Recently, I’ve been knocking around ideas for shooting a short film. As I ticked through the list, I referred to Dov Simens’ lessons to help me narrow the field. Here are the criteria I used.
- All one camera setups.
- Uses sets/settings which are readily available.
- No effects, special or practical.
- No more than three actors.
- No more than three shooting days.
Walking to my terminal at JFK, the pieces started coming together. An idea I had earlier rejected as somewhat trite took on new life as, using Simens’ rules, the story was stripped down to its essence. As soon as I hit my seat on the plane, I pulled out my laptop. Four hours later, as I landed in Vegas, I had a pretty solid first draft.
“Sarah Jane” is the working title. It is a genre piece, mostly survival horror with what I hope is a novel twist. I am pretty happy with the first draft and have it out to some friend for an initial review. Not sure when I’ll get to shoot it, but I am looking forward to it.
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