Short Film Strangers

Our group originally chose Courtney's script, but after shooting we realized that the footage was bad and trying to do a party scene would not work. Instead we chose my script, but revised it in order to be able to shoot it as efficiently as possible. My script was originally about a boy and girl who both suffered from social anxiety and together they are able to work on it and overcome it. 
The pre-production process was rushed due to our time restraints. Courtney spent a day revising the script to reduce the amount of locations we had to go to. I called a couple coffee shops to see if we could film there, but ended up filming everything at JCCC. I also created shot lists for our shoot day in order to try and give some structure and efficiency. Courtney was our actress and she found Danny for our actor. I was the cinematographer and editor for the film. Originally Grayson was the cinematographer, but was unable to make the shoot. 
On a Saturday Courtney, Danny, Wes, and I met a Pour Coffee to film but ended up being too busy. We then tried Blackdog coffee, but it was also too busy. So, we went to JCCC where they had a cafe inside and we could use for multiple locations. There was a festival going on that day so it was kind of loud and we did not have any professional audio equipment. We only had our phone voice memos. I think Saturday could have gone faster if we planned to do everything at JCCC prior and I made better shot list. Our second shoot day was Monday for night scenes and that went much better. We were able to shoot it relatively quickly and the audio was much better. Our biggest issues was lighting since it was dark out already and the lights outside were not that bright and we did not have any other light sources. Overall I think our production went smoothly. 
Editing was a stressful process since I only had 3 days to edit. On Monday I edited what we had filmed on Saturday and made a rough cut. On Tuesday I continued to edit and clean up the cut. Wednesday Courtney added color grading and Thursday I finished the edit. 
If I were to do this again there would be better planning of locations. I would also maybe get a different actor or give Danny more direction because his interpretation of the character is not what I had imagined. I wold have also spent more time editing by adding music, cleaning up audio, and doing better cuts. If I had more time I think it would have improved the overall look of the film. I did like the script, might be biased, but I think it was a good script for a short film. I would have liked to have more locations that are visually different. I fee like you could tell it was filmed at the same location. For my next project I know the importance of having good lighting during the shoot because trying to fix it afterward is difficult and will not look as good. Also knowing for sure locations in advance will help instead of driving around trying to find a decent location. This project was difficult to execute due to contrasting schedules, but were surprisingly able to complete the project with the small team. 

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