You will always continue to improve your filmmaking, because you’re never going to fully ‘have it’.
For this shoot, Nelson, Gill, Belinda, Melody and I worked with Astley’s script to create a short, two-line production. The tone and theme of the script was mysterious, so Belinda, Nelson and I workshopped the preproduction aspects of the project on Monday. While the original plans to stage the scene had to be changed, as we could not get the room we originally had written in, we were happy with our compromise in the garage area of Building 10, adding to the mystery and sketchy nature of the script. We worked with Tessa and Jasmine as actors, who were VERY helpful and cooperative, contributing and listening to us.
Overall it was a very pleasant shoot, I ‘firsted’ which was something I had never done and while it was a lot of work, it was very fulfilling. I edited this project at home, and was really happy with the quality of the shots that were captured, with minimal continuity errors, as well as only a few framing issues. Nothing disastrous, just something that comes with a tight schedule. I found some royalty free music that I felt fit the scene perfectly, and I messed around with a bit of colour grading to bring out the blues and cold tones of the project, adding to the overall mood.
I am really proud of this piece, but it’s not perfect. There is a fair bit of white noise in the audio, and we should have recorded more isolated audio on the set for ADR when editing. But what I’ve come to learn through this shoot, Paul and this studio as a whole is that my filmmaking is never going to be perfect, there is always going to be something new to learn, whether that’s a new technique, new pre or post-production skill or just a new way to tackle a problem. And that’s both nerve-racking and exciting. It means filmmaking is never going to get stale or repetitive, That’s cool as!