Summer Project 2018- Camp Rock Opening in Sims 4

Introduction:

For this summer we had to create one of our favourite scenes from any film, I decided to go with the opening scene from the original Camp Rock. This is one of the most memorable films within my childhood specifically in the summer as my sister and I when we were younger and sometimes even now when we are together, watch the film and its sequel. The reason why I chose the opening scene of the first is that I use to be such a morning person and I use to relate to this scene a lot about enjoying waking up for the last day before the summer break. I wanted to make a different twist to the scene and create it through my editing, so I decided that I was going to use the game ‘The Sims4’ to make it more challenging to create the same emotion and feeling of the scene. This made me focus on the editing part of the project as it meant that the editing was what held the whole thing together.

Directors:

The director, Matthew Diamond, was born on 26^th November 1951 (so he is 66 years old) and he was born in New York in Manhattan. He isn’t my favourite director, but I do like some of the other of his work, like Jane the virgin and the few episodes of 90210.

I like many unique styles and types of directors but one in particular, and one particular TV Storyline they helped create. The director I am talking about is Tetsuro Araki who directed the anime ‘Death Note’ I feel like the story wouldn’t be the same without his style he gave the character designs and how he created the opening, he also did a lot of storyboarding for the show and without his envision for the show. Throughout his career he has consistently taken the role of storyboard artist director and Death Note was the first anime in his career for him to have more roles, this was his first time being a series director and his first and only time to be a key animator for the opening credits. It is clear if you look at his timeline of a career that Death Note was a big part of his career. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Diamond

Why didn’t I re-create something, Tetsuro Araki?

The reason why I chose a director of an anime TV series is even anime movies are good for me but I just like TV series more because of the time that you get to see the characters be built up how the character arches are formed and having the feeling to come back for more, giving hour instalments instead of telling a coherent story in 2 to 3 hours. I know films have series too, but the way TV shows create the feeling as if the time is passing by at the same rate as it is for you, makes you connect with the characters giving the viewer a feeling of friendship within the protagonists. So, when things happen it really affects the viewer in a way a film wouldn’t. There are films that do bring people to tears, for example, Marley and me, but if you were to create a TV series about it, giving it seasons even before the ending the effect of the ending would impact the viewer harder as it would feel more like a friend who you have known for years going through that pain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsur%C5%8D_Araki

Is this my favourite scene of Camp Rock?

No. There are a lot of creative, moving, funny, sad and just emotional parts within the film to me as I remember how they made me feel when I was younger. There is a cheesy love story about a girl who wants to go to this camp over the summer to learn more about rock, but her parents can’t afford it, that was until her mother got a job for the summer to work in the kitchen and she could go as long as she helped out in the kitchens. Then the guy is a rebelling teen rock star of a band called connect three he is sent to the camp as an instructor for the summer as a punishment for behaving badly on tour. His bandmates even announced that whoever won the Final Jam he would record with them. There are some clichés and cheesy storylines to the film but overall it is what makes the film work so well. It is lighthearted and just the right amount of soppy storyline to be something easy to sit and watch no matter what mood you are in, and I think that is why my sister and I use to watch it every summer as it is based in the summer holiday and it does help that all the songs within the movie are really catchy and we grew to love, learn and sing along to them.

Problems when filming:

I only really had one overall problem and that was the fact no one who lived close enough to help had a single day to help, as it was the summer holidays people had their own plans and family trips out. I had my own too, and people who wanted to help me couldn’t as we didn’t have a single day to film where everyone was free. I handled this by using what I had. My laptop. I soon learned after trying to film the scenes on my own trying to direct, act and shoot all on my own that it wasn’t going to work as my parents didn’t know the camera equipment to film and it was a teenager within the scene they couldn’t act. I had to re-think my approach as I wanted to use this scene as it was summer based, so I thought it would be fun to re-create because of the meaning it had to my sister and me. I then thought of something, how there are many people online using games to tell stories and also re-create scenes, the main one used is Minecraft but I didn’t see how I could create something with only access to one account as the camera shot types would be very limited so I looked at more story creation channels and I found a lot of people used the Sims2. My computer ran out of space before I put it on my computer, but I did have Sims4, even though this may seem very odd to say this difference there is. Sims2 had a lot of mods, fan-made otherwise known as custom content that you get online for free, for specifically creating stories, like adding in reaction ques to make a sim react a certain way. Sims4 didn’t really have that kind of content available, well not as easy to find. In the end, I had to rely on the sims natural reactions making it harder to get the right reaction at the right time. This did make this longer to film, but it is what I had, and I feel like this has helped me edit more as I had to make the set, talent and general setting. I think this has helped me as editing is the part of the industry I want to go into, that and possibly writing scripts so I feel like this has challenged me to envision what I was creating and how I was going to create it.