EFFO FILMS PRESENTS
A SKELTON PRODUCTION

FIRST STOP

Logline: Boy meets girl.

The Numbers: (and stuff)

Completed: 30 January 2006
Duration: 4 min 10 secs
Format: miniDV
Camera: Panasonic GS-120
Editing Platform: Sony Vegas, Windows XP

Production Notes : First Stop was a short film made primarily during January of 2006 for the inaugural Moonlight Shorts outdoors short film event, held in March of 2006. The film grew organically out of a year of just brainstorming and writing down things in a notebook. During the month of December 2005, I began putting everything together on paper and pre-production lasted about four weeks. I'd just jot things down on-and-off every day, and eventually the core of film fell into place.

One of the main things I really felt strongly about was simplicity. Not just simplicity, but efficiency and focus. I didn't want to make a really long and sophisticated film with many characters and subplots. In short, everything to do with this film followed the mantra: Keep it simple.

I wanted it to be down to earth and to the point.

So we shot it one morning on a bench near Bucklands Beach, about five minutes from where I live. It was a one day shoot, or rather, a 2 hour shoot. We had a crew of two people, myself and Steve Whitford, a friend who was kind enough to borrow me his DV camera and help me out on the day. Using such a small video camera kept the production low profile.

I remember making my first short film (Epilogue) and doing about 15 takes of everything because I didn't know what I wanted. Well this time I knew that doing more takes just because I wanted more 'bad takes to choose from was... a bad reason. So I did 1-3 takes of everything. If it looked pretty good from where I was standing, I'd move onto the next shot. I learnt one of the biggest lessons of filmmaking that day:

Preparation is the most precious part of the filmmaking process.

It makes everything enjoyable. I felt more comfortable about taking things easy and not obsessing over circumstances that one couldn't change on the day. With the same amount of preparation, an extra 10 takes does nothing except make people tired and waste time. If I wasn't prepared beforehand, I wouldn't be able to change anything drastically on the day. Good preparation sets you up for a great process and opportunities for flexibility.

Everyone went home by lunch time. There were four people there on the day. I took an afternoon nap and edited the short throughout the following week. It was the best film project I'd ever done. More preparation would still have helped, but that's something I'll apply to the next thing that comes along.

It was great working with everyone, thanks for taking part and helping out.

:o)

Page Updated: 15 February 2006