Filmmaker Elizabeth Miranda embraces vulnerability.

What is Pocket Films?

In this series, we ask filmmakers to explore the theme progress/change using a smartphone as their camera, and editing their footage in Premiere Pro. We hope the resulting inspiration and advice helps you craft your own stories with the tools at your fingertips.

When Elizabeth Miranda was selected for Pocket Films, she intended to explore her Mexican heritage through the women in her family. But the global pandemic had other plans.

Tip: Embrace necessary changes throughout the creative process.

“To understand more of my familial past, I will record an intimate conversation between my mother, grandmother, and myself as we share memories, secrets, and everything in-between,” the Los Angeles-based filmmaker wrote in her initial treatment. She described marrying scenes of the Mexico town with present-day images of her mother in the United States. While she was able to make it to Guadalajara for the production, her grandmother couldn’t participate because of the coronavirus risk. Miranda scrambled to recalibrate the production.

The result, entitled Sin Despedidas (“no goodbyes”), is a revelation: Dreamy scenes of travel and Guadalajara interlace to create a moving portrait that feels as intimate as a rediscovered family photo album. “I had a heavy childhood, but I did a lot of therapy work this past year, so a lot of this project came from that,” Miranda says. “Especially now, when everything and everyone feels so far apart, this film is about progress, but it’s also about the search for connection.” As the montage of urban florals, airplane views, and Mexican street corners progresses, Elizabeth’s mother recounts her immigration story in her native Spanish.

Tip: Foster supportive relationships within your creative community.

Miranda wasn’t previously aware of this particular family tale, but it’s as if she had been preparing to showcase it in this medium her entire life. The Orange County, California native was first given a camera to hold as a baby. “I used to have a baby photo of me holding a camera — a camera I ended up shooting a lot of my stuff on — as my little Instagram icon,” she says. 

It was at community college that Miranda seriously began to contemplate a creative career. “I took the most random classes and I failed out of almost all of them,” she laughs. “There was this one photo teacher, though. I sent her one of my photos and she pulled me aside and said, ‘I like your point of view and I want to keep letting you do it.’ So she started to give me separate assignments to do on my own. She then suggested I move to Los Angeles to pursue photography — a move I never thought of before.”

Tip: Signing on to new kinds of creative projects means developing new skills.

“It was only after that teacher’s suggestion that I started looking at LA internships, and that got me to LA,” Miranda says. “Then I got a job, and then I kept getting jobs.” Her first full-time gig was at Capitol Records on the creative team, which shared office space with the film team. Elizabeth finessed impromptu lessons with the filmmakers to learn the video-making process and shot photos on any music video set that would have her. 

After more than five years, she left Capitol Records to dedicate her time to freelance photography and, over the course of the last year, began to seriously explore video creation. Miranda has already developed a raw-yet-retro perspective that has landed her multiple music video co-director credits for artists including pop darling Olivia O’Brien and the oh-so-moody Gabriel Black.

Now, this Pocket Films project marks another creative leap for Miranda, from music videos to docu-style narratives. Despite the perimeters of the series, including a requirement to shoot on a smartphone, Miranda wanted to stay true to her aesthetic, so she did what creatives do: she experimented. First, she shot everything on an iPhone, then recorded the footage on a minicam, and then shot the minicam footage again on an iPhone.

Tip: Leaving space for back-and-forth discussion with collaborators is always beneficial.

After her trip to Mexico, Miranda worked with editor Brandon Waddell to edit in Adobe Premiere Pro. Waddell began the post-production process by creating a sequence of usable source footage and then mixing completed audio. To fit the audio’s pacing with Miranda’s favorite shots, he used the Speed Adjustment tool to “create a slightly more stuttery feel.” Then, to add extra grain to the footage, he employed a variety of Blend Modes, including Overlay. To further adjust exposure and highlights, such as white balance and color grading, he also employed the Lumetri Color panel. Finally, he blurred the edges of the frame using the Gaussian Blur effect with an inverted circular mask.

“Keeping my mom’s feelings in mind when I was deciding what to keep out and keep in felt so new and confusing to me,” Miranda notes.  “I’ve kept a lot of my personal life out of my public work, which is why I think editing was so especially nerve-wracking. It was almost like another form of therapy because at the end of the day I’m a storyteller, whether it’s with video or photo. I’m just trying to make sense of the world and find my truth.”

For more from Elizabeth Miranda, visit her Instagram.

Meet the other Pocket Films participants and see more Pocket Films.