English: Create Your Own Short Films

 Hi there,

Today this blog post is about what we have been doing for the past few weeks in English. We were assigned to create our own films in small groups, relating them to The Merchant of Venice story that we read at the start of the year. In my group was Jayden, Lasa, Camryn and Cruz.  

1. What is your short film about? How is this a 're-telling of The Merchant of Venice? 

Our film didn't really display any relation to the story Merchant of Venice at all, it was just camera angles on basketball shooting. However, before we started filming we were planning to make our film about Romeo and Juliet but instead, the boys ended up playing basketball.  

3. What 2 additional film techniques did you use? What were the intended effects of these? 

In our film we had to include the following angles/shots, Full shot, Long shot, Tilt, Pan, Close up, Extreme close up, Mid shot and two more techniques of our choice. We covered a few of the angles in our film like Pan and Close up. There were actually more than two film techniques we used in our film which was Wide shot, Tracking shot, High angle and Worms eyeshot. 

These film techniques were intended to...

Tracking shot - To make the audience visual moving with the person and seeing what it's like when shooting the basketball from the player's point of view. 

Wide shot - To show the body movement and footwork of the person. To tell the audience who is in the scene and where is the scene set.      

4. What were some challenges you encountered while doing this project? What learnings did you gain from these challenges?

What our group found challenging was planning and deciding what we were going to film, especially if it had to identify The Merchant of Venice in it. Overall, in the end, we recorded a decent amount of angle/shots and made it to the point where we have a result to show with you guys.

Lesson learned: You can't do the work without asking for help and not knowing what to do. 

5. What would you do differently if you were to do this project again?

I would probably choose carefully with who I might work with instead of working with people I know that won't cooperate with the work. I would also ask for more help when we are stuck and don't know what to do. I have learned my lesson when it comes to group work and noted that I have to pick wisely before confirming right away.