Talk by Filmmaker, Ryd Cook

Talk by Filmmaker, Ryd Cook

Ryd Cook is a filmmaker who was gracious enough to come in and give a talk to our class about the process of creating a short film. Ryd had created his own short film, 'Single to London' which had been entered into several film festivals and had won an award for 'Best Short Film'. 

One of the main focuses of Ryd's talk was the importance of a good logline in the creation of a film, Ryd brought up the idea of an 'elevator pitch' that a logline has to be a very simple, one sentence summary of the plot of a film that encapsulates the core essence of what the film is about. As Ryd described, the logline should highlight the protagonist of the film, their goal and the antagonistic force opposing the protagonist and standing between them and their goal and it should specifically be in this order. So for instance a logline for a film I have already looked at such as 'The Arrival' might be 'A pregnant woman must prepare to tell the father of her child that she is not going to keep the baby however she must face her anxiety and uncertainty about this' and for 'The Fly' it could be 'A getaway driver must be ready to help the bank robbers escape but he is distracted by a fly'. Creating a logline will be an important part of the process of creating my short film.

The rest of Ryd's talk was mainly aimed at the people actually creating a five minute short film but for someone like myself who is making a digital story board alongside the ten page screenplay this advice wasn't as relavent but there were some important things he talked about. One good bit of Ryd's advice was to write the initial first draft of our screenplay without any dialogue and then add dialogue with the following drafts. Ryd showed us an example of a shooting schedule he had made for his short film which included the shot type, location, actors and props needed and the time of day. 

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