The Pressure is Getting To Me

     Hello! This is a much shorter blog post than I'd like to make but I figured I had to face the music and confront something that's been messing with the production: pressure. Recently I've felt as if the deadline's been creeping up on me, winding its way gradually around me like some terrible snake, slowly but surely starting to squeeze... It's safe to say that I'm a little anxious.

As of writing this blog I've put together about half of the 
opening, though there are gaps where I'm missing voice-overs
or scenes I've had to reshoot.

    I know that this isn't a traditional blogging topic but I think that its one that all other students have thought about making, because stress is a universal disease, especially among high school students. Even with all the planning that I've put into this project, pressure still builds up as schedules go awry and deadlines loom just over the horizon. For the past few days, things have been going a little slowly on the production side of the project. Availability for actors change, locations have conflicting times on when we can shoot, and I've been chipping away at editing the footage that I have- something that is definitely not my forte.

        I have three missing items that I need to have in order to put together everything: Martin's voiceover lines, a few shots of Danny waiting in his car, and finally, the murder scene. Luckily, I'm on track to get the first two of these done tonight, since I'm meeting with my actors for a quick shooting session to knock these minor details out of the way. But the murder scene has been a source of anxiety for me over the past few days, something I've been dreading to shoot. There's many moving parts involved in shooting this scene, such as actor availability, venue availability, the making of the fake blood, doing everything in a tight timeframe so we don't anger the management for taking too long... it's just a lot of stuff I need to keep in mind and account for. It's especially difficult because I won't be able to get any work done Wednesday-Friday because my family is taking me out of town, so I have to get everything done either tomorrow or the day after, and I plan on having some time to edit as well.

I think honesty is important in these blogs, and if I were to present everything as going perfectly fine and according to plan, I'm not only being disingenuous to my audience, but also to myself. I firmly believe that by illustrating some of my struggles through this project, I can shed light on a facet of this project that nobody wants to talk about, while also relieving myself of some of my own pressure by being honest.

I'm taking steps to get over this anxiety, and planning ahead with my team on how to make sure everything goes well- at least as "well" as I can achieve. The plan that I'm sticking to for now is to get all of the missing footage and voice-overs I need done by tomorrow, and to put all of the footage together and in order by Tuesday, leaving me in good shape to finish editing everything in totality by the end of this weekend, which will allow me to focus my work into polishing the end product and working on my critical reflection on my process.

Expect the blogs for next week to be about getting the missing footage, discussing editing and the software I chose to use, and when I get back, finishing the editing on the project. I'll be seeing you in tomorrow's blog!