3 Lessons I Learned When I Made My First Film

Hi Filmmakers! As I work on my next project, I am reminiscing about past projects and thought of some goodies to share with you from when I directed my first short film “Friday Night Fright”.

Want to watch it? Head over to this link: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fridaynightfright!

While at USC Film school, we were put into trios to make short films. Carolyn and Karen were my partners and believe it or not, we were the only ‘all-female’ group in the whole semester of 60 students. Some even joked that they should make their short film about us because they were sure ‘all women’ would mean ‘all fighting.’ That’s a hard ‘no,’ my friends. I learned so much from these women about being a part of a team, and I cherish this time we had together.

“Friday Night Fright” went on to win many awards including a DGA award, and I was hooked. I love this genre, and I love directing.

SIDE NOTE: When I won the DGA Student Award for "Friday Night Fright" I was consistently being referred to as a ‘woman-director’ that felt like something less than a 'real director' and instead -- as if I was thought of as a woman who was trying to be a director. I could feel it on the daily, and that condescending mentality took its toll. Instead of letting it pull me down I ended up temporarily venturing away from narrative into investigative documentary storytelling. If you haven’t seen "Pioneers in Skirts" yet, it's a film I directed that is on PBS right now. Organizations are hosting screenings all over the globe, too. You can watch it online here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/pioneerathome.

And now, the main event —

Three Lessons Learned while making my first short film, FRIDAY NIGHT FRIGHT:

Keep your end credits way shorter than I did! The image below shows where viewers keep their attention during the film. You can see how quickly they jump off during the end credit roll.

I had nearly 1 minute of credits in a 6 minute short. Don’t do that. I know why I did it, though — we were SO FREAKIN’ PROUD of ourselves. Can’t shame me, just learn from that mistake! Oh – and on a short film, there’s no need to have beginning credits like they do in feature films. We only need to see the title.

Sometimes people think you shouldn’t fundraise for low budgeted projects — I learned that you should. because the effort of fundraising will help you to build your supporters. USC only allowed students to put $1000 of their own money into their project (not including USC resources). I chose to fundraise for the $1000 instead of going out of pocket…and who has $1000 as a grad student?? The act of fundraising and bringing on supporters actually helped me to fine-tune my idea, my message, and brought people into my circle who are excited for my work – that’s pretty great, right?

Kid actors are not allowed to scream for every take per their studio teacher rules, so we had to fake it a lot so that our actor didn’t lose his voice. I’m sure this is a good lesson for adult actors as well — no one should have to scream for 10 – 20 takes! But, those shots never looked as good as when he really screamed. So my suggestion to you, plan around safety for your kid’s voice by doing coverage of them when they don’t have to really scream, then go all in for those money straight-on shots!