Authors: Emma Levinbook ’22 and Cici Chagnon ’21
Armed with two digital cameras, a stabilizer, and a drone, junior Charles Zhao has been working tirelessly for the past several months to create his film, “Changes: Kingswood Oxford School’s Response to the Global Pandemic.” Despite only having gotten into true filmmaking in the past year, Charles has certainly showcased his impressive cinematic abilities. The action of creating the film, however, was no easy feat.
In creating his film, Charles’s main goal was to reveal to the community not only how KO as an institution is responding to the pandemic but how specific individuals – teachers, administrators, staff members – are handling the new normal on campus. Through talking to several individuals, including French teacher and Head of the Pandemic Response Team Kathy Dunn, Head of School Thomas Dillow, history teacher Stacey Savin, and Director of Facilities Justin Wolfradt, Charles was able to present to the KO community how different departments are cooperating with one another during this time.
The first step in the filmmaking process required putting together a list of possible interviewees and reaching out to these individuals to set up times that worked for both parties, a task that was more challenging than it may seem. “Some people’s free time did not work out, so it required me to switch up my own schedule to make the time,” Charles said. “Overall, there was really a ton of adapting.” Finding the time to meet with and gather information from these individuals was also made more difficult by the unexpected snow days/online learning days and also due to Charles’s other commitments that come with being a junior in high school.
Once he completed these interviews and collected sufficient information to include in his film, Charles then had to sort through and decide which of the responses he received matched his angle the best. “The video for all of the interviews added up to 800 GB, so there was a lot of stuff to go over,” Charles said. “Also, at some point, the audio went dry, so I had to adjust the video and audio settings, which took a lot of work.” After sifting through this first set of interviews, Charles then scheduled follow-up interviews to fill any missing gaps and to get more footage.
For Charles, the interview process was one of the most difficult parts of creating his film. “Interviews were very challenging because I had zero experience with it,” Charles said. “It was hard to have to be able to have an instant reaction to someone and also to just come up with good questions.”
The footage from his interviews is not the only video part of the film, however. Charles also planned out and shot drone footage to capture the school on a much larger scale. “There were really just a lot of moving parts, which all took a lot of time,” he said.
The final steps involved Charles editing his film to produce the final product and working with the marketing team to have his film presented on several platforms, including the KO Instagram, the Wyvern Weekly, and the KO website.
“Editing was another challenging part because there were hours of footage,” Charles said. “It was hard to choose what to keep and what to delete to shorten the first draft to the final draft.”
Despite all of the challenges that came with producing his film, Charles thoroughly enjoyed each step of the filming process and was able to overcome initial difficulties. “Although interviews were hard, it was really nice talking to people and hearing the views of those who made the pandemic decisions for the school,” he said. Additionally, despite the demanding editing process, Charles, at the same time, enjoyed this step, for it allowed him to add his own unique flair to the film through animations and transitions. Most of all, watching all of his hard work come together into a final film was especially rewarding.
Charles would describe his filmmaking style as simply pursuing a high quality of filmmaking. While high school productions are often assumed to be low quality, Charles said he wants to counter this stereotype, as he strives to impress with his own work. Charles’s perfectionism can in part be attributed to his inspiration from 影视飓风, who also goes by Mediastorm, and focuses on pursuing the best quality of film possible.
For his next film, Charles’s main goal is to be more time-efficient. “My first film took three months, so I was very occupied,” he said. “If I want to continue this process, I must make sacrifices in order to produce my film in a more timely fashion.” Additionally, Charles hopes to work with even more people in terms of growing a video department at KO. “I want to cooperate with more people and give more individual roles,” Charles said. “Maybe I will get a video producer to shoot some of the shots, as well as interviews, which means I would take up more of the managing role.” Above all else, for Charles, structure is extremely important going into his next film.
Looking farther into the future, Charles hopes to become a professional filmmaker and wants to follow a media and communications path to meet his other interests as well. “Media is a great way to get your voice heard,” Charles said, “and filmmaking is one part of this storytelling that I enjoy.”
See Changes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DJv9d0iMLM
