Filmmaking is a tedious and involved process in the art industry. It is explorative and allows individuals to understand the importance of the activities that take place during movie making. Additionally, it enables the artist to appreciate the end product or the goal of their work. I am an avid movie watcher, reviewer, and writer, so I am passionate to know about the changes happening in the movie industry. Particularly, I am interested in the artistic processes that happen behind the scene. This semester I have learned the intricate nature of filmmaking and what makes it interesting. Before engaging in this project, I had started learning creative writing. However, I did not understand what goes on during the filmmaking process. For example, I was not aware of what storyboarding was, but the class introduced me to this amazing field.
Initially, I thought the coursework had equipped me with all the skills I needed to breakthrough into the filmmaking industry. I came to learn later that it was a world that comprises comedians, festivals, TV shows that goes through different writing scripts, and filming that requires efforts and talent. I had learned how a filmmaker thinks and the basic skills that one should possess. Nevertheless, I found making my film very challenging, and it made me realize that there is a technical side to filmmaking than just skills. Knowing how to handle a camera and a tripod does not make one a filmmaker.
The most challenging part was a failure to understand storyboarding concept. This was contradictory to other experienced moviemakers who had undergone the process before me. Creating my shot on paper was challenging because I encountered the classical problem of expressing every idea that occurred in my head. During the process is when I came across the term “storyboarding” and did not seem to appreciate how important it was in the completion of the project. Therefore, apart from writing, I had to acquire a new set of skills in expressing my ideas. Moreover, I was not familiar with comic books; hence, the entire concept of the paneling was new to me. It was difficult to find pictures that depicted what I was thinking at the time. However, if I were good at sketching, I might have found the whole creative process easier. However, I managed to simplify the storyboard and showed only the important parts of the shot.
Picking an idea for the film was the second challenging part. The time to write the first-time script was almost over, and I had not managed to come up with the main idea or the storyline of the film. However, I eventually decided to focus on a topic that I had fantasized about for a long time, a tense poker game. I decided to write the script as dark and agonizing to highlight the themes. The storyline was full of rigidity, suspense, and angst which has come to define my style of writing. To spice up the movie, I added dramatic pauses of people in anguish and dying in the background. Nevertheless, it was an explorative process that took a whole weekend to write and two more days to refine the plot.
My initial expectation was that the director would immediately accept my script and start shooting. However, the reality was that I was far from being ready to shoot. The script that I wrote was first rejected on technicalities that I had not covered. Therefore, I knew that if I wanted my script to be translated to screen, I had to cover every angle to ensure it passed the scrutiny process. Therefore, I went home and started refining the script with the feedback that I received from the producer. During the review process, I thought about all the filmmakers who have inspired me in the past. One of these directors was Woody Allen because of his excellent style. In the last five months, I watched six of his films as I refined my script. Particularly, I was impressed by the tone and style of his movies which made the whole process seem doable. His naturalness and light-hearted comedy infused in his movies seemed like an idea everyone would copy. As a result, I decided to infuse both humor and terror in the plot to create a moment of suspense and relief. After four weeks of writing, rewriting, reading, counterchecking, proofreading, and storyboarding, I finally managed to come up with a perfect script.
The first scene opens with a couple in the restaurant talking to each other. However, I had no idea of what awaited me during shooting or selecting the venue. I must admit that I was naïve when it came to the right to film on public property. At first, I reasoned that since the film was not for commercial purposes, it would be easy to convince facility managers to use their domain. My perception was proved wrong, with restaurants making it challenging to shoot on their premises. It took weeks to convince them of the importance of the film, its purpose, and the benefit that the facility could be derived from my work. Therefore, because of the above challenge, I was forced to shoot the middle of the script first before the first scenes.
I rented camera equipment and realized how clueless I was about the shooting. Therefore, I committed to learning more about how they operate and the sound systems. Nevertheless, their operating concept was not difficult to understand, but still, there was a learning curve experience. The two weeks I spent shooting were hard for me because I was still attending classes. I realized that the film would not turn out as I had envisioned. For example, the performances by some of the cast members were unnatural, which affected the quality of the scenes since some of them did not take time to read and understand the underlying themes of their assigned roles. The idea of the script was pure and complete; however, if an actor schemed through the plot, it was easy not to grasp it entirely. Therefore, actors failed to bring the ideas of the script to life.
In the end, I learned a lot from the filmmaking process, and now I am wiser than when I started. After the first film, I realized that there were many things that I could have done differently to bring out my ideas to life. First, I realized the importance of having a second editor to go through the script, select quality actors, and, most importantly, book the scenes for shooting. Quality equipment is everything in bringing a sharp image. The first shots were out of focus because I had not learned how to use the camera and sound equipment. However, subsequent scenes improved as my skills with the equipment increased. Therefore, my first filmmaking project gave me not only experience but also knowledge of the important aspects of this trade.