Whilst the project offered its own set of challenges and frustrations it offered me something that I’m rather grateful for; the opportunity to get out with an idea in mind and actually create something – to ‘work in the field’ as well as behind the scenes, both collaboratively and solo. With every experience I gain through projects like this I come to learn more about the industry, how to work and compose myself within in, and arguably most important; who I am as a creator, my styles, as well as my own personal goals and interests. But I could not have done this alone, not in a 100 years. The outcome of this project as well as all I have achieved this semester is all thanks to collaborative work with the members of the ‘Box’ studio. So, to Paul and all of my classmates, Cheers. It’s been a blast this semester, I wish you all the best, and I hope to see you and work with you in the future. – Cody.

Early on in the initial stages of the project we decidedly to evenly split the project into 4 pieces and have each of us shoot and edit our allocated piece. Whilst a good thought at first, it turned out that it wasn’t quite feasible with our clashing timetables. In the end Adrian and I ended up doing the shooting, with the editing being split between Adrian, Lydia, and I; with Lydia editing all of chapter 4, Adrian editing Chapter 2 and the audio foley with additional extras for 1, and me editing chapter 1 with parts of audio, and all of chapter 3. It was ‘all over the place’, but we were able to communicate as a team, working on certain aspects together and communicating how to link our work together.

Editing proved to have some major problems along the way, from missed takes, missing footage, as well as unusable audio (despite preparing for the worst). Chapter 1 was particularly difficult in this aspect, being filmed outside and with what was easily the noisiest set (crashing waves aren’t exactly silent). In order to work around this an en masse export of all rerecorded lines into Adobe audition was needed to do major alterations. After managing to make the dialogue sound more distant and natural to the environment (with the help of an accompanying underlying soundscape), all that was needed was to shift the dialogue between the left and right audio channels relative to the given shot, and finally syncing up said dialogue. Presto! Simple. Kind of, not really. It hurt.

Of course no major project is without its own learning curves and issues. Prior to getting into the deeper parts of editing I had to research and learn new title animations and ensure they fitted the styling. Although I got there in the end, there is only so much amateur how-to videos someone can handle before saying ‘stuff it’ and figuring out the rest through trial and error. Got that all done? Sweet, time to move onto the next problem. Remember those chaotic harsh winds at Cape Paterson? Well they’ve come back with a vengeance, because now all dialogue is inaudible. “but Cody” you say, “you should have prepared for this and recorded with a mic sock!”. Oh but we did. Not only that but we also recorded wild lines in case the need for dubbing arose (like now!)…however, they seem to have gone missing. Will keep posted, I need to go look for them now.

Whilst it was fun, the night shoot turned out to be a major signifier of the downsides of working in film: not finishing until 3AM, we had essentially worked for 22 hours straight. By the end of it we had done it all; issues with fire, mood setting with fog machines, extreme fatigue, Bunnings adventures, even becoming covered in fake blood (which made for an interesting Uber ride home having to explain we’re not murderers). Suffice to say, if we were to do it again I would recommend A LOT more planning in order to spread the shoot out over two or more days, but then again I have to take schedules into consideration – such as what we experienced: with everyone having vastly different timetables between uni and work, we had no other option but to attempt to cram it all into one night. Thankfully, almost miraculously, we were able to pull it off (for the most part anyway).

The time for talk was over! It was finally time for us to hit the road and get this production properly started. Following our Thursday class in week 10 Adrian and I took to the road in preparation of a shoot early next morning. Arriving in South Gippsland later that evening, we popped out to Phillip Island with the cast for a table read over dinner before calling it quits for the night. Boom. 5AM and we were on our way. we left to pick up our other cast member and within half an hour we were at the Cape Paterson Boat Ramp freezing various body parts off. Despite the harsh cold winds the shoot went well, it was just going to be a loooong day.

I’m not overly sure as to how other people do it, but one way that I’ve always been able to storyboard has been in my head, remaining more of a personal mental process. Yes there are downsides as that there’s no concrete evidence of forethought nor any reference material (and even subject to being forgotten), but for the most part I don’t have much of an issue with it, and it has helped me thus far. For instance; whilst Adrian gave the initial pitch for the project I was planning particular shots out in my head – shots which made it through to the final cut. However, as happy as I would have been to keep these shots entirely in my head, I understand that it’s not exactly convenient for others in the group and could come back to bite me, so I returned to the script to add in corresponding shot details to their respective lines of dialogue.

For the most part the script of the project was Adrian’s baby. As of the pitch the majority of it had been written already. It was only once we had formed a group that changes were made, such as changes names and attributes of characters, as well as fleshing out backgrounds, motives, and personalities. In order to achieve this we spent a morning doing a table read and adding notes as we went along. Although we all approved of the script and liked how it flowed, changes of lines and slight details are almost inevitable – with certain parts being omitted, some altered, and even some added during the filming process.

The Pitch was an interesting da, well, for me anyway. It was a cold Tuesday morning, I was tired, I had spent the last 3 nights working til midnight as well as editing a video for a different class. Then it happened; “hey Cody, did you remember your pitch today?”. Oh shit. Luckily other people were before me, and even more lucky that I had coincidentally been writing an idea for a video over the last week. So I jumbled the notes together into a short speech and fired away. Long story short, it was a terrible idea and I chose to join Adrian instead (something that was likely going to happen regardless of my preparation.)