we had a visitor

Today we met Jim, the producer, James Guarasci and it was really cool. He showed us a lot of films made by students from other schools and it was great to see what people our age can do. It was of inspiring to see their work. He also showed us some movie trailers. Explained how they are made. He talked about an app called Black Magic. Said it is very good for filming and editing. I did not know that real filmmakers use many tools until now.

He explained the story arc in a simple way, which really helped me. For our film we need to have three things:

* An intro to set the scene

* A conflict

* A resolution

He said it is like this: normal then something big happens, then a new normal.. That made sense to me. He kept saying that our stories should be about things we know and that our film should say something even if it is small. He also said that it is very important to have an ending and to make the audience feel something. That stuck with me because I never thought about how important it's to make people feel something in a horror film but it makes sense.

Then we talked about writing scripts. Jim said to write with our characters in mind which sounds easy. It is actually hard. Writing is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It is hard to make characters seem real and not silly.

We also learned about camera work like how to frame a shot, where to put the camera and how to move it. It made me realize that the camera tells the story, not the actors. Then we talked about lighting and how it can change the mood of a scene. The way you light a scene can make the audience feel calm or scared. They might not even know why. After that we learned about audio, like dialogue, natural sounds and sound effects. I did not know how important sound is until Jim explained it. Finally we talked about shot sequencing, which is how all the shots fit together to like tell the story.

Today was a day and it made me feel like we are really making a film not just a school project. It is a lot to learn. It is also exciting because now I feel like I understand what it takes to make a scene work. Jim, the producer really knows what he is talking about and I am glad we got to meet him what he said really helped me understand this class a bit more.