Following my attempt at the Jamuary 2021 Song a Day challenge, I’m following up with a filmmaking version with the same idea. I’m calling it the “May You Make Your Movie” challenge in which the idea is to make a movie or clip every day for a month. The challenge will take place in the month of May (hence the name:).
Here are some of the ideas I’ve had so far:
| Opening Title Sequence | One take | Narration | Drone | |||
| Closing Title Sequence | Sound only | Animation | Foley | |||
| Youtube / social media animations (unique) | Sex scene, without the sex | Happy | Creative Subtitles | |||
| Stop Motion | Drug scene, without the drugs | Dark Humour | Small to big | |||
| Green Screen / Rotoscoping | Silent / MOS | Angles | Big to small | |||
| Commercial (product) | To the music | Slo-Mo | What you really look like | |||
| Commercial (story, like Cannes’ winners) | CGI | Documentary | Genre | |||
| 30-seconds | FX | Educational | Vulgar | |||
| Character sketch | Photos only | Favourite Film | Clean | |||
| Editing > face / object | Handwriting | Music Video | Historical colour | |||
| Found footage | Black and White | Long Takes | Zoom out / Reveal | |||
| Timelapse | Blue / Red / Green | 2.5 D | Film look – grain | |||
| One light | One colour | Action sequence |
Now, since this is the first time I’m doing this I don’t really have an exact date for each type of movie, though I did find that having a list helped for Jamuary. I may refine the list as I go along and dedicate certain dates for a certain type of movie but I didn’t want to spend much time thinking about it, I more wanted to just get going. Besides, the first 38 ideas I write out a while back and numbered them along the away, so that may be a form of free-thinking planning.
Anyway, the next qualification I’m making to this challenge is that these DON’T HAVE TO BE FULL MOVIES, but can be clips instead. I’m aiming for 15 seconds at least. By doing so it gives me a bit of a structure and a limit to what I can do. Further, there are a few reasons for choosing that length of time:
- First, if you’ve been on any social media websites as of late you’ll be familiar with the 6-second advertisement. Some of them are funny and work, some of them are simply annoying. We’ll try to create both during this month. Anyway, the length of an advertisement has shortened considerably in recent years and so this challenge is a reflection of that practice.
- Second, it’s not too short nor is it too long. Given that editing cuts are so short these days, 15 seconds can show a lot of information in a compressed amount of time. We’ll try to push it to the limits.
- Third, 15 seconds it short enough that it can be rendered in a short period of time, especially since we’ll have to export it multiple times simply to see if it needs any tweaking. Unlike sound files which are considerably smaller, video files can be rather large, especially if you start layering on effects and multiple clips. Fifteen seconds should keep it manageable.
So those are a few reasons for the current time limit. Further, I should state, some of the above challenges wouldn’t necessarily be complete movies but parts of a larger movie. For example, the intro or outro credits. These don’t have to be boring and can take up substantial amount of time on screen, but they wouldn’t be a whole movie unto to themselves. Here, the challenge would be to imagine a scenario in which you’d need to create an intro or outro for a client and make it more than just the default Final Cut or Premiere title sequence.
What will I be using for this challenge?
As with the Jamuary challenge I won’t be adding anything to my arsenal focusing instead on using the tools I have at my disposal. These include:
- “Pro” Software: Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, Compressor, Logic Pro X, Davinci Resolve (free version)
- Freeware: Audacity, Blender, GIMP
- Cameras: GoPro 9, cell phone, Mavic Pro 2
- Lights: RGB light, black light, room lights, day light
- Audio: Zoom H4n
So those will be the tools of this challenge. Of course, I’ll also be using found materials for some of the projects but, overall, I’ll be using whatever I already have.
I’ll be trying to shoot 4K but I won’t commit to it. If 1080p works better or more efficiently for whatever reason (some timelapse settings on the GoPro only use 1080p), then I’ll go with that.
I’m also open to other ideas as I go along so if I find a new idea that I’d like to try instead, I won’t hold back on trying it out. With the list above, however, I want to take as much out of the thinking about planning as I can and, instead, focus more on production. This is, after all, a daily challenge.
It’ll be a wide-ranging challenge to be sure and I already see that it’ll be difficult with work. But that will lead me to another qualification: I won’t hold myself back from shooting extra footage for a different challenge if the time and place warrants it. As filmmakers are well-aware, you take the shot and ask questions later. That is to say, I might be able to capture enough footage for two or three challenges at one time. The idea remains, however, to create something unique every day.
And with that, let’s make a movie!
Here’s the link to the YouTube playlist since YT isn’t letting me post the video directly to my website: