F O R W A R D

 

SYNOPSIS

FORWARD is a narrative short film talking about a guy who won the race of a marathon but people doesn’t know the effort, sweat, time and pain included in his training.

INSPIRATION/REFERENCE

A very good example that I found on youtube, we may seen Usain Bolt winning the race of the 200m during the world championships but we doesn’t know how much time and efforts involved in the training and process.

 

PLANNING PROCESS (Word.Doc)

I started out by writing short dialogues and trying to imagine using the 7 shots. The image above shows a rough idea of how I drafted my script.

After some revision of the whole dialogue, I sent it to my friend to do the voice over for my film. 

STORYBOARD

As I’m not good with words, by using images it is also easier to visualise and explain to my group members. Some examples of my shortlist that I found on the internet.

SHOT 1:

The first shot included quite a few props, like the Singapore flag, gold medal, finishing line, and lots of confetti involved. To be honest, I was a little too ambitious, without the help from my team members I won’t be able to pull through the shot because it has to be well coordinated from holding the finish line from each sides, putting the flag, medal and firing off the confetti on my character at the end of the race.It was one of the hardest shot to achieve and due to the weather conditions, I had waited quite a few days to able to film at the stadium.

For the very first shot, I wanted to portray that he’s a winner at the end of the race but no one knows how much he had put in. I did a reverse in the post to portray from a winner and rewind back to where he started from.

This is one of the props for the very first shot!

VO: You may have seen me with the race, but no one knows how much I’d put in. 

SHOT 2:

I wanted to portray that he always started off his training in the early morning which shows 6am with the help of the dialogue.  The blue LUT also gives a feeling of the early morning.

VO: Every Morning is a hustle.

SHOT 3:

In the third shot, I wanted to portray that he’s actually training very hard pushing himself, step by step to the limit. A low angle with the white stripe also shows that he’s very focus as thick lines on the other hand appear difficult to break. It suggest strength and give emphasis to nearby elements.

Running on the white line also shows sense of stability.

VO: Every step, a struggle. 

SHOT 4:

I wanted to give a dramatic shot so I placed my cast with a low angle against the sun. It gives a strong silhouette feeling while the sweat drips down from his face.

VO: Every drop of sweat,

SHOT 5:

This was one of the shot that I pre-planned while doing my storyboarding, I wanted to give the audience to experience the unique feeling of him training thats why I had chosen a POV shot.

VO: Every ounce pain. In the end, it’s all worth it. 

SHOT 6:

The sixth shot represented that he’s back to his training routine even though he won the race.

VO: And after the race. We do it all over again. 

SHOT 7: 

The last shot is the most crucial part because we are fighting against the time for the sunset. We flew the drone for quite multiple of times to get the perfect shot.

The sun also representing a light of hope where he visits every time right after his training. It is a memorable place for him because while he was preparing for his race he will always run to the edge of the hill and look at the sunset to remind himself to work towards his dream.

REFLECTION 

It took me a total of 4 days throughout a preiod of 2 weeks to film, as the weather was bad during the last few weeks. I’m actually quite happy that I’m able to complete the assignment 1 but there were some shots that needed to be improved for example like the Go-Pro shot.

It was fun working with my current team as we called ourselves “A KiwiDuck Productions”, without their helps and moral support for example, while filming the drone scene (7th Shot) it actually started drizzling, I wanted to call off the shots, but Ryan and the rest was like encouraging me to just continue filming till we get the right shots. Looking forward for my next project!