This has been sitting on my hard drive for longer than I care to remember.

Some time ago, I persuaded a few people (at least one of whom owned a DV camera) to help me make an ultra-short film. Up until recently, the BBC website had a 1 minute movie challenge and I had found myself with a two minute script. It didn’t take much to trim it down to be even shorter than that, secure a willing crew, a gullible cast and any old location. Shooting took all of about 6, maybe 7 hours, interspersed with a couple of hours down the pub for lunch.

Shooting got slower after the pub visit.

It’s an awful film in retrospect. I’ve tried to edit it as best I could using nothing much more than Windows Movie Maker. The sound is terrible and I can’t be bothered to do more to it than I have done in terms of improving both visual and audio quality. I almost feel embarrassed at even publishing it at all but it does serve as an object lesson in how not to direct a film.

So, tips to remember for next time:

1. Film every angle possible - action shots, reaction shots, long, medium and close-up shots, reverse shots - everything. While editing this, there’s a lot more shots I wish I had but didn’t. I storyboarded everything and shot according to my plan but my plan wasn’t good enough.

2. Zooms don’t work. I know this. It’s obvious. Yet I still persisted on trying. And I didn’t cover myself by getting alternative shots to cover me for when it didn’t work. This is obvious in the last couple of shots and I’ve tried to mask the damage by using a right to left transition. It helps a little.

3. Several pints at lunch do not help. The quality and speed of shooting after a boozy lunch were, unsuprisingly, fucking awful. Towards the end of the day we just wanted to be drinking more back at the pub. So we rushed things. It shows.

On the other hand, we had a laugh and here, finally, is the results of a days pissing around in someones house. Enjoy!

UPDATE: (Video now been updated and replaced - see new post above) Comments are also now closed so please leave comments above too.