Video link: https://youtu.be/7mQ-ZOYZTHA
Brief Reflection:
I Think that my strongest capture decision here was honestly the decision to a camera at the same ‘shot’ for all the in-between dialogue portions. I think that it helps amplify the sense of pacing and progression, all while working well with the limited space I had to film. It keeps it simple, yet not visually uninteresting, as the person is the point of interest at all times. It helps focus your attention rather than cutting to a new angle every time. I believe the strongest story decision was throwing the laptop in the lake. I think that both from a narrative standpoint, and a filming standpoint, having the character break the line of movement in which he had been stuck to to go into the ‘background’ to rid himself of the laptop creates both an intrigue in visual language and an intrigue in the narrative, especially with the harsh cut to black. The biggest revision made was turning this from a horror inspired short to a silent film comedy. I realized that it worked better with the footage I had, and worked well as a solution to “how am I going to clearly show this AI’s dialogue, and also how am I going to get AI to say what I want it to say and still be clearly captured on screen”. the answer was “make all dialogue on screen”. The intended audience for this production is simply anyone who has a ‘genuine relation’ with their ‘AI companion’, be it someone who regularly converses with their ChatGPT like its a human, or someone who has genuinely fallen in love with Grok. The next production skill to improve would be color balance. especially with the black and white, a lot of this footage is way too blown out or over-saturated, and I would’ve liked to have more experience with color grading in order to make the footage look more professional.
Additionally, there were a decent amount of challenges in this production, such as my tripod being broken upon arrival to the shooting site, corrupted footage, the filming site being occupied every attempted trip, and only having one person on the crew (me). The tripod issue was resolved as I ended up sticking my phone in-between my car’s windshield wipers to stabilize it, leading to a much worse shot that I had hoped, but It was all that I could do at the time, and I figured the shot worked well enough to justify me not having to spend money on another tripod. The corrupted footage is what led to me using different parts of the same ‘shot’ for all of the in-between parts, as much of the other footage was completely corrupted upon trying to import it into premiere pro. Eventually it worked out, as I like the way the final product turned out without it. Additionally, the filming site being occupied was simply resolved by going to a different part of the park that I knew less, which is unfortunate, but it was all I could get. Also, only having a one person crew of me was only an issue because I knew I was limited with how I could verify how well the shots worked, how I could write the story, and how much effort I could put into working on this project while incredibly sick.