a way out

I had a few different ideas for my movie. I thought about doing a music video for a friend or an abstract film based on shadows, but after I had done some project planning, I was on a mission to central california. I had to scrap my old ideas and work with a friend to create something new. We had a great time working together and our movie ideas solely evolved as we shot scenes and thought about the resources available to us. Our first idea was to do some beautiful shots of a guy going on a long journey from the countryside into town to grab a donut, but as we kept shooting, we kept coming up with plot twists and other places to take the footage. We shot this movie over 3 days, mostly on location in Lompoc, CA and then some more during our 14 hour drive back up the coast. As we were relaxing one evening after a long day of helping my good friend (and his sister) move stuff, we were chatting away about ideas for different fun things to film and we came up with the concept for a show called Legal Guardian Angel. Basically a reality show spoof where a kid gets assigned a half-assed angel who doesn’t really want to be his guardian angel and is now also on earth as his legal guardian. That idea seemed fun, but out of our resources and time frame, so we kept shooting this shots of the angel walking around and kept talking and talking about where we could take it. We had loooooots of time in that car, haha. 

After some chatting about how we were going to tie in the storyline, we decided that a voiceover would be perfect and talked some more about what we wanted to evoke. I wanted something kind of serious and moody and sad and he was down with that, so we recorded a few takes and boom, got what we needed. Then it was time to edit, where I used Adobe Premiere for the first time, along with Adobe Audition to process the voiceover initially. I had asked my friend Kyle who is a musician for some help with the soundscape and he came through with lots of choices. It was hard to pick, but I finally narrowed it down to what seemed to fit the best. I was really pleased with the audio that my phone picked up from filming, and I decided to leave that layer in as well. I was surprised to have 3 layers of audio, but it seems to work. 

I’m hoping that you enjoy this short film and it makes you think about what the point of anything is. 

4 thoughts on “a way out

  1. Kristen Chunn

    I really loved how you were able to keep this steady dark mood throughout your video! it was super nice and you got some really good and steady shots! Overall I really liked what you came up with!

  2. Carlos Padilla

    I like how the idea for your final evolved and grew. The video has some nice scenery and good plot. I did like the late afternoon shots and change of angles. I would suggest using some lighting equipment or shooting while theres a bit more of light out. I myself ran into the problem a few times while shooting where one minute I had the perfect amount of light giving off beautiful hues of yellow and orange but by the time I got the take I wanted it had gotten dark. This is also something that can be solved in post production.

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