Our First Short Film || A Review & Everything I Learnt

MAKING 'ROCK, PAPER SCISSORS' INTERESTING IS HARDER THAN YOU THINK

We began the process of creating our first short film by story-boarding initial ideas and creating a preliminary concept. With the stimulus being the game ‘rock, paper, scissors,’ we wanted to obviously convey this in a more interesting way so the audience weren’t completely uninterested. There were a range of routes we discussed taking including children playing in a playground, a noir mafia concept and more, finally settling on a theme of a Spaghetti Western, a genre which first emerged in the mid-1960’s named so, due to the fact they were directed and produced by Italians. We believed this to be a simple yet effective concept and were able to borrow multiple classic shots from these films in order to depict our story. For example the use of extreme close-ups on the eyes and twitching fingers of our characters are seen throughout classic Spaghetti Western’s such as A Fistful Of Dollars and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

Now knowing our initial concept we continued to story-board our piece, mostly listing the shots we most wanted to include (such as close-ups of the characters feet walking apart from one another) and how we wanted to move from one shot to another, eventually settling on contrasting quick jump shots with slow panning to create building tension. We chose to position audiences as spectators to the ‘shoot-out’ style battle as are often seen in these kinds of scenes in actual feature-length Westerns. Usually, there is an audience (towns populations, romantically involved characters and other characters supporting each side) watching on and this is how we chose to position our audience - for many shots they feel as though they are watching on as spectators perhaps in more of a surrealist way due to the extreme close-ups used to create tension.

Filming then began, having previously agreed the two people featured in the film as the opposing characters were chosen due to their clothing. Classically, we used contrasting white and black clothing - and the connotations behind these colours - to depict their contrasting ‘good vs. evil’ nature. Due to time restrictions we were unfortunately not able to include every shot we had planned and were forced to cut certain corners in order to have a finished piece by the deadline. Therefore we didn’t have every close-up we wanted of the hands when actually playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, however the set-back view works with our concept of the audience being in the position of classic spectators seen in these films.

Even so, the filming process was incredibly insightful and we filmed every shot multiple times to make sure it was as close to perfect as possible. During filming we developed our ideas further, working together to develop shots so they were, essentially, more interesting.

Our opening shot of the wind moving through the trees and the sun behind the clouds presents the idea that there is an uneasy sense to the film, it is not a surrealist, ideal day but one with movement. We also wanted to use the image of the sun to take the audience’s mind to that barren, desert setting used in Spaghetti Westerns. We didn’t quite have the budget to fly out to Death Valley and construct a set with rolling tumbleweed and distressed horses roped to a log - so we worked with what we had. What we had being, an unsettling light emerging from behind the clouds and a slight breeze to create the unsettling tone.

The second shot is of the two figures shadows, creating questions and intrigue. I love this shot and it adds to the already building suspense as so little information is given away. The audience cannot see their faces or even their clothing - they are just two mysterious figures facing one another (seen by the glimpse of their shoes pointing to one another), and swaying a little in their tense, apprehensive state. It was one of the shots that we came up with during filming as we learnt what was working and what wasn’t. Hopefully the image pulls the audience into answering these questions. The contrasting colours of the characters clothes are then established as the camera moves to a close-up of their hands shaking. Again, there are more questions - why are they shaking hands and what is the significance of this? The camera pans to their feet - perhaps a motif in the film and something we return to often.

The next few shots were (ratherrr annoying) shot in portrait accidentally and are one of the major mistakes we made when creating the film. Obviously, the next few shots are supposed to be landscape like the rest of the film and unfortunately we didn’t realise the mistake we’d made until we’d put all of the videos together and edited it into black and white. So definitely a lesson for next time - make sure everything is filmed in the same way! However, I do like the idea of the feet turning against each other as the audience perhaps are deducing that the two characters are against one another. Again, we then return to more shots of the feet and the shadows. I think we probably over-did the views of the feet - the audience are basically looking at feet for more than half of the film and you can only portray a narrative and establish characters so much with feet and at a certain point - it’s just confusing and unnecessary. We definitely reached this point. In fact, it is only when the camera lifts to see a petrified Ellie in her white top directly opposite the other characters that audiences may begin to even realise our concept of a Spaghetti Western, and we certainly don’t foreshadow Rock, Paper, Scissors - something we could have done with close up of the hands practising the movements or something similar. 

So in-terms of narrative we probably didn’t take into account the fact the audience was unaware of the stimulus and were so concerned with building tension we didn’t let them into this soon enough.

When editing we chose to put it into black and white, in Westerns there are usually muted tones, but due to a tinyyy budget (also known as: no budget), we threw all the film into black and white to convey the contrast between the two characters in their opposing colours. We also couldn't include all of the shots we wanted to portray which character was 'good' and which was 'bad' (something that I generally think just didn't come across at all anyway?) Overall, I think we just spent way too much time on attempting to build the tension before the 'battle' and didn't establish the two opposing character clearly enough or show the actual game 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' effectively enough either!

~Grace~

Notes: need to structure paragraphs more effectively and not ramble on/repeat myself!