Recently I Directed two short films in 2 weeks. The first one, 'Trapped', was one of the end of year short dramas chosen at C.I.T and the other, 'Is This Your Card?' was for the Open Road Film Festival competition.
Both projects were quite different, one had a lot of time and planning and the other was put together very fast. I'll start with Trapped.
Work for Trapped started months ago with pitching. I wanted to put together the best pitch I could so the project would be chosen. It wasn't required but I decided to do a Director's statement to explain the vision I had for the story. This ended up helping a lot later on when it came to pre-production work. I researched the visual style I wanted and found references to support it and came up with character backgrounds so that I could understand the characters better and be able to answer any story related questions asked by the judging panel. I found it tough to write a Director's statement because A) I hadn't done one before and B) because there aren't many examples on the internet to go off. It took a while but I finished it and it has been a useful tool to look back on when we were in script development.
After being chosen our crew went into script development and pre-production. As is, the script needed work so the writer and I wrote several new versions. I realised that the story was starting to move away from what drew me to it in the first place and I needed to get it back there. After 8 or so re-writes I was happy with the script. I worked on my script breakdown, which I also found challenging. Trying to find that right word to explain the characters objective was really hard. I spent a lot of time on the internet looking for action verb that would fit with what I wanted for each unit. So many words can be very similar but still be totally wrong for what I was looking for. Eventually I found the right words and it was then time to find actors.
We cast a wide net to several acting websites and agencies to get the best range of actors we could. On audition day I chose to have the actors do two scenes that were emotionally different to see how the actors would perform. We were happy to hear from the actors they had interpreted the story exactly how we wanted it to be. We were fortunate enough to find two actors that exceeded our expectations of what we wanted for out two main characters. Right from the start they knew who their characters were and how they should be portrayed in the film. Their talent made my job as a Director so much easier. We had one rehearsal before filming and our three actors nailed their characters. It was also great to hear ideas they had for their characters that I hadn't thought of and I welcomed it. It really showed they understood who their character was.
After 2 or so months of planning it was shoot day. I was nervous because it was the first real film I have Directed with actors and a full crew. I was completly confident with my actors and with the work we have all done but it was that feeling of the unknown. Will we keep to schedule?, will I make a mistake?, Will we get the coverage we need?. All those type of questions were in the back of my mind, I tried to keep them there and focus on the job I needed to do. There were a few hiccups here and there by the crew (not the actors, they were fantastic) but we finished on schedule and got all the shots we wanted.
The high point for me was the first scene we shot. Seeing it on the split and it being exactly as I imagined it to be was a great feeling. It kept me focused for the rest of the shoot because knowing that with colour grading the rest of the scenes would look like that scene, especially when we couldn't see that while shooting.
The low point was on the second day of shooting. Our extra was only available for 1 1/2 hours at midday. Normally for an exterior shoot that is a really bad time to film, with the sun being at its harshest and moving shadows. We spent a lot of time trying to cover the blown out areas of the house and grass with the little equipment we had. We got the scene done but it was stressful for everyone involved.
I feel like I have learnt a lot from this shoot and what not to do in the future. It was a great learning experience. I cant wait for it to be edited so I can see the final product.
The second short film I Directed was much more stressful. We had so many obstacles to overcome to be able to get it made. This project also started months ago. It was for a national film competition in it's first year. Gregor Jordan and Bryan Brown in association with Harley-Davidson and Canon created a 75 second ending to a short film. It was our job to come up with the beginning. The possibilities were endless. I was really excited about this project and came up with a few scripts.
The first obstacle was trying to fit this project in with the huge amount of TAFE work my crew and I had already. We were hoping to film in a gap we had between projects. The first projects were delayed and pushed back. They took longer than expected and we thought we would have no time to make the short film. We were very disapointed but the deadline for the competition was pushed back a further 2 weeks. I knew it was now or never and we started work immediately. We put out a casting call straight a way and started organising a location.
The script we wanted to do worked best if we could film at the Police academy as it had all the locations we needed in the one place. This is where our next obstacle surfaced. We had basically a week to get everything sorted and had 1 day to shoot. Everything was lined up except for the location. Things weren't looking good and we were denied permission to shoot there. Again we thought we had to give up. After discussing it with our co-ordinator hope was still alive. We decided to do the other script I had written and again we were full throttle trying to get it all organised.
We had a week to get everything sorted and still only had 1 day to film. Things looked tough but we were determined. More obstacles came in the form of paperwork, film shoots, actors becoming unavailable, organising a Harley(this was part of the competition and should have been easy but was far from it. A whole story that I won't get into) and a ridiculously small crew.
Finally it was shoot day. We had a crew of 7, 3 locations in 1 street, 2 proper actors and the rest friends and family. We began shooting and all of a sudden a thunderstorm came in and we had half the script to shoot in exterior locations. All I could think was ARE YOU KIDDING ME?. We pushed on and filmed our interior stuff while it rained. The whole day was go go go and by night time I think we were all a bit giddy. Everyone worked extremely hard and after 13 hours we got it filmed. Next came editing which I had only 4 days to do before the deadline, while also attending classes. It was pretty nuts but so was this whole project.
I learnt so much on this one, ESPECIALLY how important pre-production is. I know that with more time to plan, film, edit and with a bigger crew this short film could have been amazing (which I guess is probably what a lot of people say). I am proud that were able to complete this project in only 2 weeks. It shows how determined we are and how much effort gets put in when you love what you do.
