Approach December 8th, 2023

Director: Steven Malinowski

Role: Editor/Producer/Screenwriter

Runtime: 5 minutes 31 seconds

Approach was the idea of my friend Steven who I met at UMass Amherst. We had taken several different film production and media related courses together. The general premise of Approach is to face your fears and keep going no matter what is in your way. In the case of this short film, we took an almost fantasy horror approach, pardon the pun, with a mysterious warrior venturing into the woods to face off with a shadowy demon/monster that he had fought previously leaving him badly wounded. For this production, I undertook the entirety of the post production process. Taking the footage directly from camera at the end of the day, bringing it back home, organizing it and then slowly beginning to cut the narrative together. Finding the narrative flow, timing and creating the world of the film took a bit of trial and error. However, I am happy with how the sound design and pacing turned out. Especially since I was limited to free unlicensed sounds for this film. It was the first film I had edited from end to end. The difficult part came with finding the appropriate color grade while still making sure the audience could see everything . I used various power windows and one end lut to create deep tones and well balanced shots. One part of the film that was extremely difficult at the time is the end chase down from the monster. I know I would be able to achieve a much better look today. I hadn’t worked with keyframing before. We shot all the parts of it on location rather then on greenscreen. Therefore, creating the different masks and lining everything up was a big challenge. I am very happy with how this film turned out and can see the growth I’ve had since making it. I hope you all enjoy the film.