A Short Tour of Film

This past week in class, Eric screened a few short clips on various topics that correlate to the act of film making. One particular clip, by an upstart company whose name I can’t quite remember right now, showed how we could go about making a corpse from inexpensive objects that you can usually find laying around your house. I’ve seen other episodes created by that group and I have always found them interesting. I’d like to try one of the projects they outline, but I’ve never been any good at that sort of thing and I’d rather not waste the money and make a mess trying.

Eric also screened a couple of college humor clips to demonstrate what you can pull off with a few minutes of footage and a couple dozen bored people. We watched a short documentary style film from the director of Desperado discussing the techniques he used to pull off the special effects shots in his movies. It’s odd to see the spontaneity of the whole process. If asked about my thoughts before class, I certainly wouldn’t have suspected that a major director created his effect shots as the scene was being set up. It seems like a risk that few people would be willing to take.

After screening the various short film clips, we split into our film groups to work on our plotlines and overall layout. I didn’t have much input in the group this time, because as I keep seeing all these examples of short clips, I’m starting to doubt that we can pull off something as epic or memorable, and that thought is lingering. I don’t think many people in my class would say that they are used to setting their mind to something and not coming away successful. We have spent our lives working towards the position we are in now and, to this point, everything has worked in our favor. I know that, because of this, I am going to stress over this project until the moment we turn it in. I know the expectations that I have placed on my group, mentally, and I will not be satisfied unless I can use my camera to bring those expectations to life. Eric wants us to have fun on this project but I don’t really think our personalities will allow that.