One Word Film Project

This project consisted of making a 1-2 minute short film based on a random word given to us. The short film had to follow several limitations, such as no dialogue, allowing only instrumental music and sound effects, and the story presented had to be something that could realistically occur within 1-2 minutes in real life.

The word given to my partner and me was "hateful." The condition of a real-life 1-2 minute story really limited us, so during our brainstorming, we focused on finding a way to make the word stand out in such a short period. We quickly decided to make the story about a bully, but we struggled for a while to figure out what he could do to make him appear hateful within our limited time. We concluded that we would focus on showing how the bully enjoyed tormenting the victim. This enjoyment would easily make him deserving of hate.

With this as the main drive of our story, we quickly thought of showing the bully in close-up shots so the audience could always see a smile on his face. While drawing the storyboard, we used mid shots for the bully only when we needed to show him goofing around or using his arms. The storyboarding allowed us to plan a narrative where the hateful nature of the bully was easily portrayed through his smile and enjoyment, so we could conclude the short film by materializing the victim’s hatred with a single, simple shot.

We edited the film in Premiere. Both of us had experience with the program, so we worked together on color grading. It was a bit challenging because some of the shots ended up being really dark. However, this didn’t cause any issues with the cuts. Using shot/reverse shot techniques, we enhanced the relationship between the bully and the victim throughout the short film.

Overall, I think the project was solid. The story was simple, but that's what a 1-2 minute real-life story calls for. The editing was really good. Interestingly, my partner and I ended up using very different techniques to achieve the same objective. I think his approach was better, so I’d like to spend more time on editing in my next project. Another area we could have improved was time management. We finished just in time, so some of the final shots were rushed and didn’t turn out as well as we had hoped. However, the project did include some high-quality shots that I’m really happy with, which shows a good sign of improvement.

Project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13J2b4AUo6ebb3R6_xL4_1zfuRDoiQrUl/view?usp=sharing