Hello little blog of mine that nobody reads. ;) JK that's what moms are for. Anyways over the past couple of weeks I didn't have any weddings or projects to work on so in an effort to not drive myself into sadness, I made a little short film.
I was just browsing a filmmaking website when I saw a post about a short film contest with a deadline just three weeks away. Perfect. The next post that I read on that same website repeated the same old piece of advice: make a film that has meaning to you, because only you can make that film.
I got to thinking about what that might look like, and quickly came up with the idea for Today Will be a Good Day. This is a story that me and my friend Manuel (the star of the film) had been throwing around for a while. By that I mean we had both written something similar to the final product, but not good enough to make. So we combined the ideas from our stories and I wrote the film.
I finished it pretty quickly, and gave it to my friend Bruce (who did sound/color on the film) to read it. He thought it was crap so I went back and changed like half of it. And then it was a lot better. Not as thorough of a writing/revising process as it should be, but hey I only had 3 weeks.
The biggest issue of the film was Manuel's schedule. He worked almost every weekday so we either had to shoot on the weekends or on Wednesday afternoon, so we really only had like 3 or 4 days when we could shoot it. We got it done a little bit closer to the due date than I would have liked (we finished about 5 days before it needed to be uploaded).
Editing took a lot of time, especially with all the sound work that needed to be done, and then Bruce needed two or so days to color it. Thankfully we got it all finished in time. Now, I don't really expect to win the contest as there are a ton of truly amazing films that were entered, but the contest gave me a good excuse to make a film and make it fast. Here is the link to the video on the contest website.
You see, if I had decided to make it, but hadn't put a strict due date on it, it would have probably taken a couple weeks longer to make. Projects will always expand or contract to fit into the timeframe that you allow them to have.
I learned a good bit from this film, and overall had a lot of fun with it. I think I will definitely work more on sound with my next film, as that is the thing I felt least experienced at. Also, its a good idea to always allow yourself a little bit more time when shooting. ;)
Feel free to let me know what you thought of the film even if you hated it. Negative feedback always helps me more than positive feedback does. (Unless that feedback is along the lines of "ur film sux u lil n00b. Go rek urself m8" -Thats usually not that helpful.)
I already mentioned Manuel and Bruce, but I also want to thank the other people who helped, Austin Gunniers who did sound, Brandon Jordan who plays Voice #1, and Joshua Twiddy who plays Voice #2. They helped make the film what it is. Also, here is the film's IMDB page if you wanna check that out cuz thats pretty swag yo.