Creating a Digital Short Film
As moviemaking continues to shift away from traditional techniques to an increasing reliance on digital production, creators often need to use a different pre-production process to ensure their visions transfer properly (and efficiently) to the digital medium. Developing Digital Short Films by Sherri Sheridan (recently published by New Riders) explores how unique character and set designs, bluescreen ideas, special effects, and simple 2D character animation techniques can be used as narrative devices for telling stories.
A sample chapter from the book -- called "Creating Original Characters, Themes, and Visual Metaphors for Your Digital Short Film" -- is now available for free reading at InformIT. In it, Sherri discusses how to use technology to transform character types and showcase a theme:
"Digital tools and animation techniques make it easier to turn characters into bugs or other metaphoric creatures. Harvey is a 10-minute short film from Australia with a character that is literally sawed in half (3D effect) looking for his better half or ideal relationship (a great use of visual metaphor with digitally enhanced original character design). How could you use DV effects or 2D/3D animation to metaphorically show your characters in a new way?"
If you think you've got a handle on the technical aspects of short film production, check this book out. It takes more than technical know-how and 3D razzle-dazzle to create a good film -- you need to spend time honing your characters, themes, and storyline.
