 the first time I properly put something together script wise and sat down with some friends discussed it then went out and filmed this little short film. as you can see it’s not too great as it was experimental and the audio has like a wind sound as I didn’t have the best of equipment then and college wouldn’t allow us to use there equipment and I had to edit it on some crappy editing software not the greatest of my work but it shows creativity and shows that I like to experiment with things. This was also the first short film I uploaded online especially to my personal YouTube channel. This was the first time I could express my interest into the media industry and to show that I have a passion for it but due to lack of people not having an interest in it or helping out back home was hard for me to continue to do it as a monthly thing I did plan on doing. With this short film I wanted to experiment with the whole idea of there loved one passing away, and then it’s there time but they want to escape it as they feel like they are not ready, and the grim reaper/death is chasing them down to take them to other side but they refuse to go quietly. when I look back on this now I think If I had better equipment this could of looked a whole let better and actually spent time making it and not just an idea on the spot, and then gone to some of my friends lets go film this. I am actually planning to try and re-shoot this to see what it looks like and re script it to make it look better but instead of the 2 parts make it a one 40-50 mins short film.
This one was also an early days experimental video with more of a script dialogue and a bit more experimental things going on than the previous video. This was a myth thing we decide to create in the woods back home about a haunting in the woods and someone going missing, yet again not great due to no budget and not that great equipment but I look the look of it looks like a late 1960s early 1970s like feel to it like the last video as well. I did look back at some old 1960s stuff to take inspiration for this one and then drafted a few ideas and some scripts but due to no budget and all it was hard to do things compared to what I can do nowadays if you watch my newer videos and short films I upload thanks to University have amazing equipment and props being cheap to buy like fake blood and all. This video was mainly experiment wise it was intended as you could see a draft or test for a feature film I had started scripting but I scrapped. This again I want to re shoot because this wasn’t the best and looking at it now looks a scripting mess and my acting wasn’t brilliant back then this had a better script than The Last Hope to it’s own sense this was like a spiritual sequel or you could say an equal to The Last Hope, because of the whole death coming to take lives but in this he is trapped in the woods and needs to feed on certain human souls to escape. I had planned for 2 more spiritual equal/ sequel films one entitled “The Other Side” this involved death capturing and torturing humans and then taking them to the other side where they where trapped and they had to find a way to escape the other side and return to the land of the living this was scrapped as there was no way it could of been filmed without some sort of budget had started scripting it and we planned to film it in November 2014 but it fell though so it was thrown to one side never to be seen again. The second one was entitled “Death Comes Full Circle” this was a good script and the tutor back at college liked this script but yet again I didn’t know special effects and didn’t know green screen much back then an with no budget these things are hard to do due which is a shame, I had a massive passion in creating these things and wanted to continue it as a weekly thing but got to ambitious to the point where a budget was needed or advanced camera equipment, I also planned in maybe turning this into a musical and take inspiration from, Rocky Horror Picture Show and Shock Treatment, the film would place death/the grim reaper into funny situations with people he has to take to the other side on a daily basis, and also it would take mainly on the other side in hell it was basically a comedy horror musical, to be honest I am going to come back to this because I think it was hilarious and I scripted it so well it was only 18 mins but with the songs made it around 45 mins, the songs where hilarious but then again I would need to find a music composer to make the songs here we go again with the budget thing, it’s the main reason this was also scrapped unfortunately.
Now this one was a hard one for me to script and to film as at the time of filming this I myself was servery depressed but didn’t come to terms with it and went on what you could say a mental breakdown for months which I do discuss at the end of the short film. I made this short film to show awareness that you are not alone in the battle with depression and that there is help out there,and that you don’t need to keep it bottled in as that will only make it a lot worse. We had filmed quite a lot for this but when we looked back at some of the things that we had filmed we thought this was too extreme, and some of the footage was too full on and we felt that people wouldn’t want to see some of the stuff as it was upsetting, and to be fair upset me at the time so we cut it and deleted it, especially the scene with the girl cheating and all it was too full on and I felt like this was not needed, even though it was one of the better scenes and it was very good acting wise I didn’t want it to be in this awareness video. There was also another scene which was amazing but was scrapped from the short film which involved a scene near a river where I would contemplate jumping in and then it would show flashbacks faded into the screen with me looking in the water an stuff would keep popping up that happened in the past. I wanted the video to express what a depressed person is feeling and how they would act to certain scenarios and what they go through in there day to day life especially if you are having a mental breakdown.
This is also another awareness video that I created this time for people with Asperger’s Syndrome in general as that is what I have. This video yet again kind of hit me in an emotional way scripting it and deciding what to do and what to place in the video. It basically tells a story of how people with Asperger’s syndrome in general are outcasted and don’t have many friends as they find it hard to make friends due to there condition and they just wander around places looking for friends, something which I struggled with during childhood and early teenage years as well as being bullied because of it for being different and acting what people call “Normal” if there is such things as every one is unique in there own way. The video also shows how people with Asperger’s syndrome are fascinated by certain things and get attached to them I decided to incorporate wild life and exploring as the main theme as that’s what I loved to do back in the days.
This is where things started to improve with my documentary on my hometown which I uploaded in January 2015. I decided I wanted to do something to show how I was raised and what my childhood was like and what it looks like now. I had gotten better camera equipment and started editing on Adobe Premiere Pro. I really enjoyed filming this as I did script the entire thing with one of my friends from college which took a while and we did pull a few scenes out as we felt they where not that good and one of them we went into an abandoned haunted house which we spent the night and shot some things but we felt we would of got into trouble adding this into the short documentary due to it being filmed by the council so we scrapped it. one scene took a while to do the toy like scene of the town took many re shoots as we wanted to get it right. I also had fun filming the go pro slope video as I use to go there a lot just to hang out with friends. As you can see with this compared to the other 3 it is a lot better and more creativity has gone in and you can tell a lot of time was put into this project especially the content and the way it looks.
Filmed in January 2017 I took a 2 year break from making short films because I wanted to try out other things like acting and gaming as well as expressing my interest in rock climbing. This was part of a social media blog for 1st years work which we actually had no script it was ma up on the spot and I improvised most of it. The audio quality was a bit naff as we had this static thing in background due to the Cannon 700D camera, and we couldn’t remove it so tried to cover it up which we was gutted about as we spent a lot of time on this only for the audio to ruin it. But this shows a massive improvement from 2014 to this video in 2017 something which I am proud off and will only get even better as time goes on and I complete my degree and do a masters degree and film more films which I plan on doing next year as well as a feature length romance film which I a currently scripting.
Now this took me and Matt ages to film and edit we put around a whole 2-3 weeks into editing this and 2 days to film it along with spending days making posters you can check out that blog here ” http://brandonheys.our.dmu.ac.uk/2017/03/01/social-media-group-project-week-710/