Film Blog

This is the original song I made for our short film Night Bus :)

Our film for film form was called Night Bus, a film about a teen struggling with his identity who is given some wise words after a Halloween party.

I am extremely proud of this project, so I was very nervous for the crit as I wanted everyone else to see our film and enjoy it just as much as I did. I took on the role of sound recordist and sound designer. I was excited to take on this project and further my skills in these areas. When it came time for us to receive our feedback, I was ready to see what the lecturers thought. We were greeted with a positive nod to our opening scene. We were also met with some criticism on our coverage and shots on Ethan our main character. This is something we definitely could have solved but evidently did not see our issues until the edit. Leo spoke about how he liked our although are story was one that had been told before our version brought some new and fresh to the table. This was something we strived for as a group as we did not want to fall into the category of ‘just another gay film. Lenny our writer did lots of research with young and older queer people and took experiences from their lives and his own. We also collaborated closely with the original writer of the outline, Robbie.

 When the floor was passed to Zoe, it was time to hear the sound design criticism. The first noticeable critique was that the sound had exported in mono instead of stereo. We think this may have been from the second export through Davinci as the audio was in stereo after exporting on Protools. After enquiring about that, Zoe told us that the sound design was not as cinematic as she wanted it to be. She said that due to the dialogues nod to Ethan leaving the party early, there should have been far more life in the second scene at the bus stop. She said she wanted to hear noises of people especially trick or treaters as we had set our party on Halloween. She also said that the party scene itself felt like it needed more life, more noises from the people at the party. Although during the sound design process I felt as though the bus stop scene needed to be quieter so that we were focusing on the dialogue, I did understand what Zoe was saying. Due to the script it was unnatural for the scene to be so quiet, even with the dialogue being so important to the scene the background life was almost eradicated through my sound design. I was a tad disappointed that Zoe felt as though the party scene was also lacking as I felt as though I had done a good job. However I am still new at the craft and still have lots to learn so receiving this feedback will absolutely help me in my future projects.  

We were congratulated on our production design. I was very happy about this as Nikola put so much work into our sets and the costumes. She and her assistant Evie created the flame costume for our second protagonist ‘The Stranger’. She also spent so long in hair and makeup making sure that all our cast members were perfect for each shot. She styled and created each individual look for our extras in our party scene and of course created the makeup design done on the stranger. Receiving such honest feedback on that was really exciting to hear.

Working with this team was an absolute joy, everyone worked so well together and each of us helped on another and made sure we created a coherent piece of cinema, I am very thankful I had a team I felt so comfortable with and I hope to work with them again on future projects.

Overall, the feedback we received was helpful and insightful. As a team and individuals, I know that we will take on board these critiques and apply them to our next projects. The crits are necessary for our development as filmmakers and although sometimes we may get disappointed with our feedback we know deep down that it was better for us to receive harsh comments so that we do take on the knowledge so we can better our art. I am ready to try again and hopefully create a more in-depth and cinematic sound design in my projects next semester. 

The first draft of our script for the video essay. 

For my World Cinema class, I had to create a proposal for a video essay. I teamed up with my classmate Ben and we decided to do our video essay on Francois Truffaut and his autership under the scope of French New Wave.

Our presentation went well and I am excited to create our video!

In the presentation, I will be talking about the sound design of our project.

We have decided to use the outline created by Robbie, Our film will follow a teen discovery his sexuality, he ends up having a conversation with an older queer man after a Halloween party. 

For sound design we’re not going to be too adventurous, just simple sound design with minimal effects, possible foley where needed.