Movie Trailer

Project:
The project was to recreate a movie trailer. The movie we chose had to be set in high school.


Pre-Production:
Mr Cooper assigned us groups this time around. I had never done a project
with either person in my new group. Since both of them had been the director for the last
project, it was my turn. Michael was going to be cinematographer and Nandini was the 
editor. We decided on the trailer for the movie Napoleon Dynamite. We watched it and got to storyboarding! I kept track of outfits and locations we would need to film at, Nandini found
actors and inquired about their schedules, and Michael worked on the storyboard. Soon
enough, we were ready to film!


Production:
We started planning out filming dates and times. Our schedules aligned pretty
well with our actors. The first thing we filmed was with our actress who was playing Deb. We
wanted to get her scenes over with so we weren’t inconveniencing her. Then, we filmed solo
shots of Napoleon. We decided to use Michael as the bully who pushes him because it 
would be quicker than finding another actor. After all the school shots were finished, we 
filmed at my house two different times. Again, we used people who were convenient so that came in handy. My mom played Napoleon’s grandma, I played the lady in the kitchen, and my dad played Trisha’s dad. We finally found someone to play Pedro after our original guy 
didn’t respond.


Post-Production:
In terms of editing, it was pretty quick. I didn’t have to improvise as much as
I might have with my own project. I will say, it was kind of difficult to edit everything perfectly so it matched the actual trailer. The music for the background isn’t quite the same song but 
it sounds alright.


What I learned:
I don’t think I learned much technically. The plan was to learn about tracking
and dollying but we forgot to use both of those techniques! That’s kind of irritating because I
wanted to experiment with them. I did learn some things about collaboration through this project. You have to listen to everyone’s ideas and their thoughts about what is going on. And being a director is hard! Despite this, I had a pretty good team for this trailer. I met some new people Nandini, Michael, Andrew (Napoleon), and Gibron (Pedro). I probably would never have talked to them if it weren’t for this project.


Next time:
I would like to be a better director next time. This means being more organized, in
control, and patient. I felt as though, by the end of the project, everyone was a little tired of me doing multiple takes on each shot. If I did one thing the same, it would be communication. I felt as though this project went so well because we all talked about what was going on. Everyone knew times, days, locations, clothes, it was much better than the last assignment.


Takeaway:
To enhance my next project, I am going to be just as vocal and involved. Even if I’m
not the director, I want to make sure everyone knows what’s going on. In addition to this, I 
think I might try to find a small cast again. That was nice. I don’t think I’ll use any cars for thenext project, that didn’t work out well for the music video.

Thoughts:
I had a good experience making this trailer. It was like a breath of fresh air after the
music video disaster. I connected with some really nice people so I’m happy about that. I 
like the finished product too!

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