After pre-production, me and Enrico put the storyboard into action. First of all, we gathered the real game footage. We chose to gather the game footage first because it was the most easiest to acquire. We gathered the game footage from basketball games that I recorded, and also from the Instagram of my basketball club. When we first drew up the storyboard, I already knew where I was going to get the footage so it was easy acquire.
After getting the game footage, I proceeded to shoot Enrico's training scene. It took a bit of time to come up with what we were going to do in the training scene, but we decided to shoot basic basketball drills, and general strength training. So this included shooting basketballs and gym scenes.
After shooting the shots, we started editing. Personally, I found editing and the whole process much simpler than our previous PSA project. I think this is because of two reasons. First of all it is because I used pre-recorded game footage, this made everything really quick and easy. Second, it's also because the OTS uses a lot of repetition so there was basically a pattern already.
Our editing screen
With that being said, the actual problem I encountered was syncing the video to the music. Obviously, we want some scenes to match up with the beat of the music. Currently we are still trying to match the duration of the video and audio. Now, we only need to shoot the final shots and sync the music before we wrap up the OTS. The final shot will be taken outside of class time, we will be trying to simulate a real game.
This term, we have begun creating our own Opening Title Sequence (OTS). A heavy and challenging, but fun and interesting task in my opinion.
To begin, it is important to create a story, or in this case the outline of a story that we will use for the OTS. Obviously we are not planning to make a whole TV series, so the outline can be as imaginative as you want (as long as you can realize it in the OTS). This outline is referred to as a "treatment", this is my treatment for the OTS I am doing:
Title: Reps on Reps
The story follows Rico,
a 15-year old, as he tries to regain his dignity and pride as a basketball
player. Following his team’s huge upset in the Provincial Tournament finals
back in 2016, Rico goes into an existential crisis and starts to doubt his
decision to pursue a basketball career. The surge that rekindles Rico’s spirit,
and opens a path to his potential return, is none other than his own teammate
Nash. Journeying hand-in-hand as they mutually push each other to reach their
maximum potential.
It is a very rough outline and I gave the characters names just for the sake of my imagination, I feel that it helps me give them character and envision them. Obviously the treatment is a treatment of the "series" that the OTS comes from, so not all of the characters will be revealed in the OTS. The title of the OTS' "series" is also still in consideration as I have partnered up with Enrico, so we are still considering what title we are actually going to use. The title is important because we will display the title in the OTS, so we wants something that is able to efficient summarize the story.
Using this treatment, we began creating a storyboard. At the start I was kind of stuck, I didn't know what I wanted it to look like. But the sports and basketball theme was very clear, so I just began watching basketball videos and mixes in YouTube (something I personally enjoy as well). Then, after browsing for a while, I found a video I quite enjoyed.
After watching the video, I really liked the part where the video flashes back and forth between game footage and training footage. I thought that it would make a really good OTS.
With enough inspiration, I began working on the storyboard. For me, the whole process was actually quite simple. I generally followed the video with a few additional shots, I added a ticking clock shot and a "game-winning basket" shot into the storyboard. All was well and I though everything was going smoothly, but then I realized how am I going to acquire game footage? Obviously "stealing" footage from real NBA games look to professional and thus does not fit the OTS.
My Storyboard
...And so I went back into brainstorming, trying to figure out ways. At first I discussed with Enrico and though whether or not we should just shoot us playing during break time. It was a normal basketball game so it should suffice, but then I remembered that I was involved in a tournament last year and I had asked my brother to take videos. So we decided to use those footage instead.
Real game footage from last year
With the video aspect ready, we had to move on to the audio aspect. We had to pair up with one of the music students from Ibu Megan's class, me and Enrico paired up with Mukund. Going in, we already had a music inspiration that we thought we could edit or mix (change of some sort)...
So we discussed with Mukund what we wanted from the song, some of the main points were:
We wanted the tense and serious vibe
The loud "bang" (sort of) noise that came occasionally was also nice, we thought that it could be synced up with the video
Try to minimize happy and energetic vibes in the song
Obviously copying the whole song and just removing the vocals is out of the question, so the next step is to see what Mukund comes up with while we start creating the OTS on our side.
Sources Used
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaVA6sgOpws - The song inspiration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Wa_YS93Rs - Basketball video inspiration
So after the exams, me and my crew ended up finishing the shot on the Friday that I intended it to be shot. After that, we obviously moved on to the post production process. Before doing anything, adding the title sequence, effects, music, etc., we made sure that we have all the shots that we took. Unfortunately, we lost one shot. Even so, we managed to recover it as we realized we just forgot to import that shot onto Nikolas' macbook (which we used to edit). The first step of the post production was to trim all our shots. It was quite easy since we were going to mute the sound, so we didn't need really need to cut out me shouting "ACTION!" After trimming the shots, we added in transitions for the shots. Me and my crew were looking for simple transitions that didn't look too flashy and exaggerated.
This here is our shot list, honestly speaking, it is quite crude in nature but it gets the job done since the whole crew understands it. Looking at this list, I realized that our crew has two patterns when shooting. Shots that took 3+ shots takes are either at inconvenient locations, or are shot with my iPhone. Throughout the shooting process we used two cameras, a professional Nikon DSLR camera belonging to Nikolas, and my iPhone. Those two equipment produce satisfying results, the zoom and focus are as we wanted, and the quality of picture is great. The downside of it is probably the shaking, but it can be easily mitigated with a stabilizing software or a tripod. So equipment can't be our reason for re-shooting, it is the acting and general coordination, in fact. Shots 1D and 1C need to be re-shot because of the acting and a general blunder in coordination, then again, the fault would land on my lack of leadership skills as the director. So I should work on that on my next shooting sessions.
I couldn't make my actor control his emotions
At one point, we even got too much into the action scenes
We also did too much testing and exploration of possible shots
Even so, re-shooting won't be a huge problem. Our first shot of the project took a whole period to pull off since we needed to learn, but now, finishing a take shouldn't be any longer than ~25 minutes. With that said, we still have to shoot shots 3A and 3B, which needs to be shot near Emerald.
Shots 3A and 3B, at the top right corner
The best course of action would be to do it after school, I'm thinking Friday next week which is the last day of exams. We won't have any other tasks on hand, and we go home early, that would be the perfect opportunity to get that shot done.
This term, we are studying PSAs. What is a PSA? Simply put, PSA is an abbreviation for "Public Service Announcement". PSAs can be classified as an advertisement, although its purpose is completely different than an ordinary advertisement. PSAs are advertisements that are made to convey information for the public good, they usually promote positive behavioral change. Advertisements about not drinking and driving, anti-bullying, or anti-drugs are some examples of common PSAs. The first PSAs were broadcasted in WW2 by the UK and US, most of those PSAs were made to help war efforts. Now war is seen as a negative thing nowadays, but back then enlisting yourself into the army was seen as patriotic and helpful to the country.
"This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs" The most recognized PSA on anti-drugs is a short clip of an egg getting fried with that message.
In class, me and my group did initial research on PSAs, we looked for examples of PSAs and we came across one which we liked. The PSA is called "It Can Wait", interestingly, this PSA was made by a Youtube channel called "Random at Best". The PSA's main purpose is to stop people from texting and driving, although it does so in a unique manner which we came to like. Most PSAs are short, snappy, straight to the point, but this PSA overextends a scenario which could have ended in a simple manner. The PSA initially builds up our emotions, making us "hooked" with the story, but then it suddenly ends the story ironically and hilariously links the whole thing to a message asking us to stop texting & driving.
We really liked how the PSA used narrative and plot as a way to make itself interesting. We decided to create a PSA in the style of "It Can Wait", where there is a whole thought-out story and not just a straight-forward message like most common PSAs. In this project I took the role of director and cameraman at the same time, and my groupmates Nikolas and Sebastian are the actors, although they will help in post-production. After sending in the proposal to Ibu Lis and thinking up an outline script, I began working on the storyboard.
The first Storyboard I drew up for the PSA
As everything is still in the initial stages, I didn't make a lot of changes to the storyboard. In fact, we pulled off the shots in this storyboard relatively easily. For the sake of organization, I decided to divide the storyboard into three sequences. The first one (above) is when Seb gets bullied, the second one is when Seb starts learning to defend himself, and the third one is when Seb becomes the bully himself with the martial arts skill he learned.
Storyboard for the second sequence
So far, we have finished all the shots for sequence one, and we are finishing up the second sequence. Currently, we are faced with a problem for the second sequence, shots 3A and 3B needs to be shot at Emerald so we are still trying to figure the schedule for that. Lastly, I still have to draw up the storyboard for the third sequence. I'm thinking of using similar shots from the first sequence, only this time, the positions are switched.
