Creative Critical Reflection

 

Let’s Get Reel Podcast #331

All incorporated text is property of Let’s Get Reel Inc., & Sarah Abreu

Hi, my name is Sarah Abreu and I’ll be your host on this segment of Let’s Get Reel. For those of you new to the podcast, Let’s Get Reel discusses all things related to the film world. 

The producers over at Let’s Get Reel incorporated have sent me a list of questions from their listeners to answer about the latest film I acted in called “The Roadtrip”, so if you’re ready, let’s get reel!

The first thing you all wanted to know was how the film “The Roadtrip” used or challenged conventions. 

From my experience acting in other thriller films, one convention “The Roadtrip” followed to a tee was using the element of suspense. It is common in many thriller films for something seemingly serious to go wrong in the very beginning of the film. Since most thriller films have audiences going in knowing it is a thriller, the thought of tragedy so soon makes people tense up. “The Roadtrip” began with my character, Katie pulling a prank on her friends. When the audience is led to believe that she went missing, they get an instant shock from a character loss so suddenly. When Katie re-appears, it gives a false sense of security to the audience before the camera is turned to show the anonymous stalker. 

One convention that was challenged throughout “The Roadtrip” was the setting. This film had a way of taking things that usually feel safe and twisting them to be eerie. In other film sets I have worked on, a thriller movie usually starts with a dark setting even if it is just something like rain when the characters leave for their vacation. Starting “The Roadtrip” with a sunny, upbeat, setting challenges the sort of “start dark” mindset in thriller movies. 

Now, as a sort of follow up, it was asked how these conventions within the film represent social groups or issues. I think “The Roadtrip” brings to light a very important fact that many thrillers neglect to address which is that a situation does not have to feel dark and ominous to go wrong quickly. While the characters are joking around and enjoying this sunny start to their vacation they neglect to pay attention to their surroundings and question the hooded figure following them. My hope is that people who see this film keep in mind that part of what makes a good vacation is a safe vacation. 

The listeners of “Let’s Get Reel” wanted to know how our film engages with audiences. When taking on a new role as an actor I try to only take roles I feel help bring awareness to something practical. Media has a huge mental sway on people so I want to ensure what I am teaching through my work is helping people. “The Roadtrip” starts by bringing to life very realistic characters. Since I worked closely with the directors and producers of this film throughout to widen my career beyond acting, I learned how important relatable characters are in keeping viewers emotionally invested in the film. I enjoyed playing Katie especially seeing as how she was similar to me in real life always having to stop in the middle of roadtrip for food or whatever the need of the moment is. 

Alongside this, you guys wanted to know how “The Roadtrip” would be distributed if it had been a real, blockbuster media production. Since the directors on this film are very up and coming, I cannot see them wanting to go to a big movie premier. I think we likely would have taken the film to the Sundance film festival first. Once it had been recognized at Sundance, we would rely on the help of other small, indie filmmakers to spread word of mouth on our film. Throughout the directors of “The Roadtrip”’s careers, they have used their growing platforms and following to promote other small scale films that bring light to real issues through entertainment. 

So it seems that you all have been keeping up on your industry reading because this next question asks how my production skills developed throughout this project. As I mentioned earlier, I shadowed the directors and producers of “The Roadtrip” closely during the filming of the project and even beyond when I worked on revisions. I learned a lot throughout this whole process about making do with what you have. I remember several times the producers called me to tell me how the directors wanted a pan incorporated here and a shot-reverse-shot there. There were times, being such a small scale film that the actors were not available again to refilm after they left set. If the cinematographer didn’t capture the angle or movement during filming, I would work with the producers to mimic that desired shot by splicing together clips we did have. This out of the box improvisation was difficult and oftentimes frustrating, but I think not taking more extra footage than everyone had patience for benefitted the whole crew and guarded against in-authentic feeling clips. 

Sadly, my slot on this podcast is coming to an end but I will answer one more question for you guys which is how we integrated different technologies in this project. 

For starters, with the rapid improvement to the IPhone camera this technology was worth its weight in gold. The  camera on the IPhone has debuted several new features in the last few years which have made cinematographers pine to trade in their old, clunky, bulky cameras for the newest, sleek and possibly light pink IPhone. The newer model used by our cinematographer had that fancy new feature called cinematic mode. This mode boasts being able to stabilize the camera in shaky hands such as our cinematographer had and even pays attention to things as minuscule as the lighting and how that is captured on the camera on an everyday IPhone that anybody can own. The quality of these shots were improved by getting a more precise angle allowed by the minimal equipment. Fitting the whole huge traditional camera and tripod get-up into the car scenes would have been a claustrophobic nightmare for all involved. The large dollies and even just the cameras themselves can be a huge ordeal half the size, if not the entire size of a suitcase so being able to trade in for something we could grab in a pinch and just have the cinematographer sit in the trunk of the car and use was so helpful to us and really helped the cinematographer get angles and get closer to the actors and capture their facial expressions without zooming in by instead, moving the camera in ways you couldn’t if it had been bigger and was running the risk of hitting us all upside the head. As far as software goes, CapCut which was what the producers used, was our go to. This software allowed all the cutting edge combinations of shots I mentioned during my segment on developing my production skills. One of the things that the producers had mentioned to me was the ability to edit multiple shots and keep them in one close place to add into a final project. So one thing I had worked with throughout developing my production skills was helping the producers and they would be able to send just mock ups of the individual shots to show us what they looked like and ask our opinions on which ones looked better and all of those little tiny shots would be able to be stored very close by to the large timeline which had the entire project on it. Once all of us who were involved in the final revision and editing process had voted, it was just a click away for the producers to be able to add that into the final timeline of the movie. Now another benefit of CapCut that I had noticed was that it is free and I believe you can buy some in-app upgrades but nothing that you need. As I have mentioned, we are indie filmmakers and so even acting on the set, we had to get really creative with the budget and buying a whole software that had all the makings would have been confusing and difficult for such a small set and on top of all of this, just not affordable. When I had mentioned how our film would get out to the public, we had talked about taking it to Sundance to be with other indie filmmakers. At this scale, we aren’t using Adobe Pro, we aren’t using what the Hollywood makers use, we are using what the indie makers use before they break into Hollywood. And one of those things was CapCut for us.

I want to thank you all for listening to me talk about “The Roadtrip”. The transcript of this segment will be available for those of you who prefer to read to follow along. I am so beyond honored that “Let’s Get Reel” allowed me to host today’s episode and you can follow along on the website where this segment of the podcast will be posted along with the transcript and look back in the archives for “The Roadtrip” where you can watch it for free without ads. Thank you so much, this is Sarah, signing off.