Ethan Hesselbein
March 31, 2017
Thea Foundation Scholarship Essay
Creating this film was a true roller coaster. There is nothing more fun to me in life than editing a video. Any time there is a project to do at school, I always make a sort film. It’s not unusual for me to start editing at 4 o’ clock right after school, and not end till 2 in the morning. However, this was my greatest challenge. Every turn there was something wrong, each scene had to be completely changed, and the comedic style I was shooting for was lost because of scenes that had to be scrapped. This excitement, though, brought forth several cases of accidental greatness. I believe my video should be considered for a scholarship because of the effort and promise I hope are clearly displayed throughout.
The process in creating this piece consisted of many adventures in itself. It began with me begging my friends to try and act, some were good, some were bad, but I needed them all the same. A big portion of it was just getting some crude footage from a decent camera. The videos were then imported to MovieMaker, where everything was cut to the length for the desired effect or emotion. But apparently Movie Maker likes to take frequent breaks from making movies; this is evident from the seemingly infinite amount of times it crashed on me, causing me to restart my computer.
My actors then had to repeat all of their lines into a microphone because the audio just was not good enough. All the background noises had to be collected separately, then the new audio had to be lined up just perfectly. About this time is when I would start exporting then reimporting each scene individually to edit them in layers, because that was the only way to get the desired feel.However, every time this was done, though it enhanced the pacing and effect, the quality was drastically dropped as if it were hot.
Also, of course, there was the infamous waiting…a lot of waiting; mostly to let videos save, export, and import.All the most recently exported versions of the scenes were then put into one big project. From that, any part where the quality was just too low to keep, it was cut and the original footage was grabbed and placed in after beingtrimmed down to the one small part that was needed.Any last sound effects wereadded to the footage. Feeling like I was finished, I realized that I should not have used the copyrighted music that I had, in a scene that was in for comedic purposes, and removed the whole bit,resulting in 4 more hours of exporting.
Originally when I found out about this scholarship, the website had the date for the previous year on it, so I believed I could not participate. Then at the end of January I checked again and found out that I actually could do it, but the due date was really close. So in the span of a week I whipped up a super long and detailed script filled with comedy, irony, and a rich story. But when it came to getting all my actors, camera people, and other necessary crew together, the filming windows were very narrow. The original scrip featured several water scenes that were trashed due to cold water; we tried filming one but it was both unbearable and January. The ending was originally set to take place on an island. We would canoe out there with a drone videoing, but getting both the canoe guy, they drone pilot, and the weather to be good on a certain day was literally impossible. That is just an example of how half the process in making this went. It was tough, which made the result that much more rewarding.
Scriptwriting, obviously, is not my strong suite. Nearly all the lines that were planned we threw out the window when filming; probably half the scenes I, and my actors, improvised. The ending is not what I was originally shooting for, and does not necessarily have a more, or a good one at least. I saw an opportunity within the last week before the deadline for a slight plot twist, and I took it. If I could do it over again, I would choose a stronger message and stick with it through the whole film.
All in all, I am pleased with the outcome. This project was a so much more work than I expected, but it sure was fun making it and I learned a lot along the way. I am always excited when given the opportunity to make art, and though “Friendship” might not have been the prettiest, I like to think it has some beauty to it. Every step of the way there were trials, each one got bigger and more frustrating. The patience that it took to make this video possible was quite testing. In the end, I hope that this video will show of the dedication and effort I am willing to put into any goal, and that I should be heavily considered for this scholarship, A’men.