Creating My One Word Film 😶

Hi guys it's me Santi,

Me and my partner Oriana just created our One Word Film! For this project, we had to develop a 1:00-1:30 short film based on one word. And here's the catch: we must tell our story with absolutely no dialogue. Sounds fun!

Planning

The first page of our storyboard!

Our word was "Reminisce", so we had to base our film around the idea of reminiscing. We originally had a bit of trouble with this, as a very common way of showing reminiscing in film is to use montages, but the instructions were very clear on NOT using montages, so we had a lot of ideas that we had to scrap because we felt like they were too similar to a montage. In one of our ideas, we wanted to do a guy who was having an extremely happy day, only for it to be revealed that the guy was reminiscing about his happy day in a boring class. We scrapped the idea because in order to show a day passing we would've had to do the film in the style of a montage, but we liked the idea of revealing that the main character was reminiscing, so we worked on how we could adapt our story into a smaller setting, yet still keeping the "beats" of the idea. We decided to scale the story down and have our main character, a student who is having trouble writing their essay, get some help from another student, and watch how their essay grows rapidly, until the eventual reveal that the main character was reminiscing about a time when they had their friend to help them. We liked this story and drafted up a rough storyboard of our idea. Many of the shots in our storyboard were close-ups, with a couple of wide shots to break the tension. 

Shooting

Once we had our storyboard approved, we asked a friend if she could be our main character, and head out to the chorus room to record. We used the chorus room's lighting to our advantage, as the story is meant to be slow, and the dimly lit room helped the ambiance of the overall film. We took more shots than we had intended to, but most of them weren't used, as we only shot them in case our original shot list didn't work out. One thing I wish I would've done differently during shooting is to have brought a tripod with me, as many shots were rather shaky and therefore could not be used in the film.

Editing (YAY!)

Now that we had everything filmed, we got all the footage and threw it into Premiere Pro. I started with
a simple line edit to make sure the pacing of the film was right, and then I found some music that fit the vibe of the film I was trying to create. I found music I liked and edited it to match the story beats, such as the friend walking up to the main character, or the reveal of the main character reminiscing. Finding good music was important for this project since it was the only thing people would hear, as there was no dialogue and only the sound of the keyboard clacking.

After getting the music and line edit down, I began color-grading the footage. I used vignetting later in the film to visually show that what the viewer is watching is not happening in the present, and is more of a memory. I also added grain to resemble a more "filmic" look, aiding in the film feeling like a dream. In the future, I would like to represent these qualities through camera work more than through editing effects, as I believe they can better enhance the story. I used "Adobe Premiere Pro" to edit the film together, and I used "Magic Bullet by Red Giant" to color-grade the footage and add the desired effects.

In the end, I think we achieved a film that was able to successfully convey a story based on the word that we were assigned. While I think some aspects, specifically the cinematography, could've been done better, I am proud of the final result and I hope to make more projects like these in the future.

Here's the project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ujk6SCL3o9nA_IRhy0vNfmKz_6EAvbIv/view?usp=sharing

Until next time, Santi.