G.I.F.T.S

This last summer I got the opportunity to go to a camp called Gulf Islands Film and Television School (G.I.F.T.S). It was a 7 day long process on Galiano Island where I went with 30ish other people and we took workshops and make a short film. The camp itself was isolated from the rest of the island but it was nice and peaceful. We were put into groups of four, and this year it was decided on age. There were two types of movies people could have made: a documentary or a dramatic short film. I was part of the dramatic portion. For the week we spent 3 days storyboarding 1 day shooting and 1 day editing. Our days consists of lots of work time but also some workshops that would make our filming process easier now and in the future. Storyboarding is one of the most important parts of filming; the storyboards had to look like a comic book because they have to be SO specific that if you were to hand it off to any director they would know exactly what your vision is. It was a little challenging getting actors because we only had a limited amount of people to choose from to fit our characters. Once we found our actors, the second hardest thing we had to deal with was the timing of when we got to shoot the movie. We had to battle against the kitchen staff who had to cook the meals and made so much noise, and we had to battle against the sun who kept playing peek-a-boo in the clouds. The editing process is my FAVORITE part of the whole film maing process, because that is where I can let me imagination go crazy and I can start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. It took my team 20ish hours to edit the whole thing and come up with the final product. There were somethings we forgot to do so we had to improvise, I got to use my music I recorded with Beware The Goldfish (my band) because we forgot to get our own music, and also we forgot a scene so we added a random aspect to our film. It took our team 20ish hours to get the final product, but we were pretty pleased with it. We were finished at 7 AM in the morning, the morning of our premieres of all of our films. The response to our film was better than I imagined. And now I am proud to see my short film on YouTube so everyone can see. So if you'd like to see it its there for everyone :) I hope you like it.....So enjoy!

The Starting Of The Rest Of My Life

In grade 10 I had the opportunity to create my first real short film. It was a infommercial for anti-racism. We had to make a 30 seconds - 1:30 minutes explaining how racism might be in our community and how it can be stopped. We had to come up with our own ideas, find our own actors, and even make our own music. Dharra Budicha was my main character, and I had so much different help from majority of my friends, I was so thankful. The short film that I made didn't place in the contest, but I was still very proud of my accomplishment. It was a great learning experience, and even though I didn't place it help me move one step closer to my bigger goal which is becoming a film editor.

The Beginning

The first time I knew that film was the thing for me was in 8th grade, when I read the book “Theories of Relativity” by Barbara Haworth-Attard. My imagination ran wild while reading this book. First I started imagining scenes while I read it. Then I would image that if I could actually make the movie version of this story where it would take place, how I could change it to make it my own, and even the cast I’d think would do great things with this storyline. Ever since I read that book, ever book after that I would let my imagination take control. But the thing with “Theories of Relativity” is that even today I try and perfect my vision of my movie version of the story. How did you know that film would be part of your life?