My Score
Director, Writer, Editor, Sound Design, Co-Composer
“My Score” was a musical introspective into my own life, in particular, the sensory overload that comes from loud crowds and being immersed within my favourite type of music, orchestral film scores. In other words, this is showcasing my "personal identity", what makes me unique. As a person on the autism spectrum, I really wanted to tell a different perspective on what it can be like to have it, while straying from the stereotypical depictions present in media, and I felt it was appropriate to depict this via film.
To ensure that the production went smoothly, I had spent a lot of time working on the pre-production of the film, including drawing storyboards, creating shot lists, coordinating the crew to ensure everyone could participate (through Instagram messages), and scheduled the shooting day for 11am-3pm. The shot list helped us a lot, with CJ Vasquez looking after it to ensure we got what we needed, and Raja Kukalaeuntla also looking at it for reference when slating, while allowing me to focus on the film. We did have a bit of trouble with the casting, as we had casted an actress to play the role of the lead, but they dropped out the day before the shoot. Thankfully, I had found out someone had joined in our group late, and as I didn’t know what to make them do, I offered to make them the lead, to which they agreed. Despite not preparing for what I wanted them to do, they were able to immediately understand my intentions and delivered something that was better than expected. Not only that, when reshoots were needed the next week, he was willing to arrive in the exact same clothing (I sent them screenshots for continuity) to get some quick shots.
I was able to fulfill one of my goals of having a full orchestral score. Originally, the plan was to work with my composer, Prabhav Ganesh, on the themes during pre-production so we could play it on set, however, due to his schedule not allowing this, I ended up writing a rough leitmotif and I used it as a guide for the actor during certain moments. During post-production, me and Ganesh worked on the score using Logic Pro X and a MIDI keyboard, scoring to picture using the current version of the edit. He had even contributed a music cue in the beginning that was never intended to have music, but the final product greatly improved it. The score had to be adjusted in order to meet the 2-minute limit, and to sync to certain moments of the film (much to Ganesh's frustration). For playback on set, we had a 140bpm click track playing to ensure whatever our actor did synced to the music.
One aspect of the original proposal that did not work out was the idea of filming the final scene in a “public space”. The plan was to shoot in a location like Town Hall/Parramatta Station, however, upon contacting them, we were quoted a filming fee of about $400/hour, which was unaffordable for us so this plan was scrapped in favour of shooting the entire film within the campus. I remembered that there was a bridge near the EB building that would work as a suitable alternative, so I rewrote part of the script to suit this location. The final bridge sequence required the use of a gimbal for the revolving “Steadicam” shot, but I only had a phone gimbal so we used my phone (with Filmic Pro installed) to shoot it, and had our DOP Will use it. We shot about 4 takes of it and the final version combined all of them based on the best moments from each take.
We managed to get permission to film at all the areas around the campus, which helped filming progress smoothly. For the few shots where we could shoot in Parramatta Square, we shot it on a phone in 240fps and to create the crowd shots (which had to be done candidly to avoid attracting attention), I used directional blur effects and keyframes to mimic the look of a “camera whip” ala Damien Chazelle cinematography. I then rotoscoped two shots on After Effects so that the crowd was blurred.
In terms of the final product, there were some shots that I wish we could’ve gotten, due to the entire cast and crew’s schedules and time restrictions, so as a result, we couldn’t do it exactly the way I envisioned it, but what we got was fantastic with the time and resources we had, and because of the amount of pre-production we did, production went smoother than expected, and overall, this acted as a fantastic learning experience about working with a crew, and the knowledge I've gained will be very useful towards future projects.