Research: How to make a short film

 We watched a video about making short films. They say that when writing, we need to keep in mind what we can pull off. We shouldn't write in things that we cannot create for our film. In other words, anything too expensive we should not use in the film. They also say that the theme should guide the story. Whatever we want out of the story should be kept in mind while writing. They also say that with stories where we want the audience to be surprised, go against our first idea. This way the obvious idea will not be given and they will be legitimately surprised by things. They emphasize that casting the right people is very important. They need to be able to look the part. They need to fit the character too. This will not be a problem for my group. We will have a member of our group play the main characters and we are confident our members can do so well. They also emphasize that sound is very important to capture dialogue and noises well. Our story will have important sounds. However we are not millionaires so we will not have good microphones. In fact, we will not have any microphones. For a zero budget film, though, we think it will be enough. They say that one of the most important things to keep in mind post production is pacing. It needs to be cut a lot generally. But it shouldn't be too tight. They say that sound and added tracks should typically be used from unlicensed sites so that we don't have to pay or get the license for sound.