This is stfu, the video I made with Adam, Scott, & Tom; it’s a slightly less morbid version of something that I thought about making awhile ago, but having the assignment for Comm Lab was the perfect impetus to actually do it. We had storyboarded the whole thing out, but only roughly, and in the end we mostly used a shotlist that I came up with and that Scott added to, and it worked out just fine.

The shooting went a lot smoother than I expected - I think we did the whole thing in about 5-6 hours, including a lunch break, and not once did we get busted for filming where we weren’t supposed to be.

(That included carrying large, suspicious looking bags into the library, and Tom running and screaming loudly in the basement of Stern. Yes, folks, NYU security, keeping you safe. Aren’t you glad they ask for your ID at the door every time you’ve got a full coffee and your hands full of pComp?)

We shot with two cameras, which was definitely useful in that we didn’t need to do a million takes for coverage, and Scott was great with the creative camera angles, so the whole thing looks a lot more dynamic than I expected. We also got away with only lighting one scene, and minimal color correction in post. It doesn’t match exactly, but it looks really good for how much time we spent thinking about lighting. And Adam’s sound worked out really well, too - no re-recording at all.

I forgot how much fun editing is! It was a bit difficult to split up editing duties - I ended up doing the first half of the rough cut, then Scott did the second, and we all worked together on the fine cut. It was during that fine cutting that we realized how our lack of solid storyboards had affected us, and that our ending didn’t really stack up. I spent some time re-editing the stair running to make it quicker, and cutting to the sounds, but it still wasn’t great. Luckily, that was Monday night, and Scott saved everything when he came in the next day with a score that really pulled the whole piece together. I had been brushing off music as being too complicated because I thought we’d have to re-edit everything to the beat, but Scott pulled it off masterfully, and outside of a few levels that weren’t quite perfect, it turned out working very well. I have to say I’m surprised at exactly how well, given our quick turn-around. What do you think?