Film Project Summary

Undoubtedly, our film project “The Pursuit” is the result of painstaking effort from each group member. The plot itself was the product of a vigorous exchange of ideas: I first came up with a story which my groupmates did not like, and then Jason suggested that we do something with a stalking theme. Thus, we ended up doing a film along the line of films “Seduction” or “Fatal Attraction” and heavily influenced by the thriller genre.

I became the sole cameraman, with Charice, Jason, and John as the main actors, and Gale as my co-director and co-editor of the film. Among the problems that we encountered in filmmaking were the limitations in time and resources such as equipment and technical knowledge in filmmaking. For instance, none of us knew how to edit a film and we were using a handheld camera that made most of the shots shaky. Most of us were also not used to acting in front of the camera, which made it necessary to retake most of the shots as the actors were laughing.

Being a collaborative process, we tried as much as possible to be involved in capturing on film what we had in mind and to be present at all shootings, which was difficult given our different class schedules. To resolve these issues, we asked Bob from the IMS to teach us how to edit the film, and then we just maximized the resources that were available to come up with a good film. A notable scene in our film is John’s dream scene, which depicts our effort to use the mis-en-scene to show John’s real side of being sweet despite his obsessive and geeky personality.

In this scene, we first showed a close-up of a picnic basket with flowers, wine, and fruits before showing John and Charice in a picnic, and then zoom out to a wide shot to show them and the things around them. We situated the camera above so that the angle of the shot shows his full profile in the natural light and shows his unique personality. Lastly, we intentionally blurred the shots and made the music softer which succeeds in suggesting to the viewer the dream-like and fantasy quality of the scene. An area that I would like to improve in the film is the transition between scenes.

I think the film would benefit from longer transitions. I would also like to refine the quality of the background music as it sounds choppy and distorted in some scenes, although I would have to study sound editing in order to do this. All in all, producing the film project was a very challenging but fulfilling experience for me. It made me realize that jobs in the film industry are as difficult as any other jobs around. However, it also forced me to learn a lot on both the creative and technical aspects of filmmaking such as editing, which I am confident would be very useful to me in my future film projects.

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