Our class was assigned a one-word film project. We were teamed up in pairs to make a short film based on a word we were given. The challenge was to come up with a 60-90 second story that really showed what the word meant using visuals, sounds, and camera angles. We had to shoot all the footage ourselves and then each of us edited it separately, making two different versions of the same film. The final product had to be between one and one and a half minutes, with only instrumental sounds or effects and there was no dialogue allowed.
We were assigned the word "tolerance" and we kicked things off by tossing around different ideas. At first, we thought of a typical bully/nerd scenario where the bully learns tolerance. We then got more creative and landed on a pro soccer player trying to coach an amateur. The huge gap between their skill levels would force the pro to be tolerant and patient to help the amateur improve. Our brainstorming sheet helped us think through our ideas (see below)
Next, we had to think through the story and the camera shots that would work to tell the story. We put together a 15-slide storyboard to get a better idea of how we would bring this story to life as well as how we wanted each shot to look. This is what our storyboard looked like (see below). The storyboard helped us become more organized and served as our camera shot checklist.
We then started filming in class, but quickly realized we were missing some key elements - soccer gear and a soccer ball (pretty important props). These were central to our story, so we had to meet outside of class to film. We met after school at Vista Park hoping for better luck, but we soon ran into another roadblock. We realized we needed a third person to help film the scenes when we were both in the shot. We had to meet again, over a weekend, with a third person to help us film.
Finally, we recorded over 100 shots, but I ended up using about 20 for my version of the film. We used iMovie for the editing and it was a challenge having so many shots to choose from but, at the same time, it was great to have so many options.
I feel that my video was well put together and told a coherent story but I feel some of the shots could have been executed better. For example, the over the shoulder camera shot came out looking more like a zoomed shot of Alessandra’s back. The camera should have been placed much closer to her shoulder. In addition, we probably could have avoided a lot of the initial obstacles and setbacks (not having props or a third person to help) if we had spent more time brainstorming everything we needed, instead of just focusing on the story and shots we wanted.
Video: