"Exit Wounds" - Production Portfolio

A. Rationale: ( A: 100 Word rational of the project) 

What film did you make and what was your working plan? Why did you want to do it? What style did you want to experiment with? What audience were you making the film for? Why did you think it was a good idea? Any other relevant material.

Jennifer, Plenny, Maria and I wanted to create a film about a man is struggling with money to support himself, as well as his 6 year old brother. He is already so worried about how he is going to survive on the little income that he receives and when he gets fired this causes him to be angry and steal from his work. This shows how many people struggle in life and even good people make wrong choices. Liam knew it was wrong but at the time he was thinking of his younger brother and how he wants to give him the best.

Word Count: 102

B: Commentary: (1200SL-1750HL) word portfolio derived from your working notes and journals and highlighting your individual contribution to the project)

In the most relevant order detail:

1. Your areas of responsibility on the film. (Writer, Director, Director of Photography, Editor, one or more)
2. Problems and Challenges that arose in your area of responsibility.
3. How you solved problems that arose in your area of responsibility. (Remember that by fully explaining the above, and by giving specific details about what you did, you are actually giving evidence that you actually worked on the project.
4. Problems that arose on the film as a whole (not limited to your specific area of contribution.)
5. How the group solved problems that arose on the film as a whole. (You may, if you wish, detail problems in this section that arose because someone on the shoot had problems, was undependable, and did no work However, the first question I will be asking you is, “Why didn’t you go to that person and tell them that they were not contributing enough, or help them work on skills that they found difficult.”)
6. YOUR CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THE FINISHED PROJECT
   Note: This is a critical evaluation of the finished Product and not a second chance to complain about someone’s lack of work. Comments here should be insightful and detailed commentary about the project itself, what was successful and what could use improvement plus commentary on what you would do to avoid such problems in the future. (So, I would expect to see comments like “There are too many shots that are too long and linger for a beat after the take is completed” but not comments like “Fred screwed up the editing.”)

My main role during the production of this film was sound designer. I found the main track and also made some music that could be dramatic for the scene when Liam steals the money from his work. I also did some cinematography and directing for one of our days of filming because our cinematographer, Plenny, was absent.
Challenges as the sound ddesigner weren't very big considering i got lucky and found tracks and made tracks at a fast pace that fit our film pretty well. I did take a long time looking through the folders trying to find music that wasn't used or that fit our movie and i seemed to do that okay. I was nervous at first because i didn't feel the sound track i made would fit well enough but Jen, the editor, said it was perfect as well as the last sound track for the ending scene. 

The problems i faced for filming were huge i was worried most of the shots werent going to come out looking as good as the previous shots because it was a different person filming. Plenny is a great cinematographer and for all of our films that has been her main job and her not being there was unusual considering she is always there while production. It was difficult trying to think of the shots plenny did and get them right but overall it came out decent, expecially with Jens help, cause she is also pretty good with cinematography as well. 
I addressed the problems by just trying to focus on the footage we needed. I tried to think of shots Plenny did so i could reenact them. 



The challenges that we faced with our actors were that the little boy playing the little brother, my brother AJ, wasn't listening very well. The first few days of filming he did a good job of trying to stay focused and get the filming over with, but on our last day of filming, our re-shoot day, he was not corr-operating well at all! It was very frustrating for me because i was already lost trying to film and his lack of focus and fooling around was just not how i pictured out last day of filming. I think the reason he wasn't focusing was cause Plenny wasn't there and she was the one who helped him and talked to him.
Our biggest and most frustrating challenge was the footage. Our footage wouldn't upload correctly and we had to re-shoot certain scenes. The worst part about having to re-shoot was since the light wasn't the same as the day we originally shot, we had to re-shoot the whole scenes correlating to that certain part of the film.
The ways we fixed it were, to just try and bare with AJ. We tried to get him to do the shot correctly so we had to shoot it like 20 times until it was decent enough to use. We struggled and were all very fed up with the filming and couldn't wait to be done but we stuck with it and finished and the scenes we needed complete.  
We all participated pretty well to our film, sometimes each of us got off task and that slowed down production but that is to be expected while filming. 




First off I feel our film wasn't very strong to begin with. It was good but i feel more details and more thought could have put into the film. Plenny and I were working alone and had a horror movie in mind but it wasn't done being edited. We joined Jennifer and Maria to make a bigger production crew because both groups felt two wasn't good enough. We decided to go with Maria and Jen's treatment but made some changes when it came to our pitch. Our organization wasn't very good cause we got our actors a couple days before out first filming day and we just kinda threw things together when we were filming, but it seemed to work to our advantage until we had problems with the footage and had to re-shoot. Our main idea for the film overall i thought was "sometime bad things happen to good people." Liam is a nice, caring and loving brother towards Christopher and he wants to just give him the best he possibly can. That is difficult for Liam though because he doesn't have a lot of money and later on ends up losing his job. After losing their parents Liam doesn't realize how much he has to put in for Christopher and his own survival. He doesn't want Christopher finding out so he goes to steal from his job to help pay for their life. The shots we did for these scenes were well lit with the lighting kit and made the scene flow nicely especially with the intense background music. A scene i really liked was when Liam came home mad and yelled at Christopher to stay home, it was the scene before he was going to steal the money from his work. I liked this scene because the lighting was good and Jen did a great job of working around the small room and getting different angles for shots. During this time AJ kept laughing at Nick for his acting so Nick tried made it work though by yelling at him to not laugh and say "it isn't funny Christopher."  
I felt the most successful days were when we were all there and focused, not only Plenny, Jen, Maria and myself but our actors as well, because when AJ wasn't focused it threw everyone off and it was hard to focus. I tried to remind myself that my brother is only 5 and isn't an actor but it was hard cause i really wanted to just get the filming done with because it took hours to get just one scene done. Things that didn't work were when we were all just off task and weren't communicating with one another, one days of filming, which was our first day of re-shooting, i forgot some of our props and Plenny wasn't there and Nick had to leave early and none of our organization was there. Overall this movie came out decent, i would fix a few things here and there but i liked that our film was good with a short and very hectic schedule. The sound in the scenes weren't always so complex but they did help to give the movie more feeling.