I recently declared this year to be “The Year of Production” over here in the Tylerverse. And so far so good, I say. What this really means for me is that if I’m not either sleeping or writing I want to make sure I’ve got a camera rolling.<\/p>\n
I’m in the early stages of producing a live-action feature (sorry animation buffs, you’ll have to wait little longer for me to get back on that horse). So in preparation I’ve been trying to shoot a little something every weekend. I think of these little shoots as ways of honing the different aspects of filmmaking that I’m going to need to produce the bigger project. And rather then simply making these little shoots nothing more than “camera tests” I’m trying to treat them like the short films they have every possibility of being.<\/p>\n
For instance, a few weeks ago I wanted to test a my ability to organize camera set-ups and manage the more administrative side of shooting a film; planning the shoot, marking the scenes, keeping a record of everything; that kind of thing. It’s tedious but if you don’t do it then you’re going to be in a world of crap when you get down to shooting and moreover, editing. So I wrote a short script… It came out to about 15 pages – which is short for me. Then I went about creating a list of the shots I wanted which meant rehearsing and blocking them (that’s figuring out how the actors would move around the set and where to put the camera).<\/p>\n
The shoot was fun… For the first two days. Then I realized that to get everything on my list (there were about a hundred shots because I’m a gluton for punishment) I was going to be at this for at least another three days. I’d originally thought the whole thing would take just one weekend.<\/p>\n
But that’s why I shot the thing. To teach myself what I wanted to learn as well as encounter whatever other problems might arise. In this case that lesson was: Calculate your schedule then triple it… And that was shooting video<\/em>… Yeesh.<\/p>\n Anyway, thanks to the ever forgiving nature of my stunning partner, Vidya, we persevered and finished the project… Or so we thought. But I think I’ll leave post-production and the art of additional dialogue recording an entire short film to another day.<\/p>\n Here’s a trailer for our fifteen minute short film The Seven Second Slice<\/em>:<\/p>\n