What failures (of your own) have you been able to learn from? How did they change you and your process?

After making my first short film I learned that to tell a good story you don’t have to be overly ambitious in terms of locations. The story of my first short film required complex things, like: filling a house with trash, shooting in a prison, shooting a fight scene, working with a child... I think because it was my first short film, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Ultimately, I was able to pull it off, but the result wasn’t something that satisfied my expectations of the type of film I wanted to make.

My first short film taught me to be more practical. That’s why when I was given the assignment of making a second short film; I decided to follow Robert Rodriguez philosophy of making a story with what you have. I knew that the best thing would be to write a story that could be shoot in an easy setting, so I came up with a story that took place in the University. I ended up shooting a story about a student who wakes up late for school and has to overcome many obstacles to get to the University, just to realize it’s Sunday. Shooting a more practical story really made a difference. My first short film took me 8 days to shoot, while the second one only took two days.

I also learned that you don’t need to come up with as many angles as possible for every scene. I also learned that having a storyboard could make communication with the cameraman easier. During the shooting of my first short film, I always wasted a lot of time trying to get the camera operator to frame the shoot as I had picture it in my mind. Halfway through the shooting the instructor suggested me to do a storyboard, so I made one and it worked. The storyboard helped me show the cameraman how I wanted the shots and he was able to set them up more quickly. After that I always use a storyboard.

I also realized after my two short films that you don’t have to stress about lighting. Lighting a scene usually takes time, but in my case I realized that no matter how long we took trying to make it look right, it never satisfied us because we didn’t have the proper equipment or a technician who knew how to properly light a scene. After learning more about editing, I realized that It would be better for me to stop wasting time trying to light a scene that was always going to end up looking bad, when I could correct that later in postproduction. Now, when I shoot and I don’t have someone in my crew who can light a scene really well or if we don’t have all the lights we need, I don’t worry because I can see in my mind how it’ll look after doing some postproduction. I know that you can’t do everything in postproduction, but you can do a lot, especially if you set the lights thinking about how you might alter their look later.