Weeks 7 & 8- Shoot & Edit

This project as a whole was a lot to take on by a single person. I have spent a great deal of time strategizing a new approach to this short film class and the biggest change I would make is to tackle this with a partner or for students in groups of 2-4. I learned so much about the process as I went through it. The time it takes is often my biggest misconception, and was again in this project, but not too far off. For example, to begin shooting, I needed to “set-up” the whole set and all the details. This required using tacky wax on every items bottom to ensure nothing moved that shouldn’t while filming. This also failed on me some while filming. I repeatedly knocked over the decorative plants in the hallway due to their ornate wire feet not holding onto wax well enough.

Which leads me to the second biggest obstacle, my set design. Although it did work out, my initial need for removable walls proved to be very true. It was very difficult for some shots to reach in and move and then replace the ceiling etc. Although I had many archways to reach through, too much movement there caused just one curtain to move more than others in the scene. Some little things like that could not be avoided, especially in the timeframe I was working in.

I also struggled with lighting. My choice of battery powered lights, though I was keeping them off inbetween scenes, proved to be a very bad choice. Never use battery powered anything for stop-motion animation lighting. Unless you want a slow fade out effect over the course of a scene. I was able to improvise with other lights to save the shoot.

Another issue I struggled with was the equipment I was using. I shot this using my iphone 14 pro, which has a fantastic camera, but somewhere in the communication between the program on my computer and the settings on my phone, I had a hard time getting a good focus on what I was shooting. We had to test shots and move the camera many times for each filming session to find the best “view”. I built a small phone holder out of LEGOs so my phone could “sit” inside the set and that helped alot.

Overall, this experience was tremendously fun and educational. Somethings are really learned best by doing, but in this specific case, having a time constraint really made the difference for learning how to work through obstacles as I encountered them in a quick manner. I didn’t have time to stop and be overly frustrated when an idea didn’t work out. And that happened a lot. From the set building, prop design (you’ll notice I got rid of the ugly columns down the hall and made new plant stands), to the actual filming, I had obstacles I never imagined and was able to keep going.