It was quite an experience creating a short film as my final project for Rhetoric of the Moving Image. This is something that came as both a blessing and a curse. I’ve never been given the task of making a movie. Sure, there was that time in the 3rd grade when I was asked to film a show about the endangered snow leopard, but that was a little different than this. This project had to demonstrate the range of key terms and techniques I’ve learned about movie making over the past few months in taking this class. I can honestly say that as clueless as my group was going into this, we came out with something to be truly proud of.
“Little Jokes” is the name that was given to our film. Our editor, Elena Chwat, came up with this playful little title while we were in the midst of editing. After about an hour of clipping scenes and brainstorming titles, she decided it might be a lovely idea to pull our title from the lyrics of the song that plays throughout the film. This seemed like a good idea for a couple reasons. One, “5 Years Time” by Noah and the Whale, is the song that inspired my whole concept for our movie. I had that song picked out before I had anything else. Two, we were running out of ideas. It’s not easy naming a movie; it’s even harder naming it well. So with the line, “I’ll be laughing at all your silly little jokes …” we found our title. We felt it was a good representation of our movie in that it our movie was meant to be light-hearted, simple, and honest; as harmless as a little joke.
There isn’t much to say about the process we used to produce our movie. When the project was initially assigned, it took me a matter of minutes to decide it might be cool to film a couple of kids going through their morning routine before school. It would be a compilation of shorts with kids brushing their teeth, getting dressed, eating breakfast, etc. It was an attempt to show how people do similar things in different ways. My group seemed to welcome this idea with open arms. After a few days of writing out some scenes to fit the music, it was clear that somehow I had become the director of our film. Knowing this, I would try as hard as possible to execute my vision in an artistic, playful way. I took on the responsibility of writing out all of the scenes for the movie in hopes that this would make our filming process as simple as possible. With a whole script in front of me, the filming process was extremely easy. I liked that I was able to film what I wanted and make adjustments right in the middle of filming to fit the needs of the assistant director, Perri Bernstein, and the editor, Elena Chwat. Their input during filming was definitely a huge help in making our movie as interesting as possible. They were able to tell me when to switch up the type of shots I was taking to show a better range of what we had all learned in class. You need more than one person to make a movie.
One thing my group never discussed was what five cinematic techniques we would try to utilize in our film. I guess we all assumed it would be pretty organic, which it was. As hard as you try to follow a script, things never go just as planned when making a movie. My group changed a lot between the initial script and the actual taping of our movie. Close-ups turned to medium shots, and long shots turned to tracking shots. Fortunately, even though we never really addressed it, our movie definitely displays at least five different cinematic techniques used in the most purposeful of ways … There’s the close up of a girl’s hand grabbing at a toilet paper roll, hinting that she might be going to the bathroom. We felt it would be inappropriate and semi impossible to convince one of our friends to sit on a toilet in a medium or long shot; there are just some things people don’t need to see. Another technique utilized in our film is the long shot. We decided to use a long shot while the boy was running to school in order to show just the distance he would have to travel to get there while in a race against time. A third cinematic technique utilized in our film is the tracking shot. In two instances, we track the main girl for a few seconds. The use of a tracking shot definitely made our film more interesting. It’s something you don’t see nearly as often as the other kinds of shots and it was a nice variation for our film. A fourth technique we thought would be pretty cool to utilize was parallel editing because it would be a great way to compare the boy character to the girl character while preserving this idea that people do similar things in different ways. We see a shot of the girl walking out her front door in a calm manner, and then a shot of the boy walking out his front door in more of a rush. We then see shots of him running to get to school. Once he finally gets there, we see a shot of the girl arriving to school. The use of parallel editing allowed for me to execute my overall concept in a very smart way. Lastly, a fifth cinematic technique we used was the medium shot. Some see the medium shot as the most boring and overused, I see it as the most classic. We used the medium shot for many of our scenes because it gave our movie this very honest, real quality. I feel that people see naturally in a sort of medium shot. Medium shots show just enough information without confusing the audience. In taping much of our movie using the medium shot, we created something that is easy for the audience to watch and follow. A movie of all long shots of close ups would be too conceptual for what we wanted.
I feel my group really ended with something big and I’m really proud of what we made. It can be hard when three people have three different opinions, but my group did a good job incorporating their ideas while respecting my original vision. I would say my favorite parts of the movie would be where I included some comical relief. At one point, the boy takes a jug of milk from the fridge, sniffs it, scrunches his nose, and proceeds to drink the foul liquid anyway. Everyone who has seen the movie has laughed at that part. The end of the movie is also pretty comical; two kids spend the whole film getting ready for school to learn it’s a Saturday and there’s no school at all. It took me quite a long time to come up with this clever ending. Once it finally hit me, I couldn’t have been happier. It’s just what our movie needed. Of all ways for our movie to end, it seemed most appropriate for it to end on a little joke.
So again, I’d like to thank my group for helping me execute my vision. I can’t see any other way to end a film class, but by making a film. I can only hope that anyone who views this movie will recognize the work we put into it and truly enjoy what they see. I never for a second wanted to make something serious for this project. I don’t think that means we put any less work into our movie than someone who did make something serious. I just know that “Little Jokes” is a perfect reflection of the people that made it.
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