at times. Long render times, playback issues
and lag were all involved. Even doing the simplest thing, such as adding text, was a drag at
times. However, I persevered, and at the end of the day the film was made. Hardware issues
aside, editing, sound mixing, color correction and everything else went pretty well. The only
main issue in this entire process was a voice over segment. I asked my friend to do a voiceover
segment for the opening scene of the film, in which I tied videos, pictures and music over.
However, his voice sounded a bit… off… So I asked him to redo his voice over. It sounds quite
simple really, all he had to do was redo the voiceover. The problem was, I specifically time
coded and formulated all the effects and videos to his old voiceover, so trying to carry over
everything to the new voiceover was going to be a big pain. In the end, I left the old voiceover in
the final cut. It doesn’t sound the best, but it gets the job done, and overall I learned from my
mistakes so I can do a better job next time.

My favorite part of the production process had to be Production. Honestly, just shooting
your film and seeing everything from your script come alive directly in front of you is one of the
most magical things in filmmaking. All of your hard work, coming out of a sheet of paper into the
real world, is truly magical to the eyes and ears. Besides that, the production process also gives
me the opportunity to slightly change how I want my film to look in real time! For example, I feel
that I can change how my film looks slightly during the production process, due to how I'm living
in the moment of everything that I've written and made in the pre-production process.

Surprisingly enough, I didn't have too many weaknesses throughout this entire process.
Rather, I had a ton of strengths that I developed over the course of filming, editing and writing
the script. The strengths that I developed were knowing how to film entirely within my house,
and using what i have to make an incredible short film that everyone can enjoy / relate to. I
guess my only weakness was the limitations that I had to deal with occasionally, such as faulty
hardware or glitches. Overall, I'd say this was a very successful experience. I can improve my
overall strengths by continuing to improve my workflow of working at home, and my motivations
to do so. I can improve my overall weaknesses by investing more time into optimizing my
hardware. If possible, I can also save up a bit of money, in order to upgrade my hardware so
these stutters and glitches don’t happen again in the future.

Overall, I do believe that I've met my program objective. My film reaches out to every
type of person. No matter their ethnicity, race, age, or even language for that matter. It’s a
simple film about losing a loved one, in which that loved one will always be there to guide and
watch over you. I’m pretty sure even if the film didn’t have any speaking in it, the message
would still be grasped by the audience just perfectly. During quarantine, things have definitely
been tough in the filmmaking process. But in the end, I created something I'm truly proud of.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the film and more importantly, I hope you enjoyed
reading through the experience that I went through, throughout this entire process.