"You lapsed into a coma..."

A few weeks ago, we were given the task to shoot a short film with a message contained that was to be done with camera in editing on a Panasonic AVC-HD. And while our first attempt fell like Ikarus, today's attempt proved to be successful!

The message we wanted to include in our short film was: "You lapsed into a coma. If you can hear us, please respond. If you do not respond within the next x minutes, the machines will be turned off."

A long message, I know. And technically not only one message but rather manifold, but I'll come to that now:

My initial idea was about a man who fell into a coma and is now caught up in his own subconscious, trying to escape it before the machines - and essentially his life - will be turned off. He receives a lot of letters in different ways, all counting down the time he has left to escape his inner prison. The clou is though that, in his last seconds, he acknowledges that he has possibly been too intoxicated. His epiphany finally leads to a door appearing in his mind. With newfound determination and only nine seconds left, he makes a desperate dash to the door.

Adam S. was our camera op and Katie our boom op, while Craig acted the role as Derek and I was director/producer for the piece. We started our shooting day at 9.30 by taking out the equipment and returning it at approx. 16.00 with a minor break in between.

Since we initally had a shot list of 21 consecutive shots and only one day to shoot, we decided on simple but effective two-point lighting this time to keep the rearrangement between shots to a minimum. Which proved to be successful in terms of emotional and scenic lighting, but failed directly in the first shot, which turned out either too dark or uncontinuous with the rest of the shots, no matter how arranged the lighting.

Here, right at the beginning, I realised the importance of having a somewhat concrete storyboard at hand, since we lacked one and purely relied on the shot list we developed. Which, one the one hand, inspired our camera op and gave him liberties to interpret as he seemed fit, but, on the other hand, took a lot of time away from our production schedule that we could have used otherwise.

This will be a reminder for future projects to try and sit down with the cinematographer/camera op beforehand and not only to discuss the shot list, but also to create a storyboard (or improve a pre-existing one) collaboratively and well in advance.

Furthermore, since I experimented with colour-coding documents in previous studies to enhance an easier and faster access to them, I'll try to colour-code and colour-reference both storyboard and shot list for the next film shoot just to see whether it improves the collective workflow.

Finally, in the process, we were able to cut down the shots to only about twelve since we started tweaking the initial angles and including slight camera movements like tilts and pans which elevated the cinematic quality of the short film AND saved us valuable shooting time on schedule.

In the end, I was extremely satisfied by the quality of our student short film and I cannot wait until postproduction to see how it turns out on a bigger screen instead of a camera display.