Not Another Teen Movie

Scripts were due on February 27^th. We turned in a 5-7 page script which was okay. We were set to base our comedy around the first day of college for some freshmen. When we sat down to discuss our script again, it was clear that we had created a stereotypical teen movie. After much debate, we sought advice from Eric. It wasn’t that anything in particular was wrong with story, only that it was so predictable and tired altogether. We ended up changing our idea completely. Eric also pointed out to us that 7 pages is far too long of a script for comedy. Sam showed us a clip from the Flight of the Concords that we all agreed was funny. It was apparent that situational comedy was the direction we needed to steer towards. When we finally got going on ideas, we couldn’t stop. Each one of us would come up with a great idea inspiring the rest of the group. The energy we have for this film is really good and I am excited. The only problem we are running into right now is committing to one idea and allowing that one to shine.

Eric also provided the entire class with a handful of advice during this class session. He strongly suggested that we have a producer. The producer’s job would consist of setting work-days, keeping the cast and crew on the same page, arranging shooting locations, etc. Having a producer would just make this project happen more smoothly. Eric also said it would probably be best to make a list of every scene we plan on shooting and the order in which we plan to shoot them. This is going to help us be more efficient with our time and resources since we’ll go ahead and shoot all the scenes at one location at once rather than driving back and forth everywhere.

I always enjoy when Eric shows us videos to inspire our projects. The video he showed us in an earlier class depicting three guys reenacting an entire battle scene from Saving Private Ryan made us realize that it doesn’t take a whole professional production crew to make something good. This week Eric showed us a documentary on Robert Rodriguez. It was about the production of Once Upon a Time in Mexico. I have seen this movie before and was always amazed by the special effects in it. However, never would I have guessed or imagined how low budget this movie was to make. It was very inspiring to listen and see how innovative Rodriguez was about the special effects to keep a low budget. This documentary reinforced the idea that we don’t have to sacrifice quality to maintain our time and budgets!