Rationale: The film that I made is titled “outlet”, a film about how a young man uses basketball to escape the difficult aspects of life such as school, his family, and his girlfriend; hence, an “outlet”. I wanted to do this for two essential reasons: I myself use sports to escape hard times, and basketball contains many different sounds that can easily connect to different, common things. The intended audience for this film is for a mature audience as it is personal, and to some a little daunting.
Commentary: In this film, I was responsible for the job of the director as well as the cinematographer; I contributed to other jobs as well. As a director, I had to overlook the other jobs in pre-production, production, and post-production. I had to conduct the script to the actors, make production-schedules, confirm that everything needed was provided, and overlook the final outcome of the film. As the cinematographer, I was responsible for making a location diagram, grabbing equipment for production, and managed all of the camera angles and shots. I encountered many problems throughout the process. To begin with, finding a way to translate the script and concept into a film was quite demanding.
Considering that the film initially required an inside basketball court as well as two full teams, I tried to arrange something that would provide the same meaning to the audience and still be an adequate set; therefore, I was able to group together two teams of three wearing similar
apparel to distinguish the teams and provided an outside basketball court. Since their was an ample amount of extras involved, i had to arrange a time and place that was suitable for all of them and had consistent weather. The first day for the basketball scene, we went to a secluded place (Allen Elementary School) on a rainy day to emphasize the dedication of the young man.
As the day progressed, the weather became unbearable, so the actors as well as myself agreed to call it a day and to resume our shooting on the other day. Unfortunately, the weather never returned so we were forced to re-shoot the scene, and since school was going on in Allen when i was able to assemble all of the actors again, we were forced to shoot at Capuchino High School, our last option. We managed to finish the whole scene on the windy day. Less troubling problems included going out of battery while in the process of shooting and forgetting important equipment that is crucial to a specific scene. For example, we let another group borrow a camera that we needed for the scene where the young man gets yelled at by his mother, so we showed up to our location without an adequate camera, so we returned home without any footage and decided to do it another day.
Problems dealing with the whole group begins with the trouble of sound design. As a sound film, we had a very hard time making the “trigger sounds” very clear and distinct for the audience. Our sound designer, Waris Allie, worked very hard in finding the appropriate sounds for the film, and considering this difficulty, My other partner Luis and I, openly helped him out as he helped us out with our personal jobs. Another crucial flaw within this process was the amount of editing. Since we didn’t finish the filming until very late in the process, a lot of pressure was put on our editor, Luis Velasquez. As both the cinematographer and director, I am fully responsible for the lack of time that our editor had to prepare the film. Both Waris and Luis were able to dodge the hurdles that I created for them and did a decent job.
Overall, I think that our film is good and amusing throughout each aspect of the film, especially the connections with the sounds. Beginning with the concept, i felt like it was solid and set us up for success. It included a various amount of scenes with interesting and diverse locations. For instance, the scenes included a basketball court, homes, as well as a college campus. These different settings appeals to the audience as they won’t get board looking at the same background or repetitive shots. The only exhausting part within this film is repetitiveness within the acting, yet it was appropriate. For instance, the young man’s mother began yelling at him as well as the teacher began yelling at him, which is very repetitive as far as the plot goes. this also forces the actor to react in the same way, which begins to get dull and boring. Yet, what redeemed this was the acting and variety of shots to emphasize the great acting. For instance, in the girlfriend scene, the girlfriend, Maria Luevano, presented her character in a spectacular way. She was easy to direct and provided the conceited, arrogant character that was expected of her.
This was enhanced by the last shot of the scene, when the camera circles around the boy and follows her out of the door all in one sequence. I would also like to acknowledge the character of the young man, who’s emotion s were consistent throughout the whole film. although he tended to smile a lot in production, he managed to stay composed throughout most of the filming process. We managed to get a variety of different actors that we haven’t used before (with the exception of the young man John Ababseh). We managed to develop some of the characters as much as possible through the camera angles and shots. For instance, to depict the fact that basketball was the young man’s peaceful place, we rack focused a number of the shots from the trees and plants to the basketball court.
Similar to this, to express the character of the young man’s mother, we included a statue of a tyrant within the frame of the shot, suggesting that she is very abusive and demanding of him.
Another important aspect of the film is the special effects within the film. To film the basketball scene, we used the 7D camera in order to shoot 60 frames per second in order to fluidly slow down our film. With the film greatly slowed down, audience can identify the scene as the center piece of the film as it the most time consuming and each movement is very dramatic. Also, we pounded on many different filters and effects to pronounce the different “trigger sounds”.
We incorporated to different camera movements to show this; When the sound of the basketball dribble is the sound that reminds the boy of school, we used many different techniques. For instance, to present the dribbling, we put the dolly track on a large slope and pedistalled/dollyed down to the ball in a close up to show the ball. To support this even more we did many color correction to showed, this, as well as used many earie sounds to show this uncomfortable transition, as it is also uncomfortable for the young man himself. Despite these neat effects, I feel like we lacked some close-up shots that would support the basketball scene that would distinguish certain things a bit better.
I also thought the lighting was significant within each scene. Generally, in the basketball scene, is very bright, reflecting happiness within the young man. On the other hand, the other scenes where the young man is having a bad time, the lighting is generally darker than usual, showing a certain cynicism behing the scenes.
Although my personal vision didn’t quite meet up with the final outcome of the film, I was happy with what did come out of it. It may be confusing to the audience in some instances, yet I would like to think that they would appreciate the quirkiness and elusiveness of the film. The characters are well portrayed and although their may be some wholes within the plot, it is sufficient enough to understand the central meaning and ideas behind the film as a whole.
