Talk by Former Film Studies A Level Student

Talk by former Film Studies A Level Student

In class we were fortunate enough to have been visited by a former A level film studies student, Neil, to give us some advice on the process of creating a short film. Neil was formerly in the year above us and hence he had made his short film as part of his A level film studies coursework just under a year prior to us. This meant that his experience of creating his own short film was relatively fresh. Neil's film was called 'Reflection', it was a horror film that was very enjoyable.

Neil gave some very useful advice about coming up with ideas for a short film including watching more short films online outside of the set short films we have looked at in class which is an idea I pursued. Neil also said it was a good idea to base a short film on some kind of universal situatuion which is relatable to everyone. He also emphasised the importance of writing, planning and filming your short film based on the resources you already have which he reffered to as 'reverse budgeting'.

Some of Neil's other advice included leaving time to write multiple drafts of our screenplays which is an inevitable and necessary part of the process of creating a short film, to ask our classmates to read over our screenplay and give feedback. Some more general feedback included keeping the number of characters in the short film to about one or two but no more than three and writing one page of our screenplay for one minute of screentime.

Neil's advice for shooting was to check out our filming locations before shooting either in person or through google maps to check for variables that could effect the shooting schedule. 

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