The Drama Society Presents Murder is a short film that was made with my team and me. My main role for this was the Editor, but I also helped out in other areas, such as lighting, sound design, and more.
The Objective and Purpose
This Project was designed to build teamwork skills and help our team learn to support each other. This whole experience was very hands-on and required us to problem-solve and use the film skills we have been learning for the past few years of college. My goal for this project was to improve my editing skills and really capture the vision of the director.
The Process of Making The Film
There are three stages to making this film: Pre-production, Production, and Post-production.
Pre-Production
Pre-production is everything we need to do before filming starts. This took me over 20 hours to plan everything.
As a team needed to come up with who our audience is and what the overall objective of this film is. Once we had this, we were able to dive into things like the synopsis, the style, and things like that.
One of the things I did to help out during this project was the Storyboards. Storyboards are used to help plan out what the camera is going to film or see and how the characters will be placed, so that filming goes faster.
I was also in charge of planning how we would get and how we would organize the footage. During this proccess I would coordinate with the cinematographer and director. I would plan out who’s going to bring their drives to the shoots, how we will be transferring footage with each other, and planning out which format we will use for the camera.
Production
Production is where all the filming happens. This took over 30 hours to film.
Production first starts with setting up everything. This includes setting up lights, the camera, audio, decorations, and blocking. Blocking is where actors will be moving from mark to another.
During the shoot, my main job was the lighting. I had to figure out how best to place the lights so that we could achieve the mood and feel we wanted. We did this by color during party scenes to make it seem like a different place, and for the interrogations, we did a darker, high contrast lighting.
Post-Production
Post-production is where we gather everything we shot and put it all together. This took me over 30 hours. The editing software I chose to edit on is Davinci Resolve. I chose it because of the amazing color correction and grading it has available.
Part of my editing process is really diving into the script, then taking what we shot and piecing it together. However, there are 4 main parts of editing.
The 4 Stages to Editing:
- Assembly Cut: First is the assembly cut, which is basically just piecing everything together.
- Rough Cut: Second is the rough cut stage, after I found out what the story is and refined it. I would zoom in where needed to make it flow together, transition, and so on.
- Picture Lock: Third is the picture lock. This is the part where we will get to the point, no longer touch it, so we can hand it off to color and audio.
- Final Editing: Then, finally, it all comes together with some color, graphics, and audio. Then the edit is done.
The Final Product
Challenges Encountered
During this whole process of making the film, there were three main challenges we had to overcome.
- Film Approval: We had issues getting the project approved for filming. This caused us to have to delay filming past when we planned to film, so we had to force it in a small time crunch. However, we came together and scheduled out the best times to film as fast as we could and were able to complete it.
- Reshoots: We had to reshoot and add a scene to make the story flow better. This caused some last-minute shoots, where we had to make small adjustments. Then I had to spend a all nighter in order to finish the edit for the next stage of editing in time.
- Sound Design Issues: There were issues with audio and sharing the files, so we had to redo some of the music and audio changes. We solved this by sitting in a group and making the changes together so that it would go faster.
Overview and Takeaways
This project really helped me to become more familiar with Davinci Resolve and become an overall better editor. It taught me how to coordinate my editing process with the director and make sure I capture their vision.
I learned many valuable skills, such as coordinating with my team, planning ahead, communicating, and being able to capture someone else’s vision. While there were bumps in the road during this project, through teamwork, we were able to overcome them.