Figuring Out the Details

This past Thursday we got several helpful tips regarding making our short film. The best advice from the workshop came from Eric. He told us to have a Producer. The producer is important in getting the cast and crew together, as well as helps make thing work smoothly when shooting or during rehearsals. I’m just now realizing what a vital role this is. It is so difficult to get a group of people together. Every person has a different schedule, so it’s hard to figure out a time and a place that works for everyone.

We also got some advice regarding shooting our film. It is important to make a list of every scene you plan to shoot and in what order you want to shoot them. This way, if you are at a location (and have the appropriate location agreements signed) you can shoot all of the scenes that take place at this location all at once. This will save time and effort because you won’t be driving back and forth from location to location. Also, you don’t have to shoot the scenes in the order they will appear in the film.

In addition, we watched a documentary on Robert Rodriguez. I thought it was interesting how he did all those different special effects on such a low budget and could think up a special effect at the drop of a hat. This would come in handy for our own short film. We don’t have a very large budget at all. I would like to spend as little as possible, being the poor college student that I am. Also, we don’t have much time to shoot this film. We must keep this in mind as we are creating our films. If we want to do special effects it is necessary for us to do them using as little time and money as we can get away with and still produce a quality film.

For the greatest portion of the class we broke up into our separate film groups. My group nailed down a lot of the details of our scenes. We figured out exactly what scenes we would need and brainstormed some ideas for locations and actors. We also, thought each scene through so we would have an idea of what little things need to be in each scene. This part really helped me because I am the sound editor for our group. Thinking about the details of the scenes gave me an idea of what types of sounds I need to think about recording. For example, rustling papers, squeaking chairs, or cars driving past. Now I know where exactly I need to start when it comes to getting the sound we need for our short film.