Zach Bloom Media

As a young child, I liked to create short films. Initially, I used my iPod and iMovie to create stop animation movies using Lego figures to depict fun storylines set to music. As an older child, I became part of Henry Jenkins participatory culture; a prosumer, wanting to create content for my own YouTube channel. It was during the first lockdown, when my world shrunk and life went online, that I started creating short films. It combined my love of narrative with love of technology and helped me cope with the isolation. I experimented with various video editing software before settling on Premier Pro. I was self taught, watching YouTube tutorials first on the basics, then on specific skills, such as key framing or colour grading.

The Proposal (short film)

As part of my AS Level media studies course work, I created this short film. This was a group project. We were given a brief to create a script for a short film which had to include 8 different camera shots and we were given the first few lines of a script that we must follow. The brief had the title “The Proposal” and we wished to stay away from the obvious genre of romance or a narrative of a business deal. We wanted to be original and have a unique take on this title. We decided to base our idea on a psychological horror that would mess with your mind.

We took inspiration from the Alfred Hitchcock film, Psycho for the look and feel of the film. This shaped how we wanted the film to feel, it provided us with ideas for camera shots, like the extreme close up of the eye. We started with writing a script, then we did a location recce to decide how we could shoot the scenes. Based on this, we were able to plan the stage directions, the props and the settings and camera angles we intended to use. We also had some very clear ideas about how we wanted the transitions to work, we wanted there to be smooth cuts and continuity between scenes, for example, we were careful with planning how we would use props from scene to scene so that it made sense throughout the whole film.

Next, we thought about the equipment we were to use, we made sure the camera battery was charged and the SD card had sufficient space to store our footage. We also made sure we had a tripod to keep stability when filming and the same camera position. We considered the lighting as this was a key feature for us. We wanted one of the characters to be back lit, to provide an eeriness to this character and the other character to have natural lighting to give this character a more realistic feel. We decided to shoot in monochrome rather than apply it in post production because it had a more authentic feel when we tested and compared the two methods. We wanted the film to be in monochrome to intensify the emotions of the characters and strip back the distractions of the vibrancy of colours in the set. It also mirrored the feel of Alfred Hitchcock that we wanted to inject into our media film. We wanted there to be a feeling of unease when watching it, we wanted it to be an uncomfortably emotional watch as there would be no one to sympathise with or root for. We kept in mind the genre of a psychological horror that would mess with your mind which we thought would fit better with one actor playing two roles.

When shooting, our main challenge was lighting because we needed to keep it similar between scenes, for example, we shot outside and then inside and needed the lighting to be very similar. We also did test shoots to see if there were any issues that we needed to resolve. We needed to make some adjustments with the set, where the camera was positioned in relation to the actor, we needed to move the lighting. We planned the filming well and our film was very much narrative driven so the editing was mainly about making sure the transitions were smooth, that the audio levels were similar and adding non diegetic sound at the beginning and end. Most of the work involved the pre production stages.

I learnt how crucial planning is, how having a clear idea about what you want to achieve and the feel of a film really matters. Our group consisted of two and I learnt that the size of the group is not as important as a good idea, good planning and good execution.