Time has indeed run out.

Recap 

The project's first half was mostly research and planning our video. We started planning relatively late and last minute since we waited until two classes after we were given the assignment to actually do some useful planning. The first thing we did was make the schedule of when we wanted to get things done (mind you this was on a Wednesday) and luckily we got our idea down super quick I think my group was really good with communication, especially Brooke who would bring me and sam back from film cloud 9 and give us the reality. We settled on a couple struggling with drugs; one wanted to help the other quit. The one thing that came super fast was filming.

Filming

 We decided to get filming done that coming weekend on Sunday and Sunday only since we were all busy otherwise. So that meant we had one day to film an entire 4-minute video

(me getting a shot of sam)

(since we are overachievers and wanted to do the full song). We also set in stone that the storyboard had to be done before Sunday since we needed it to film. But we ran into an issue: who was going to be our actors on such short notice. Now it was my job to recruit our actors so I was scrambling to ask people and by Friday we only had 1 solidified actor, Tristan, who would be the partner of our drug addict. Tristan was originally supposed to be The drummer to our lead singer because Cyrus said he had a drum set and Sume was originally supposed to be a band but we had to very quickly adapt since nobody had a drum we could use. But that wasn't important at the time we still needed our face for this whole thing, our lead singer. So one morning I was talking to sam about who we could possibly use,  But on that super special wonderful morning, my lovely bestie Andrew was sitting in the back of the TV room when I remembered his TV3 music video where he played the lead singer and the scream I screamed at that moment of excitement of finding our last important actor was like a holy grail.

To my surprise, he accepted my offer pretty quickly without many details or questions. I thought he was joking, but he pulled through in the end.  So now we had our lead singer but who was going to be our main actor.. Sam and I had asked about 5 people and nobody could work with us so Sam decided to step in, now we had our whole team and we were ready to film. Come filming day we decided to meet around 12 so had to move very quickly since Andrew had to be home by 5 and Tristan by 6. Our first stop was Markham park. We chose Markham to film the outside scenes because it had the woodiest look to it and we wanted it to feel kind of desolate. We spent 20 minutes driving around Markham to find a good spot to film and we ended up choosing an area near this frisbee throwing course, which in retrospect was not super safe with flying projectiles everywhere but we got the shits so it's fine. Once we picked our specific spots we started filming, Brooke was in charge of keeping us on track with the storyboard, Sam and I were directing and poor Cyrus was helping with what he could, we had to move so fast because of time he was probably confused 85% of the time. We got some shots of Andrew singing outside that we never ended up using but we had them just in case, then we moved to a very woody area we came across to film the rest of sams scenes which took a lot more time than we expected we left around 12:30 and finished closer to 2:30. During this filming period we all discussed props that we needed to pick up and food since of course we had to eat and Brooke decided to go run those errands once we got back to the house. While we awaited our knight and shining Brooke we started setting up for all of Andrew's scenes since he had to leave soon.

We had a very specific look we wanted to achieve with colors, where Sams character would be red to show aggression whereas Tristan's character would be in blue to show passiveness with tints of green for that psychedelic look and every now and then we'd have some purple in between to show togetherness so we wanted to show both of those on the lead singer since in our campaign he's struggled with drug addiction so he knows both aspects of each character, we were lucky that a friend of ours had RGB(red green blue) lights that we could use to achieve our goal. Once Brooke returned with our “drugs” and a sidequest of Publix popcorn chicken we started to really get into filming. Unfortunately as great as Andrew was it took a while for him to warm up to everyone watching him, which is why in some of the beginning scenes when he shows up in the music video he's stiffer than in the end, which honestly worked out in our favor making it seem as he was getting angrier as the story progresses. But after a few takes, I had the grandest idea to make it slightly more dramatic: to have the lights rapidly change color and have Andrew's hair blow effortlessly through the wind of a hairdryer. After we wrapped up on Andrew, he left immediately after.

Now it was time for Tristan and Sam’s scenes. At this point, it was already 5pm so we ended up making Tristan stay longer than intended. Cyrus ended up leaving around 6pm so I and Brooke took over directing we got a lot done during this time since both Tristan and sam work well on camera but as the night went on and the delusion of being exhausted started to hit everyone plus all of the “drugs” (candy) we had eaten it was like prime time to film since we had the motivation to finish as quickly as possible. Right as we almost finished filming, around 8pm Tristan had to leave and with him Brooke so I and Sam finished up the music video since it was one scene and it was the last scene. 

(taken after sam and I finished)

Editing 

So we all decided that since Sam and I have the most editing experience we'd be the main ones to edit. I was the first one up to edit from Monday to Wednesday then sam would edit from Wednesday to Friday since on our personal schedule the edit had to be done by Saturday for us to practice our presentation on Sunday to be prepared for Tuesday. After we wrapped filming Sam quickly transferred all the files to a flash drive for me to start editing right away.

I realized when I got home to start editing that we were NOT specific enough on our storyboard and I was missing a few files since we filmed on two separate cameras so I was mostly lost for the first few hours of editing and would have to ask sam where things would go, but I got a basic line edit out and then come Wednesday sam would take over the edit for final touches. 

Presentation 

Editing for the most part went smoothly on

both ends, The last Friday before filming we started the presentation and put information into it while also dividing up who gets which slides to do and present. We each did 2 slides, not including the music video slide but we found out nobody could practice the presentation on Sunday so we moved it to Monday over facetime. On Monday we got A LOT done it was supposed to be mostly just for practice but we ended up sharing more ideas with each other to include in our presentation and you can't make a group presentation if everyone is not on the same page so I feel Monday was good for all of us. Our small group presentations went really well. We presented, then discussed things we should change and add. Come presentation day we originally planned to hand out “drugs” (candy baggies) as a way to interact with our “investors” but I think we all just froze at the last minute. We all had so much to say but I think the only one who got everything out thoroughly was Cyrus, he basically carried all of us since we were so nervous.

I realized right before we went up to present, that my information was all out of order so when it came time for me to speak it didn't sound concise or “right” I guess, and ended up being completely lost in what I was saying. Now I knew what I wanted to say and how we wanted it done but the nerves and having messed up my information just threw me for a loop. I think overall we did well on our presentation regardless of what happened.

Closing thoughts

(A still from our video)

I learned that communication is key even if your team has good communication! It was the most important part for us. I also learned that we need to write down specifics in our storyboard so editing will be done easier and that I should check my information before presenting. So these are all things I will be taking with me from here on out on any project.