Makena Dettwiler

The Film For my class feature film project called The Hidden, I was the 1st Assistant Director. This meant that I help with our main director with anything he needed plus making the master schedule and call sheets. The biggest challenge we faced was staying on task. This caused us to film on more days than originally planned. I learned how to be a trusted leader in the class and used those skills beyond the filming set and classroom. My overall opinion of the film and my work on the film is positive because it was a successful film but I wish we could have had more time and used our time more productively. My Time In Class Every day in class, I was working on either call sheets or collaborating with my fellow crew members about upcoming filming dates and made sure that everyone was prepared. Outside of class, I make sure that I continue to be a leader so that I can better my classmates in this film. My Strengths I would say my biggest strengths are productivity, problem-...

e-Communication has greatly impacted my life, even though I don’t plan on entering the AV Communication field. I am going to school to study music education, and I plan to take the leadership skill I gained in this program and applying it to my own classroom. I feel that I am more technically advanced than a lot of other kids my age. For example, I made my grad party invites myself, after coaching my mom through the photography process and photoshopping my own pictures. I have learned to collaborate with people I don’t particularly like, and I feel this skill will help me in my future workplace. As a teacher, I will need to be able to communicate with my students and my coworkers, and my job as AD greatly prepared me for that. Managing a set taught me management skills by allowing me to know when to adjust deadlines and when to stick to them. Leadership went from being a quality I never had to one of my greatest values, and I’m so grateful to e-Comm for teaching me all of this. Le...

The purpose of No Film School's article titled "9 Basic Tips for a Smother Indie Film Production" aims to instruct readers on easy things they can do to have a productive film set. What caught my attention was the fact that the author mentioned the value of an AD second, just after the necessity of a producer. I'm mainly going to focus on this paragraph. The author focuses on how the AD runs production on a "day-to-day" basis, meaning they schedule and manage smaller crews (light, sound, camera, etc.) during the set. While I liked that they referenced Wikipedia as a source to refer to for on-set commands, I wish they had instead listed the commands themselves. It seems more professional and less lazy that way. I like what this article says about ADs and their responsibilities and I wish that every crew member could read this tip at some point! It provides nice insight into an AD's mindset. For reference: https://nofilmschool.com/2011/12/9-basic-tip...

During Fourth Quater, I had the pleasure to work as Assistant Director on our last few filming days and as "Film Mom" for post-production. One of my favorite things in the world is caring for people, and as an AD, I got to do just that.

Cheating PSA I thoroughly enjoyed making this PSA. The whole point of this project was to catch the watcher's attention and then teach them something meaningful. The idea of the film was to show a conversation that could be interpreted two different ways. Upon first watching the PSA, one would think that the boy is seeing another girl behind the main character's back. However, toward the end of the PSA, it is revealed that he actually passed one of her assignments off as his own, cheating off of her, not on her. We spent about two weeks making this film. We lined up our actors, set up a filming day, gathered equipment, created the set, and filmed it. We edited it for the next couple days and then presented it to the class. On filming day, we learned last minute that the guy we had cast couldn't make it to the set, so we scrambled and asked Trevor to fill in. He did a fantastic job, and the PSA still turned out great. Along the way, I learned a lot about the effort th...

In this story, two people with severe social issues are trying to overcome them. Max is always worried about what others think about him, and Violet struggles when talking to strangers. Natalie wrote and an adorable script about how Max and Violet meet and learn to overcome their social anxiety. We originally were going to film a story about a kid whose parents forgot his birthday and he throws a party for himself. We started filming but ran into some logistical issues. We set aside everything we had already filmed and moved on to Natalie's script instead. We filmed and edited it over just a couple of days. I was originally the Art Director of the production, and I helped stylize and obtain props for the birthday party, but when we actually filmed, I was busy the whole weekend. I wish I could have made it to the shoot, primarily because there are things I wish I could have done visually. For instance, putting the waiter in a more formal outfit would have looked better, or having ...

The idea of the video was to hook the audience with something more dramatic and enticing, or in other words, a girl who is mad at her boyfriend because he got caught cheating. The viewers get to watch her argue with and accuse her boyfriend as they fight about what he did. What the audience doesn't know is that he is actually cheating off her school work. We tried to create an "Ohhhhh" moment, a kind of realization that dawns upon the audience when they finally figure out that he's cheating off her, not on her.  First, we sat down and looked at a list of PSA topic ideas, stuff like suicide awareness and drug abuse. When we had each settled on a few ideas, we brainstormed basic plot and synopsis ideas of each topic, and based off of those, ideas, we settled on Cheating. We figured it would provide the most interesting story for the PSA.  After deciding on a location, we visited it to finalize the decision. As the production designer, it was my job to ...

Opening Image: Star Wars has almost two opening scenes. There’s the timeless yellow-words-scrolling-through-space-to-give-you-background-info opener, but then the movie actually starts, moving into deep space where a larger Empire ship is attempting to capture and board another, smaller ship. Storm troopers board the smaller ship, along with Darth Vader, and the first ever documented Star Wars battle commences. Theme Stated : The theme of this movie is to never give up, no matter what is thrown your way. Set-Up: Mid-Battle, a yet-to-be-introduced woman fusses with R2D2, a droid. R2D2 and his comrade, C-3PO (another droid), run for cover. Meanwhile, we find out that Darth Vader has boarded the ship in search for something – he’s looking for “plans.” Turns out, R2D2 has been assigned to a secret mission by the woman. He has been given these plans in secret, and they are stored in his hard drive.  The two droids escape unharmed in an escape pod, but the woman, who we find out to ...

This year in Graphic Design, I have learned the importance of project management and technical skills. If I don’t stay on task and pay attention, I can’t complete my projects on time. Also, if I don’t pay attention, then I can't learn the technical skills that are vital to completing tasks on time. I learned all of this through my Individual Focus project. We were told to explore our own ideas and come up with our own assignment. I chose to learn new skills online through various tutorials on YouTube. I took pictures of celebrities that I love and turned them into Andy Warhol style pop art icons. By the end of the project, I was able to work really quickly and I didn’t need the tutorial anymore! It’s important because, without the knowledge that these skills are vital to success, it would be really hard to go anywhere in the Graphic Design world. Clients want their products quickly, and without previous exposure to the basics of what they are asking for, it’ll take a whi...

We’ve all seen this before. If you haven’t, you’ve been living under a graphic design rock. One of Andy Warhol’s most famous works, his portrait of Marilyn Monroe, is recognizable to anyone, just because of how famous the artist was. Using a publicity shot of Marilyn, Warhol created a few works through a silk screening process. He made the original, Marilyn , and then Marilyn Diptych , symbolizing the iconic woman’s death. In my own little way, I tried to create my own Andy-Warhol-based portraits of Hayley Willams, Gwen Stefani, Cara Delevingne, and Lady Gaga.  Following a basic color scheme, I created Pop Art Portraits

After being given the assignment to imagine a supplement and then create packaging for it, Sydney, one of my best friends, and I created a carton for a pill that will plump your lips. This is it!

This is my Saul-Bass-inspired movie poster for Lady and the Tramp. I image traced scenes from the movie in Adobe Illustrator and turned them into black silhouettes of the two characters. I love my subtle heart/paw print overlapping background piece!

In our latest project, we made magazine covers reflecting who we are. As girl with a "preppy-rocker vibe," or so I've been told, I went ahead and broke the rules and overexposed the image, as well as increasing the red and blue hues in the photo, giving me a beautiful purple overlay. After editing the picture in Ps, I assembled everything in InDesign.

1) Find the photo you want to create. 2) Create and select a new layer. Using the Ellipse tool    , figure out the size of each circle you need. Lay them over the original logo. 3) Press the Hide button on the layer for the original picture. Select the circles, and hit Divide    in the Pathfinder window to separate the circles into individual segments. 4) Delete the extra segments by Direct Selecting    them and hitting the delete key on the keyboard.  5) Select everything, and change it to a nice Twitter Blue. There you have it!