My Short Film Experience

Recently, I have completed my TV Program Production course which is a short course -4 month duration- that teaches production techniques of TV shows, dramas, news programs, advertisements and movies. My final assignment was making a short film based on any script I wrote. Finally, I made a short film as an amateur. Even if my short film was far away from the most of the techniques I learnt, it help me a lot to consolidate my knowledge and gave me ideas about what I should do and avoid in my next projects. So, I want to share my first short film experiences; what I ruin, what I recognize, like and hate so far.

Initially, if you want to make a short film, you need to have two characteristic that will help you a lot: Passion and Patience. When I was in the learning stage, while listening my teacher, searching on different websites or watching videos, it seem very easy and funny to me, but when I start writing the script or take to camera on my hand, Unfortunately I faced with the reality. Somehow It was most of the time funny, we enjoyed a lot but it was not easy at all and made my crazy.

Let me start from the beginning. There are five basic steps of production;

• Idea / Project Development

• Plan / Pre-Production

• Shoot / Production

• Final Cut / Post-Production

• Next Step / Wrap Up and Distribution

In the first step we should decide our project. What do you want to produce? Where will you get the story? What is your rough budget for this project? etc. You should find the answers of these and many other questions in this step. You need to be very careful because rest of your project will take shape based on this step.

However, all steps are very much important, I think the most important and detailed step is the Pre-Production step. Because, you should finalize all details such as location, cast, crew, wardrobe, props, call time and so on.

Most of the money is spent in this stage for hiring the all equipments and the workers for your project. This is why you should be very careful about budget that it should match with the budget you decide initially. If you hired an appropriate screenwriter, you can easily improve your script and shape it to attract the director. You should write down each and every detail, thus you will not forget anything on the day of shooting. This is the thing which I regret a lot that I thought I could keep all the details in my mind and I could easily remember them, if I just read the main titles I wrote. Unfortunately, I forgot very important details and trust me it effected my project very badly.

If you want to shoot again what you forget to shoot, it is very costly. You should set all locations scenes and gather the people again etc. I mean it is very difficult and costly that you won't want to face such issues. So, be organized and arrange everything before the day of shooting.

The stage of production means the day of shooting. This is the most exhausting stage despite its fun. You should ensure that all of your cast and crew is in the decided location on time. If we sum up this stage, the set is designed, casts are prepared, lighting and cameras are set and shooting starts and finishes in the required days.

The next step is Post-Production. We can call it editing stage as well. Shortly, we edit our short film in this step. Sound effects are designed, recorded and added. We also add the graphics and visual effects, required musics and the titles. There are many professional editing softwares. Initially I didn't know how to use a professional software but I easily learnt Adobe Premiere and used it for editing my short film. If you don't hire an editor, you should spend most of your time in front of the computer which require very much patience while you want to finalize your project as soon as possible.

Finally the last step is the distribution which your film released to cinemas or directly to consumer media. Press kits, posters, and other advertisement materials are published in this stage. I just upload my final project on my youtube channel and share my teacher. I felt relieved after finished my project. Actually I was happy to get rid of it until my teacher gives me another assignment of making a music video. Then another adventure has started for me. I decided to learn something from my wrong doings and submit a perfect project this time.

My first experience of short film making thought me many things. I hope I express them in a way you can understand. Let's make a brand new project without silly mistakes this time. Fighting!

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