Drafting a treatment

• After hashing out a rough story as a group we agreed to go away and work on individual treatments during study week, aiming to come back together at the end of the week to compile them into one final treatment. 
• A skype call was set for Saturday evening, however two members of the group proposed moving it to the following day because they wanted to go up town.
• When we did have the meeting on Sunday through Skype and Google docs, I was the only member to have a full treatment. One member had a page of notes and the remaining three members had nothing.
• We went through my treatment as a group bit by bit, editing and discussing ideas until we were all happy with the final treatment.
• I will hand in the final treatment tomorrow together with the ethics check list.

Rules of short film making

While researching short films I came across this list of rules for making a short film.
The list seemed to fit the needs of the project as well as our experience levels and budget, particularly the following points:


1. Must be shot on location- it's part of the brief that we must shoot on Campus.

2. Must be hand held - We have access to tripods or handheld only. No track or cranes.

3. Special lighting is not acceptable- this would be out of scope of our film anyway.


I felt these would be good rules to follow in order to craft a tight, simple story with a good arc that would be within our limitations while still being entertaining.


Unfortunately once we had the first story meeting the group decided on a story idea that while compelling, also broke the following rules from the linked list:


1. Optical work and filters are forbidden

2. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)

3. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)

4. Genre movies are not acceptable.


I like our idea but it needs fleshing out and we need to make sure it has an arc, at the moment we have the where and the when. We need to make sure we have the who and the why.


What's his motivation? :-)

Initial research & first meeting minutes

Preliminary Research

So I began by sitting down to make a list of all the resources we had access to as a group. I set up a Google doc and shared it with the group so that we could keep our information centralised,ease communication & eliminate redundancy.

I listed all the props, vehicles and location types we'd have access to and started noting down some preliminary story ideas.

I also emailed the head of the drama school to see how we'd go about sourcing actors.

My story ideas were as follows:

1. A poltergeist story- I thought the advantages would be it could mostly be shot in a single location and have minimal actors. It would also be quite simple to pull off any visual gags such as items moving or floating.

2. A student keeps hearing noises, food and bog roll goes missing. Thinks their flat is haunted. Turns out someone has been living in the cupboard and sneaking out when they think no one is looking. This idea has similar advantages to the previous idea.

3. God decides to reveal himself to a man by speaking to him. Man doesn't believe in God. God spends ages trying to prove to man that he is god by performing miracles. Every miracle he performs the man explains away easily. Man is a complete cynic. Eventually god gives up. Man goes on with his life. Or ends with man saying to his other god. “You’ll never believe who I met”. I still think this idea has legs but it would require a solid script and a lot of dialogue.

First production meeting

I organised the first meeting between all 5 members of the production team to discuss ideas and how we'd go about tackling the short film.

Most members brought good ideas to the table and we evaluated and discussed all of them.

The group gravitated towards some sort of fantasy fight scene involving various weapons and super powers, which would allow us to explore various shooting styles and be fun to do.

Some members mentioned they had some experience with after effects and that certain effects such as muzzle flashes or bullet hits would be achievable within the scope of the project, which opened up story options.

We all agreed to go away and write individual treatments and then come together in a week's time at the next meeting to take the best ideas from each to work into a first draft of the treatment.

We also allocated roles to each member of the group for each stage of production.

For pre production I was to be involved with the treatment, script and storyboarding and book equipment out.

During production I would be cameraman

During post I will help out with whatever is needed at the time.

Everybody seemed happy with the roles they were allocated although we are all aware that these roles are not set in stone and everyone needs to help out wherever they can.

Chi and Lawrence were happy to act in the film and we felt that as we were having minimal dialogue this would be OK.

Moving Image Module - Creating a Short Film

This blog will document my involvement in the making of a short film for my Moving Image module on the Digital Arts Programme at the University of Kent. 

I aim to document everything from pre production, through production and then post.

Wish me luck!