preproduction

Behind The Scenes of Desire

Welcome to a behind the scenes look at Desire, a short video project created to tell a story using only macro shots.

A month or so ago, I was tasked with a brand new challenge: Make a video about sex… for a church… that’s not a joke, or takes the topic lightly. It took me a week or so of pondering, but the resulting concept, I think, was pretty cool. Most of the preproduction work was done for us, as the project follows very closely a video that inspired me a several years ago. So in essense, our preproduction was already done for us. The biggest challenge was reverse-engineering the shots. I’d never worked with macro shots that were close enough to make the human eye fill the entire frame.

Production

The entire project was a relatively quick turnaround, which actually worked out because all of it was filmed in a single location. The trick was trying to convey different locations and moods, almost entirely with lighting.

Postproduction

This project was one of the first (professional) projects I cut in Davinci Resolve. My experience was nearly seamless coming from Premiere Pro. Didn’t have to search for much, and instantly fell in love with the tab system. Overall, had a great experience with this project and it’s probably my favorite of 2019. Check out the final below!

Final Result

I’m just not a person who writes things down. I never carry pens or paper. Even if I do happen to have a pen an paper with me, I rarely use them. I carried a Moleskine for a year or so, but was always nervous to write ideas in it for some reason. One day, I accidentally ended up washing my Moleskine and never replaced it. I’ve tried writing journal entries in my Moleskine, in .txt files on my computer, and even in personal Google Drive documents, but I’ve never been consistent with it.

Biggest Roadblocks to Writing

I’ve started a good handful of scripts, but for whatever reason, I’ve never been satisfied with where they end up. I’ll start with one idea and work it and develop different ideas for conflicts and story arches, but I never feel like I really arrive at, “Oh yeah. THAT’S my story.”

It could be just me on this, but that has been the biggest roadblock for me. I rarely actually follow through with projects because I can never get past the writing part of it. Writing is definitely my weak spot, and I certainly wouldn’t classify myself as a writer.

Another roadblock is just inconsistency. I’ll start an idea, maybe spend a weekend or so developing an idea, reach a stopping point, shelve it, and never look at that script ever again. I don’t make a plan to revisit the script. Now that I’m taking on this project, I’m going to HAVE to dedicate some time every single day to making at least a little progress or it will never get done.

And finally, I’m just not confident as a writer, simply because I don’t write. It sounds stupid because it’s one of those ping pong, back-and-forth arguments. I don’t write because I’m not confident, yet I’m not confident because I don’t write. So the cure for this is consistency, and getting over the fact that your writing is gonna suck. Your first script will suck. Your first film will suck. Your first animation will suck. Everybody’s first thing sucks because it’s their first thing. Glad we got that out of the way.

Finally On Paper After 3 Years

I cannot express the overwhelming satisfaction of having an idea over 3 years ago, starting to play with it 3 years ago, then life happening, taking a break, more life happening, having kids, moving, changing jobs, and all the stuff that easily take priority over writing a script. But! To come back to this idea that’s been shelved for so long, and to finally get the complete short story down on paper feels amazing.

I’ve got big plans for this little short film! It will actually be my 3rd personal short film ever. I made my first two in college and learned a ton, and started doing professional videos from there on out. I haven’t had much time for personal or passion projects, but I feel like I’ve built up enough passion to make this one happen in spite of whatever happens along the way.

This also kinda marks a turning point in the ol’ blog here, as I’ve been posting a lot of nerdy terminal-based developer stuff as of late. All that stuff is fine, and I think it’s pretty cool, but in the future, I’m going to post as many updates as I can on the progress of this short film project. I want to learn as much as I can from the project, and I want everyone else to have the opportunity to learn along with me.

This will be my first animated short film project. The previous two shorts in college were live action shot with zero budget and friends. I’ll have a micro budget for this one, but the biggest difference is that, because it’s animated, I’ll be doing the entire film almost completely solo.

Desire: Making of