Scottish Paddlesports Festival

Part 1 - Planning and storyboarding

To start, all you need are;

1. An idea, doesn't have to be too big; we're suggesting a max 10 mins but 5 mins is long enough to get a couple of good ideas across; look how many ideas adverts squeeze into 15 secs of TV time.

2. A camera and wide angle lens (and possibly a small microphone and small headphones). Steady-shot function is very useful but most other fancy features are not essential to making a basic film.

3. Keen mates who are signed up to the project and are prepared to sit on the bank/in boats while waiting for things to get set up.

Later on you will need to edit onto something but it can be as simple as a domestic VCR; investing in a computer editing system is not essential to film making. One approach is just to go out and film a trip but the resulting footage often leads to a disjointed programme at the edit stage. What we would encourage is a planned approach.

Ideas and style
Get the idea clearly sorted out in your head. If you are going to tell the story with dialogue, ie your actors are going to speak lines, it may be best to have a bit of a rehearsal. Acting is nowhere near as easy a people think so try a few of the scenes out on your actors at home and see how comfortable they are at delivering lines. You may have mates who are budding Mel Gibsons but what is most likely is that your mate will deliver lines in a monotonic style and often forget to blink whilst he is in shot.

Planning
The enthusiasm is already taking a grip of you. You know where you can get a camera, the tapes don't cost much and there's a couple of mates who you know you can get to be the actors, so Saturday it will be but plan before you set out if you want to spend the most time on site being creative

Practical problems (like when you find out you need an extra actor or a prop) will reduce your filming time unless you've planned or piloted them. The most useful tool when planning is a storyboard.

What you are trying to do here is tell the story by pictures alone; see if you can tell the story without resort to commentary. A simple rule for a good story is to have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Part 1 - Planning and storyboarding
Part 2 - 20/20 vision
Part 3 - Editing