The two areas of film I have always been most interested and excited to do have been writing and directing. As a result, I wanted to go through the process of writing and directing a student run short film. The final product was Model Friendship, a nine minute short that taught me all about the importance of planning, improvisation, and working with a great team of people.
The first part step of making my idea a reality was to create a script. Thanks to the help of so many peers and advisors, I was able to improve it a lot from first to final draft. In initial versions I made the story much too focused on the superficial project and less on Hank's need for true friends. As time went on I fixed that and made alterations to all the characters. Hank became more earnest, Philip less antagonistic, and Anna and Oliver more manipulative.
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Below are the first and final drafts of the screenplay.
First Draft
Final Draft
Once the Screenplay was finished, the next step was to begin planning shots. I began conceptualizing setups and estimating where I wanted to use each. I made a description of every shot I wanted to use and outlined on a script when I planned to use each in the final film. This wasn't a cold, hard plan, it just gave me a general idea of what coverage was needed for each scene. This outlining can be seen on the left side of the script on the right.
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After outlining what shots I wanted when, I had to decide how long to capture each shot in terms of script; what lines and/or actions we would get for each. This was marked on the right side of the script and can be seen in the script on the right.
With a list of all the shots needed and actions and dialogue that would be said during them, I was able to start diagraming them. Below are some of those diagrams. This helped me communicate my plans for different shots more easily to others on set. They also helped for planning some lighting in advance, which made some shots go smoother and much quicker.
After this, work on preproduction scheduling went into full swing. I had to examine all the shots and figure out what actors were needed for each, was there any special equipment? Where was it being shot? What shots would be good to shoot consecutively for sake of time. Because of limits on time and strange conflicting schedules, figuring out the timing of each shot was a huge puzzle.
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Below on the left is a piece of the schedule showing the times, scene, shot, shot description, which characters are needed for the scene, and which actors are available at the time. On the top right is the shot list with various information about each listed. Pictured on the bottom right is the shot logging sheet that script supervisors used for taking notes on different takes on set.
Finally it was time for production. Fifty hours of filming in one weekend. Production turned out to be energizing, tiring, fun, stressful, and an overall exciting experience. While I was concerned over many things for almost all of shooting, I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed being around all the cast and crew and feel extremely lucky to have been working with them. No set I have worked on has had such an upbeat and jovial atmosphere as this one did.
