 Hey everybody, what's up in this video? We're going to wrap up the behind-the-scenes on the dark artifact video series with five Lessons that I learned while making my first Star Wars fan film. So let's get started All right So the number one thing that we want to start with is make sure that you have a full story that you want to do I've started lots of projects that I didn't quite know what I was going to do We started trying to shoot some stuff and we got about halfway through and didn't quite know what we were doing and the product Really shows it's really just kind of trying to throw something together Without really knowing what you're doing. It's not really going to work for you very well So in this case we actually used the Dan Harmon story circle to create this entire Story ahead of time so in the first part of this series we go into all of that how we wrote the story using the story circle And I will link that below in the description for you so that you can see that it was super helpful to do that We actually knew where we were going to go with the story and that helped us in the second part Which was to creating the storyboards made that part a whole lot easier So this brings us to the second thing that we learned from this experience and that was creating storyboards is super helpful So for this we just took some blank paper. We just drew some rectangles We you know took our story circle and we just started to break down the story into these chunks that we knew You know, these were the things that we were going to need to film This was the way that we sort of envisioned all of this to work And it was very very helpful for us to see what locations we were going to need What pieces we weren't really going to be able to film what we were going to have to fill in with something else and You know just in general it allowed us to take that simple story from the story circle and to lay it out into these frames So that we could actually begin to start visualizing and seeing what this was going to look like in the end So the third thing that we learned here was all about camera angles and camera trickery You know making someone believe that you are in a different situation is a cool thing about movie making It's actually one of my favorite things is to be able to you know only show You know your story through you know a very small frame anything else could be going on outside of that Nobody has to know they only see it through this one little view and you can completely craft that to tell whatever story that you want And so in this case we were able to use just a blue screen and some you know dramatic lighting We were just in a condo in Florida an extra refrigerator, but all of a sudden we are transported to a sith temple where the story is Taking place so camera trickery great tip study it learn it. It's very very useful So the fourth thing that we learned here was you know You really just can't shoot everything sometimes You know you're gonna have a flyover scene or you're gonna have a wide shot or something that you really just can't film on your own And so in these cases you know don't be afraid to use some stock footage You know make sure that you're licensed of course in this case I have a story blocks license that I use all the time so since we're not trying to make any money off this It just made sense for us to look through there Try to find some things that would make this process a whole lot easier for us And as I show in our special effects video we're able to grab several things off of there including you know This Mayan pyramid that became our sith temple You know a flyover of a jungle which you know was our spaceship entry the spaceship itself Which was actually a green screen spaceship that was already available lots of things like that You know that I really didn't have time to try to create these things on my own So for this project just since we were trying to do it in just a few days The stock footage was great highly recommend it and I'll use stock footage in Probably all of my projects going forward because it was just so easy So and then the fifth thing that we learned in this is that you know this video is not going to be perfect We are not experts. This is not our job to do this We're just learning how to do this on our own just for fun So you know just be happy with whatever you can do try to get better Don't wait to put this out until your effects are perfect. They're never gonna be perfect You know you are not a team at ILM You know you are not the people who actually creates Star Wars, you know well, I mean maybe you are but I'm not You know so for in this case. We're just learning. We're just doing this You know sure it looks kind of funny and whatever But you know next time will be better and the time after that will be a little bit better And so it's just a learning process But the main thing is you know, it's not gonna be perfect Don't sit there and just nitpick it forever Actually, just do something and just put it out and be happy with it You know it's still better than what 99% of the people are putting out You know in fact, you know if you don't like this Star Wars film put yours in the comment I would love to see it, you know, I would love to learn from other people who are doing this This is just a learning experience. So, you know ball means take these five tips and you know, create your own of Short stories or fan films, whatever you would like to do, you know But just the point is just create just get out there and do this stuff This is the whole point of this channel is to show people how to do this type of thing Show that it's easy, you know and show my mistakes and my successes and learning how to do this So make sure you subscribe if this is your first time here and drop this video a like if this has been helpful And we'll see you next time