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 short film “Friday Night Fright”… more than 10 years ago!
Want to watch it? Head over to this link: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fridaynightfright!
At USC Film school teams of three are put together to make short films for class projects. For “Friday Night Fright”, Carolyn and Karen were my partners. It was 2010 and 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 cherish this time we had together.
“Friday Night Fright” went on to win many awards including winning me a DGA award! After that I was hooked. I love this genre, and I love directing.
Three Lessons Learned From Making 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…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!
Bonus Tip: Get yourself a crew member like Russell Beaman who is hilarious, so the positivity will spread through your whole crew. 🙂
Watch the film that solidified my voice as a filmmaker! Head over to the link (above) to watch. And yes, it was made with an all-student crew! We’ve gotten better 🙂 Enjoy!
