Day: March 15, 2022

Demonstration

This film project has changed me as a person in ways I would have never imagined. It has been by far the most stressful thing I have ever done my full life, yet I know a few years down the line I am going to forget the inconveniences and ultimately miss this experience of creating a feature-length film. The story is my story, and I am both excited and terrified to share it with the world. It will require courage but I know if I do it, it will have an impact. Even if I do not see the impact, I believe in the butterfly effect, and I know that it has immense potential to do good to this world. I am happy I have done my best to document the full process because I know there is value in that as well, not just for myself but for other indie filmmakers.

I feel ashamed of my behavior the past two years as well as my full life. Even as I type this out right now, I feel as if I am only motivated by self-gain, and that is greedy, egotistical, and also the reason I even experienced forms of anxiety and depression. I am practicing to let go of my pride. The thing I am trying to figure out now is, am I practicing altruism just for myself? just so I can alleviate my problems and feel good inside? Do I not genuinely care about those around me? Isn’t that also selfish? Does everybody on this earth only act through self-motives? If so, aren’t there people who are more selfish and other people who are more kind? I still have to give it a lot more thought. Well, maybe it is a biological nature for creatures to act with self-motive in mind, but that doesn’t change the fact that we have a choice, we can choose good over bad.

Of course, there were many things I could have improved on when I look back at the filming process. I was obsessed with getting the perfect take. I didn’t give the actors any freedom to say the lines, I wanted them to say it exactly how it sounded like in my head, I couldn’t let go of my vision. As I edit the project now, I realized that I actually like it more when the actors improvise it because it feels more natural. I have to learn to not be so stubborn. As the director of my favorite TV Show (Breaking Bad) puts it:

In the film, the main character eventually overcomes his anxiety and practices meditation. Similar to my real life. I have been challenging myself and exploring spirituality these past few months, and I have learned some very interesting things about the world and how I am able to interact with it. Something I have discovered recently is, perhaps this world is filled with vibrations, and our thoughts and energy have an impact on it. It is something I aim to explore for the rest of my life, and I owe this film project to be the reason that initiated this search.

Reflection

The process of making this film has been very rocky. There were many moments my friends wanted to quit, including myself. But at the end of the day, we went through with it. Originally, I wanted to have all the filming done for the project by December 2020. After I realized that wasn’t enough time, I aimed for Summer 2021. We actually managed to complete all the major shoots by summer 2021 which was a very accomplishing feeling. Similar to the feeling I experienced once I finally figured out the ending of the story after months of contemplating and rewriting. Once it all clicked together it was beyond satisfying. Nevertheless, after completing all the major shoots, I took time off the project and focused on school once grade 12 began. Then I got back into working on it as there were still several minor shoots and other work to be done regarding this project. I can confidently say that I have finished all major and minor shoots for the entire project. It feels really great to be able to say that. There were some moments I really didn’t think I would make it to this point. This is something I wrote down in December 2020.

I remember I had a breakdown during that holiday. I had just done one intense shoot and had only one day to prepare the props, location, write the script and organize my friends to come for another massive shoot the day after. I’m grateful for my parents who brought me out of it and got me back on track, otherwise, I might have given up. It’s sad because throughout the full process I was so obsessed with myself, the only thing that mattered was my film project and I often stepped over other people’s feelings to get what I want. I only came to realise this during the start of grade 12 after I talked to one of my friends about their perspective towards helping others, and I took a while to reflect on my life and who I am as a person and if its the kind of person I want to be.

Other points of reflection:

I needed a bigger crew to alleviate the stress of my shoulders. Just the little things like taking too much time on a single shot, organizing what shots to get next, and providing food for the cast, these minor inconveniences add up and really harmed my headspace which impacted my ability to direct/act effectively.

Originally, I intended this project to be a TV series consisting of short 2-10 minute long videos uploaded to YouTube. We stuck with that, but I also thought it would be nice to keep it all into one big movie, just to simplify the presentation of the project in the future. It wasn’t as easy as just piling the separate videos into one long video though, in fact, I had to film extra scenes, adjust some existing scenes and remove some unnecessary scenes in order to make all flow well as a feature film.

What now?

Currently, it is March 2022. My final IB exams are coming up in two months. I wanted to have this project done and published before the exams, but it seems that is not going to be the case. The final stage is the editing process. Its a lot less stressful because I don’t have to worry about others or external factors, but at the same time, it is painful and tedious. All of the flaws that we overlooked in every shot suddenly stand out. “If only we had just done/got this then it would have been perfect!” It’s hard to control the urge to reshoot stuff. But I am learning to let go and not be stubborn. My current plan is to put this project to the side and put all of my attention into schoolwork. I just had my mock exams and I performed very poorly, so I need to make sure my grades go up, then afterwards I can continue my work. There is an external time pressure that exists for this project, I gave myself the deadline to release it once the next major update for the platformer game Geometry Dash releases. That way I could capitlise off the event and gain a large viewership for my work. The blessing/curse is that I do not know when the update would be released, and the developer is notorious for taking years to release updates. Substantial evidence has gathered across the past two years that the update will inevitably come out, it just comes down to a matter of when he finishes it. I just have to hope it does not come out within the next few months, otherwise my project won’t be ready and I would have missed the opportunity. But there is no point worrying too much about it as it is out of my control. For now, it is best I just focus on what I can control.

I created this edting timeline for me to stay on track with editing everything. Although I made it very organised, unfortunately, I couldn’t stick to it. I guess I still don’t know how to effectively manage my time and balance between homework, work, and life.

Action

After having a general understanding of the story, we got to filming. We managed to find a nice location in the art block in school for the first scene in the entire film.

Initially, we filmed the project chronologically, however, once the story expanded beyond what we anticipated, we started organizing our shoots based on every scene one specific character acts in so that we can cross of actors who we don’t need anymore. We could only do this however once we understood how the film would end, which I couldn’t figure out until the middle of the production.

Most of our shoots were extremely stressful because we only had a film crew of two people, which is really quite impractical on a film set. We got tired quickly from doing all of the setup/heavy liftings ourselves. I experienced high levels of anxiety before each shoot day trying to factor in the endless possibilities of things that could go wrong.

What made it worse was I was the main actor for most of the shoots, so I didn’t really have a director to tell me what to do or change about my performance since I was also the director. This resulted in lots of time being wasted on me going through each shot after every take to see if I was happy with the results. I was required to swap in and out of character every few moments. There was a constant conflict between me wanting to get a better take against my tired friends who wanted to move on and get everything else done so they could go home. All of this combined with the constant time pressure: not having access to the location forever… the sun slowly going down causing changes in lighting… cast getting tired of having to go home… etc. To put it simply, almost every shoot day was torturous.

Some shots were poorly organized and planned, so we had to redo them. Throughout the full two years of the IB experience, this film project has almost always been at the back of my mind. It infiltrated every aspect of my life, I would constantly be seeking inspiration, sometimes unconsciously. There was constant doubt. Is it even worth telling this story? Eventually, it transformed from a passion project to something I dreaded having to do. I felt trapped by it. I gave myself such high expectations to make an incredible piece of art that it drove me kind of insane.