(p.s. sorry for the weird formatting.. im still trying to get used to inserting pictures)
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.
Our film is called Exit Wounds and my group decided to focus on trying to show the amount of stress and difficulty of providing a simple life for your family. We wanted a strong driving emotion to be seen in order to understand the torment; we planned our short film this way because we were influenced by a book some of us had read in English about a traumatized man. There was no specific style we had used. We kept our audience open to everybody. I thought it was a good idea because our audience could connect with our motives.
B: Commentary: (1200SL-1750HL) word portfolio derived from your working notes and journals and highlighting your individual contribution to the project)
In this film production group, I was the assigned Cinematographer. I also helped quite a bit in the preproduction stage because in our 2 column script, my group needed my input on the certain types of shots we wanted and/or needed to get. I kept flipping back and forth between the script and 2 column script (see our 2 column script here) so I could see the whole movie play out how I pictured it in my head. And once I had pictured it in my head, I would find the best way to show that specific scene and then I would type out what I had in mind in our 2 column script. I had Anissa take a couple pictures on our first day of filming. I was the one who mainly worked with the camera and the tripod and the first picture is of my laughing because I was trying to get a good over-the-shoulder shot of AJ (who’s playing the little boy, Christopher). 
I’m standing on a chair in the next one, even though it’s sort of unclear, because I wanted to track Nick’s movement along the room and the glide track we had checked out couldn’t reach that high because of the limited amount of height the tripod had. Plus, Nick is pretty tall so I just decided to use the resources around me and stand on a chair. 
It turned out that if I held the camera under my chin, I would be right at eye level with Nick and I thought this was good.
The other pictures of me (in the purple jacket) shows me filming two different scenes we needed at the prop house. 
The one where I’m sitting down and my leg is hanging over the edge, was a long shot I wanted to get of our main actor, Nick, doing his custodial duties. It was pretty scary sitting on the edge because there was only a flimsy wooden bar that blocked the way. The next picture is of me bent over and holding the camera close to a mop (I’m not really sure what the yellow container is called though.) 
I was trying to get a close up of the wheels turning as Nick rolled it along the floor. This also shows my attempt to get as much coverage as I could while filming on location. There were problems on some days when I couldn’t communicate well with the actors we had casted. It was a challenge for me to work with the director and have her help me work best with the actors we had at hand. The fact that communication wasn’t strong between everyone in the group as well as our actors proved a definite problem because my group members and I would be all set to film but we would have to wait around for our main actor because he had school or work. 
The picture I inserted is of AJ and me in the bottom right hand corner watching him; he’s complaining about the lateness of our main actor. But the challenge for me, I think, would be getting coverage. I’m not sure that I thought out the camera shots and angles as much as I should have and that led to simple, basic angles during our shootings. Challenges would only came up after we filmed all of our scenes. We had uploaded all of our footage and our editor, Jen, was doing her best to wrestle with our raw footage. I didn’t do much in this stage; it seemed like the film was out of my hands for now because my job was only required during the production part of the film. I was the one who worked the camera and it wasn’t my main job and sole duty to edit the footage or look for music. The problem concerning my communication with our actors, I talked with our sound designer who also understood the fact that we need a better relationship with our actors. Since the little boy who played our other main character was Anissa’s brother, I was able to work with him better. I would talk to him and have a conversation with him because he would always get distracted with me and how I was working with the camera and other equipment. I would be able to get him to focus and work hard to show the emotions we wanted to be shown. The first time shooting our opening scene, his character Christopher had to accidentally knock over a bowl of cereal. Some general problems that arose were the dependability of our main actor. We chose someone who we knew but someone who wasn’t centrally located in our area. He had to commute to us and it was difficult because he would run very late. Another problem would be the fact that we all would forget our much needed equipment. There was bad communication about getting the equipment because sports and school would get in the way and priorities had to be rearranged. We would also sometimes forget the props that Christopher (the little boy) would need in most of the scenes. I would help solve these problems by texting everyone in the group and using Facebook to remind them of items. I would make a list of the items we needed to have and be on top of everything. There would be problems with getting our little actor to focus and everyone in our group did their best not to lose their patience and try to coax and bribe him to do a good job so we could move on. It was a problem that we had to keep reshooting all of our scenes just because the audio decided to be stubborn. We double checked our equipment right before we started and yet once we uploaded the footage onto Jen’s computer, the audio wasn’t there. Or, for about half of the first scene, there was a loud buzzing sound that kept going. For the scenes concerning Liam’s work and the robbery, we had a hard time focusing because of the enormous amount of props that packed the prop house we filmed at. Overall I feel like my film production group did a great job with our short film. Our opening shot and beginning scene pass by too quick and don’t give much of the background that we wanted the audience to have. The music at the end goes along with the emotion and tension we wanted to show. Jen made sure that there weren’t any dropped shots in our short film. I thought the overall story was successful; we were able to get every shot we wanted except one which made the beginning scene a little too fast. The cutting between scenes could use a little improvement. I think we could’ve made the transition a little smoother; or I felt like we were using too many transitions and not having that straight cut that could’ve worked better. The scene right before the robbery is committed, in the apartment, I thought the lighting was good. The dialogue could be improved to made it seem more normal. We did the best we could with the footage we filmed and I think the final product showed how hard we tried to work and our efforts to share our story.
