It is officially time to start working on our short films for class. The class was split into small groups and each group was assigned a different genre-comedy, drama, horror, romance, experimental, and action. Our group was assigned the genre comedy. Each film must be two to five minutes long and include the following: a mime/clown, the lines “Why is this happening to me today of all days?” and "It would be better for us not to talk about that,” a guitar, a cheese grater, and skull.

Our group is very excited and has come up with a few ideas about our film. However, we are all a little bit nervous about screenwriting. The art of screenwriting/direction/and sound all coming together to create a masterpiece is intimidating but definitely our ultimate goal.

Before Eric assigned genres we came up with a really neat idea for a film that is centered on a dollar bill. We wanted to depict the lives of different people who all had that dollar bill at some point in the day. That probably could have been really neat had we gotten the genres drama or horror. When we got assigned comedy, we were a little disappointed, because we liked our original idea so much. But when we started brainstorming again, the excitement returned. I also think our group will be able to produce more usuable and creative ideas when we get the input of Sam and Tommy. Sam was away on a conference and Tommy was learning the tricks of a camera-man.

I was very impressed with the short film “The Spider” that Eric showed us in class. It started out pretty boring and I did not pay attention until the characters started driving. If you haven’t seen it, the ending was very shocking and I was speechless. Even though we have comedy, I am confident that we could create a very fresh and original twist to our plot.

For our genre, dramatic lighting throughout wouldn’t be appropriate. I think it would be neat to create the same lighting that is present on sitcoms. We talked about the importance of dialogue in our film. That might be our biggest challenge because any dialogue in a comedy needs to be strategically structured to include witty one-liners, awkward silences, etc. We decided that two things in life that are always funny are farts and falls. Therefore farts and falling will most likely be incorporated in our final cut. Haha

Basically, we want to produce something that we are proud of and will make people laugh.