So we had just finished shooting week and we got hit with a 48 hour film blitz. Basic summary: we are given certain criteria and have to make a short film around those criteria in 48 hours, including editing, to be judged. Unfortunately our film didn't finish exporting until it was too late, even if it started exporting on time. We weren't disqualified, I thought we would be, but we did get docked 10 points. So for the results before the details of the experience: 49 for us, 53 for them final score. Including the docked 10 points. Yep. The thing was we cared more about making a film we were proud of and happy with than winning. We said that before we were exporting. In the end that was how we felt so the win/loss was not important to us. We were proud of it. On to the experience...
Fortunately I got 9 hours of sleep to sort of make up for the lack over the previous few days (last night I got 10). We went to the classroom and were informed about it. We weren't given any information, just who was on our team, and told to go do homework, get the roles sorted for the film, or whatever until 6:30 pm when we'd meet again and get the info. We had a book report due the next day (I did Making Movies by Sidney Lumet, I highly recommend it) so I went to the park across the street for some restful introvert time post meeting to finish the book. I had finished and emailed it by 5:30 pm. So back to the meeting. We had to decide roles and Lindsey wanted to do it where we all prayed about who should fill each roll and the write the name down and see what happens. We could write our own name down if we felt God was saying to, I didn't though. So we did that after everyone was interested in pretty much everything, ha ha. First up was director. Names were written and we had a tie of one vote each until the last name was pulled out. So with 2 votes to 5 other individual names I became director. My director of photography/cameraman was our staff member William, our other staff member on the team was Josias and he became 1st assistant director. Helene was sound, Lindsey was script supervisor, Brie was 1st assistant camera. Emma was our actress. We ended up getting an actor from outside the school to be in it as well named Wendy Spencer. She has done a lot of work over the last 30+ years in acting. A few of us were feeling a tad of surrealism over it.
So 7 pm came and we got our info. We started throwing around ideas right away and rather quickly came up with a story. By 1 am we had a script and Wendy cast. We went to sleep and were back at it by 6 am to find/make props and costumes and find locations. The rest of the crew went over the script as well so they knew what we were shooting for. I went over rehearsals with the actors and felt good about it. So we went to set...a forest...with lots of spiders. We filmed the whole dialogue scene from a few different angles. Josias and I were the spider finders and removers. I used a stick and he flung them at us. One bounced off my arm and I screamed. We stayed at that location until sunset so we could film Emma walking through the trees at golden hour. William was an amazing DoP. We had worked out the angles etc and he set up some great shots. He used the glide cam to film Emma walking. I went ahead with a stick and cleared out the webs and spiders. I told them to follow my path exactly. Lol. Good times.
After we got back Josias started editing that scene and the rest of us got the props together to go film the "cave" scenes. We filmed under a house light by candles and the glowing elixir that was glow sticks cut open and dumped in a bottle. It was epic.
3 or 4 hours after we finished and we went to sleep it was time to get up and go back to the forest to film more tramping around at sunrise. When we got back from that I passed out asleep on a couch and snored like a chainsaw. After I woke up from that (an hour later) there was more editing and we went to film a timelapse (which didn't make it into the final cut). We also filmed some flashback scenes but those didn't make it either. Then it came down to editing sound and colour. We submitted the version with no colour correction and we will be able to clean it up more for the premier night (aka grad).
Yep. That was an awesome experience and I loved it. I can really do this. Yes!
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