High School Trailer

For this project we recreated a high school movie trailer. We had to recreate it using the same music, script, as well as shot style. My group decided to recreate the High School Musical 3 trailer.

This project had quite a few steps in pre-production before we could begin filming. Our group easily decided that we wanted to do the High School 3 trailer since we knew it would be a challenge and because we all loved the movie. We then assigned roles in our own group. Ryan was the producer, director of photography, and art director. Amanda was the production designer and cinematographer. And I was the director, costume designer, and I helped with storyboarding. Next we worked to cast our actors. We tried to find people that looked as close to the original actors as possible. Amanda worked on creating a story board that explained how the camera moved in each shot and how the camera needed to be arranged. I focused on choreography and Ryan worked to get into the schools schedule to film in the auditorium and the gym on a Saturday. We then began creating a filming schedule so that we could get the project done on time. We determined that we could get most of the school shots done on block day and all the dance numbers done on a Saturday. After we finished all the pre-production work we were ready to film.

Filming took place over 3 days and went very smoothly. Our story boards made it very easy to determine what shots needed to be taken on what days. We also filmed in the auditorium and gym and it was a little hard with the lighting but we were able to make the shots work. The choreography was also very easy so our actors learned the dances fairly quickly. Overall, filming was very successful. 

After we finished filming, we began the editing process. We took a lot of footage at the basketball game and it was very overwhelming to find the specific shots we needed. Most of the footage also had several takes so editing mainly contained me going through similar shots and choosing the best one for the scene. It was very easy to edit along with the video. I imported the actual video into premier and edited the footage my group filmed on top of it with the same style of editing as the original video. Editing is not my favorite part about video production, but it was very easy to do for this project. 

I learned a lot from this project. I mainly learned how to collaborate to get the project done on time. Since the people in my group all have busy schedules I was really stressed we wouldn't have enough time to finish. Thankfully the organized story boards made filming go a lot faster and having one Saturday to film really helped to get all the footage. I have always been good at project management and this project helped me even more to try and stay on top of editing and making time to edit and shoot. 

I also learned several technical skills. I don't really enjoy editing that much, but editing along with the actual trailer made it go a lot faster. I also used bins to organize footage and that made it a lot easier to find footage from specific days. 

If I was to do this project again their are several changes I would make. I would spend more time with lighting and making sure it looked good in all environments. When we filmed in the auditorium the footage is a lot more warm and when we filmed outside it is very blue toned and I would try to fix that for next time. I also would spend more time on wardrobe and making sure everyone is dressed according to character.

If I were to do this project again I would keep the same production schedule and story boards. Having a list of what shots we needed to film each day made filming a lot smoother. Also having organized story boards with a script helped me tell the actors what to do quicker than checking through the original video. 

I can draw a lot of experiences from this project to enhance my next project. I learned a lot about collaboration and teamwork that I can use not only in the next video project but in every class. I also can use my new editing skills in future projects so that it doesn't take as long. 

Overall, I really enjoyed recreating the High School Musical 3 trailer. It was really enjoyable to work with the students in my group as well as the cast in the production. This project has helped establish my love for entertainment style video production and has helped develop skills that I can apply to future video projects.