The U Films Virtual Film festival - Assignment

Short Film Competition 

My Idea

When looking at the brief for the competition it was a big challenge thinking of an idea that could work.  This is because I can only film inside my house, I cannot get any help of parents are anything to act in it as they are working. Furthermore, the competition said there is no dialogue meaning that I have to convey my story through visuals. I first stared to think about different ideas that I could do around the house as the brief was the short film has to be filmed in your house. Mmy first idea was to do a short film about my dogs’ life at home however there was not a good story line and it was hard trying to move my dog in the right place to get a shot.

After this I went back to the start and began brainstorming ideas. The idea that I enjoyed was an end of the world situation, about a virus. Furthermore, the main protagonist could be a patient who was the cure for the virus. I thought of this idea as it is an extreme version of what the world is currently facing.

I then began scripting and planning what my idea was and what shots I wanted for my short film. I written down bullet points of the different shots I wanted and looked at which shots would be best for the situation I was going for.

My Execution

After I planned out the shots, I began planning locations as I needed good places around the house which fitted the atmosphere of a dark abandoned world. I wanted to start off with the protagonist on a bed and waking up to the destruction of the world. I wanted a dark place with a brick wall where I would film the opening. I decided to film in the garage as this gave a dark feeling and made the opening be more dramatic. However, the rest of the location I filmed around the house as I was limited on locations. However, in edit I decided to make my film a black and white film, this made the rest of the location give the same atmosphere as the beginning.

After I looked at locations, I had to find a cast however as I have no one in my household, I had to star in the short film and try and do cinematography. I then made a schedule with 1 day of filming and 1 day of editing as this will give me a good amount of time to put in effort with the group project.

I had to figure out how I was going to film on my iPhone and still make my short film look professional and how I was going to stand the iPhone still without using a tripod as I will be doing all the cinematography. This was probably my biggest challenge but with the use of tape and a selfie stick I was able to make a little stand for my iPhone.

Research

I then began to research different short films that have been made in isolation, I began watching the isolation shows on ITV. I did this to figure out how they were able to make a short film inside a house and how they used their location of just a household to make a dramatic and interesting short film. I also looked at non-dialogue short films as this was the assignment and looked at how the portrayed the story with just using visuals and no dialogue.

Non-dialogue short films often have one actor as this makes it easier because the one person does not need any dialogue to speak to another character. This made the theme of isolation easier as well as there is only one character.

My Shoot

As I was by myself during filming I struggled to try and move the camera so I was in shot as I could not see the shot when I was in it. This was probably the biggest challenge because it was a lot of trail and error. With recording a certain shot and watching over it and if I did not get the correct shot, I would repeat this. The lighting in some shots did not match the dark atmosphere that I was going for in the first scene. As I could help the natural lighting and I was on a schedule. I decided to fix this issue in edit, by making the film black and white and adjusting the exposure to make each seen match the same dark undertone.

One issue was the location as I could not film anywhere other than my house. If I had more access to locations, I would make the location be like the opening with brick walls, like an abandoned house. Furthermore, if I had more crew and cast I would of made the story longer and had a better storyline, as I thought the storyline was a bit cliché and not as good as I would want it to be.

With a better quality camera and a tripod it would have been a lot easier and quicker when filming, as when filming the iPhone kept falling off the stand that I put it on, which could of damaged my phone. Having just a tripod and camera would have made filming much more time efficient and easier to film.

Evaluation

Our assignment was to create a 30 second to 3-minute non-dialogue short film with the theme of isolation. I first began with research into different short films that have been produced during lockdown and looked at the ITV short stories. I also investigated non-dialogue short film, as I would be the actor in my film. During filming I was able to improvise and figure out how I was going to get this shot with just my iPhone and what camera angles and shots are best for the situation.

I was happy with the different shots and the editing of the short film as it felt dramatic and gave the correct undertone I was going for. However, I was not happy with my overall storyline as it felt a bit bland and there was nothing to the character. I thought the way I got the shots and my editing to make the lighting darker to covey the darkness was clever. I also thought the editing when the fire reflected in my eye was a different and new effect that I was excited to experiment with.

Another thing is I would like the protagonist to have a backstory and make it more interesting and have the viewer connect to the character. However due to time I was unable to add more depth with the character. However, this also makes it a mystery for the viewer, and they will make their own assumptions about the characters and how he got in the situation.

Group Project

Idea and Execution

Our second assignment was to create a short film with a group in isolation. We went on a zoom meeting with Kelly and she discussed what the brief was and how we could execute it to make it work. After the zoom meeting I began thinking of ideas, my idea was to do an Isolation mockumentary of different households across Britain. I told the film students this idea and they liked this idea and they thought it would make a funny short mockumentary.

We then got the actors involved to see who would be interested in this idea and we made a group chat with everyone who wanted to be involved. We then had a zoom meeting about how we wanted this to work. We all discussed our ideas and we took notes. We first discussed about all the characters and all the different lockdown stereo types and how we could emphasise this to make a comedy. After we had the basics for each character, Harriet and Sam went away to write a script.

Research

The research that I undertook, I looked at popular mockumentary show such as ‘the office’ and looked at how they filmed their shots for the comedic value. I then sent my actor screenshots of how she should frame her shot and told her to watch some clips on YouTube so she had a clear idea about the style of comedy we were going for.

Shooting

Once this we began giving an actor to a film student so they could direct their scene. I had Sophies character. Directing without being face to face was difficult. She sent me her first footage and I directed a bit of her acting, her camera angle by sending her examples what I had found and I also directed her lighting as in one of her takes the camera was very over exposed.

If we were going to re film for the narrator, we would use the sound studio at Stockton Riverside College as the sound would be very clear and there would be no background noise. Furthermore, we would go to each house and with a Sony camera and a tripod and direct the whole scenes properly as it was hard to direct without being there filming the scene.

Editing

Me and Kai were the main editors on this project, so we decided to split it in half and edit a section each. I was editing Sophie's and Josh’s bit and Kai was editing the rest. We both edit them and then I sent them to Kai to put them all together, so we had a finished project. However, it was 11 minutes long and the brief stated it should be 4 minutes. So, me and Kai both began cutting down lots of dialogue as some bits of dialogue felt to long for what we were going for. After me and Kai both had a shortened edit of what we thought would work we worked together to put our favourite bits together and we were able to cut it down to 4 minutes.

Evaluation

Our assignment was to create a 4-minute group short film in isolation. I came up with the idea of a mockumentary about lockdown in different households. We thought this topic was very relevant to the time we are living in and it would make it a situation that is awful have a bit of a funny side. What I would improve is I think we should have looked at the timing of the short film better. This is because the original version wad 11 minutes long meaning a lot of scenes dragged and seemed a bit boring. Me and Kai fixed this issue by cutting out all the irrelevant bits and the stuff that seemed to drag.

At the festival, this was received very well as it was clever how we all worked together from our own homes. We were able to work as a team, with directing the actors and editing which made it work smoothly as we planned it out well.  As it is comedy short project, we had to try and fit the humour which most viewers enjoy. From research the office is a good example off a inspiration of this.