My experiences with making Shorts Films
Like many others reading this blog, I was always interested in the filming aspects. It is not about just watching a movie or observing a part of the movie, but that overall process of creating a film from start to finish. What makes a film a film! What goes in! What is the process! And finally can I ever make one on my own!! And where do I start?
And finally 10 months back I decided to finally stop procrastinating and start doing something about it, about this urge to plunge into film making. And I decided to make a short film.
Why Short Films - They are fun to make. You can tell your story quickly. You can avoid big budgets.You can look for and collaborate with local talent with similar passion. And importantly, you can put your film making skills to test.
By then I watched, with a critical eye, many movies, to the extent of not being able to watch any film without ripping it apart every few seconds. Yes, it was very annoying to others watching along with me. No, I did not do this in a movie theater. I also read lot of books on various aspects of film making, both printed and online material. And of course, watched a lot of youtube videos too.
So when I finally got to the threshold of taking that first step of creating my first film, there were some decisions to make.
Story - And the learning is - Keep it short for the first film
How do I approach the story. Do I take an existing story, get the copyright and develop screenplay? I decided against it. In the end I wanted to develop my own story and screenplay.
By then I already started writing down my random ideas as single lines. So when I finally got the courage I went back to my journal to look at my ideas. And then one day I just started writing in a screenplay format. It is an amazing moment for me. Whatever I read about characters developing themselves when one starts writing, that thing started happening and I loved it. And then in 15 days I had my first draft of 15 pages.
The next big step was finding some people who are willing to come in front of the camera. And who else than your friends for an opportunity to get shot into fame! I gathered 4 friends and did 2 weekends of workshop sessions. There were two reasons for doing a workshop.
Reason 1: To evaluate my abilities around Camera, Direction and Editing. Yes, you are right. I was going to do all that work because I wanted to understand all aspects of it.
Reason 2: To evaluate how my friends were going to do on camera.
After 2 weekends of workshop, I realized that my story was going to end up at around 20 minutes, rather too long for a first short film. And it needed too many sets in different locations. And it needed indoors, outdoors.
So I scrapped the project and went back to my ideas journal. Found an idea. Restricted it to two characters and one single room. I made the film in 3 hours, because my friend, the other actor, could not spare more time. As I was not able to find a second actor, I decided to act in it. Looking back that was both a good and bad decision.
Good - because less dependency on others. I just had 3 people for the entire film, including the two actors.
Bad - because I was also the DP/Camera Operator.
In the end I was able to quickly edit it 5 days using Final cut pro. I also made up a tune from 5 random notes and added it to the crucial moments in the film.
Looking back - I wish I cut out some dialogues and made it little shorter. The film stands at 7 minutes today. It is online and I will post it here one of these days.
What I learned from my first short film
I experimented a lot with editing. Learned a good deal of Final Cut Pro.
Learned a lot about lighting.
Learned multi camera shooting and editing.
Got a good external audio recorder (Tascam - DR40) and learned importance of clean audio.
Experimented with cameras and lenses (within my budget) and finally chose to go with Sony S7iii. I just use two lenses. One the standard Sony lens that came with the camera and a Rokinon Cine camera with a higher aperture. I also use my iPhoneX as the second camera. It works great for B-Roll and in high light conditions.
I also learned using the green screen and now understand the limitations on the camera movement with green screen. At least with the current technologies I use it is not easy to move my camera during green screen shoots.
In my next blog, I will write about my first 48 hour film festival experience.
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