Finally, I've gotten the first opportunity to exercise my creative muscle in my media studies course! I was assigned to create a story with 2 random items in my backpack and tell it through 15 different shots I get of them on my phone. The shots would vary from medium to wide to close-up, with a few requirements such as an extreme closeup, a high angle shot, an establishing shot, etc.
My process was similar to how I plan my other projects. I grabbed 2 Hot Wheels Ford Mustangs I've kept in my bag since last year, and started work with my partner. The first move was to find the story to tell, which in this case was a pretty simple toy car race. They would drive from my notebook, outside and to the finish line. We considered our logistics, (how ambitious the plan was and how much time we had in class) and made some changes, having the cars teleport outside through a piece of fallen paper, having the red car be the "protagonist" who falls behind then catches up at the end, then we began writing the shots that would illustrate a solid story to the audience. We ended up having only about 25 minutes to get all the shots, finishing right as the bell rang.
I tend to work very slow, regardless of what I'm working on or how much effort I'm putting in, because I have a need to make my work perfect, focusing on 4 different details at the same time. That perfectionism caused us to spend a bit too long working on the shot list, trying to incorporate some kind of deeper message into a story about toy cars, and cut out some more time we could've used for extra takes of the shots to match the list better. Otherwise, I believe our shots were really cool. The story is easily understandable, we followed the shot list and created some real intrigue in the story, successfully showed the "paper portal," and submitted on time. I believe the shots came out great even considering they were all taken on an iPhone.
Here's the link to the full project with breakdowns on each shot choice and the story on each slide:
