A perfect remake

Teammates blogs: Indira, Liam, Josh, Ryan

Hey guys! I’m Simon and I’m a grade 9 student. Welcome to my blog post. So today, I’m talking about my most recent project. Here’s a short introduction to what we did.

An introduction to the project

Our project was called “Running a remake”, but for the sake of your eyes, I’ll abbreviate it to R.A.R. The goal of R.A.R was to perfectly recreate a short 2015 horror film called RUN! which you can watch if you click the link here. We also had to answer the question and the core of your project, or our ‘driving question’ which was “how might we learn video skills by re-creating a short film?” I’ll answer this question soon enough after I briefly go over my milestones.

Milestone 1

How can I introduce myself as a person?

Our milestone 1 was called “Introduce yourself!” and to put it simply, we had to use a specific app called Clips to create a roughly 2 minute video introducing ourselves and our favourite hobby. They had us make 2-3 drafts, each one building off critique and tips given to the previous one. We learnt about establishing shots during this milestone. Establishing shots are clips used to the the tone/mood of the video, alongside filters and background music. In my view, the purpose of this milestone wasn’t so much to introduce ourselves to our teachers, but rather to be introduced to film making and a few basic tips and tricks. You can watch my milestone 1 here.

The competency that we were assessed on was called innovative designer 

• Definition: How might I design a solution to a problem, process, or challenge?

I demonstrated this when I came up with creative solutions to problems, such as how to properly establish the mood. My video was about my art hobby, which in my mind has a cozy feel. So I put in a shot of a raindrop falling from the roof, a shot of my Apple Pencil rolling towards the camera and a shot of me rapidly walking down a set of stairs with some calming, slightly sad music in the background. I designed my establishing shots so that I could set the proper ambience.

Milestone 2

A plan for creation

Our milestone 2 was called “A plan for creation”. In this milestone, me and my teammates (who’s blogs are linked up top” had to brainstorm a series of specials questions, or ‘need to knows’ which are questions that must be answered in this project. But most importantly, we divided up roles for all of our teammates for the recreation of RUN! which was going to be filmed the next day. We divided up all of our tasks as well as prioritized a list of things that needed to be done before we could start filming.

The competency we were assessed on was the same as before, innovative designer.

• Definition: How might I design a solution to a problem, process, or challenge?

Me and my teammates designed solutions by dividing up the tasks and making sure no one had a bigger work load then the rest. We designed a solution by prioritizing certain tasks over the others to make sure we would be ready for filing the following day.

Milestone 3

Gold standard video master

In our milestone 3, which was called “gold standard video master” we filmed the first draft of our remake of RUN! Our goal was to perfectly re-creat it, shot for shot. My role was cameraman as well as video editor. We filmed for around 1-2 hours before before going inside and editing for another couple hours. After that, our video was completed to the corgi girl and the rest of the class gave us critiques.

The competency we were accessed on was once again innovative designer.

Definition: How might I design a solution to a problem, process, or challenge?

We designed our solution by coming up with unique ways to film the project as well as creating solutions to our other problems. We had quite a few problems involving the setting where we were filming and we needed to come up with creative ways to deal with those problems.

Milestone 4

A remake of “run”

In this milestone, we filmed our second draft and used the feedback given us by our peers to improve it. We made sure the camera was more steady, and we even created new tools to help with filming, such as a schedule shoeing the different shots and how long they lasted. We also took longer filming, and refilmed more times to try and get the shots as perfect as possible. We also took longer editing and used more sounds clips to establish a better mood. You can watch the finished video here.

Our competency was the same as the others, innovative designer.

• Definition: How might I design a solution to a problem, process, or challenge?

we designed solutions by incorporating the positive criticisms given to us by our peers into our solution to the problems that we were faced with in our first draft, such as camera shake, lightning, scene changes and costume problems. We designed scenes and edited scenes to match the movie.

The answer to the driving question

How might we learn video skills by recreating a short film?

There is no better teacher then experience. We learnt what works and what doesn’t through trial and error by analyzing our film. We learnt what’s it’s like working on a team to crest a video. We learnt that it’s many different parts working together to creat the film. We learnt that you plan steps ahead and you have a whole lot to do before you actually film. I learnt many things about filming, such as how to move without tossing the camera around as well as the amount of time it takes to film a small video. We learn by going out and seeing what works and what doesn’t.