Working on First Narrative ‘Star Wars Universe’ Short Film

This is sort of a BTS(behind the scenes) Blog on creating this short film.

Yesterday I was the one-man crew filming an idea I came up literally the night before. My friend is pursuing a career as an actor and is planning to move to California in the next several months. So before he did, there was a lot of filming we wanted to accomplish beforehand.

The original idea was to film some ‘fake’ scenes we could compile into a show reel since he had none. And would end up basically benefiting us both anyway as the experience is always welcome.

I text this friend on Saturday and told him I would send him a song that would basically capture the emotion I wanted to portray in whatever we ended up filming. I told him basically nothing was set in stone and we could just wing it. This wouldn’t be my first guerilla film making attempt anyway. We were both just eager to film something together.

Later that day I sent him a link to this song I came across by this ambient music artist I like that I found on Youtube. This would serve as what I was thinking 'emotionally' for the yet to be described plot.. so he could better prepare.

Shortly after sending this my mind start working and came up with the idea to film a sort of “star wars universe” style short film. I had purchased a few cheap light saber props I wanted to put to use, and new my friend who was also a star wars fan wouldn’t object.

Check out the good but quick weathering job he did to one of the light sabers to make it look more realistic, even though it’s plastic.

It probably wasn’t until late in the night that I started putting together this story board that I eventually sent my friend about 1am, knowing he would be at my house the same day around 11am.

I used a program called celtx which I was happy to come across and will definitely use it again.

The rough idea of the story is we peer into the life of a man you’re not sure is good or bad, but come to find out he is trying to build a lightsaber, and even has a broken one.

Nothing too crazy – after all it was basically just the two of us filming this so I opted for a story that didn’t really need dialogue as well.

Here are some more screenshots of the scenes. And be sure to follow me so you’ll be able to see the short film once complete.

Thanks for checking in!