Hello everyone
After nearly a year of writing, re-writing and then re-writing some more, I have finally begun shooting my short film, which is titled – The Brick Wall. So I thought I’d do a production journal to document…well, the production I guess.
So here goes…
About the film
The Brick Wall is a short film which explores where our dreams and thoughts arise from; do they randomly arise from abstraction or are they a certain reflection of our own realities.
It’s the first day of work for Carl Unger and what should have been just another day, turns into a series of surreal adventures, only for him to find out that it was all a dream. But do his dreams have any sense of realty to them.
This film, which also happens to be my first attempt at storytelling through motion pictures (I have done a few small averts, promos and corporate videos) has had a very long gestation period and I believe it has benefited from that, though friends have chosen to label my extensive ‘pre-production’ as procrastination. For starters I am a lot happier with the present state of the script than the first draft-ish I wrote nine months back and happier yet with the revised ending (whether the viewers agree with me or not is an open question). I have also been able to storyboard almost the whole of the script which continues to make the task of editing a lot simpler.
But most importantly, the film has certainly exceeded my initial expectation from it, which was only to treat this attempt as a learning curve in storytelling and practicing some editing, compositing and so basic 3D techniques, with the help of a few friends in the acting roles. And while these expectations still remain, during my period of tinkering with the script I happened to make friends with an actor who suggested that I should meet some other actors he knew and see if I’d like to work with them. I had never worked with professional actors before and this being my film fictional film I didn’t want to complicate things by working with ‘real’ actor whom ‘I didn’t know’.
In any case, I met them just to keep my actor friend happy (who had also agreed to work on my film for free) and long story short, all the roles are now filled by professional artists (all of whom are working for free by the way). And I realized something which would have been obvious to any sane person – that working with professionals who know what they are doing is much easier than trying to squeeze a performance out of non-actor friends (some of whom still think they are going to be in the film once I stop procrastinating and start shooting; I just didn’t have the heart to tell them).
So anyways, nuff said for now. I leave you all with a few screen grabs. And I’ll post at a later time some more stuff about the cast, crew, technical specs, storyboards and other elements of the film's development and production.
Thanks for reading
Rudra
After nearly a year of writing, re-writing and then re-writing some more, I have finally begun shooting my short film, which is titled – The Brick Wall. So I thought I’d do a production journal to document…well, the production I guess.
So here goes…
About the film
The Brick Wall is a short film which explores where our dreams and thoughts arise from; do they randomly arise from abstraction or are they a certain reflection of our own realities.
It’s the first day of work for Carl Unger and what should have been just another day, turns into a series of surreal adventures, only for him to find out that it was all a dream. But do his dreams have any sense of realty to them.
This film, which also happens to be my first attempt at storytelling through motion pictures (I have done a few small averts, promos and corporate videos) has had a very long gestation period and I believe it has benefited from that, though friends have chosen to label my extensive ‘pre-production’ as procrastination. For starters I am a lot happier with the present state of the script than the first draft-ish I wrote nine months back and happier yet with the revised ending (whether the viewers agree with me or not is an open question). I have also been able to storyboard almost the whole of the script which continues to make the task of editing a lot simpler.
But most importantly, the film has certainly exceeded my initial expectation from it, which was only to treat this attempt as a learning curve in storytelling and practicing some editing, compositing and so basic 3D techniques, with the help of a few friends in the acting roles. And while these expectations still remain, during my period of tinkering with the script I happened to make friends with an actor who suggested that I should meet some other actors he knew and see if I’d like to work with them. I had never worked with professional actors before and this being my film fictional film I didn’t want to complicate things by working with ‘real’ actor whom ‘I didn’t know’.
In any case, I met them just to keep my actor friend happy (who had also agreed to work on my film for free) and long story short, all the roles are now filled by professional artists (all of whom are working for free by the way). And I realized something which would have been obvious to any sane person – that working with professionals who know what they are doing is much easier than trying to squeeze a performance out of non-actor friends (some of whom still think they are going to be in the film once I stop procrastinating and start shooting; I just didn’t have the heart to tell them).
So anyways, nuff said for now. I leave you all with a few screen grabs. And I’ll post at a later time some more stuff about the cast, crew, technical specs, storyboards and other elements of the film's development and production.
Thanks for reading
Rudra
