Film School Files: Loyola Marymount Film Rush

Hello everyone, did you have enjoyable weekend? It’s been a pretty busy one for me as film school has really started to pick up. In an effort to catalog my time there (and satisfy a class requirement), I’m gonna be posting interesting things under the tag Film School Files. And what better way to start then by talking about the project I participated in this weekend. Loyola Marymount hosts something called 10:1 Film Rush for the incoming grad students, where we are put into crews, given three words to choose from, and 10 hours the following day to shoot, edit, and screen the movie.

On Friday night, we received the three words we’d have to build a story around (key, toothpaste, and shoe) and went off in our groups to create the scripts for our films. We spent about 3-4 hours in the library (btw Loyola’s library is gorgeous) brainstorming the movie. This might sound like a fun activity, and it totally was, but I liked how my group took it seriously. Our ideas ran the gamut from super serious drama (abusive relationship) to foolish (handcuffed to a bed?) to the comedic. We ended up settling on comedic and developed a movie around a guy who uses a key to lock his girlfriends mouth, only to find out it disappears after one use.

One of the smartest things our group did after this was go out to our various locations after this brainstorming session and actually block the scenes. For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s basically planning how and where the actors will move during filming. In layman’s terms, we rehearsed the scenes. As the director, this was good for a myriad of reasons: we got a basic idea of where we’d be shooting (being comfortable isn’t the worst thing to be), started to get a feel for how we’d shoot the film, and I got to start the communication process with the actors. This was the biggest deal for me because I often worry about my communication skills and there’s probably nothing more important to a director than being able to explain what you want in order for others to do what you need them to do.

We showed up early the next day (8:30 am to be exact) and encountered our first issue not shortly after breakfast. There was another production filming on campus and they had used one of our rooms as a production office so we had to pick a different location. Not the best start but luckily we got to use a much cooler room instead. We took off after that, shooting the film and moving like a well oiled machine. The actual process of shooting the film was great because everyone was willing to pull their weight, making my job as a director easier. It was also good to have a DP like Adam who was just on it with the shot compositions and offered great feedback to my creative vision. Our mentor Vivek was super helpful throughout the day, give us tips on how to be better organized through shot lists and just being a calming presence as we were all brimming with energy.

After shooting the film, we went into the editing room, which is where the movies are really made. It was fun seeing all of the shots and putting the film together, although it was awkward finding that some of our better shots had people in the frame we didn’t want in the frame. The editing process went surprisingly well and we managed to export without issue. Then our mentor decided to tell us that he could color correct the film and edit it better lmao. Which he actually did and I’ll post the video once I can edit the sound and the tracks together. After that we screened all the movies in front of each other and had pizza and wine.

I noted internally that this was the first film I’ve directed that I haven’t written myself and it was a fascinating thing to do that. It was made easier cause I had such an awesome group, but I really learned a lot. In the end, it was really awesome seeing all that we managed to do in the course of a day. I’d say in my unbiased opinion that we had the best film, although there was one group with the funniest sight gag/stunt I’ve seen in a while. All in all, it was a great day and I’m excited for more projects coming up.