Shooting the Me, Myself, and I

Today came finally the day when our group would commence the shooting of my Me, Myself, and I-project.

Since my project was ambitious (hej, a smoke machine and continuity!) and time was of the essence, I made sure to reread, control and amend the shot lists and my storyboard as much as possible to accommodate any issue that might come up which I had not yet anticipated.

I had not anticipated that it would be a lot of smooth sailing.

I know that this sounds boring and uninformative, since it does not really portray as exciting a learning curve like a completely disastrous film shoot would where you would constantly fight Murphy's law. But I learned that a good script and a couple of retakes or safety takes really will help you later on in the post-production stage. For, during our shoot, we took a lot of material - spontaneously as well as accidentally - that would give me a lot of options in post. Amongst them were shots that allow me two alternative endings to my current one, depending on how much time my short film actually takes.

I learned, that a carefully filled out production log helps you gauge when to proceed to the next shot and when to take a couple of takes more.

I learned, not theoretically but very practically, that acting is an extremely difficult and emotionally exhausting business, especially if you (attempt to) employ Method-acting and put a huge bit of yourself out there. Situations arised where I was brought to my personal limit or where I outright inhibited to act as scripted - and that with a piece I have personally written myself. Which serves to demonstrate that I have to be more careful keeping the actors in mind - as screenwriter as well as director

As I have already realised with my application short film (and any essay or thesis I have ever written), I tend to stay rather at the maximum end of the requirements, if not even exceed them. Which I realise poses a problem within an industry where certain films or clips need to fit into a certain time slot to be presentable or even usable. Not only news and TV channels rely on your work being cut to size for their purpose, also film festivals and cinemas do. And I need to get to terms with that.

Which is why I am really glad that I ended up with a lot of material to use and abuse and, all in all, three slightly different storylines that I could follow without hollowing out the story itself. I guess I will see if I need to retreat to this material or whether I have developed a better feeling for the length of a story in the meantime.

It is really always surprising how much time you can save on set if you plan ahead in the pre-production phase and if you have dedicated and capable crew on set. I am lucky that I had both.