Sunday, January 18, 2015

Lights, Camera, Camp!

Over the years, I have spent hours locked up in my room watching a variety of short films and feature films of any genre. I chose to spend majority of my time watching Film Riot videos on the ins and outs of filmmaking rather than memorize the entire Periodic Table of Elements for an upcoming test. In this case, procrastination wasn't the evil villain we connote it to be.

Once I realized that I have put great interest into the film industry, I went on a search for any workshop or event I could attend. Most of what I found were directed towards college students so with a heavy sigh, I kept looking. The search ended when a schoolmate posted on my batch's group page proof that the world of Pokémon does exist. Just kidding. The message went as follows: "Hi guys! Loyola Film Circle is inviting DLSZ students to join Film Camp! It's a Film Production workshop for high school students that will teach you the basics of cinematography, film directing and film editing." Yes, it indeed said high school students. You can imagine how I reacted to this.


After I sent my application form, I soon received an email regarding my acceptance to the film camp. It felt as if my Hogwarts acceptance letter was handed to me. It was like the entrance to the Chocolate Factory appeared right in front of me and all I had to do was step inside. It was a moment wherein rainbows would just materialize in front of you and you'd end up in this sort of trance. I was honestly overjoyed to be one of the few chosen to attend their first film camp.

During the workshop, they grouped us per school, except for those whose groups didn't have enough members, and labeled each one after a well-known director. My group ended up being Team Miyazaki and we came ready to conquer. Also, we were given the opportunity to choose from the 3 elective classes and I selected Directing as this appealed to me the most. Towards the end, each group was tasked to create a short film to go along with the song "Dying To Meet You" by She's Only Sixteen [definitely a recommendation!] and apply what we learned from our classes during the production process. It was decided that Kyra and I were directing along with Kristine as assistant director, Jeymi as DP, and Sophia and Joie as editors.

Camp Counselor Tanya
(L-R) Kristine, Me, Jeymi, Kyra, Sophia, and Joie

Directing Class with Gabriel Quimel of ManilaMan Productions Inc. and LFC members

The pre-production and production phases were extremely fun as we got to bond and even playfully mock one of the other groups whenever they passed by [well, they started it since they were so smug and overly confident that they would win]. On the other hand, post-production was a different story. The only editing program we could use was iMovie so obviously any special effects we wanted to do was immediately crossed off. Also, I wasn't particularly impressed with how we color graded the film, but with the time limit at hand, we needed to work with what we had. To add to the challenges we faced, the source clips that were saved in the laptop we were using got deleted so we had to scrap the whole work and go back to square one with the editing process. That was surely a nightmare. However, we calmed down, stayed positive, and got it together.






From this whole experience, I became assured of the choices I will soon be deciding on. It was because I learned an important message I needed to know. Every story that you may have, whether it be an eventful memory or an odd inside joke you share with your friends, is worth telling. Surely, the craft put into storytelling is a skill to be obtained, but if you succeed in telling it well, someone out there will listen.

If you want to watch Team Miyazaki's short film:


4 comments:

  1. It looks like it was a cool camp and you learn a lot and had so much fan! I hope you become a successful filmmaker once!:)

    xxMonica
    http://sunstreetbymonica.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much Monica! I'll do my best :)

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  2. This nice dear, great experience for you. By the way, do you mind following each other
    via GFC or bloglovin'? If you just like my blog also. let me know okay...

    love,
    Cassie Thriftier

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Cassie! Sure, why not? You can follow first and I'll follow back as well. :)

      Delete

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