The One Word Film project tasked us with making a short film, at least a minute in length, centered around a single word that would serve as the prompt without using any dialogue. I worked with a friend of mine, Nina, with the prompt being "Surprise." Our first thought before we could even start brainstorming was, lets NOT be boring, that was actually one of our biggest set backs, we kept thinking of stuff that was just too basic and boring. We eventually landed on the idea of someone being stuck after school from oversleeping and wandering around trying to find their way out. We built on this with an Alice In Wonderland esc plot of shifting hallways and mysterious lurkers. We proceeded to make the brainstorm sheet and story board.
I think that without a story board we wouldn't have been able to finish even half of the project. We used these shots like our bible, they completely cut off the stress I've felt countless times of feeling unprepared to film something. The actual video was edited in Adobe Premiere, a software that I am pretty well versed in, it is a pretty simple software that hits a great balance between being beginner friendly and not feeling overly limited, apparently my partner was already versed in After Effects, or as I call it the more complex older brother to Premiere and when she found out she couldn't use AE she stressed out thinking that she wouldn't be able to get the project done which I found somewhat ironic.
I think we did a good job at diversifying the shot list, thats something else that the story board really helped with, I don't think I ever realized how often I repeat shots until it was literally drawn in front of me. I also think we challenged our selves into using fun editing techniques that not everyone would have though to have done, like a fade in to a similar shot as the Main Character turns around. For negatives I didn't love how our ending turned out, we cut out the original twist at the end to better fit with the prompt of "Surprise" so it made the ending a bit vague, feeling as if its tainted with the "bad student short film disease" although the ending still came across well enough I'd say.
