On November 6th, Jeannie Lee, Jason Luong, Ethan Gray, and I opened the BBN planner and started our 4 week project called FVHS: The Game, which was initially titled Untitled FVHS Game. When we first pitched this idea to the producers and Mr. Ziebarth, we were extremely unprepared and the idea itself was on shaky ground. When we got into our production meeting a few days before, we had initially pitched an idea about doing a spoof on Youtube Rewind, integrating significant events that occurred in our school as well as displaying certain references to recent advancements in pop culture. (Luckily we didn’t since this year’s Youtube Rewind ended up becoming the most disliked Youtube Video ever, surpassing Justin Bieber’s Baby).
So we got to planning. The first step was to fully develop our idea of making a VR video game, where we needed a plot line to base the video off of. We ended up going with the concept of showcasing the choices a student may make throughout the day, whether they were good or bad, where their ultimate goal was to make more good than bad choices and “win” the game.
(as you can see, we didn’t make loading screens after each scene since that would’ve made the video too long – it’s all about improvising, friends)
Our planner check was on November 7th and we were more or less prepared to present our idea to the producers and Mr. Ziebarth. We found our actors, using me as the main character since it would be more convenient when filming just her arms, which would require a camera person to be extremely close. Jeannie ended up taking that position and let’s just say that we always got strange glances towards our way.
Our video idea got approved by the end of the period and the rest of the week was dedicated to fixing up and continuing the planner.
The following week, we went through our list of extras once more, contacting them again to confirm whether or not they could make the days we had lined up for taking their portraits. However, this also meant that we had to get the studio set up and instead of forcing William Luong, the studio manager, to do it by himself while we sat on the sidelines, Jeannie and I decided to take it as a learning opportunity. We were able to learn how to set up a ring light, as well as where the switches for the overhead lights were, including which switch corresponded to each light.
Since this was the week before Thanksgiving week, it should be expected that many students were already feeling it and had the desire to laze about until it came. Our group was no different. After figuring out how to go about filming the video as a first-person perspective, we shot 3 scenes on two different days – the shoving, picking up money, and the cheating on the test ones. Unfortunately, after that, we decided that we would definitely be able to do work over break and have a majority of the package ready to assemble after the break.
Our mistake was not considering the urgency of such a large project. Having a character select screen almost always exists in a video game is essential and we wanted to bring that to life. Sadly, After Effects would not download for Ethan, so we had to push that towards next week, which would be the last week that we would have time to work on the package seeing as it was due on November 30th. On top of that, we could not film any of the other scenes as they all took place at school. The only work that we could accomplish was making the congratulations screen that would pop up at the end of the video, along with a screen recording of the last choice in the video (logging out of a stranger’s Canvas account).
With that, Thanksgiving break came to a close and it was back to work for us; except this time, we were extremely stressed out. We had 2 scenes left to film, a character select screen to make, and we needed to start editing our package. The last two scenes were filmed relatively quickly and Ethan got to work on the character select screen right away. Those were the easy parts…
I consider the editing process to be one of the best learning experiences I’ve been through in the class. Sitting down with Jeannie and following her movements as she pieced together the flashing heart for one of the scenes, as well as key-framing the “stage failed” text was an incredible learning experience. Seeing as this was only my second creative, I was still unfamiliar with a lot of Adobe Premiere’s features, so seeing different effects and techniques being used and getting a chance to apply and use them myself provided me with knowledge that I could to future projects.
After a week of constant editing and hearing the same Dragon Ball Z Opening and Renai Circulation music in their 8-bit form over and over and over again, our video was finally complete. What a journey it had been.
It was especially rewarding when we heard the supportive and excited feedback from many of you guys and we look forward to making more videos like this in BBN!
