To begin with, this is my first weblog here. It’s been a while I wanted to speak about something, and here’s the first post – it’s about my views on why a budding filmmaker should make a short film and how to get along. I know it’s an era of videos and vlogs, but here I am with some old school ways and sharing my thoughts and experience in the form of a write-up.
I’m a self-taught and trained filmmaker. I didn’t go to film school or don’t have any particular certificates that will tell I’m qualified for writing, or direction. And that’s one of the fascinating things about filmmaking – anyone can become a filmmaker. You just need a story, a vision of how you’d want to tell the story and accordingly execute it to a film. Now the art lies in the skills and talent you possess, how you design the film. Some of us already have certain skills required for filmmaking and some can learn the craft and build a skillset.
During late school days, it happened that I started to believe I can write stories. And I did write 2-3 stories at that time, eventually built a desire to become a filmmaker. But due to some unavoidable issues, I couldn’t study filmmaking and dropped the idea of becoming the person with the lens. However about a decade later, I decided to choose the path in which I’m best at and here I am making films, climbing the ladder to reach my goal.
This was one reason why I wanted to make short films. Not for any appeasement for my desire to become a filmmaker, but to learn and practice the art. And trust me, each film will teach you some… many things.
Disciplinary Norms
No it’s not some strict rule you should adhere, but there are some common norms, or say basics of filmmaking you should be aware of if you are coming into this space. When I made my first short film in 2017, we were just two in the crew – one friend and myself. And this was the film “Wake Up (2017)” in which I made so many mistakes that were never thought of. I did invest my time in writing, preparation and shoot but it turned out, nothing came out properly. The writing which had a few drafts failed to present the theme in the way I wanted. Our preparation suddenly felt half done (during shoot) and we had to extend this one day shoot to two days. And it wasn’t even a low budget film, I had invested around Rs. 18,000 and that’s a good budget for a short film. Some might find it a low budget, but I’ll come on this part and explain down this post.
So before anybody else can point out, I started to realise what went wrong and how it could have been prevented. And I believe that’s the core idea you should have when making your first short film, you’re not going to make a masterpiece, you’re not going to become famous, maybe nobody will watch your film… but you have to make it because you need to know where you lack and how you can improve your craft.
No matter how much I tell it here, you as a new filmmaker must experience the process to learn it properly. But anyways, we begin the first crucial step with writing. I messed up very bad in writing my first short film, and improved like 70% in my second short film “A Simple Plan (2020)” but then again messed up with my third short film “Saira (2022)”. I know why A Simple Plan had somewhat better writing because there were several drafts – I tried to give each of the three main characters their characteristics and goals. And you know why I say it’s just 70% improvement over my first short film because no matter how much I tried I could not fully define the characters. But that’s all okay for me, because hey, I was learning.
Share your writing
Of course you should register your writing first, or just send yourself an email of your draft. Then share the draft with your friends or people you trust who would read and give you their feedback. It helps a lot, I tried it on “A Simple Plan” and improved the story at certain intervals.
Formatting your script
There are some guidelines how to write a script but to me only three rules are important and I’ll tell you why. Number 1 is divide your scene based on location – so you’ll have a bold, all caps header on top of each scene that will tell the reader, actor and your crew members the location and time of the scene.
For example:
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY
or
EXT. HOUSE – MORNING
or
INT/EXT. CAR – DAY
So in the above example it’s very clear what the location and time is. INT. means interior – if the location is interior like a house, office, warehouse, anything that is not outside. Likewise EXT. means exterior. And in some cases like CAR scene, we write both interior as well as exterior. This interior, exterior is important because it will help director, cinematographer, art designer, DOP, post production to setup required settings and lights accordingly. And you can have a breakdown and divide your script into two categories like INT. and EXT. so it gets easier to schedule the shoot.
Number 2 is writing action, like writing what’s going on in the scene, describing the setting, the character/s, their actions.
Number 3 is writing dialogues of characters and aligning it in centre. You don’t have to be very precise with setting up margins for it, just align it to centre if you’re using a software like MS Word, Pages or Google Docs to write your script. However there are various software for writing script, some are even free that gets formatting done automatically by just one or two shortcut keys.
There’s also Number 4: You don’t have to worry about your English, or Hindi or whichever language you are writing it. You just need to put out simple words and sentences so everyone can understand it. Don’t treat your script like a book or novel, use words and phrases that is understood by everyone. It doesn’t matter if you have grammar or spelling mistakes, it’s your short film, first of many more films to come… just write down your thoughts. Things will improve as you go along.
One tip, read scripts of your favourite films. There are many scripts available online, just google it and you’ll get it. It will help you improve your craft of writing. But to begin with, you should always focus more on story and characters than formatting and advancing in it. There are theoretical ways to achieve it but I personally like it more how it becomes engaging for me as an audience, I just follow my instincts.
Now why I titled this ‘Disciplinary Norms’ – because you should apply it to your every story, every script writing you do. Writing is the core of the film. You may not perfect it but try to spend more time to make it worthy for the audience. If your writing is not up to mark, all the efforts that you do to make the film would just not sum up.
Budget
Generally your first short films are produced only and only by you. At some instances, a person would make short film with a sponsor’s money like say the person have won funds from a scriptwriting competition, or a film school would let him/her use their resources to make student short film. But for many out there, short films are self-funded.
And self-funding is a good way to learn more (and do some budget maths). Because when you do a self-funded short film, you end up with a low-budget project – and this is a challenge that prepares me for my feature film ambition. It depends how much money you have to spend, you can make one short film if you have Rs. 2 lakhs and you can also make 10 short films with budget of Rs. 1 lakh. Obviously production quality will differ, but I prefer the second one making 10 films in Rs. 1 lakh, because like I said earlier I want to learn from short films. And making one short film wouldn’t be enough for me unless I know that it’s worthy for my portfolio and study. I want to try out different styles, genres, actions and situations to write and direct.
My first short film was shot in Rs. 18,000 but given the quality it doesn’t seem that much was spent in the making. My second short film was made in about Rs. 30,000. And later three short films were made in relatively low budget. I didn’t spend even what I did on my first short film for the latest “Wake Up (2022)” short film.
Depending on the project and your intentions, you may not require a high-end camera, professional lights, additional crews or paid set location. But you will definitely require a vision. Because little or more, whatever you invest must have at least 70% of your desired result.
We’ll fix it in post!
Please don’t say this, unless there’s really something that must be tackled in editing. Try editing your film right at its first stage, that is, writing. Edit major part of your film in writing and deliver a good and engaging story to your actors and crew to begin the production. This writing, once locked, will go right all the way from pre, to production till the editing room, and till the film gets stitched and delivered.
There might be minor things that you will edit while editing your film but don’t be dependant on the editing process that it will fix your film. It doesn’t. You will get what you wrote and shot.
My first film was all about “we’ll fix it in post.” Even third film Saira, but it didn’t work.
Have patience
Filmmaking is not an easy process. It requires a lot of scrutiny and efforts just to even shoot five minutes of the film in one day. Give yourself time after your script’s first draft. Don’t be like, “I’m done, now let’s shoot!” No.
You should listen to your partners at work, be them your crew, actors, teachers. When I say listen, you don’t have to just make every changes they say, it should be yours and only yours decision what to change and what to not. But always have open ears.
You might finish off your short film shoot in three days or two or even in a day. But you may find it time consuming in the edit process, and that’s okay. It takes time. Making your film proper should be the key thing, rather doing something in haste and making a product you will not be proud of later on.
Be prepared for what the production is majorly about
And that’s shooting your short film. Filmmaking is both creative as well as technical, so make sure you try to learn and gain knowledge of both spaces. As a filmmaker, when you are writing down a scene you have a visualisation of the sequence and on most cases we try to stick to that vision in the production. However we don’t always get desired location and setting for the scene but that’s fine. Vision is something that is not going to come in your head just once, it will behave as per the situation and replan on its own. Problem come when there’s major compromises, so take care of that.
If you have done a location recce (which you should) you should make a list of shot division or prepare a storyboard. You can do it alone or if you have a cinematographer and/or someone in director’s team, let them be part of it. Making a list of shots really help tackle production schedule and your vision is clear on set. There are times when you prepare shots right at the time of shooting, and that’s also fine as long as you have a dedicated time slot provided in your shoot schedule.
It’s always great if you have a cinematographer and DOP in your team, but that’s not always the case in making a short film. Even if you have someone in the team, they might be fresher in the field just like you. So this gives you an experience to share your vision to them, adapt their ideas and get along. It will teach you how a vision is communicated from you to your crew and lastly to the editor.
So in order to get that communication flow smoothly, and also if you don’t have the required crew member, you must learn the basics of camera, lights and editing software. It’s not a painful task, it will just consume some of your time but it’ll be worth it.
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There are obviously more factors to write on, but these are some important takeaways from my experience that I wanted to share. Either you work with professionals for your short film or freshers or friends who just help you out, you should understand that you as the creator is responsible for the short film – it’s okay to be responsible, that’s one of the steps.
I don’t see much of commercial gains from making short films, I just see that I’m learning. And it has helped me a lot.
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