Is This Your Card?
To keep from losing her business, a penniless magician must successfully perform a card trick to impress her skeptical clients.
Role:
Writer / Director / Editor / Visual Effects / Colorist / Sound Design
How it started
December of 2019 I told myself it was time to make another live action short film. I looked through my script archive and I found a comedy sketch I wrote that was too insane to put on stage…
but not on the screen.
Production
To put together this story, I needed a team. Luckily, I had a team of talented crew members and actors within my circles, either from my Entertainment and Media Studies major or from my Sharkwing Sketch Comedy troupe. Is This Your Card? contained my most experienced film crew to date, and it elevated the whole project. While I could work with actors, I had cameras and lighting teams setting up the shot, sound getting their equipment ready, and the make-up artist creating an amazing demon hand. Everyone was creative and independent, sometimes coming up with solutions better than I intended, which as a student filmmaker, is a blessing. With everyone’s work, we were able to wrap production before COVID caused a lockdown.
Better Practices in Post Production
Since Is This Your Card? is a fairly VFX heavy short, I wanted to use it as an opportunity to develop my VFX practices and techniques, including organization. I did some visual effects tests to make sure everything would work. Beyond the flashy graphics I was able to make, I also learned more subtle aspects of compositing, like getting a good green screen keys and matching elements to the shots.
Is This Your Card? was an amazing experience in learning how to work with larger crews while remaining organized. The lessons I learned here will make my future projects run even more smoothly.
