Winter Final Video

a.k.a. "Tatty Is Dead Again"

Hello... It's Me... Not like it would be anyone else. This is my blog. And today I'm here to tell you about one of the most eventful videos I've ever been a part of. This is the story of our Winter Final.

Once upon a Finals Week, the fearless leader of eComm, Morris, posted online the prompts to be used by her faithful students in creating their finals videos. One of four themes (Love/Hate, Lost/Found, Forgotten/Remembered, and Stolen/Reclaimed) was to be selected and portrayed through a 2 to 3 minute short. I teamed up with Alex (no, that's not a typo. I do know an Alex and an Alec. Actually I know two Alexes and an Alec, anyways...) and I came up with the idea that I would be a dead girl that led Alex's character to my body. Lost and Found. It seemed simple enough. It was basically a chase scene with a few camera tricks and effects. Should be easy. 

Oh were we wrong.

First off, after we finished nourishing ourselves for a long afternoon of filming, my car, my beloved Mr Jones, did something really stupid. I turned it on, put my foot on the brake, put it in reverse, and Mr Jones decided it'd be a good time to roll forward up on the curb. My foot was on the brake. I had the car in reverse. And up on the curb it rolled. So I turned it off and started again. I took backroads to get to the location after that.

When we got to the park where we were filming, I played on the playground for a while, because I am forever a child, and then I went down a slide and completely flipped off the end and face planted on the ground so that was enough playground for me.

I climbed a tree and Alex filmed a few shots. Then we decided to do jump cuts and set the camera up to shoot several shots with me in different positions from the exact same angle. Now began the tricky part. We wanted to have Alex chasing me while I jumped from position to position, but to keep with continuation of motion, Alex couldn't move, but neither could I. And we had no cameraperson. There's a lot of footage of us standing probably 20 feet away from each other, not moving, just talking, trying to figure out our next move. We took it one shot at a time and figured out a system to get all the shots. I'm really proud of how we figured it out.

As we were leaving the park, with all our footage the way we wanted it, I noticed something off about my car. Mr Jones had a flat tire! Ugh! I would've changed it myself, but I didn't know that there was a jack in my car. But we saw a cop parked a few lots down and asked for his help. I felt kind of bad, if I had known I had everything in my car, I would've gladly done it myself, but he went ahead and did it all. So thanks random police man. I was very afraid to approach you, but you really helped us out.

So that was our day of filming, but the adventure didn't stop there. We edited the video and realized it was only 35 seconds long. It was supposed to be 2 to 3 minutes. In hindsight we should've known a chase scene couldn't last 2 minutes. We tried to figure out how to fill up more time, but none of them seemed to fit our story just right. We decided to just stick with our 35 second short that also doesn't have audio because we couldn't figure out what would sound best with it.

If we could do it again, I would make sure to lengthen the story and go into it with a more developed plan. I would also make sure we had a song or some sort of audio to help the audience understand even more. I'd also choose an actress that is not me 1) because I hate acting, and 2) because I suck at it and that's why I always have to play dead girls. There are a lot of things I'd like to change were we to do it all again, but in general, I think our effects made up for some of the areas that were lacking.

I'll post the link later, but for now, I wish you happy holidays. 

From,

Your friendly neighborhood Tatty