Procrastination: A Short Film
As my first preliminary task that I had to do a short one minute video. Personally, I did not know much about shots and angles before doing this video. However, I was open to learn right away.
First, my group and I had to brainstorm ideas for the story, which was a rather difficult task because I had many different ideas that we could choose from, nevertheless we eventually figured out and decided to do a short story on a procrastinator.
Before shooting the film I did the storyboard
During the storyboard brainstorming, I had to be conscious of the different shots and angles that we wanted to do to enhance all the feelings that I wanted to translate to the audience. For instance, as the camera-lady, I decided to do an extremely close up of the eyes to increase the feeling of distress that the main character was feeling the moment he realizes he did not do the homework his teacher is collecting at the moment. My group and I also had to be considerate of of the lightning choices we had in the school, which weren’t the best, so a decision was made to use the flashlight from our phones.
Furthermore, I needed to take into account the symbolic codes in our film; for example, the protagonist is supposed to be a reckless student who doesn’t really care about school, so to symbolize that my group and I had our actor walk looking down at his phone while listening to music with an empty-looking bag-pack hanging low on one shoulder, while walking late into class.
Angles are a crucial technical and symbolic code to demonstrate how a character is feeling, so a low angle was applied in a scene where the protagonist is walking into class to convey his feeling of power, as if he is on top of the world oblivious to the fact that he had a homework due at the very class he is entering.
One thing that did not work well, was the use of color. The protagonist was wearing a white shirt, which symbolize innocence and purity, and that is the opposite of what we were trying to convey. So now I know that next time, if I’m doing a film with a “bad guy” again, he or she would rather be dressed in black or red, to symbolize danger and/or darkness. Also there wasn’t any contrast between the white board behind the protagonist and his white shirt, and that can be distracting for the audience.
However, a thing that work in our favor was the mise-en-scene. Since the film took place in a school, we had the advantage to shoot in our school. Even better, we got the chance to shoot in one of the classrooms, so there wasn’t any necessary props that needed to be added to make it look more convincing, since all the props were already given.
Overall, since I did not know much about the technical part of film making, it was a difficult task to endure; however a great learning experience as well. I got the opportunity to collaborate with my peers to create a decent first short film.
AS Media Studies 