Recommended Books:
- On Directing Film by David Mamet - Making Movies by Sidney Lumet - Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell - Cinematography Theory and Practice by Blain Brown - Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video by Tom Schroepel - Setting up Your Shots: Great Camera Moves Every Filmmaker Should Know by Jeremy Vineyard Movies to Watch for Story Inspiration - Imperial Dreams - The Last Black Man in San Francisco - Moonlight - Life Itself Goals: - Shoot for a movie that is within the range of 5-15 minutes. Write a story that will fit within those restrictions. It's hard to make a film engaging for long amounts of time, even if it's just 30 minutes. A short film also forces you to look and give more attention to details and add nuance. It also requires that the idea or emotion of the story be short and direct. - Limit ourselves, K.I.S.S., Keep It Simple Stupid. - Go to All American High School Film Festival Website and watch the short films. Watch the movies and take notes on what is good, what is not. What we like and what we don't. Keep it in mind throughout the process. Look at the winners. - Things to avoid in our story: Suicide, split personalities, homeless people, last second twist. They're all cheap topics. - Do something unique! Don't be afraid to do something gentle and simple, stories don't always have to be super complex and sending the audience in every direction. Stories can and should be about empathy. It's okay to write about our experience. - Main focus should be getting good performances from actors and getting a good story out of it. When shooting, focus on moving forward and not the setup. - Since it's our first film, we should follow the rules instead of breaking them. - Beat Sheet: A (very) simple outline that gives the beat by beat of the story. After writing it tie in the potential visuals. Be fully willing to make changes.
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Although there isn't much camera work to be done over the summer, in terms of visualizing our story we know we need to first start with storyboarding. We need to know how to use and apply techniques like focal points, the rule of thirds, and leading lines in our footage. With a detailed storyboard early on in our process, we'll be able to identify type of equipment we need to create the moods and effects we want, as well as transitions, movements of characters and the camera, etc. We also need indoor and outdoor lighting and recording equipment so that all of our scenes have the right look.
Ms. Johnson helped us understand that the idea of the story is the foundation of the project. It's the first step. It will help us create our storyboard, decide our cast, the equipment we need, our settings etc. She also recommended to start working with Adobe Premiere early because of it's steep learning curve, and the fact that being familiar with it could also give us more ideas in making our movie. And that we should invest in textbooks that could help us learn more about compostion, storytelling, etc. At the Fellows Leadership Lab on June 2, we developed a clear pitch and began to finalize our timeline. During our meeting, we decided on possible mentors to reach out to and defined our summer goals as the school year comes to an end.
Going into the summer, we’re going to do a lot of research on the process of shooting and writing an amatuer short film. Our first step is to solidify our story and characters so that Chela can begin the writing process. Our biggest concern right now is the logistics of our timeline. Although we would like to start shooting by the beginning of next school year, we also want to have a backup plan in case there is another stay at home order. We’re also aware that social distancing may still be necessary in the fall. We’re trying to make sure our story is still plausible with everything that is going on right now. |
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May 2021
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