Story: A man has the ability to relive a day and time if he records it with a special camera. Something has come up that he wants to find a way to change something with it but you can’t do this with the device. What is he trying to change and what does his best friends’ idea of marrying someone have to do with it? Watch to find out more.
Background: In freshman year at Upper Merion Area High School, the film teacher had told me about a film festival called the Five Day Film Festival where you make a movie in five days. It would be quick, allow me to get better at film making, and would have an audience view my movie. I was all for it and quickly got a team ready.
Creation: I had always had the idea of a film camera altering time but was never meant to be used like that as an idea for a couple months now. I decided to use this idea for the film festival since my genre was thriller. I had to include a specific dialogue and item as well. Those two things being, “I can’t believe you took it all,” and a sandwich.
Pre-Production: I spent the first two days going over ideas with my friends, mine being the final one. I wrote a few drafts but decided that since a lot might be changed upon the filming day that I shouldn’t waste time with storyboards. I fleshed out my script and was ready to film.
Production: The day we began filming it was realized we didn’t have a female character and certain plot points didn’t make sense before realizing that and especially after. The script was reworked to fit a male cast of characters and sometimes we had to change things on the go. The twist at the end was also completely different but makes sense unlike before where it really just was an attempt at something that didn’t turn out too good. There were a lot of arguments on script choices and using a different camera when our main one died. All in all, we got everything we had to, done.
Post-Production: Due to Hurricane Sandy the deadline was delayed two days which helped since I was having problems running Adobe Premiere Pro on my computer and had to quickly get Elements again. I did everything when it came to editing, finding ways to convert the second camera’s footage, composing music, sound effects, etc. It was stressful having a deadline to edit a movie this time around but this helped me improve my editing skills in a situation for if I ever edited a feature length movie for a release window.
Premiere: EDiT was submitted to the director of the festival which was then judged by people who work in the industry that apparently many people would know. It was shown at the Ambler Theater and while not winning any awards, the whole experience got me to improve my film making skills and meet some people who have been doing this stuff for years who I could now contact and learning something from.