What I Learned Making a Short Film in 24 Hours

Making a Short Film in 24 Hours



Wander the Burgundy Narrow // A 2018 Down to the Wire Top 10 Film // Student Spotlight Award Recipient // Winner of the Award for Best Actor

1. Keep it Simple

I know a lot of people here don't have an interest in filmmaking, or really anything video-related, so I'm going to try and make sure these tips are explained in a way that you can apply them to your own creative medium of choice.

I think this tip can go a long way for nearly any project. Just keep it simple. Stay on track and say fewer words. Before my film was what you see above, it was a Google Doc full of words. While developing this Google Doc, our writing team had a slight hangup. One of our team members was concerned that we didn't explain the relationship between our janitor and librarian enough. He asked, “so why is he meeting the librarian for the first time? Is he new on the job? Is she new on the job?”

Backstory. He wanted backstory, and my response was short and simple: “It doesn’t matter.”

For our purposes, we didn’t need to spoon feed the audience that information, and that’s a huge takeaway here: your audience is smarter than you give them credit for. All they needed to know were three things: What does the protagonist want? The girl. What’s the obstacle he faces? Inability to approach her. How does he overcome it? With “wise” guidance from a friend. By narrowing our focus simply on the info we needed to convey, we were able to create a concise script that got our point across. We didn’t bog it down, we kept it simple.

So take that into your next creative project. Don’t go overboard explaining things you don’t need to. Understand your audience, don’t underestimate their intelligence, and use your words more powerfully to get your point across.

2. Organize Your Tasks

Time management was another huge things we learned to take advantage of. We scheduled people in advance of the entire day. Writers showed up first thing in the morning and completed the script (hopefully in the time we allotted for writing, usually 3 hours), and production crew didn’t need to show up until it was time to start shooting, etc.

By taking the time ahead of the project and dividing up tasks and responsibilities based on our schedule, we were able to keep ourselves pretty well on track throughout the day, ensuring that we got things done in a timely manner and finished the film on time.

My takeaway for you here: divide up your tasks for the day. Regardless of if you’re a full time freelancer who works from home or someone who just takes gigs part time for spending money, nobody knows your capabilities nor time commitments better than you. So use that to your advantage. Divide up your tasks and allot what you believe is a reasonable amount of time to them. X hours for research, followed by X hours of writing before breaking for lunch. After that, right back to it. X hours of writing and editing, etc.

3. Be Confident with What You Write

I feel like this point is the hardest for anyone to come to grips with, after all, we tend to be our own harshest critics. I still find myself second guessing what I write, even if it’s a simple Facebook or Instagram post for work, or an email template that will be sent out to a mass of people. While I think it’s a good thing to second guess what you write to an extent (otherwise you might pump out some awful stuff without hesitation, missing typos, etc.)

However, the time constraints of this competition always force myself and my friends to be confident with what we wrote. We don’t have time to second guess ourselves with this timeline. And this year, it paid off. We moved forward with the idea we felt was strongest, blasted through our script, and stuck to our guns the entire day. The result? A Top 10 Film and an award for Student Spotlight!

4. Keep Doing What You Love

I think this point is the most important. No matter what, just keep doing what you love. I love the filmmaking process, and this competition almost puts me at odds with my passion. It takes what I love to do, puts an incredible amount of stress on me and my crew, and really pushes us to our limits. But at the end of the screenings, we come out of it with a better sense of unity, and a better idea of who we are as filmmakers and where we want to go with our passions. Really, it makes me appreciate the ambitions of myself and my team even more each year, and I’m really thankful for that.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve drawn from my experience these past several years, and I hope it’s applicable in some way to your future endeavors as well!