Creating the Shot List

    One of the largest obstacles which my group faced when going into the filming stage of our first production was that we lacked a solid plan, especially when it came to what we were going to shoot. Though we had a storyboard, lacking a shot list caused a lot of avoidable issues when it came time for production. Our film had repetitive shots which looked lazy and boring. Additionally, it was missing entire shots, which caused it to look incomplete and confusing at times.

    Having this shot list allows us to have that aforementioned "definitive list" to go by, thus ensuring no shots are missing. A well-thought-out shot list is a key to effectively shooting our film - confusion is limited and time doing last-second planning is minimized. As with creating the storyboard though, creating the shot list caused a shift in my mentality. Creating the storyboard I thought about how the shot would be filmed, but even then I thought of it more in broad snapshots. Alternatively, when creating the storyboard I had to think about every individual shot - the coverage, etc. - the kinds of shots that are often glossed over but set apart the good films from the bad ones.