5-Hour Filming Challenge
As a task, we as a class have been requested to create a two-minute short film with the filming and pre-production and editing time of five hours. The day before we have been asked to put ourselves in our own groups of a maximum of five people. The day before filming we as a group had a discussion of what our ideas were and what we would most likely be able to use. I came up with the basic idea of someone running to use the toilet, as we have had discussions in film studies class, we have learned the concept of “its not always about the destination its about the journey” so in discussing this with the group we have come to an agreement that we would create a journey sequence that would throw the audience off and deceive them in thinking the character is running to/from something but in reality has to use the toilet. Some people were cautious of this idea as it was very basic and it was a risk, which some of my group were wary to take. The reason why I chose to put forward such a basic idea was simple, because the film was supposed to last two minutes a story could easily be told but as my last film was quite a dark drama, people have challenged me to create a film that isn’t so dark and create a film that is buoyant. Knowing me, I like a challenge and tried to have a more upbeat storyline that could double as being funny all I requested for my team members to do is to trust in my judgment.
The pre-production was relatively easy because I had installed in my head what locations I would like to use for the short film and what I think would have been a good choice of shots to use. The majority of shots I would of preferred to film and use would have been outside, rather than filming inside the college building. In my opinion filming inside the college building was basic and was too simple but due to team members being late and group decisions, the filming time got reduced to two and a half hours. Filming and editing was still possible in my opinion.
Filming was more of an obstacle because there was a range of technical problems such as team members being late and group discussions on where to film. Once our team members showed up, I done everything in my power to get the task done effectively and efficiently as possible. There were a few disagreements of locations I put forward due to the time restriction we now had, so we had been reduced to film inside the college building. A good thing about filming inside the college building was that the health and safety risk had been lowered and there were a river of new ideas that came into my mind.
Editing, once filming was completed, the next step was to edit the footage we had recorded and we had just under an hour to do so. Editing for the first half an hour I felt was an easy task because I knew exactly how I wanted the film to look. As the editing went along smoothly there were a few ideas that I had before but weren’t filmed, I solved this by taking the camera out on my own and filming the shots what I wanted for my film. There were quite a few technical problems I encountered while editing, such as; the sound refusing to work for a the rest of the day disabling me from editing the rest of my film. I tried resolving this issue myself but this wasn’t possible so I requested help from the technician and he tried resolving the issue but had problems too. I had been assured to have the rest of the time to film another day when the cause of my problem had been resolved. I didn’t finish editing my film that day, which in my opinion wasn’t ideal but there was nothing possible that I could do.
Overall, the whole task I felt was easy, there were a few problems as stated above but I felt that the people I worked with were good team members and a few of the ideas I put forward had been considered and used by my team members.
ondreroach 