Assignment: SCARY LUCY Short Film Editing Exercise
Sheila Schroeder, University of Denver
This teaching resource provides an introduction to the assignment for instructors, a sample assignment sheet, raw footage, scripts, and other supporting documents for students to produce their own version of two different scenes from a short fiction film.
“Scary Lucy” is an award-winning short film developed through Project DU F.I.L.M. (film initiative linking mentors). Our mission is to create experiential learning opportunities designed to change the face of filmmaking both in front of and behind the camera. We do this by writing inclusive stories that feature a broad array of people and populating our crews with a diverse range of students, alumni and professional mentors.
“Scary Lucy,” our second film, is based on a true story of a disastrous statue unveiling for the Queen of Comedy, Lucille Ball, in 2009. The original statue, dubbed “Scary Lucy” by the locals, depicts a scene from one of Lucille Ball’s most famous episodes of the I Love Lucy television show, “Vitameatavegimin,” where Lucy becomes the pitch woman for a product that contains 23% alcohol.
The footage from Scary Lucy is packaged into two unique scenes for use as a continuity editing assignment. Scene 14 is a beginning level continuity edit and Scene 1 is a more advanced scene. Included in each package is
- a Vimeo link to the finished film (not downloadable)
- a Vimeo link to a single clip which consists of all the raw footage to each scene (downloadable)
- my continuity editing assignment
- a complete copy of the screenplay
- a lined script from the director (scene 1 not included)
- the shot list for each scene
- the script supervisor notes
- a sample footage log
View and download all the materials here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WkkTUAYubP8BSzahRHSMsYY1YIRkboRM?usp=sharing
Keywords: active learning, editing, production, short film
