u/Plenty_Psychology545

Finally, I did it. Uploaded my completed my first short/skit. That is the only achievement -> That I did it. Everything else is a sob story.

 

It took me three months to complete this. First two months were wasted fighting the inertia. At my age (58 years old), it is very tempting to sit on the sofa and ruminate over life, dispensing free advice to the world.

 

Luckily my wife fully supports my endeavors. My 7-year-old daughter proudly tells her classmates that her dad is a YouTuber (I guess at her age being a YouTuber is more prestigious than being a filmmaker). My son, who is college student, encourages me as well. Most people I know on the other hand are skeptic, I don’t care.

 

This is not my first rodeo in this world. One year ago, in a fit of late-mid-life crisis (and making a bet while completely drunk), I decided to learn to sing. Which led to my first song audio, which was good, which led to song video. Now I have four song videos. However, song videos were very controlled and someone else did lighting and camera. I did edit and color photography. I know edits and color grading is horrible since I am a beginner. But I have 25k subscribers so I must be delivering the experience.

 

One good thing that came out of this shoot is that we discovered my wife loves cinematography. So that department is going to be in-house as well.

 

The shoot itself turned out to be horrible. It was primarily my fault. I thought 3-minute films were too easy, and I did not do story boarding. Now I realize that unless we do story boarding, we cannot effectively decide blocking and lights. Also, the less mental pressure during the shoot the better so things need to be detailed out on paper. I suspect there were a couple of place where comedy could have been better and story boarding would have told me that. For e.g. when we see the gangster, initially we could have started with focus on his egregious shoes.

 

Read Roger Deakins book to prepare for the shoot and wish I had not. Completely made a mess, this guy makes it look so easy. Anyway next time I am going to approach as a beginner with key light, fill light etc.

 

As if my mistakes were not enough. My two actors developed cold feet. So I decided to play both roles. My wife jumped in for camera and my daughter for lights/live teleprompter. I thought I could combine the footage during edit but since I did not do story boarding, one shoot was with me looking north and next shoot was with me looking east.

 

I also completely forgot to do white balance. First few seconds are in bright light. Rest of the skit in warm light. I completely forgot to reset wb etc. during the second part. I tried to fix this in post but couldn't. Hence, I gave up after 2 days of fighting. No color grading for this short.

 

I should have done some trial shots. There is an ac duct and thermostat visible on the backside and it is very distracting, at least for me. Next time I will do trial photos. Sometimes things only jump out when you see something on the monitor.

 

Here is my skit https://youtu.be/5ZD34URpTzA the script is actually not bad but it is in a foreign language and it has a lot of cultural references that only people from a particular generation will understand.

 

Now on to something better. I am determined to nail the lights this time.