For our One Word Film Project, we had to create a short film to represent the word “awe” using editing techniques and different camera shots and angles.
During a brainstorming session, we thought of several scenarios that could best visualize the word "awe" such as a boy entering a massive school for the first time or a beautiful view of a sunset over the football field. My partner and I finally decided to tell the story of a boy who by chance made a nearly impossible basketball shot.
Our storyboard helped us to round out the storyline. We realized we needed to add an emotional aspect to the story since there wasn’t going to be any sound. This helped us to frame the scene and decide what order the shots should be in. However, we had realized if our character consistently failed at his attempts to make the basketball shot this would create a narrative of a rivalry between the basketball hoop and the boy. To do so, we included a culmination of scenes that repeated his failed attempts while continuously zooming in each time to add more suspense and intensity to the scene. This would also make the viewer invested and relate to the character’s increasing frustration.
For our editing resources, we used jump cuts along with action matches in order to accurately convey the message of repeatedly trying to make the ball into the basket but failing to do so every time. With these consistent transitions and editing techniques, the audience is able to relate to the character as the story progresses.
I believe that for our project we were accurately able to tell a story that represented the word “awe.” I also feel the story of the boy’s frustration was effectively executed through our repeating failed basketball shots in the scenes. I think the nearly impossible basketball shot created a moment of "awe" because he had done it unintentionally, surprising not only the boy but also the viewer. Another aspect I believe we were able to achieve was using the brightness effects to help emphasize the anger and frustration the boy was feeling.
However, I wish that we had additional scenes focusing on the boy’s increasing frustration to further build the storyline. Although the repeated shots of the boy missing the hoop was able to get our message across, we could have dove deeper into the internal thoughts of the boy and how his frustration was turning into a feeling of worthlessness or stupidity. We could have done this through more closeup and medium shots of the boy playing around and smiling at the beginning. This would then decrease as the story showed failed attempt after failed attempt. For example, the boy would be seen at the beginning smiling and playing around with the basketball before deciding to shoot and missing the first time, causing him to be disappointed which would lead to the later events of the story. I also think if we had time to capture more footage of him shooting the basketball during the editing process, we could have clipped his failure shots together at a faster pace which would have been more impactful to the viewer.
