A Few Forks in the Path

From the recent workshops, there have been a few things that stood out to me when thinking about the future of our Short Film assignment due at the end of the semester. I have seen that good sound (which is given 50 to 90% of the credit in a film), good editing (so the story flows) and adequate lighting in all scenes is very important. It surprised me to know that in horror films, the light often comes from the bottom of the shot instead of the top, to create an ominous feel. I know now that when editing, you must have a story that can be followed, but it helps you to cut down on time spent explaining if you could just use a flashback or other tool to skip forward/backward and then return to the original story. Camera angles are also very important to the feel of each scene. Like, when two people are shot talking face-to-face and another where the conversation is filmed over one's shoulder, that there is a huge difference.

Some of the more detailed techniques, like those of stop motion, cross-cutting, zoom, fade-in and fade-out, and many more impressed me as something to use in the filming and editing of our film. With the editing software and cameras available, I believe all of these techniques are possible in one way or another, but the real determining factor is the creativity and hard work our group is willing to put into it. We'll need someone in each area that knows what they're doing or is at least willing to do their research in the camera shooting, lighting, sound, and editing to make it a masterpiece. I was extremely interested in some sort of montage, with the limited time we have, to tell a larger story. With good writing and editing this is definitely possible. Also, I'd like to use a few good transitions to go from one scene to the other, such as cross-cutting or fade-ins and outs, just to make it flow a little easier.

Well, I guess it's time to put our heads together to make something not only entertaining, but good too. I believe we can accomplish almost every technique we choose with the right amount of work, except for the extremely high-tech stuff that is out of our reach. It's a movie, we can make it whatever we want it to be.