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Painting Story Production Notes
Working on the painting to life film was a different experience for me than the genre film. On the genre film, I was much more involved in pre-production, specifically writing the story and developing the concept. This time, because we each wrote our own stories, I had no part in coming up with the one we settled on, so I had to assume other, more technical responsibilities, which were more foreign to me than writing a story. Still, though, it was an interesting experience. Having to think about the individual shots and how they were filmed was new for me, so it was sort of enlightening. I wasn’t under the impression that film-making was easy, per se, but I think I had a different idea of how things were done.
On the genre film, I had proposed the original concept then essentially acted as crew during shooting, holding green screens up or animating props rather than having anything to do with the camera. This time I almost found myself playing co-director at times, suggesting ways to improve the shots or tell the story in a clearer way.
This time was also interesting because we ran into problems with filming. We had to deal with some surly employees and frustrating bureaucracy, so I think I learned the importance of being a little bit flexible. Eventually, we pushed hard enough to get a few of the shots we wanted, but we had to restructure our storyline a bit in the end. What was interesting to me was that I proposed alternative ways of telling the story that seemed relatively obvious to me but that the other members of the group hadn’t thought of. I guess this taught me that giving input, no matter how obvious it may seem, is always worthwhile.
I think the film itself could use a few tweaks—watching it back a few weeks after the fact, I realize that the story isn’t totally clear—but I think it sort of boiled down to time. Ideally, we would’ve re-shot and further retooled our story and given it some more depth and humor. But again, this was a learning experience, as sometimes failure to fully realize the potential of something can motivate you to work harder the next time.
