CLAIRE SCOTT

#I am not a comic artist#but I had a similar problem when I was in film school#I call it “the door problem”#in my thesis film I had written that two characters walk out the back of the club into the alley behind the club#and my club location did not have a back alley but did have a side room that we used as the door#but that door opened in#and the location I used for the alley had a back door but that door opened outwards#and I knew it looked weird#I struggled framing the shots#and blocking the actors#and I got really really caught in my own head about how to make this door work#because to me it was really important that you saw every step from club to outside#because even though we had learned in school that you could transition it didn't feel right because it didn't feel like a new scene to me#(this being one of the struggles with a short film. It can all feel like one scene if your script is short!)#AND THEN#when we got into the editing room we just...cut the door transition entirely#initially not on purpose#what happened was that we decided to tighten up the timing by cutting non-linearly to the custom music I had commissioned#which made it much more experimental especially in comparison to my fellow classmates#however it showed me that the story still absolutely worked without needing to show how they got into the alley#the audience can infer the door#so now anytime I can feel myself getting stuck on something when I'm filming I think#“Is this a Door Problem?”#as a storyteller it's always a question of what is the absolute bare minimum you need to convey what you're trying to say#and sometimes that means you just need to already be outside the club