Journal #7: I Can See the Finish Line

This week was much more demanding and tiring than I had planned it to be. Except for Monday, I spent every day after school editing. On Wednesday, I stayed until 8 and still wasn't near being done. On Thursday, I skipped 4th, 5th, and part of 6th period along with using homeroom time, before school time, 3rd period, and after school time to work on the project. Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep because I was worrying about my film project. I feel drained of energy from the past two weeks, and I am ready to cross the finish line tomorrow at the beginning of 3rd period despite the numerous (yet tiny) flaws in the film.

While editing, there have been different problems that have come up. In one scene, the camera angle of Bryan is vividly colored, but the camera angle of Marlin is flat and lacks color which causes the shots to look inconsistent once edited side by side. Also, in our climax scene, some of the shots are underexposed. This is because our actress Rebecca had to leave, so we rushed the most important scene so that we could get it done in time. Now, this inevitable lack of time is biting us in the ass.

I am so proud of Laura Macias for all the editing work she has accomplished. She is truly an angel from heaven, and I love her to pieces for her dedication to this project. Tonight, she was the only one in my group who stayed with me and helped me edit the rest of the film. I just want to thank her for everything she's done in the name of this project. She is truly a hard worker who never gives up, which is something I prize above almost everything else.

Tomorrow, we shall see how our hard work turns out. Hopefully, it will not be too horrible, but I have some confidence that everything will go well. We shall see tomorrow!

Journal #6: Too Exhausted to Come Up with a Title

This week of filming was...exhausting, stressful, and challenging in multiple ways. At the beginning of the week, we had decided to film Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. However, this carefully organized plan soon fell apart due to flaky actors. On Monday, Marlin showed up to the shoot late. Piero also forgot we were shooting that day, so he did not bring his camera. Because Amber thought Piero was going to bring his camera, she did not bother to charge her own. While we were trying to get everything done on Amber's camera, it died. Therefore, we did not finish the scene and had to postpone it to the next day. However, on Tuesday, 20 minutes before the end of 6th period, RJ, one of our actors, texted me and told me he could not make it due to "deadlines." This ruined our plan for finishing the shoot and we had to push back the scene until Thursday. On Wednesday, Bryan, our other male actor, told us after school he could not film at Petit Park until the next day (Thursday), so we had to push together the Menchie's scene from Monday and the Petit Park scenes from Wednesday on Thursday. On Wednesday, we reshot scene 3 and filmed our fight scene. On Thursday, nothing went horribly awry. We filmed at Menchie's first, then we drove to Petit and filmed there. After we were done, Piero brought the footage to Laura Macias, our editor, so that she could start putting the pieces together. Tomorrow (Friday), we will need to reshoot some scenes at Laura Macias' home in Sylmar. I hope that these will go well. I am excited beyond belief that we are done with all of RJ's scenes. Out of all our 4 actors, he was by far the flakiest. Also, Friday at lunch, we will need to ADR some dialogue from the first scene. I will be in charge of helping Laura Menchaca and Jeanette. Hopefully, we will be all done with filming on Friday (we better be done), and all the stress I feel while writing this post will evaporate into nothingness.

Journal #5: Things Have Gotten...Complicated

This week of filming was rather shaky. While I could not be there on Saturday due to my plans out of town, I was told as soon as I got to school on Monday that we had to reshoot. I immediately scheduled this for the 27th of April. On Tuesday, our shoot went well despite the fact that Piero forgot his tripod. Laura Menchaca and I were "human tripods" so Piero could film. On Wednesday, however, I was severely disappointed. We were supposed to shoot our fight scene that day. Our main actors were there along with our main crew members. However, Laura Menchaca and her boyfriend, who was playing the bully, did not show. We tried to contact her, but she did not answer phone calls or texts. She never apologized for not showing up, which bothers me even more. I know now not to rely on her. The bright side is that I've found that Laura Macias is a very trustworthy person. I am happy she is our editor. I'm excited to continue shooting and to see the final product when Laura is done with it!

Journal #4: The Joy of Organization

Never have I been happier to be cursed with OCD. As producer, I feel extremely proud of my work on my group's project, Head Games. Even though I went to the SkillsUSA trip in San Diego last weekend, I still got my breakdowns and schedule done while the other producers failed. I also helped organize a group of extras together for our first shoot on Thursday and kept the shoot on schedule. Our group successfully finished our first day of shooting with only small hitches along the way. I feel everyone is working to the best of their ability, and I am extremely confident that our movie will soon be ready to be screened at numerous film festivals. Piero is an amazing cinematographer, Laura Macias is on top of continuity, Jeanette and Laura Menchaca are focused on their sound design project, and Amber is guiding everyone (including myself) to greatness. I cannot wait to continue filming next week and weekend. This film is going to be incredible!

Journal #3: The Screenplay

This week, Amber and I started working on our screenplay. The first thing we decided on was how to divvy up the writing job. After discussing this with Amber, we decided that she would write dialogue, and I would write everything else. So far, this has been working extremely well. We have made sure to check each other's work, and we are open to suggestions from each other as per usual. I could not be happier with the way this project is going so far.

Although most of the screenplay lies ahead of us, we have finished Act I and the beginnings of Act II with only the most minor hitches. I feel we need to focus on what is necessary for our story. I do not want a script full of filler information, action, and dialogue that have no purpose. I want to shock people with the plot. I want the audience to have ohmygod did-that-just-happen moments when they watch anything I write or collaborate on. I have a feeling that with Amber and I working as a team, we can accomplish all of this and more.

Another reason I am so happy with how smoothly the screenplay is going is because my SkillsUSA project is proving more stressful than I had previously thought. However, I have faith in Alexa and myself, and I know we will get our project as great as we can before we go to state competition on the 4th of April. I am excited to leave for San Diego, so the stress the project brings is worth the benefit of being prepared for the competition!

I can't wait to finish the screenplay and the Skills project over break with Amber and Alexa, respectively. I have confidence that both projects will turn out amazing!

Journal #2: Writing is Revising

This week, Amber and I fixed our treatment and created our beat sheet. Before this assignment, I had never heard of a beat sheet before. It was refreshing to experience something new and explore a different aspect of writing. Although the beat sheet is simple, it provides a clear outline of what needs to be done in the screenplay and how many scenes will need to be done in production. I really like the organization of the beat sheet and the simplicity of it.

Amber and I are still working extremely well together. We continue to come up with solutions and fixes to our plotholes and are both open to eachother's suggestions. I feel that our story is very strong, and I am excited to finalize it in a screenplay.

I hope that everyone will enjoy the finalized story Amber and I come up with and that it will be produced. I am going to try my absolute hardest to finally get one of my screenplays produced at Kennedy. Hopefully my wish will come true!

Journal #1: Bouncing Ideas

These past two weeks, I have been working with my partner, Amber, to create a revolutionary teen noir that will be worthy of student awards. At first, we had to come up with individual treatments. I found this very challenging, not knowing where to begin. I thought back to when I watched the movie Brick during a Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie marathon my friends and I had a while back. I also went on YouTube and searched for Veronica Mars clips. After watching these, I still did not feel motivated. I began to write my story, pausing for long periods of time and procrastinating. By the end of my treatment, I was not satisfied, but I knew that I would have the chance to rewrite it, so I left it. I was extremely unhappy with my story and plot when I turned it in the day after Oscar night.

It came as a relief to me when it was announced that we were to work in pairs. I immediately chose Amber as a partner since we had never worked together before and because I knew she was as dedicated as I to create something much more incredible than what I had first written. The first thing we decided was to turn noir on its side and make our lead character a female instead of a male, in effect making our femme fatale a male. Intrigued by our new idea, we went home and mulled over a plot line that would captivate anyone watching our film. We brainstormed for about 2 hours on Google Drive, chatting and jotting down the skeleton of our plot. This plot focused on a girl who wanted to be with a boy, doing anything she could to get him. In the end, however, the girl would find she had been manipulated by this boy, who was the puppet of the girl's sister. Excited with our progress, we shut down our computers and slept on our ideas.

The next day, I wrote the first half of our treatment, letting Amber finish the second half. We used notes and comments to communicate with each other, always revising our treatment and improving it. Although there are still some minor problems we must solve and some things we must rewrite, writing is revising, and there will be no complaining on either of our parts. We want to make our treatment (and screenplay) as incredible and enthralling as possible. Our goal is to live up to the teen noir feel in our own, unique way.

Our pitch went as well as I thought it would. We decided to use a poster as a visual in order to better explain our convoluted love square to the class. It was very effective, and the pitch went more smoothly than I had expected. I am excited to fix the kinks in the treatment and improve the plot even more than we have done already. Writing is my absolute favorite part of film, and being able to do it with an extremely creative, dependable partner is half the fun. I cannot wait to work more on this project and perfect it as much as possible!