Lesson Learned

This past Friday the students at Flashpoint took part in an all day filmmaking event. Students were divided up into 8 different groups to make their own 30 second film with the recently released game "Team Fortress 2."

Following a storyboard session, the students would record shots and dialogue with this game using 3 of the characters seen on the left. Then the editors would go to work by constructing the short in time for a screening at the end of the day.

This proved rather difficult, primarily because of the lack of time allowed to construct this film.

Our group had a great idea. Everyone was contributing to the pre-production of our film. Story ideas were mixed together to create a clever 30 second short. Storyboarding allowed for our short to have a clear direction.

Unfortunately, with the lack of time to prepare the camera shots and fact that known of the team members knew little about the game (myself included), the experience took a hard turn and almost fell apart.

We got down to business, however, and were able to turn out a short film that we are allowed to revise this coming week. Although it was rather hectic, and at times aggravating, the overall experience is undeniably helpful to our future careers.

If you can't collaborate successfully, then you can't be in this business. Period.

DM