Hectic. 

Why do I use that word you ask? Because its the only one that accurately describes this project. At least for my group. Let me explain why, starting at what the project even is.

Running a Re-Make was all about how we take the short horror film, Run (above), and remake the film with tools like our iPads and our peers. Our driving question: what technologies, tools and strategies can we utilize to create short films? You will see later, I talk about the strategies we used, like assigning equal jobs so no one has an overflowing pile of work. We used mic’s, and iPads for this project but we also used specific editing apps that helped us with the final product. We tried to pick a place no one else was filming to ensure that we were using our surroundings and tools to the best of our abilities. We all had to bring something, like a costume, and using our tools really helped us in having an accurate video.

Next, we learnt about the production process of making a film and learnt about what needs to be done before and after you’ve shot scenes for a film. We call these the Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production process. But even before we started this project, we took something called the Myers-Briggs test. They have determined there are 16 possible personalities in the world and to find out which one you are, you must take this test. It was a long test I tell you, but in the end I completely agreed with my result and I wasn’t surprised at what I got.

On the right you see my strengths and on the left, my weaknesses. I’ve been working on these for a while and trying to maintain a balance between them. In my opinion, this project has helped me underline my weaknesses and improve on them. I’ve become better at taking criticism and improving, I also received criticism on this blog post! I’ve been starting to understand how its there to help, not hurt me.

As we begin our pre-production process, we start to see words like screenplay, storyboard and call sheet pop up. Lets take a look.

We started off with writing a screenplay, making a story board, and having a call sheet. Writing the screenplay took us quite a while because we had to get reference from the video a lot, and write down every shot, everything we saw and even the timings when each shot changed. Since this needed to be a carbon copy, most things had to be perfect or very very similar to the original. But even though we planned out our whole schedule, things did change in the middle, maybe even for the better. I didn’t expect that we would change anything after we planned it out so much. We finished our screenplay with Ben as the second jogger, Holly as the scary monster guy, and me as the main jogger. As Holly did the storyboard, Ben and I simultaneously did the call sheet, to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. 

Click here to watch our storyboard!

Both were finished within a day and we planned when we were going to film. At first we filmed without Ben because he couldn’t make it, so we got all the scenes we could without ben. We then got together during class and filmed the rest. 

Honestly, I think we could’ve done better. Our competencies for this project was Computational Thinker, Knowledge Constructer, and Innovative Designer. We showed small bits of evidence throughout our first draft. We got around our problem of Ben not being there to film, by working around it and it helped us in the future for workload. Our video editing was Ben’s job and he realized we don’t have enough shots to match the exact time, but we had everything that the original video had. So we got together at school and he made each clip longer to match the original video. As for being knowledge constructors, while doing our screenplay, made us critically choose simple things like what we even write down. Do we write everything we see, or only the important parts? What about what we hear? These are only some of the questions we had to face when writing the screenplay and that we successfully worked around. Lastly, being an innovative designer (from my perspective) forced us to dig deep into our creative sides. Every time we filmed a shot we always filmed from a different angle to see if it would match better with the original video, or while Ben was editing he could have at least 2 options to choose from. 

All I can say is thank god Ms. Maxwell gave us a little bit of extra time for revision, because for our final presentation we did way better. Some things you might notice was that we switched around the parts. Each actor had a new part now, which I think made the video a bit better. Ben became the main actor, I became the scary monster guy and Holly became the second jogger. I wasn’t as athletic as Ben, so the scenes looked better and more like the original. We upgraded our costumes and wardrobe, which definitely. We were all there for all days when filming was scheduled and our planning was more organized. Our execution was much better, because we had done this once before so we knew what mistakes not to make. 

I compared the 2 that we made and the original side by side and I think our second one did a lot better, execution, production and editing wise. 

There was always (and still is) room for improvement for our videos and our way of learning the competencies. One thing I’ve noticed, thats been consistent throughout most projects this year: I usually get off task and thats what brings me down in the end. Even if we manage to get a good final result, I still think it would be easier for the whole group if we were focused even more during class time. But nevertheless, I think our outcome was great, and even though I didn’t focus as much as I want to (which is something that I will work on for the future), I’m proud to present our Run Short Horror film video to the world! 

~Malaika