Okay, I can’t lie: this week has been bit of a rollercoaster if I’m being honest. I came back from last weekend feeling super positive about the film and made good headway on both the backgrounds and colouring of a fair amount of shots. But, after a few days of positivity (guess that’s how much my brain can handle!) I soon turned to disliking my project/ the backgrounds and considering scrapping the whole thing. Yes, it was that extreme! This was triggered by a bout of insomnia- it always affects how I feel emotionally as well as being physically tired. Oh, the joys… It was particularly bad on Thursday, so I only managed to do half a day of work, which actually was a good thing. When I’m in that kind of mind set, continuing to work is usually not the best idea, as the work I produce is never up to standard, alongside it impacting my wellbeing negatively. It’s best to do something completely different to take my mind of it- in which I did and went on a nice walk in the sunshine, followed by a couple of films at the cinema.
Friday I was feeling much more positive again, after a decent nights sleep and a good skate session, I was able to look at my project in a more rational light. I watched the film through in full and felt really pleased and proud of what I have achieved thus far and I’m excited going forwards. I just need to carry on as I am and have no more silly thoughts regarding my work- or if do, just ignore them, as they’re usually just temporary anyway.
I think when you’re working solo on something such as this, it’s easy to get in your head about certain things, because you don’t have anyone else on your team to lift you up/ bounce ideas off/ rationalise thoughts to. My boyfriend has been wonderfully helpful and supportive in that way and will often watch the project through with me to keep my somewhat self destructive thoughts in check, though I don’t want to drag him into my mental turmoil(!) every time I’m feeling ‘off’ about my project. I suppose this is where a producer or very least a mentor would be handy. I should remember this for future large scale projects…
The above probably doesn’t make for the most fun reading, but there’s little point in saying everything is going swimmingly when it’s not. There’s so much online which is just people’s highlights and I have never wanted this blog to become that. If I read back on this in a few years (or even as a reader of this blog), I’d much rather read a realistic account of making a short film and see what highs and lows one might experience. Because filmmaking is never straight forward or easy and you’re always going to run into challenges which you need to overcome, whether that be mental or logistical or anything else. I don’t want to put anyone off filmmaking by any means and I will actively encourage people to make stuff as I love when people do just that, but at the same time I’m not going to forfeit any authenticity or hide my filmmaking experience for the sake of trying to looking good online.
Ok, free therapy session aside, I will actually share some positives, because contrary to the above, the week wasn’t a total write off and I did get a lot done and stuff I’m very proud of, too! See, filmmaking really does have two sides to it! When mulling the project over in the small hours of the morning whilst not sleeping, I did actually come up with a good idea of how I’m going to render the dress in the nightclub scenes. I thought, can I make it glittery? The answer was a resounding ‘yes’:

The above is a quick test I did using After Effects, following this tutorial. It needs refining, but as a concept, it works. And I’m pretty pleased with how it looks. It’s making me consider whether I should use more textures on the clothing, so it’s not so ‘blocky’, but I’ll get to that at a later stage… I just need to focus on finishing the backgrounds and basic colour first, but it’s definitely something to think about.
And lastly, I’ll sign off with the ever developing colour swatch:
See you next time! xo