Self Reflection Madelaine Demas

My film festival project-video is called “Coming Out.” It is a little pet shop

animation. It is a romance-drama about a lesbian teenager named Lennon claiming
the courage to come out to her parents, and finally agreeing with herself to do it.
The final project ended up being about just that. The theme is encouraging those
in the LGBTQ+ community to be less afraid of being who they are, no matter who
may hurt them for it; possibly parents.

During the pre-production phase, I wrote a seven minute script for the
project, chose littlest pet shops for each character, asked my friend to be a voice
actor, and got/created(some) of my props. Writing the script and picking littlest
pet shops went well. What didn’t go well was that I forgot to create a blue piece of
paper to cover my dollhouse’s windows, and didn’t use anything. The only obstacle I
faced for pre production was submitting my script on time, it was a few minutes
late(sophomore year). Nervous, I just decided to email it to Mr. Baker. To prevent
it from being late I could have worked on it before the last day to submit it on
time.

During the production phase in video production, you film or animate your
project. You bring it to life, and can even record voice overs for it. For mine, I sent
my voice actor the script, and he read over his lines. Then I recorded my own voice
for my lines. And took pictures of every single part of the video to make it a
fingerless(most who film LPS videos on YouTube use their fingers) animation. I
thought showing my fingers would look really weird and unprofessional, so I spent
many days to weeks animating it. It was very difficult and time consuming, but
extremely fun to do. I felt so proud when I finished it. Last year, I forgot to do
the film festival form, but it worked out in the end because I got to submit it to
the film festival this year. Taking the pictures went well, and so did the voice
recording. What didn’t go well is what I already said about the pre production part.
I forgot to color a sky to attach to the dollhouse windows, so when you watch the
video, you can see the “Friends” show poster in my bedroom. I’d say that the clear
view outside of the windows was the biggest obstacle I faced, and I did not
overcome it to the best of my abilities. But how I could have would have been to
draw or color a sky and tape it to the windows to make it look more like a proper
animation.

During the Post-Production Phase, you edit and put all your shots and voice
recordings together. It is the phase where you finish your masterpiece(video). For
the post production part of “Coming Out,” I put all of the photos together, and
made it an animation. I also added music, sound effects, the voice overs, and
transitions to it. This was the most difficult part of creating the entire film. Prior
to this video, I had never made an animation like this before, so it was my first
time. I learned and figured out how to do everything, and it was hard. Then after
editing a few parts, it became easy. The difficult part was how time consuming it
was. If I didn’t like certain pictures and how they made the animation look, I’d have
to retake them or cut them out. And this was something I couldn’t notice or see
before editing. I had to align the voices with the movement of the LPS and
everything to make them look like they were talking. Honestly, for the editing
everything went well, except for the scenes I’d have to recreate for looking blurry
or bad. Those were some of the obstacles as well, but to overcome them I did what
I said. I retook the bad looking scenes. The reason they were probably obstacles
to begin with is that I didn’t take a long enough look at a tiny bit of the photos to
see if they looked good before bringing them to life.

Post Production(AKA. Editing) was my favorite part of my video making

process. It was the most fun part of the entire thing, although it was the hardest.
While editing, I finally got to see my animation, what I had been working on, and
got to see it pay off. Got to see it come to life. It was amazing, and although it is
not the best animated film, it was my first, and is the video I put the most work
and effort into out of all my videos. If I didn’t have the app “iMovie” this film
wouldn’t exist.

Out of completing this project, I realized that my personal strength is

indeed editing on my phone, and a weakness could maybe be my voice acting. My
voice was okay in it, but that’s just it. I did try to voice well, and would re-record it
if I sounded bad. I can improve my voice acting by auditioning for plays, and
practicing on my own time or in class; so my future best becomes better than my
current best.

Lastly, yes I did meet my program objective. My goal was to spread

awareness to everyone in the LGBTQ+ community(target audience) to let them
know that their parents should not stop them from allowing themselves to be who
they are. You do not choose who you love, and that is perfectly okay. Love is love,
no matter the gender. I do believe that it is effective for its target audience,
along with the genre. Yes, my video did translate to the audience the way I
imagined it. I pictured it to be funny, but have a meaningful purpose. And that is
what it has.