There are a few projects that we've done thus far during the year that have helped prepare me for this upcoming portfolio project. The most recent of which emulates the type of project I would like to choose for the portfolio, which is the movie promo package. We did a distribution project and had to release trailers along with a marketing campaign for films given to us by another class, and the trailer I worked on, "But Still it Rained" was an interesting experience that I learned a lot from.
The most notable of these lessons came from storyboarding. Our group found storyboarding to be extremely easy, but I found their workflow to be redundant. The original storyboard that we shot an entire preview of ended up being scrapped, with limited shots from that original vision making it into the trailer. Due to time crunches and a long day of filming, we ended up scrapping material that could've been put into the trailer had we not wasted time going over the storyboard multiple times, only to change it last minute. This redundancy, if avoided, could have saved the group time and given us more work for the final edit or other components of the presentation.
Another contribution that I will note as difficult was working within an unfamiliar group. Although my team worked well together, we occasionally would have work done at different times or simply see different things in terms of shot placement. This forced compromises, especially since filming came down to the wire(something I want to avoid in the future moving forward since it has been an issue of mine in the past). I will compensate for this unfamiliarity by working alone as the director and only giving acting/supporting roles to individuals who I know I can depend on, who have worked with me in the past.
Another way that I've avoided coming down to the wire is by already starting to plan. I've known since this project was announced that I wanted to do the film promo package, and I already have an underlying genre/characterization that I want to display within the main character. I want to do a dark vigilante piece, where the hero struggles with the refusal to kill his assailants, but constantly must deal with the repercussions of letting them continue to cause trouble. I have a faceless mask that I want to use in production and have started working on costume/aesthetic mind maps to help tie together various bits that I want to include in a trailer while ensuring that a story starts to appear from those creative snippets.
More on that later...
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