Sweding project

Recently, I've decided to spend some time sweding a clip from Parks and Recreation.

What is Sweding you may ask... Sweding is a verb that means to imitate a film you admire by attempting to re-create all or part of it. This originates from the 2008 film: Be Kind, Rewind.

Three boys (Dylan, Michael, Ryan) and I have decided to swede the scene from Parks and Recreation of the two minutes leading up to when Ron says "give me all the bacon and eggs you have." We chose this scene because of how it resembled the characters, with Dylan being a humorous person and the rest of us having to experience it. Comedy was also chosen because Dylan and Michael are working together on a comedy film, allowing them to practice more with this genre. We used elements of cinematography and editing to recreate, or swede, the scene shown below. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSMJOL0-dCQ

This was a comedic choice that allowed us to recreate this in a way that would be similar due to the style of cinematography being similar to that of a documentary. However, the entire scene was filmed at night. We had originally planned to film this on the 4th of March, but things didn't go our way, so we instead filmed on March 11th. Based on our schedules, we decided that 7pm would be the best time to meet, but with the time change happening the day before, sunset would occur after 7 instead of before.

Normally that wouldn't be too big of a deal as long as we shot it consecutively and made good timing so that the whole scene would be shot in similar lighting. However, in the middle of shooting the scene outside, the AC turned on and was disrupting the sound, so we started filming the inside scenes before we finished the ones outside. This led to a HUGE jump in lighting from one scene to the next, but we made it work because it comedically happened after Ron (Dylan) kicked the door, making it 10 times funnier than intended to be. It also worked out because sweding is supposed to be a terrible recreation, meaning it was fine to leave it like that. 

Of course I can't just talk about it without sharing, plus it would help you understand what I mean by a comedic lighting change. So, I linked the video here below... enjoy! 

Ryan (house owner and actor for waiter) was the main cinematographer, but when it got dark, he had to partially cover the light that was disrupting the shots. We couldn’t turn it off because it was still needed in order to see. So in the shots(s) where it was just Ron (Dylan) and Chris (Michael), I was the cinematographer. We all had filmed at least one shot of the video using Michael's phone, so he was the main editor. 

This serves as a lesson to me that not all media needs to be shot perfectly, and even some errors can create quite a comedic piece. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did and subscribe for more Lit Littman Posts!