Penguin June 16th, 2007
I’m the Drama Director at my church. This summer, we’ll be embarking on our first short film. So I decided it would be a good opportunity to share about the whole movie making process, from start to finish.
We looked at our budget and decided that the easiest thing for us to do, was a romantic comedy. I never really liked romantic comedies, or chick flicks; they tend to be formulaic and uninspired. This is not to say that we’re going to produce groundbreaking cinema, but it’ll give us an opportunity to go at it from a different angle.
Two Sundays ago, we came up with the general plot outline:
girl stood up at prom…causes intimacy issues
girl meets boy
boy is girl’s tutor
boy doesn’t know
girl goes to great lengths to get boy
flirts with other people
work at the same place
talk/is herself/common interest
boy notices girl
girl loses boy
girl has intimacy issues –> runs away from boy
“I never really liked you. You were just a rebound”
boy pursues girl
boy makes his own prom just for the two of them
takes her old dress
One of the hurdles we have, since my cast are generally between the ages of 15-20, is chemistry. I’ve produced two previous works, where the lack of chemistry just made the entire thing disastrous. In an effort to resolve this, we did some screen tests. I also talked to my actors about who they were comfortable interacting with. Although, I didn’t get my ideal cast, I think the casting is still good.
Not only am I the casting director, the director, I’m also the screenplay writer. I’ve been working on the script for the past three weeks. It’s getting there, but I’m afraid it won’t be ready for our first table read tomorrow.
During the screen test, I had them read a small part that I wrote, and the dialogue was just horrendous. I was so embarrassed. Hopefully, this round will be better.
So, what’s next? I need to location scout, convert my script to a shooting script, write up a shot list, and write up a shooting schedule. Lot’s to do.
If you’re interested in film, stay tuned!
-Penguin
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Tags: Drama
