How We've Worked Together

    You know what, honestly, before this project was even assigned for us to do I was planning to create, film, and edit my own personal film opening. And thank goodness I changed my mind about doing that because I don't think I could've done this all by myself, or with any other group of people for that matter. Everyone played an important role in this and now I'm going to discuss that in more detail.

    Tori made one of the most significant contributions to this film opening by lending her skills to play Betty. Although, as far as we know, she does not have much acting experience, she played our main character wonderfully, delivering all the lines well and the right level of drama we needed. She also filmed Betty's bedroom scene all by herself (well without any of our help anyway) and was the person whose camera we used to film most of the opening! I am very proud of and grateful for Tori, we definitely couldn't do this without her. 

    Now, Daniel, one of my closest friends and closest collaborators on this project did plentyyyy of work on this and I just have to shout him out for what he did. Not only did Daniel help to formulate the story and write the brief dialogue, but he also played the supporting character, James. On top of all of that hard work, he also let us use his house and one of his parents' cars to shoot some of the scenes. I cannot even begin to describe the amount of unconditional gratitude I have for the part (or shall I say parts) that Daniel played in this production.

    Melanie, regrettably could not come to the filming of this project, due to her parents' hesitancy regarding the COVID-19 restrictions, but also has been (and still is of course) pulling her weight. Melanie has been the main editor for this, especially taking up the role because she couldn't join us in shooting the actual thing, and frankly I think we owe her a lot. None of us have had editing experience, at least not enough, but Melanie has had a little more experience than anyone else and has been learning even more stuff along the way. Without her new knowledge and access to those fancy editing programs, our edited film opening (so far) would never have turned out so great!

    I also have to mention our friend Ashley Polo who graciously accepted our request to come and play August, something she had no real obligation to do. She played the role very well and was superr cooperative when we had to do multiple takes in the blazing sun, something I'm not even sure I could handle. 

    Personally, I found the planning of this entire project a little challenging. And I'm talking about all the aspects of planning which included: the storyboarding, the organizing of the filming location(s) and who was going to play who. Not that this was that hard or difficult but it was pretty stressful and I was worried that we wouldn't have everything, or everyone for that matter, ready, by the time we needed to begin filming. The current pandemic and the worry of following guidelines definitely was a factor in that stress. But clearly, everything did turn out alright and all of that planning and organizing made the process of filming, and right now editing, even easier!