Lights, Camera, Romance?

The finale of this semester’s honors course is the creation of a short movie. Our class members have been divided into groups of 5 or 6 and our assignment is to shoot, edit, and present a 5 minute short film on a various topic.

Last week in class, we finally began the process of creating our short films. Eric split us into small groups based on the roles that we have been assigned to play in the upcoming project. I clustered with the other camera operators on the sofa and struggled to grasp the multitudes of camera knowledge that was thrust upon us. You would not believe how difficult it truly is to take the shot you envision in your mind and transfer that to film by a specific manipulation of camera components. I found myself getting confused just trying to zoom in on a random object. Because of class time constraints, Eric decided against making each group check out a camera and running test footage. Instead, I and the other camera operators took a camera and whatever quick notes we could jot down during the tutorial and set out on the world (the hallway) to see what we could do. I think that this strategy was more useful in the end, because the group setting allowed us to help each other better understand the intricacies of the device. I must admit, we had some fun.

It seems that Donna and Eric do not trust us Honors kids to come up with a film from scratch, so they decided to assign our groups random genres to focus on. I was away from class for the last two hours of so trying to manage wide and long shots in a building hallway, so I missed the majority of the genre assigning and brain storming. It seems as though my group was assigned the task of making a five minute romance film. Just what we wanted (seriously). I and my group members had a short talk before class ended and I like the ideas they came up with in my absence. I believe our consensus was to do a stalker variation of the romance theme. Everyone surely has seen some scene in a movie with a creepy guy filming someone through the window or watching them from afar. I’m not quite sure how that theme will be associated with the romance genre or how the film will end but I’m sure there will be some unexpected twist. Our group will not be meeting until tomorrow afternoon so I don’t really know anything for sure yet. I’ll post more when we know for sure.

I’m kind of nervous for the project to get underway. I do not know exactly what our group is capable of with the minimal resources we have available. I have this idea in my head for a film that looks and compares to the stalker films that we are all accustomed to. There is a certain look to a scene where someone is in power and someone is completely oblivious and vulnerable. I don’t really know exactly how to create a shot like that. I’m just hope our product turns out half as well as we’re all expecting it to and that at least a few viewers get the point.