HUGE DAY #2 More fighting! PP#10

     Yesterday was day two of fight practice.  Next week is film time!  But about yesterday, we ran through some of the old moves that we did before, while also extending into some new moves and fight sequences that we plan to implement into the final product.  A couple more moves we included had props, kicks, and overall more movement, as I liked the chaotic nature of all these scenes.  I'll show them below.  

Here in this scene, Saloman can be seen wielding a pole.  We took a bunch of necessary precautions.  We made sure that there was an extreme, distance between the actor and the swinging pole, about 3 feet, while also stacking the camera to make the hits connect. 

 

In this scene, there was a ton more running and props, which can be seen when Saloman hits the floor while being choked out.  

This is just another angle to the same speed while on the other side of the pair!

For more shits and giggles, I made a fun little concept video as well for today, feel free to check it out!

-Noa

Instagram Page Created PP#9

    A couple of days ago I created the Instagram page for my film, FIGHT SIMULATOR VR, made a profile picture, and proceeded to use that as the first post.  I wanted the first post to be able to tell what the title of the film is going to be about, but not hint at any major points of the plot in the film that might spoil it.  From the first post, I'm hoping that my audience would get the gist of a couple things.  First of all, the text that I used is inactive of video games, like the 8-bit font, so I'm hoping that mixed with the title's VR would reveal to the audience that it's about a video game.  Additionally, I used blood to give the idea that this production is going to be pretty bloody!

    In addition to the first post, which was made when I made the account, I also added one more, which is a behind-the-scenes post showing and giving some insight into creating the film.

    This is the post zoomed in, and it is essentially the "fight sequence," which is basically the list of fighting techniques we used, and I would write them down when we need to perform them on shooting day.  Imagine like, a script, but for fighting!  It's a cool concept and I thought it'd be cool to make it into a little behind-the-scenes post.  

    I plan on releasing more behind-the-scenes stuff. Not only because I have so much footage, but because honestly getting the footage was too much fun not to release it.  And I feel like releasing this type of content onto my page would make people inclined to view the film, while also seemingly being involved with the production process. 

-Noa

Camera Equipment for the Shooting next NEXT week PP#8

     Filming for the short film is coming up, and I need some equipment in order to be able to... film this thing.  Starting with the camera, I will keep it simple by using my iPhone 11.  It's done me well over the past couple of projects, and not only does it look nice since it can shoot in 4K, but also because it's really the only thing that I have.  I tried asking my high school Television class if I could perhaps use some of their equipment, but you have to be a student within the television class, so that meant I'm stuck with my phone.  My phone looks fine, however, it definitely could look better if I had a camera with tangible lenses that I could manipulate in order to garner sexy shots regarding focus and depth.  But as for now, my phone will do!

This is the phone I have and I plan on shooting with, it has a 12 MP wide camera, which I plan to use to get some close-up shots, while also a 12 MP telephoto lens which I plan to use for my basic filming.  

    While I plan to use my phone using my hands for a couple of shots, a majority of my shots are going to need some sort of stabilizing equipment, like a tripod or a camera mount with a phone plug-in.  

    My sister was in this class last year and actually had a couple of these things lying around after she left for college.  They were in her room collecting dust, and I figured she wouldn't;t be back for a couple months, so she probably wasn't going to need them.  I managed to get them, and I thought they would be in subpar condition considering how much use they've been through with my sister, but they're actually in really great condition!  

    First up is this little guy!  As you can see it is a regular cameras mount with an included phone holder, which is like perfect for my current situation.  I plan on using this camera for the fight scene mostly, as it is gonna give me tons of maneuverability within the nooks and crannies within the fight.  Not only that, it'll be able to keep the camera stable (horizontally stable at least) throughout the fight to avoid too much motion being recorded, like I don't want the final product to be disorienting, but also have some chaos mixed in there!  Also, you may have noticed the little spider legs on the bottom, which re essentially foldable legs that can be used to adjust for height, and angles, while also allowing the ability for it to be attached anywhere via wrapping its little legs around anywhere.  

    Next up is this tripod that is able to extend to about 6 feet-ish.  I plan on using this tripod in order to shoot basic shots like over-the-shoulder shots that aren't in action since this camera is most likely going to be standing still.  For example, when the main character enters the video game, I plan on using a long shot to introduce the battle arena where they duke it out at.  Here is where I'll use the tripod so I can get a nice, good, stable, shot.  

    Now that I think about it, I think my sister was planning on throwing these things away once she left for college since my mother instructed her to just leave shit behind that she doesn't need/want.  But hey, another man's trash is another man's treasure!

-Noa

Location Details/Scouting PP#7

     I've been working on my storyboards for a while, and one thing I need to figure out is the location I plan to film this project.  This project will have, I believe, 3 locations in total.  First is David's house, which will open up the film.  David's house can be seen in Nat 20, and it was the basement where we were playing Dungeons and Dragons.  

This is the basement, however, I plan on shooting in other parts of his house (with his permission of course) such as the living room and his bedroom.  

    So that is one of three of the locations I plan on filming at.  The next one is Heron Park, which is simply a giant field.  I chose this park in particular for two reasons.  One, it's fairly empty.  Literally and figuratively.  There's really nothing there as it's just a huge field, and also people tend to not visit the park too often, meaning it'll be empty without other individuals when we film.  The second reason plays well with the first reason.  Since it's so empty, it looks like a pre-generated, flat world that would be found within a video game.      

This is the park at an atrial view courtesy of my city website.  You can see that it's pretty big and empty, which is what I'd like.  

I pulled this photo from the internet, and I think it captures what I'm trying to say.  The photo above is a simple asset found in a video game engine, and I feel like the field I have above matches the idea that the main character spawns inside a pre-generated asset.  

    I have now mentioned two places that I plan to film at, and I'm still looking for the third one.  Within the story, the combat tutorial NPC is going to teleport David to another battle area, after they fight in the big field for a little bit.  However, I still haven't found an area where they could potentially fight at.  I'd like for an area that isn't as empty as the field, but still empty enough for my actors to fight in and not field pressured to accidentally hit their surroundings.  

Again looking at my film intro, I think filming adjacent to this spot would work.  There tend to be some trees and foliage that would add some natural aspects to the fight, while still allowing my actors to fight.

    I also like the area above since the lighting seems really good, along with being really grassy.  My actors are gonna be on the ground at some points fighting, and I'd rather them be fighting on the soft grass as opposed of hard concrete.  

    But yeah, those are some of the locations you'll see being used within the film!

Links:

https://www.westonfl.org/Home/Components/FacilityDirectory/FacilityDirectory/18/239

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ7PC_Vb7iw&t

-Noa

Fake Blood Shopping PP#6

    Today I went to Publix and got some materials that I would possibly need in order to make some fake blood, which I want to have an abundance of for filming because I want this fight scene to be pretty bloody.  With that said I took to the internet and looked for some recipes for fake blood, and came across this website that shows different ways how to create fake blood.  I wanted a version that didn't have food coloring so it wouldn't stain the skin/clothing of the actors, so no food dye.  With that, I wanted to find a substitute for the red color part of the blood, so I turned to non-toxic ingredients, like child watercolor!

    After that, I needed the other ingredients that I would use to construct the fake blood.  The other ingredients called for cornstarch and cocoa powder.  The corn starch ould add a thick consistency that blood has, while the cocoa powder would add to the dark tint that blood has, since blood isn't just an opaque red color, however would add some depth to the dark rich red.  

The blood here has some darker areas, especially when in thick volumes and in shadow.

I then went to Publix, which to the U.K, is just a grocery store.  And like 14 bucks later, due to inflation, all the ingredients were collected.  

I bought some food coloring just in case the water color idea doesn't work!

-Noa

HUGE DAY: Storyboarding Problem Solved! PP#5

    A couple of posts ago I made a blog that documented how tricky it was to storyboard and plan this fight scene.  Sitting in class and trying to figure out how this would look was freaking impossible.  So I took a sigh and was like, "I'll save it for the weekend," totally under the impression that I'd just be stuck at home, similar to how I was during the school day.  The blog post I'm referring to is here, and I basically talked about how difficult the process of planning a fight scene was, and I needed a solution.  

    Fast forward to today, which started off like any normal day.  My friends were coming over to hang out, per usual, and my friend David and Saloman came earlier today, and my other couple of friends were running a bit late.  These names may sound familiar, as they were actually my actors in Nat 20, the film introduction I created last year.  Click here to check it out!  As we were waiting, a huge revelation came to me.  Saloman and David, these were the actors I was planning to shoot the film with.  I told them about the basic premise of my film days ago, and they seemed to like it, however, when it came to actually doing some fighting in preparations for the film, they didn't know when they would be doing some choreography.  So as we were waiting, I thought: "I had trouble planning the fight during school, why don't I start planning with them now?"  I asked them if they wanted to help me plan the fight scenes for my film, and they seemed okay with it.  Actually not even okay with it.  They seemed excited.  So we drove to the shooting location where we planned to film the short film.  I grabbed my phone to film, and notebook to take notes on the fight hopped in my car, and hoped for the best.  

    The first order of business prior to actually doing any fighting of any sort was to give them some hints and tips on how to sell a hit.  As I mentioned before, I watched a ton of videos on how to do this fighting stuff, and I told them the best parts that they could use when it came to be the actors in my fight scene.  

    THINGS I TOLD MY ACTORS:

1) First thing first, safety!  Fortunately, my friend is 18 and acted as our adult supervision throughout the whole planning for today, and I told them that staying safe was tons more important than anything we were going to do today.  I mentioned how throwing fists for the camera is different than real life, as camera fights are extremely more exaggerated, along with keeping distance between hits and blows.  I told them that I wanted around 6 inches to one foot of space in between the fake punches in order to make sure no one gets hit.  

2) Now down to business.  I told my friends there were three components to making a punch look legit for the camera.  First, the camera.  The camera was super important for how the hits would look, and although my actors wouldn't be handling the camera, I'd still mention the importance of the camera so they can be aware of the camera's position during fights and for stacking, which is a technique that allows hits to look like they hit when in actuality, they miss completely.

    This is an example of stacking, in which the camera would be placed behind the individual with the black shirt, seemingly looking like he lands the punch!

    Second, action.  The action essentially means the delivering and approach of the fight, like a punch for instance.  Punch placement is super important for the recipient to act like they get punched.  For example, I told Saloman, who for a scene would be throwing a punch, to imagine a line across David's face, and to follow that line with his fist (obviously from a distance)  This is what that looks like.  

So basically Saloman follows a line across David's face, stays about a foot from his face, and swings!

    Third, reaction.  David's reaction above is what really sells it.  Sure the punch is good, but the way the recipient acts, and the rotation of the skull, shoulders, and hips is what really looks like the damage is dealt.  

We trained with these three components, and we moved onto the final piece of notes that I told them.

3) The difference between real-life fighting and fake movie fighting is genuinely insane.  Usually, if someone is fighting in real life, take MMA for instance, their stance is tight and controlled, which makes sense as that would be most practical for fighting.  My friends are pretty experienced fighters, as they like to do MMA and wrestling themselves.  Because of this, I told them to ditch the traditional way that they would fight.  I told them that I needed big and powerful stances, as opposed to smaller, controlled ones.  This way, the hits they deliver would seem more powerful, without actually really doing anything.  

    The two stances above demonstrate what I mean.  The stance on the left is seen as more powerful, which is mainly what I want in a fight scene, while the one on the right seems smaller and less powerful.  

And with that out of the way, planning and fighting began >:D

    The videos and photos above are some concept footage that we shot in order to see if the fight scene would even work.  And judging by the footage, it seemed like a success.  We were just playing around, and some of these shots look really awesome.  We wanted to see what techniques would look cool for the camera, like the gut punch and the suplex maneuver.  (After every take we made sure everyone was okay!)  And this is what I needed.  Fight planning goes beyond pen and paper.  It's physical.  I needed my actors out here in order to write this fight scene.  I'm glad we came out today.  I actually now know how to finally plan this scene.  

    For shits and giggles, I made this little short film and put all the footage from today together to see how well it worked.  Lemme know what you think!

Obviously, this isn't the final product, but it's a good step toward the final goal.

-Noa

Genre/Fight Research PP#4

     Storyboards are about 60% done, and with that, I have reached the fight scene.  I talked about this before in a previous post, and it is indeed tricky, so some research regarding not only the fight scenes but action genres, in general, must be done.  Let's do this.  

    The first order of business is to evaluate a couple of movies within the action genre, which is most related to my film.  I guess one could argue that mine is sci-fi considering how there is a technological/VR aspect involved, however, I believe that since the main focus of this narrative project is the fight, it'd be most practical to look at this as an action scene, and therefore look at some action movies.  A couple that immediately came to mind were The Matrix, Nobody, and John Wick.  All these movies have their own sorta subplot genre mixed in with their overarching genres, like The Matrix is no doubt an action movie, but also has sci-fi mixed in there.  Same with John Wick, which is famous for its action scenes, but also has some thriller elements as well.  I want to follow the same theme in which my main genre would be action, and have other genres, like sci-fi mixed in as well!

    Looking at these movies, they all somewhat follow the idea of the hero's journey.  The most explicit can be seen in The Matrix, in which Neo travels to unknown territory with the aid of a supernatural force, and comes back to the world he's familiar with.  The same can somewhat be seen within John Wick, in which John Wick embarks on a mission to avenge his wife and dog, and proceeds to head home with a new pitbull after a job well done.  Now although my film is a lot shorter than these films mentioned above, mine would most definitely follow a somewhat similar format.  The main character would garner supernatural object, which then forces him into a new world.  He explores it, fights the tutorial, and ends up dying at the end (I've been thinking of an ending for a while, I'll update when it is fully fleshed out, however, I believe the main character would actually die >:D).  But yeah, these movies within the genre are the ones I planned to follow.  Now time to research some fight scenes.  

    Up until now, I've actually only seen tutorials and YouTube videos regarding fight scenes, but I actually haven't delved into them in terms of movies.  So now I plan to look at a couple of fight scenes and analyze them in order to see what I could learn and potentially utilize within my film.  

    One of my favorite ones is the bathroom brawl within Mission Impossible: Fallout.  Click here if you wanna check it out, it stars Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill going up against their enemy within a public bathroom, somehow being one of the coolest scenes in the entire franchise, despite being taken place... in a bathroom.  But there are actually a couple of takeaways from the clip.  

Henry Cavill going in!

    Firstly, in a couple of the shots, you can actually see some padding interwoven within their clothing, which was most likely implemented since the individual with the gray suit takes some pretty rough hits.  But mainly what I wanna focus on is the fight itself.  A lot of the fights here are stacked, and they seem to be heavily planned as Tom Cruise weaves some of the hits toward the end as he crashed into a cement wall with his enemy.  A large portion of this fight scene, and what I believe makes it so good, is the fermented realism it has.  These men fight really slowly, but not in a bad way!  They have tons of power within their punch, which is a lot different than other fight scenes, like ones from Jackie Chan which tend to have more speed and agility.  I think I'd want to find a balance between the both.  I want the hits to be large and powerful, but since the actual setting of where the two of my characters are fighting is a video game, it could be fast while still emphasizing power because it's a video game!

    The next one I wanna check out is this one from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, click here.  One part that I really love about this scene in particular is the use of slo-mo, along with the action of the camera.  The camera and setting feel ultra tight, which I feel adds the idea that the viewer is along for the ride and is actively involved in the fight.  I like this, and most likely will implement it into my film.  And the slo-mo seems really cool, and doesn't actually disrupt the flow of the fight. 

SHANG-CHI 

-Noa

Creating the Storyboard is a little tricky... PP#3

    Last night I started working on the storyboard, and I have a pretty good idea of how the short film is going to start.  I'll scan what I have so far, and I'll proceed to work on it next hour during media studies.  But yeah, as of right now the creating of the storyboard isn't terrible, it's simple enough to the point where I've done it plenty of times before, but I'm approaching the part of the short film where the fight takes place and it's hard to approach it.

    I've watched a lot of tutorials on how to film a fight scene, but planning it is tough!  Using traditional storyboards is hard because not only am I really bad at drawing, but I don't believe it would match the pacing of the actual fight, which I want to be fast.  If I use the storyboards, I feel like they'll be too sluggish and won't match the tone that I hope to acquire.  One YouTuber I watched, his name is Ruustic, is a professional stuntman and fight choreographer.  You can find his channel here, I'd love to embed the videos that I watched, but my school apparently is blocking it :/  But yeah, he's the guy that I watched and garnered a lot of techniques on how to film the fight scene.  I plan on talking about the actual filming of the fight scene in a later blog post, maybe after this post, but now I want to talk about the planning of it.  

Really great video!  Helped me get started and taught me a lot of the basics.

    Like I said, I watched videos from Russtic, and he gave a good amount of insight on how to plan the fight, and it's vaguely different from anything I've ever had to plan before.  Storyboards have been my way to go, but the way that fight choreography is planned is beyond pens and paper.  It's physical.  They plan the fight in real life, rehearse it, and proceed to act it out on camera.  I think that's where I was stuck.  I thought that doing it on pen and paper would do the trick.  Turns out, that's only half of it.  Of course, planning on some paper prior to the fight is great, which is what I plan to do, I need some physical activity to see how it's going to work.  With that said, I'm most likely going to continue my storyboards and write the fight scene, while being cautious and expecting the actual action to come later.   

First two pages of storyboards!  (don't talk about my handwriting I'm well aware.)

    The two images above are my storyboards, in which they catalog the beginning portion, about 30 seconds in. It's an intro that's heavily inspired by YouTuber skits.  I plan for it to be pretty fast, not only so it follows the conventional styles seen within most YouTube videos (fast cuts, sarcastic tone from the character), but also to get straight into the action!  The main character would start out being extremely bored, eating shit, and then all of a sudden he hears the doorbell and gets super excited as he remembers what he purchased.  He rushes to the door, signs off the package, and slams the door on the mailman.  Then he takes it to his room and prepares to unpack.  That's about how much I got so far, I plan on doing some more later today during media studies.  But yeah, just wanted to give some insight as to how this storyboard is a little bit different from what I've done before, but that's okay!   I love doing things that I haven't done before, and expanding into new territory :D

-Noa

    

SCHEDULE FOR PP: PP#2

     I have ten weeks for this project...  This is what I hope to accomplish every week.

Week 1:  This is the planning phase.  I still have to storyboard my original concept into a five-minute piece, along with seeing if this idea even looks good on paper.  I plan on relating back to many of my previous storyboards and comparing the run times of those and seeing how much I need to produce for this project.  Additionally, I need actors for this, and I have already contacted them about my idea and they, fortunately, seem very on board.  This actually leads to my final aspect of this week.  Teaching fight choreography.  I've done a ton of research on fight choreography, which can be seen in my previous post in which I mentioned a couple of videos that I like to watch.  I plan on not only showing my actors some of these videos but also maybe throwing together a PowerPoint presentation to get them ready for the filming part.  

Week 2: More planning, especially with props this week.  I want like a ton of fake blood for the fight sequence.  Gonna have to figure out how to do that.  Also, gonna start teaching my actors the possibility how to be an actor in a fight scene.  Should be fun.  Along with the presentation I want to hand them the full script so they can get comfortable with their characters and be prepared prior to coming on set.  

Week 3: I plan on shooting this project super early, and I want to leave the editing part and other components of the project for later so I don't feel rushed when doing those parts.  So filming would take up the majority of this week.  

Week 4: Shooting would probably leak into this week as well, so I plan on shooting here, ending it off as soon as possible so I could move towards editing.  

Week 5: Editing!  My favorite part about any project is editing, and I plan on spending one to two weeks editing this band boy, so expect this week, along with the next one to have me doing tons of editing.  

Week 6:Similar to what the week above is, I plan on editing throughout this week as well, refining the project and making it loos as good as I possibly can.  

Week 7:  Once I complete editing, I would start to work on the minor tasks, which are the social media page and the postcard advertisement.  I'm not the most skilled with PhotoShop, but I plan on using this and next week in order to focus on these parts and make sure that they come out looking pristine.  

Week 8: Like I said before, this would also be a week taken up the smaller tasks, since I'm not really as well versed in PhotoShop as I am in video editing.  Deinfelty would need two weeks for this.  

Week 9: I plan on doing the CCR this week, and taking a couple days to record my progress and write an essay about it.

Week 10: Refinement, this is the week where I look back on everything and make sure that everything looks good, like the piece, ad, and social media page.   If anything looks out of place, I would go back and fix it.  

This is my schedule, it's really simplified, which is good because it allows me to follow a schedule that isn't jampacked with specifics, but things always can change, so while one week might have been designed for one thing, chances are untimely events could occur and swap some dates around.  But I like how this schedule looks, and it definitely seems plausible.  Only one way to find out!  

-Noa

AS--->A LEVEL+ NEW PROJECT IDEA: PP#1

     Hello everyone!  I'm back using this Blogger, hopefully not for the last time, but I'm back for a very good reason: Portfolio Project!  As you might've been able to guess, I'm in A level, which can be seen via my documentary critical reflection, which you can find here, along with the documentary itself here.  

    But yeah, A level!  It's honestly been a nice transition from last year because I feel like it's simply an extension of last year, a DLC if you will.  We're taking the core concepts of last year, like essay writing about cool stuff, media producing, and editing, and amping it up a lot more this year.  For example, at the beginning of the year, we had to make an Idneity Brand project, in which we convey our identity within a video along with a presentation.  We only had a short amount of time to do so, and I managed to show off my personality with this presentation that you can find here.  Fair warning, it is a little explicit, but not really.  Just think of it as matching my identity, which was the point of the project!  Fast forward a couple essays regarding media regulation, representation, and postmodernism, along with a project to create a trailer(click here to check it out, it was very fun!), and here we are, facing the daunting Portfolio Project once again.  I'm slightly more nervous about this one than last year because I think this one might be a little bit more ambitious.  Actually scratch that.  I'm not nervous!  I'm eager!  Last year the film introduction was about 2 and a half minutes.  Now we're doubling that time and creating a short narrative piece, and my brain is having trouble wrapping its thoughts around it. I have a very rough idea of what I'll be tackling for this project...

    Like I already said before, I'm pretty sure I'll be picking the narrative short film for my project this year.  I feel like this one would not only be the most fun for me to produce, but I also believe that this one would be most fitting for what I'd wanna be able to create.  Over the past couple of weeks or so, I've been pretty into watching fight videos online and stuff.  Like the YouTube channel RocketJump or the Stuntmen React videos on Corridor Crew.  These videos, along with movies like Kingsmen and The Matrix really piqued my interest in creating a fight scene.  I've kinda always wanted to film one with my friends, but never really had the reason nor motivation to do so... Until now!

    The photos above are just a couple of videos that I've watched religiously over the past couple of weeks... years actually.  I'm a huge fan of their stuff!  Especially Corridor!  They truly make some amazing videos, and I highly recommend them!  

    But yeah, fight scene!  I've wanted to do one for a while now, and now that the Portfolio Project is knocking on my door, why not greet it with an action-packed fight sequence.  But that's when I ran into a little problem.  This is a five-minute narrative piece.  I can't just have two dudes duking it out for five minutes and calling it a day.  That's boring as fuck and no one would want to watch it.   That's where I really needed to start to brainstorm: how can I include a cool fight scene in a narrative-driven piece?  Basically, I would need a story to accompany my main motivating piece towards creating this project, and I think I figured it out.  

    Picture this:

    A lone kid spends his day inside, bored out of his mind.  He knows he's wasting his day, but doesn't really care, laying in bed feels too nice for him to get up and do something.  He hears a ring at the door, grumpily awakens is greeted with a package.  He never ordered anything, but immediately recognizes the logo hugging the box.  Boredom turns into excitement as he hauls the box to his room, clears out space to make enough space so he doesn't hit anything, and proceeds to unbox the package.  Inside is a state-of-the-art VR headset, haptic suit, with a warning sign plastered adjacent to the headset: DO NOT USE.  He could, you know, follow directions and never touch the headset and contact the proper authorities... Or... he could use the latter.  Ignoring the warning, the adolescent straps in, unbeknownst to the world's most realistic combat tutorials he has ever seen as he loads up the game, FIGHT SIMULATOR VR.     

    Does this sorta sound familiar?  It's heavily inspired by Ready Player One, a sci-fi dystopian novel written by Ernest Cline that I recently re-read prior to this project.  I like to think of this project as like, a culmination of all my likes within pop culture coming together to protrude outwards and create something new.  I absolutely love Cline's idea of  VR dystopia, but I also love fight scenes...  You can probably see where I'm going with this.  

    But yeah, that's the basic foundation for what I have thought about, along with my transition from last year, to this year!  I'm super amped for this project, and stay tuned for when I release the schedule!

   -Noa