Over the past few weeks, our EDT 503 class has been in the process of completing the first three steps of the American Film Institute's "Door Scene" project. Essentially, we were confined to shooting at 90 second or less film without the use of editing tools or effects, and within a 5 foot distance from a door way. The scene was supposed to portray a character hearing a noise (source never known) and becoming more and more anxious as he/she heard the noise multiple times. The character approaches a door, has difficulty opening it, and eventually reaches the other side safely.
Although the project seems very simple, it took nearly 90 minutes to film! It was a challenging, yet fun way to gain experience making short films (digital stories). For the first step, we were split into groups and were expected to film the scene anyway we wanted. This step was very difficult because we had several points of view working simultaneously and came across a lot of difficulty agreeing on our overall vision of the project. Through a lot of reshooting, we were able to finish the project and had the opportunity to view other groups' work. It was interesting to see how different groups interpreted the assignment and it gave us a chance to realize where our groups came across the most difficulty.
My favorite piece of the project was step two and step three. Step two everyone in class created a storyboard for their "Door Scene" with illustrations and detailed isntruction. When we brought our storyboards into class the following day, we shuffled our storyboards and had to recreate someone else's idea of the "Door Scene" for step three. This was a surprise, but I think it went a long way to proving to us how necessary storyboarding is and how much detail we need to include in order to transfer our vision to an outside perspective. Overall, I really liked the "Door Scene" project and I think it showed us how important our attention to detail is when we storyboard. Additionally, it showed how much time needs to go into effectively creating a digital story.
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ReplyDeleteI enjoyed step 2 and 3 as well. I had never created a storyboard before, but I liked that, by shuffling our stories, we had a better understanding of how much detail we need to include to make an efficient storyboard.
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