Filmmaking Lesson One, What Can We Learn From This Film

Filmmaking Lesson One

As I have written article about How Watching Movies Will Help You To Learn Filmmaking, and i guess you all are watching the films. Films or movies doesn’t imply to only feature films only, it can be any kind of film be it documentary, of tv commercial or  a short film, whatever it might be you must learn from them. Tv commercials are the best for learning as they are short, upto the point and highly creative. Today’s filmmaking lesson is about this Thai Insurance Tv Commercial.

Filmmaking Lesson One. Thai Insurance Tv Commercials are always highly creative. Lets get deep into this film. The duration of the film is 3 minutes which shows a story of a lady dumped by husband has cancer and cannot live more than two years, yet she adopts children and having fun with them. She is filling other’s lives with happiness. Now that the basic story.

Now lets watch it from a filmmaker’s perspective. First the films starts from a flashback. She is in hospital and strumming her guitar and then her complete story has been shown and in the end she is back to hospital. Introduction of characters is very important. In full length feature film director takes first 15 minutes to introduce all major character, but as this is a 3 minute film the director has introduced all the characters in first 30 seconds, which will be the ten percent of the film length.

Now next filmmaking lesson can be learned from the next one minute and fifteen seconds. Then the filmmaker shows she is helping her kids and having fun with them for next one minute fifteen seconds. The concept of fun is very simple, having food, playing football or running on beach, nothing unnatural. This is how we make fun in our day to day lives and thats why you can connect to the film.

At one minute forty five seconds is the next filmmaking lesson, where director has introduced the conflict, which is by letting you know that the character has cancer and she cannot live more than two years at the same time the director introduced her positive thinking attitude. Now director once again uses flash back to show how she adopted the kids and helped them to become happy.

Next filmmaking lesson is at the hospital which is at 2:2o. She is playing guitar and everybody is enjoying that including patients and the hospital staff.  You can make a 2 hour film on that story but the director has made a three minutes film and that’s outstanding.

What filmmaking lesson we should learn from  above film.

  • Film started with a flashback and camera movements used to make the shots more intense.
  • Voiceover has been used instead of dialogs because director wanted to use minimum words and maximum visual story.
  • Almost every frame has some movement to make it more intense like panning or tilting or shaking.
  • Filmmaker has place objects before the characters to give third dimension to the framing.
  • Director has used two cutaway shots like cloths hanging for drying and moving buildings when they are in bus to help the editor.
  • Director has used many closeup shots to maintain the intensity by capturing reactions.

There are many other things also and I want you to notice them and share them in comments so that others can also benefit from that.

Please subscribe below for free the newsletter.

Leave a Reply