Sometimes the rain makes you see things that aren’t really there
Right before creating Film Shortage we made a short film called After The Rain, which in fact, was the inspiration behind Film Shortage. You can read more about how the film inspired us to create a new short film platform on one of our first posts.
After The Rain started as a simple short story written by a friend over 12 years ago for a University class, which I then turned into a script for a short film. But difficult scenes, inefficient budget and lack of resources left the film to sit on the shelf for over 10 years. Until I found new inspirations in 2010, which led me to rework and rewrite the script to simplify production and deepen the story. I called on my friend Laura Aloi to help with pre-production and later on co-directing the film.
Everything around me seems so real…
The 10 minute dramatic short is about a man stuck somewhere between reality and dream world. Where the heavy rain distorts his perception and further events bring him to reconsider what he knows to be his reality.
The entire process was an incredible learning experience, with some very difficult challenges, including having a full cast ready, waiting for the perfect weather, mix of heavy rain and sunshine in the span of 3 days. As prepared as we could of been in pre-production, the tight and unexpected schedule turned into an immense overwhelming task during production – which in turn impacted our film with two massive production mistakes; A shaky camera, and a rolling shutter.
Two things that could of easily been avoided. But due to our tight schedule, budget and wet environment, we decided to keep our team as small as possible, where we disposed of DP and cameraman. Using a relatively new camera for us, we asked a friend to set up the camera a day before to remove the rolling shutter (knowing we wouldn’t have time on set) – we only noticed the shutter was still on after the shoot. To save money we also build our own DIY steady cam, which turned out great during tests, but became hell during production. On set improvisation saved us a little, but the shots turned out nowhere as smooth as we would of liked to.
There’s always a strange feeling when the rain suddenly stops. Unexpected changes in the weather can be caused by the slightest wing flap thousands of miles ways… Our lives are affected by the same complex chaotic system…
We are fully aware that this film does not compare with all these other unbelievable shorts – but in many ways After The Rain is the reason why Film Shortage was created, and we wanted to share the film to show what can be done with very little budget, and how much can be learned from each extra shot you make. Make films and don’t be scared to make mistakes as you will learn upon them.