Final Blog Entry

THE YEAR IN ONE BLOG

Matt's Choice

What is a short film? How short does a short film have to be? How much do you have to prepare to make a short film? What is the significance of a short film? 

These were all questions I asked my self before entering the Planning and Making film course for my 2nd year at University. I had some vague assumptions on what the course would entail. I was looking forward to the experience of creating a short film, and the process that is involved in it.

Me on the camera

In this blog, I will be reflecting on the year, on stuff that I have achieved, things I have struggled with and what I have learned. First of all it is best to try and define a short film. A short film in a nutshell is a film that isn't a feature length. It doesn't necessarily need a conclusion, and doesn't even need dialogue. However a short film, like every feature length film, needs to be engaging with anticipation.The most important aspect which I wanted to learn about short films is what makes a short film good.

I wanted to achieve the most out of this course, and as my ambitions are centered around the film industry, I believe that I would gain on all the experience I learn over the year.

After reading the blogs I have created over the year, I do feel that I have progressed since the start of the year. 


Outlines and Loglines
One of the first things we learned was outlines and loglines. The concept of loglines is to establish the the theme of the film in one or two sentences. An Outline is to establish the structure of the film. When getting the script for choices, I wrote two possible loglines for the theme of the script;

• Would you choose to be good, or choose to bad.
• You never know what choice you will have to make

Obviously I am not a creative writing student so my loglines are definately no piece of literature. So in this respect this was my weaker point on the course. I felt that it was quite hard to sum up a film in a sentence (even a short film) to make it engaging enough for viewers to want to watch it. So I left the loglines to the more creative writing students. As for the outlines, I found it quite useful to sum up a film in a few sentences due to its structure. I particularly found it useful when I was writing my script.

Choices
The first script we all received was entitled Choices. As I mentioned in my first blog I generally disliked the script. I felt like it didn't seem enough to make it convincing for the short film genre. I quoted;

"The script now to me seems like a moral documentary that you would show to teenagers. Hopefully after re-editing the script, it would look more visually aesthetic and engaging for the audience to make it seem more like a short film."

Regardless of this, our group tries to make the best of what we had. I came up with the idea of their being a twist, -  the main character being a schizophrenic. We managed to get all the locations relatively easy and all the pre-planning was fairly simple. As we hadn't done this before, I was quite eager to do it all right, so therefore starting the planning as early as possible.

The filming went well, well least I thought it did. There were a lot of problems with our Choices film. I have expressed this in more detail in my blog on editing, which where most of the problems occurred.

Although I had problems with the film, I had gained a vast amount of experience, and I could conquer the problems which arose to avoid them in the next film. It is also important to note that I took the role of director. I felt this was a huge responsibility. However, this not meaning I wanted to avoid it, rather I enjoyed the challenge. It was quite an odd experience, as I enjoyed having the power, as I literally 'called the shots'. I wanted to be director for my next production.

After reviewing the film with the class and Mike, we generally got negative response. At the time I felt that I was cheated quite unfairly, as me personally put in a lot of effort. However, when I look back on it now it just made me more eager to make a better film next time round. Therefore making the second film with my 100% effort.

Writing a Script

Over the Christmas break we were given the task to write our own short film script which, if chosen, will be filmed by our peers. This I was looking forward to as I have always wanted to write my own script, and it would be good experience to write one. In my blog of writing a script, I discuss the ideas I had in mind and the process I used to write my script. I wrote that;

"I tried asking my flatmates in what they would of liked to see in a short film. They came up with ideas like a twist, good music and possibly a dead body. Everyone likes to see dead bodies".

This is how I started coming up with ideas. My final script was entitled 'Car-boot'. I was quite proud of it and I had so much fun writing it. I felt it really help me to look at short films and features on paper, and the process in which a film comes into production. Celtx also helped me format a script in the correct manner which is really useful for my future ambition.



Take Care (Just desserts)

Our final project was to make the second film. As I had a lot of work in for other modules, I wanted ensure that we had a safe schedule to prepare for all the pre-production side. As I was working with a different group, it became more interesting to see other peoples perspectives. We had to chose a script from the shortlisted ones in which we all agreed with. I wanted to pick a script that was challenging and had little or no dialogue in.

We decided to pick 'Take Care' and cut out the dialogue and have music running through it. Mike told us that this wouldn't be challenging enough. However, I disagree. I found that it was quite difficult in the editing process when we try to mach all the shots with the beats of the music. Also the end scene in which the room turns around was the most challenging thing I have done to date (in the context of filming). This is not to say it wasn't fun. I had much more fun filming Take Care than I did filming Choices. I also believe I did a much better job and learned valuable directing experiences which I lacked with Choices. As I wrote in an earlier blog;

"Overall the weekend was much more successful that last time. We didn't run into any problems which made the whole experience much more enjoyable".

Here is the final outcome of the film;

Our film generally got good reviews by our class, which was a good turn around from my last reviews.

So as the year has almost come to an end, I now look forward to the film being showcased at the Little Theatre in Bath. I don't believe Take Care is the best out of all the students films, as some of the films were fantastic. I particularly liked The Breakdown by Claire and Mel as it seems that they have put a huge amount of effort and work into it, and the film obviously shows that.

Over the course of the year I believe I have gained a wider knowledge on what short films are all about. It has also helped me gain a broader knowledge on the film industry in general, and the expectations of the processes that films are made. I am hoping to take some of these skills I have learned and put it into practice to achieve my ambition in the film industry.

One thing I have treasured most out of my personal gain over the year is that I always wanted to get better. I want the next film/script to be better than the last. As Alfred Hitchcock once said;

"I am scared easily, here is a list of my adrenaline-production: 1: small children, 2: policemen, 3: high places, 4: that my next movie will not be as good as the last one." - Alfred Hitchcock.

Post-Production

Putting the Pieces together

Getting on with the Editing in Final Cut Pro.

Yet again, it was time for the wonders of Final Cut Pro to collaborate all the frames together to make our short film, Just Desserts. After filming was seen to be a success, we got on with the capturing and logging the two tapes. Everything was looking good,  the picture quality was satisfactory and as the music was sent to us in mp3 form, it seemed to work well with the frames.

Music
We decided to make the whole short with music as the audio, and having no audible dialogue. Rachel's friends band, called The Jackals. The song we used was called Puppets and Fakes. The lyrics were suitable to the office scene (our opening scene) as it explains how working is labor and they rather get the money for free. This is fitting the main character Chris, as he is portrayed as laid back and immature.

Re-shoot
After we made our first rough cut, Mike told us that we were missing a few shots. Shots, such as the washing machine on, symbolizing the room turning upside down. Mike also told us that we needed more shots of Chris miss reading more signs. So me and Adi booked out the equipment to re-shoot. We managed to collect the equipment the next day and start filming. The only problem was that our main actor was unavailable to shoot these extra shots. So we had to improvise. Instead of shooting him in the shot, we shot my hands which will fit nicely into a shot we already had of him opening the cupboard. This we used for him as another example of ignoring a sign. We also had the idea of using my drawing pin board with numerous amount of signs on it, this worked quite well with just using a panning shot.


Post-Production Regrets
When watching at the rough cut several times, they are many aspects which I feel we could of done better or added in, which would be hard to re-do. I had the idea of a surreal moment of when Chris is on the ceiling and various amounts of signs fall round him. This could of made the ending much justified in its surreal ending of the room turning upside down.

Another idea I had was inspired by the Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy. I particular like the duel scenes where Leone cleverly uses fast shots between two or more characters where it inter-cuts from long shot, medium, medium close-up, close-up, extreme close up, etc. These alternating between the characters. I had the idea of using for the character Chris while he glares at the microwave before the room turns upside down. This creating suspense and attention. The picture on the right shows this as the fast cuts ends up to being this close, if not closer.

The next step is finalizing the shots and making them look visually perfect as possible. We are currently in the process of doing this. I am looking forward to the final outcome of the short film.