Ten Constraint Exercises to Sharpen Your Filmmaking
Summary
No Film School's list of creative challenges forces filmmakers to work without the crutches they lean on most: edits, dialogue, extra lenses and big locations.
No Film School published a set of ten creative challenges this week designed to push filmmakers out of their habits by taking tools away. The first is the oner, a full scene in one continuous take, where ""there is nowhere to hide in post."" Others include lighting a scene using only practical sources like lamps, neon and streetlights; cutting a dramatic scene with the sound muted to force reliance on performance and rhythm; and writing and shooting a scene with no dialogue at all, which the piece argues is often used as a crutch.
The list also challenges filmmakers to shoot an entire scene on a single prime lens, stage a scene inside a closet, car or bathroom, shoot outdoors using only natural light and bounce, and build every sound effect by hand with custom Foley. The final two exercises are a complete story told in 60 seconds, with ""zero room for fluff,"" and a seamless match cut connecting two places or times, in the tradition of Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey, which trains filmmakers to plan transitions at the writing stage.
