48 Hour Assignment

This video was made for the second team assignment for Carnegie Mellon University’s Visual Story course. The assignment was to produce, shoot, and edit a story where the main character must change from the beginning of the story to the end of the story. We could not kill the main character in the story and we could not use any dialogue in the video. We had to complete the assignment in 48 hours. We were given the following list of possible story arcs:

Main character:

  • Person needs protection

  • Partygoer

  • Person who doesn’t get the hint

  • Cheater

  • Hitchhiker

  • Person who doesn’t feel attractive enough

  • Object of a crush

The Conflict:

  • What is that smell?

  • Where is everyone?

  • Mirror

  • The last one

  • Car won’t start

  • Nobody is watching

  • Shouldn’t have touched it

  • Long walk with an old friend

  • Note on windshield

After deciding on a main character that does not feel attractive enough, we chose note on windshield to let our main character find love and lead in to a happy ending. Our team decided on a studious main character that, over time, felt more attractive because of a secret admirer leaving notes on her windshield.

Storyboards

Garage Production Shot List

Because it was going to be extremely cold, I decided to use an industry-standard shots list to keep the outdoor scenes on track. Keeping to this schedule in Pittsburgh’s intense cold was very helpful in keeping team morale high.

Garage Shot List

Garage Shot List

We shot the video at both the Entertainment Technology Center’s garage and at Carnegie Mellon University’s Hunt Library.