Recently Discovered the Beauty of Film Making

C

cdavid02

Hello everyone, I am David. I, like most people, have always had that little urge to make a film (short or long) with some friends just to see how good you can do and how fun it can be. I recently had the chance.

My friend Evan is a Director/Editor and during class one day , we decided to make a film. We got a generic idea on Friday, created the basic scenes on Saturday morning, and filmed all Saturday and made up things as we went. We finished filming Sunday morning and created some more plot and filmed it.

We made this video EXTREMELY fast and never had a plot written out, we only had a few scenes, but the rest was just made as we went and we improvised.

I didn't direct much, but I did a lot of acting and helped create the story line and thought of some ideas for filming as we went. Evan was the camera master and edited the whole thing.


I love making serious/dramas/thrillers, as they interest me the most, but I wouldn't mind doing something funny if we had an idea.

Well, this is pretty much me. HI! ;)
 
And another one is hooked! SUCKER! Welcome to our little Filmmaker's Anonymous group, the coffee's by the door :)

This is addictive as hell and legal (unless you film like Spatula ;) )
 
How cool is that!

I spent two years (from age 14 to 16) doing that. I would
call up my four friends early Saturday morning and say,
"You wanna make a movie this weekend?" We would add
a couple more people who were free, buy as many rolls of
film as we could afford, stop somewhere, set up the tripod
and I'd say, "Okay. What happens first?"

We would shoot until we ran out of film or out of light. I
still remember the days when we'd be in the zone and the
guy with the camera would say, "This is our last roll."
Suddenly we had to find an ending.

We'd send the film out for processing on Monday and by
Wednesday, I'd be editing.

I envy you! You should make at least two of these a
month for the next two years.
 
ugh.

I was helping on camera and we shot last weekend with no script (and no camera test on a brand spanking new Cannon XHA1) and basically have to reshoot everything. I was just happy no one died. We did a zip-line off of an abandoned grain silo in the middle of nowhere. Fun, dangerous, but in the end... useless (at least in as far as creating a quality product). If you're doing it for fun, it's all good, but don't expect a festival screening if you don't have a shooting script! And for FUCKS SAKE, do a goddamn camera test!!!!!!!!!!! We shot in HD and because the gain switch was on auto, the footage looked worse than SD!!! But because you can't actually get a good picture test on the LCD, we had no idea until we captured!

Don't get me wrong, spontaneous filmmaking is fun and all, but nothing beats a good plan!
 
Back
Top