Fatality

This was the first film project for my Film Production class. Technically, part of this short came from an earlier, smaller assignment in the class. All I did was take that assignment and added on to it. Anyways, for this assignment, we were to create whatever we felt like doing as long as it didn't have any synced sound. We weren't allowed to have any dialogue or background noises that was in synced with the scene during the recording. All sound must be done outside the confines of the scenes.

I want to give thanks to my two friends, Parker Haws and Austin Johnson, for helping me out by being my actors for this project. Parker and Austin doesn't have any formal acting experience but I think they did alright for virtually their first time acting as well as what I wanted for the project. All shots were done at Parker's house with natural lighting. The option of checking out lights from the university's film department was available but since I hardly know a thing about lighting on set, I rather use natural lighting than potentially make it look completely weird and unnatural with the lights. Besides, there was barely enough room at Parker's place to shoot the scenes. There wouldn't be enough room to add more equipment to the place even if I did want to play with the lighting equipment.

The concept of the story came from a smaller, earlier assignment as mentioned before. For that assignment, the class were to draw three random cards from three separate jars, one jar contains cards representing a place, one an item, and one with a person. With the three cards drawn, we were to create a one-minute video based on the cards drawn. For me, I drew out A Warehouse, A Balloon, and A Drug Dealer. We were also given the opportunity to change only one of the cards drawn to anything we want if it doesn't work out in the long run. Since there are no warehouses anywhere near where I live, that's the one thing I changed. Unfortunately, there isn't really anywhere that was "shady" in my neighborhood either to fit the Drug Dealer card I drew so I ended up doing it at Parker's house. In the end, I think the setting worked out mainly because it somewhat adds to the comedic factor but also my thinking was a drug deal could happen anywhere, even in a normal looking house. This smaller assignment was only one-minute long so there rest was shot on location and added on at a completely different time.

As for the story, it's basically a comedic approach to a drug purchase gone wrong. The balloon prop was used as the "drug" sold by the drug dealer. To attempt to make it a little more amusing, I had Austin, the customer, buy the drug of Parker, the drug dealer, with Monopoly money. During the confrontation, I thought it would be fun to do a fighting scene and top that off with a Mortal Kombat Fatality spoof.

For my very first film project ever and being a director, it was a lot of fun. Maybe because it was due to the fact that I was working with two good friends of mine. It made it enjoyable and there was a lot of fun moments between us during the shoot. For example, the fight scene took a whole lot of time to get right mainly because they would mess it up somewhere along the choreography I came up with. It was quite hilarious watching them do that scene. I probably had enough footage to make a blooper reel if needed. Parker's little sister who's just a couple of years younger than Parker probably enjoyed watching his brother fail. Anyways, it was a fun project to do and I'm happy with the end result for my very first attempt in making a video short from the beginning to end.