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Matthew Bickford

Video Production III

Mrs.Lazarski

December 20th, 2022

Film Festival Reflection Paper

When originally presented with the Film Festival we were asked to come up with an idea

on spot and explain it around the room to our fellow peers. At first I had no idea on what I

wanted to do, in my head I thought of coming up with a horror film like I have in the past but

earlier that day my friend told me about an experience where he noticed someone playing chess

on a physical board by themselves. To be honest I thought it was rather peculiar and kinda a

stupid proposal to have a film like that but it was almost my turn to speak so I just blurted it out.

Everything basically stayed the same besides the literally topic itself which changed the day of

recording, and the reason for the adjustment was because.. well I didn’t have a chess board.

Should I have better prepared and taken action to make sure I had the actual correct game, yes

but you learn from your mistakes and now I know what to do for the future. Now I was able to

substitute checkers for chess so that became the new title and when going over the rubric I

realized my movie didn’t have a purpose so I used a running gag joke that Robert and I had about

this sewn bird which became the main villain and source of evil which Robert in the film is

trying to stop by playing the Checkers match. Actually in the video if you look close enough you

can notice the bird in the background so although it seems like Robert’s playing a checkers

match by himself its really against the bird who is telekinetically moving the pieces.
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Adding the parts together to prepare was pretty simple it involved fiinding a location,

knowing what shots to use along with techniques to make those shots work. A major part of the

pre-production though was creating a script which ran through the details of shots, location,

actors, ideas and overall just how I wanted the production to go. A problem I came across was

my own laziness and this came into play when I planned to have a montage but didn’t want to

actually coordinate all the shots, my plan was just to improvise but I know that in this field you

can’t just make concepts up as you go. I didn’t end up writing down all the shots for the collage

of shots but instead adapted and used what I felt was right for that scenario. Along with that I had

to find a day where Robert and I were both available to go film it and I also gave him the task to

show up dressed in a suit that looks worn or poorly managed to add the effect that he is crazy for

the audience. Once that was all done it was finally time for the filming portion.

Obviously during the production stage it requires recording and actually executing your

plan so it can come to life. Robert and I arrived at the filming site where there was no other

people in the area which was good and what I wanted to make it seem like his character was

alone and isolated. The actually filming took some time to do because I had to explain how I

wanted him to act in each scene that was shot and of couse you have to have some fun so we

goofed off a little bit here and there. Something that intereved from straight on recording was

also figuring out where I wanted to place the bird that I had and what order to place the shots

also reshooting certain shots to my ideality. One problem that I couldn’t overcome was how I

was going to show how the opponents checkers pieces were moving I didn’t have no green

screen and I didn’t know how to move it with editing so I only had one shot where the piece

moved and I did that with just blowing on it so it would fall onto the other side. Eventually when
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it came to the end of our recording It was just going to end with Robert getting up from the table

and walking away but I knew it would make the video seem bland and boring without a major

point. So to express more emotion and frustration after losing the match I asked him to flip the

table and honestly I’m glad we did because it adds more drama to the film, got a reaction out of

our classmates and it was just fun to see. After this all that was left was the post-production

where I had to edit and add the clips together along with music on top of it to add more of an

effect.

Editing with adobe premiere has never been a strong area for myself since I never been

really taught how to use it but I tried my best with what knowledge I had about the software.

Well to start the program was really buggy and it took me weeks to figure out how to keep the

after effects in adobe premiere without going offline even when I uploaded to my edit share I still

came across a lot of problems. I messed around with color correction but felt that the natural

lighting I was given was fine and also I adjusted the audio levels so it wasn’t piercing. Another

running joke I have is that Beethoven isn’t appreciated enough and that his music is fire (which it

is) so I decided to use Beethovens 9th symphony over my video which unironically worked

really well with my film. Actually it felt like the music was made for my video all those years

later because of how perfectly it fit. Then I added a suggestion Robert made a voiceover where

he said “Argh tis the day the beast broke me”, now why it was in a pirate voice I’ll be completely

honest I have no idea but the reason he said the beast was because he was referring to the blue

bird in the video. At the end I had two after effects one that had Checkers appear at the end and

then of course the credits. For me I felt like I could’ve finished this on my phone editing app but

I understand that what was being tested was how well we can use Adobe. But overall I felt like I
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struggled with editing and post production and I felt frustrated at times so it wasn’t my favorite

part of the whole process.

In my opinion the funnest part of this had to be just the regular production where I

recorded with Robert because I actually got to film and create my project. It just was a nice

experience of having my script and going along with the idea that I created, even though not

everything went according to plan I was glad I was able to come out with something creative.

That’s what I love about it the most is the aspect of being creative and doing things the way that

you want to do it because its all about imagination and there are endless possibilities of how you

can do something. I couldve shot the whole film upside down, in green, with animals, at night,

oversaturated, undersaturated just so many ways to do thats what I fell like the best part of it was.

Pre and Post production have their own structure on how it has to be done while recording is all

up the director/person filming on how they want it to be done.

My strengths during this process were creativity and process of recording because it all

helped to create a very interesting film called checkers. Now instead I have three weaknesses I

would like to mention preparedness, laziness, and editing. For me I think that if I found a way to

remember and not put things off that it would help me be more ready for certain things in the

process and also learning more on the editing side so I can become a better editor and put parts

together more efficiently and cleaner. Thats what I feel I can do to help improve as a student and

creator.

I was honestly surprised with how well the video came out for an idea that at first I had

doubts about but ended up having fun making and being happy to show other people what I
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made. I think it achieved the right reaction with the audience it left people confused on what they

just watched and kinda wondering what it was all about, originally it wasn’t supposed to have

any purpose at all but just to be a fun idea to work on but it ended up being a very interesting

idea. For my expectations going into it im happy with the project that came out and I hope that

people found it amusing and interesting to watch.