Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre: Week 10 Reflection

This week, we started the shooting process of the short film. As the main supervisor of location scouting, equipment, and shot list making, it is my first time handling multiple jobs at the same time. Therefore, it is unavoidable to encounter logistics problems. When I was organizing the shot list, I did not consider the timing of the scenes. Mainly, when we had a group discussion of the script, we did not mention the scene timing. Therefore, the shooting order did not suit our intention. For example, last Sunday, we managed to shoot the scenes when Agent Whyte was teleported to 2024 in daylight: the city montage. After that, we finished those scenes when Whyte was looking for Wollie’s clues. All scenes happened to be done by 5 p.m., and we expected to shoot the fighting scenes between them. However, the winter afternoon soon got to dawn and the sky turned black quickly. I was running into camera issues so the shot has to be delayed to next Monday. Therefore, either we wait until late Monday to get the fighting shot or try to find a way around to shoot it regardless of the condition. Nevertheless, I was able to grow professionally by managing these roles in our project. After our first shooting on Wednesday, I learned that it is more useful to have a good direction visual and a more organized shot list. My first shot list was not that great for delivering instructions to actors. However, I still managed to include other useful information: scene order, location, camera, lens width, and shot types. Therefore, it helped cut down time on the set. For the second shooting on Sunday, I tried to break down each scene into smaller parts. That way, it will not get the actors confused by too many directions. I used the Shot Design app to convey my idealistic shot visual in 2D. Especially during our working on set, I realized that it’s better not to be too adamant about the shots you want to make. My teammates are natural performers and they know how to take advantage of the shooting location to express their characters. That’s why I added a comments section next to each shot to ensure that I kept track of any visual changes. It helps me communicate with my actors more easily since they understand my expectations and give immediate feedback on whether the shot might be good or not.

Link to my shot list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JaB4bkNaVk-isVFPDZSGO6bPif5TqNSoiyQBWOwB64w/edit?usp=sharing

 

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