1. What went wrong with our short film?
Michael Rumble
During our apprenticeship we had the idea of creating a short film, which would
help us to fill units for our apprenticeship folder, specifically units 17, 23, the
units for filming and editing.
Initially we were all happy to have a part in the project and were all enthusiastic
about both undertaking this project and filling a large amount of our then fairly
empty units.
It had also been decided that Jonathon and Carina would make a documentary
about the making of our short film. We decided as a group that each of us would
have a part in each individual process and not leaving the script writing to just
one person, the contacting locations and actors to one person etc.
We thought this was best as it meant that we’d all get experience in each area,
evidence for our individual folders and added to that not one of us had any
expertise in any of the areas that would be needed therefore it wasn’t going to be
a case of the person being right for the job.
The first thing was to set deadlines for each stage in the projects life cycle, these
stages where as followed, along with the deadlines:
-Script 8/7
-Actors and locations 29/7
-Visualization 5/8
-Production 16/9
-Rough Edit 30/9
-Soundtrack creation 14/10
-Final Edit 28/10
-Screening and Feedback 11/11
We sat down with Peter Murphy and John Stockton and these deadlines where
agreed upon by us at the time. In reflection I believe that these deadlines where
too strict and at the time I thought that because I started earlier than everyone
else, that I’d have less time to finish the apprenticeship. This was proven to be
incorrect but at the time it was unsure what was happening therefore these
deadlines could have been changed slightly.
The first step was coming up with an idea that was practical with our resources
as well as being a creative idea we would want to do and feel passionate about.
We printed off documents with information on different themes and genres and
what they’d consist of.
Off the top of my head I cant remember exactly what genre we decided on which
is clearly something we should have known however the main theme was
Romance.
2. We decided that a story about a man and woman meeting each other and talking
about bad dates they’d been on with people from the internet and then
subsequently falling in love with each other after looking for love elsewhere.
We thought this story was simple yet effective. It wasn’t the high point of
creativity but it was doable and wasn’t too ambitious.
We then went to work on writing a copy of the script each as no one had massive
experience. We felt that we would all benefit if we all written a draft each with
the same theme and genre and then collated them and chosen the best elements
to pick from each.
At this point everyone was still happy to go ahead with the project and not much
time was taken up from our work here at Red Dreams.
Over the next few weeks we all were all busy writing our version of the script,
aware of the deadlines however what we should have done was set up smaller
deadlines for when we’d sit down and meet up and discuss the script instead of
just briefly talking to each other about it when we where in.
Things hit a point where we all had other work to do and we didn’t make enough
time to ensure we’d hit the first deadline. As of this we missed the first deadline
for finishing the script however instead of just going ahead with what we had we
kept going making small changes to the script here and there.
This obviously was a major mistake as it took us from being behind on 1 deadline
to being behind on the other deadlines.
While the script was being written still we had made an effort to get in touch
with people for actors and locations as well as printing out storyboards and
contracts however we couldn’t organize a shooting schedule without knowing
when the script would be ready. Therefore we couldn’t advance until we thought
this idea was perfect. At this point we had even considered changing the idea
completely to something we would have felt more passionate about. This went
on for approximately 2 weeks before we decided that we would continue with
our original idea despite us loosing passion for it.
During this period no contacting or other planning was done potentially setting
us back 2 weeks.
