The stair incident (5 sample shots)

The Stair Incident (5 sample shots)

            By: Lazaro Alfonso 

 

    

    In this video, I went for an establishing shot in order to introduce where the following shots would take place. I wanted to get a bird's eye view of the flight of stairs, so I chose to record the video from the top left of the staircase, slowly walking to the right to show it all in a straight manner. It isn't perfect, but it is a great start for my first shot!

                                                                                    

    The second clip features a first person point of view shot of my feet walking over to the staircase, to descend downwards. I was considering a close up shot to introduce the subject to the audience, but I would rather that the audience sees through my eyes of when I approached the scene. Another small detail to add, I included my feet in the frames instead of looking straight as to not confuse the audience to whose POV it is.

    Now here comes the climax, going down the stairs. We settle on a wide shot of me descending down the stairs, closing in on the scene's tension to what is about to unravel. I decided against any other shots to really express where I am on the stairs, as well as how far down I have gone. 

    I have fallen on the stairs during this scene (based on true events). It hurt, like, a lot. This was probably the hardest part to shoot, not only because of how painful it is when floor meets elbow, but because of how dirty that filthy ground was, having been stepped on by thousands of Everglades students (I am washing my clothes and my face at this very moment). A high angle was used in this clip to evoke how vulnerable I am to the action of walking down steps, my humiliation is immaculate. 

    The final shot, a close-up shot to be specific. I decided to go with this to capture my exact expression of embarrassment getting up from the ground. The only thought behind those eyes are whether someone witnessed that torturous plummet onto the concrete. I cannot believe I went ahead with this plot.

Lazaro's Blog

       Hi, my name is Lazaro Alfonso and I am a student in AICE Media Studies. I'm a 17 year old student in his senior year at Everglades High School, already yearning to finish the school year already. I am a Cuban male with pretty much my entire family being of Cuban descendants.    

    My family involves 3 siblings, that being my older sister Daniella, who is just turning 19, as well as my younger sister who is currently 11. The two of them are a major part of my life, as I have grown up with my older sister since we were in diapers, and my little sister is there so I can annoy her as much as I please. My family also includes my parents, obviously, who indulge in things like Cuban Coffee and Hispanic music that I can barely understand. 

    I regularly visit my grandparents on my mom's side, but unfortunately my dad's side have both passed at the time of writing this, I do miss them. My family is filled with aunts and uncles, especially on my dad's side. My mom's side, however, has a sister as well as a younger uncle, who is currently 16, and whom I have grown up with closely.

    I see myself in college with a minimum wage job still living in my parents house in the next year or two. I plan to study at FIU nearby my house for a year, so that I can not only save up money living in my parent's house, but also to get better chances at entering UCF when I transfer to a college. I wish to study computer science, which is mostly because I want to code videogames for a living, as well as design them. However, the degree also provides fallbacks in case I fail at this, as many corporations look for coders to create websites, systems, etc. 

    I took this class mostly to receive an AICE credit, but also because I believed it involved using social media as a platform to learn from, which was rather interesting. Other than that, I never envisioned, that we would be using YouTube of all platforms to conduct our learning experience. Watching YouTube videos to analyze details of editing and why the artist used it sounds spectacular, which does make me want to come and sit down in this classroom each silver day. 

    Just the thought that we will eventually be making our own video clips sounds amazing. During our final project in my English class with Ms. Polgari, we were required to produce a 15 minute video on certain writing genres, as well as creating skits, songs, PowerPoint slides, and whatever more for it. I spent 5 hours learning how to edit my group's video, which involved syncing voice overs, pasting clips together, including subtitles as well as pictures of our group members, and cutting out unneeded clips  to reach that maximum 15 minute mark. It was tedious work, but we got it done. 

    That experience filled me with determination to learn more about video editing, which is both a fun and stress inducing load of work. I hope my peers and I will all take away something from this class, as well as reaching that 100% pass rate at the end of the year.