Taking place during my first year of Audio/Video Production, sophomore (tenth grade) year of high school, my class was assigned the project to make a silent short film. Creating a script in a little under an hour, the story I managed to create was about a gamer looking for his "sweetie." His sweetie is actually revealed to be a PS3 controller near the climax of the film. My small group of gamers and I had a fun time making this project. It was a film we could easily get into the mood of being involved in, considering the geeky, pop culture references surrounding it: Halo 3's Warthog Run music, the Mortal Kombat theme, the Ultra Instinct theme from Dragon Ball Super, Undertale, and a Legend of Zelda reference. I managed to fit around the film's lack of dialogue by having "in-game dialogue," caption boxes representing the character's words without "verbally" communicating.
As an aspiring film director and writer who has never even picked up a camera to film actors performing actions from your script, it was an overwhelming experience I'll never forget. It made me excited to walk into class and prepare the lens and tripod of the camera and hurry into filming. As you can see from the video below, the project was successfully created and it was even my teacher's favorite among my peer's other films. He compared my film to a stylistic approach used by film director David Fincher (The Social Network.) He made this comparison because of the large amount of shots used, along with the timing of each shot used.
Near the end of that school year, I submitted this project for my school district's film festival. Sadly, it wasn't chosen to be on the finalist list. Looking back at my film and comparing it to others, I was confused as to how it couldn't have been chosen. My thought process ranged from the film's visual quality to even the duration! I never received an explanation, but it's what gave me the motivation to make a film that would be even better for my next year in AVP.
Masked Ulterior is the name of the second short film I made during my first year of AVP. This is my first student film assignment where i could actually have dialogue, referring to my previous silent short film. Reflecting on this project, my editing could've been improved and my story could've been a lot more simplistic. I still find respect for my older work, and this film is no exception.