How to go from meeting a comedian to making a short film in a few weeks (Part Two)
Last week I talked about meeting Kristen Lundberg, our lead actress for When Mother Calls, and our quick pre-production leading up to filming.
After we wrapped, we had a late lunch, and I went to grab a coffee to give myself a minute to decompress before going home.
After I got home, I backed up all of the footage from our shoot and set up Adobe Media Encoder to make proxy files. For most of the shots, I filmed in 4K. In order to edit that footage on my Macbook Pro, I needed to create proxy files.
After my proxies were created, I merged all of the video clips with the sound files.
When we were on set, I was often surprised how quickly our takes were. A lot of the scenes were about an eighth of a page, or just a few lines. Scenes would start and in half a minute, the scene was over. I wrote the script, but three or four times I was surprised on set when a scene ended.
That ended up creating a lot of clips to sync.
I use Adobe Premiere to edit and I create a merged clip bin to keep all of my assets organized. I have a bin for video, one for sound, and one for merged clips.
With everything backed up and my project prepared, it was time to start editing. I would watch each take a couple times to see which one worked best. I check for focus, composition, and make sure to find the clip with the performance I like the best.
Kristen is on screen for most of the film which makes editing the coverage easier.
After I had a rough cut with all of my video clips, I started laying in audio. In the film, Kristen talks to her mother (played by D R Edwards) on the phone. We recorded D R’s audio separately to ensure we had the cleanest audio we could get. D R was also on set to interact with Kristen. This made it easier to edit the footage and lay in the clean audio track for D R’s dialogue.
I sent the short to a couple of colleagues for any notes. Then it was on to color correction, color grading, and adjusting the audio. Adobe Premiere makes it pretty simple to adjust the audio levels on a clip to make it sound like the person is on the phone.
Finally, I added credits, and music.
To help promote the film, I made a short teaser as well as a couple spots to share via Instagram and Facebook.
I am grateful for the talented people who signed on to make this short.
As long as you are willing to put in the effort and the time, anyone can make a film. I pitched Kristen several short film ideas, and once we found one we both liked, I ran with the idea to write the script and she connected with it.
If you’ve been thinking about making a film, but you haven’t gotten started, it’s time to make the leap.
Call to Action
If this article speaks to you, please highlight or recommend it. If you have a question about filmmaking or you are interested in collaborating, leave a comment below or email me at info@bridgeportfilmclub.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Next on Deck!
Next week I will talk about Why I got started screenwriting.
Check out part one of this blog: How to go from meeting a comedian at a comedy club, to writing a short film script, & shooting a film a few weeks later (Part One)
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