FISHBOWL
Jan 9th - March 28th
Background:
While studying at Michigan State I was presented with the opportunity to work on a short film with some of my peers. The team I would be working with consisted of myself and four others, together the five of us began by coming up with our own scripts, then collectively voted on which one we felt would be the best one to bring to life. The winning script was titled Fishbowl, and is the story about a brother and sister trying to earn enough money to make it out of the city after the death of their mother. Over the course of the semester, we poured our time, energy and creativity into this project, with each team member taking on unique responsibilities to ensure its success. From pre to post-production, we collaborated closely,working hard to refine our vision and deliver a project we could all be proud of. This experience not only honed my storytelling and technical skills but also reinforced the value of teamwork and perseverance in creative endeavors.
Role:
Videographer
Audio Recording/Engineering
Editor
Project Management
Results:
Filmmaking is one of the most collaborative art forms, it brings together creative specialists like writers, directors, cinematographers, and editors, combining their skills to create a cohesive and high-quality final product, making it incredibly important to be able to trust in your teammates' expertise. It's a job that requires constant communication and coordination among the cast and crew. Throughout this project, my team and I relied on each other continuously for things like sharing information, scheduling shoot days, and managing crew and equipment transportation. By paying attention to details like pacing, cut duration, and color schemes, I was able to further put in practice user centered design techniques and gained firsthand experience at designing an audience’s emotional experience. This project helped me embrace user-centered thinking, teaching me how to design intentionally with the user in mind, which is at the core of UX and XA work and remains my primary focus.
Takeaways:
Project Management: Balancing creative and logistical tasks, like equipment transportation and scheduling, strengthened my organizational and communication abilities as well as allowed me to gain experience on managing time, risk, management,
Adaptability: Challenges with recording like outdoor audio interference and matching lighting required me to think quickly and make real-time adjustments, allowing me to strengthen my ability to adapt to changing circumstances and reinforced the importance of flexibility and creative problem solving in collaborative creative projects.
Technical Skill Expansion: Working on video recording/editing, green screen editing and color grading improved my proficiency with tools like adobe premier and presented me with an opportunity to refine my approach to design beyond the audio space.
Collaboration: Regular feedback sessions, shared decision-making, and seeing each person contribute their unique creativity really highlighted the value of teamwork in bringing a shared vision to life.
Storytelling through Design: Getting to focus on filming, framing shots, and capturing B-roll while also considering elements like color, environment, and background audio during editing helped me strengthen my ability to create emotionally engaging narratives through both visual and auditory mediums.
User-Centered Thinking: Through the process of planning, shooting and editing, I would often try to put myself in the audience's shoes in order to get a feel for how different people might experience and interpret the film. This project became an exercise in understanding audiences and considering how seemingly minor details like cut duration, color schemes, and pacing shape the way an audience connects with and interprets a story.
Video editing: As the primary editor, I focused on assembling the footage collected to tell a cohesive and emotionally engaging story. This involved making several qualitative and evaluative judgments to determine what scenes would go onto be cut from the film to maintain the narrative flow. Ensuring that visuals were properly synchronized with audio was also a priority along with applying color grading to establish a unique aesthetic and establish a consistent tone. As a way of ensuring things were progressing to everyone's satisfaction, regular iterative feedback sessions with the team, we were able to refine the edit to align with our collective vision, resulting in a polished final product
Before attending Michigan State University, I spent years working as a freelance audio engineer for local artists, making me confident in my ability to succeed in the engineer role. However, I have been on a mission to improve my visual design skills and saw this project as an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and broaden my skill set. Determined to grow as a creative professional, I decided to work as not only the primary audio engineer but also as a videographer and the primary editor for the short film. This allowed me to strengthen my video recording and editing skills while also ensuring I was diversifying my expertise beyond audio engineering. Additionally, I would often embrace a supportive role within the team, often managing logistics such as transporting equipment on shoot days and ensuring my peers had reliable transportation to set. Making this film not only expanded my technical abilities but also emphasized the importance of adaptability and communication in delivering a successful collaborative creative project.
Approach:
Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the work that was done for the project, I will be breaking this section up into 4 main parts to better describe my approach to designing in these sectors;
Audio Recording: The recording process for this project was fairly simple. My primary focus was on capturing clean and consistent dialogue despite the challenges of shooting in outdoor environments like a skate park. In order to ensure the audio captured was as clear as could be I experimented with microphone placements and used microphone windshields to minimize interference from background noise like wind and passing cars. Our primary mic was a shotgun mic connected to a boom pole. I would run audio into my personal audio interface and record the audio on my laptop. This method granted me a lot of freedom in motion, enabling me to fully experiment with mic placements until I found an optimal location.
Audio Engineering: Post-production audio work involved cleaning up dialogue, balancing levels, and layering sound effects to enhance the film’s soundscape. For scenes at the skatepark, I carefully mixed the audio to ensure the ambient noise included added texture without overwhelming the dialogue. Equalization and noise reduction tools were essential in refining the audio, and I ensured that every sound element aligned with the visual pacing of the film.
Videography: As one of the videographers, my primary focus was on framing and movement to bring Fishbowl’s narrative to life visually. I worked with the team to design shot lists that helped establish what we were looking for from our footage. Dynamic camera movements, such as tracking shots, were used to convey a sense of urgency, Lighting played a significant role, with natural and diffused light setups creating a grounded, urban aesthetic. Additionally, I ensured we captured ample B-roll footage for flexibility in post-production
