The Trials and Tribulations of a YouTube Collab
While production on Oliver continues, there have been quite a few other projects have presented themselves to me. Some I'm working on and some are still a little way in the future. Which I will update you all on in due course. The project I want to tell you about to day is a little short film idea which a friend of mine and I have been wanting to make pretty much since September last year but due to other commitments we were unable to. Until now.
We met at university and when we realised that we both were Vloggers and had an interest with YouTube we thought it would be a great if we could collaborate in vlogs and produce our own short films to practice our filmmaking practical skills.
Our original ideas were all about starting uni; what to expect, how to make friends, what the course is are like etc. All help and advise based. A few ideas were really good (if I do say so myself). You may have noticed (if you have seen my YouTube channel) that there are no University themed videos. At all. This is because we did a lot of talking and idea generating but sadly, nothing came into fruition due to our commitments to our university course and other projects we both had to prioritize.
Everything went onto the backburner so to speak. The ideas were kept alive in discussions but we never acted on them. Until now.
About a fortnight ago, we sat down, planned and filmed not one but two video productions. One was a traditional vlog and the other was a short film, both connected with the university theme. The short film was about two 'friends' who had lived in the university's halls of residents and were in the process of moving out at the end of the year. The general premise is that an interviewer is interviewing them both about their experiences of the first yea. One of the characters is a little creepy towards the other and it causes a rift in their friendship. The vlog was a stereotypical 'advise' video but all the advise we give is satirical and should not be taken seriously... AT ALL. It was more comical. Everything was shot in the day and edited in the week after. However this was were disaster struck!
The short film went fine and has since been uploaded which you can watch here:
But sadly something happened in the post-production stages of the 'advise' video. When I hit the editing stages something had happened with the audio, the sound was working in the rushes but once in I was editing it the audio cut after about 2 minutes of content. I have decided to scrap the entire concept; keeping it on a hard drive somewhere so that in the future I might come back to it.
To remedy the problem, we began to script a brand new short film idea. Which we are still writing, I stopped writing it to write this! It still follows the same theme of university and it is still advise based but put into a new format. I am happy with how it is shaping up. We are hoping to film it this week and in an ideal world it'll be up in a few weeks after that.
The thing about filmmaking and any other creative industries for that matter; is that hurdles in production always come up. I have never worked on a project that hasn't had an issue at some point. Clashes of opinion can halt a project, technical difficulties, cast/crew availability and even the weather. All of these things can make more work for you than you would have realised at the beginning. It stresses me out to no end however, it is also a reason for loving your profession. The changing of ideas to make something work/better. The collaboration of ideas to fix a problem; you'd be amazed how many things change from the original script. It's swings and roundabouts. Somethings go to plan, and somethings don't. It's all about adapting and learning. You never do the same thing twice.
Keep telling stories,
