L’Enfant — World War II Short Film

Luke Schoener is an Interactive Multimedia Senior with minors in Communication Studies and Photography. After graduation, he plans to get a job doing photography or video production. He has worked on several short films in a variety of positions, including being director of photography for the short documentary film, Safe Space, about the underground music scene in New Brunswick, NJ.

Summary: L’Enfant is a historical fiction short film that revolves around William Miller, a B-25 bomber crewman who is shot down over France during World War II. The film will explore his relationship with Florian, a 10-year- old French boy who finds William in the wreckage of his bomber. After the crash, the focus of the injured soldier turns to ensuring that both he and Florian make it out of the German-occupied countryside alive.

Tools used:

· Adobe Premiere

· Adobe After Effects

· Adobe Photoshop

· Black Magic Cinema Camera

· Arri Lighting Kit

Significant Challenges: The largest challenge we faced included setbacks and content removal due to scheduling issues and unseasonable weather changes that kept us from filming several scenes. Another challenge was working in such a compressed and confined space on set due to our usage of the B-25 bomber as a set. Another challenge that I faced was the green screen not being lit as well as it could’ve been, making editing take a much longer time.

Advice to Future Students: If I were to do it again, I would’ve brought more lighting to use for the green screen, as well as trying to seek funding well in advance. This project was pretty massive and I would advise any students considering a project of this scale to not do it unless they have a team of people working with them who they have already worked with multiple times in the past.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukeschoener