Every Carson City Shorts Film Competition gives filmmakers the same basic challenge: receive a set of required prompts and create an original 5–9 minute short film in just two weeks.
It sounds a little intimidating… and it can be if you don’t have a plan. But we’ve watched teams do it again and again with successful results.
Over the years, we’ve also noticed that the teams who have the smoothest experience usually have one thing in common: they make a plan before they pick up the camera.
And yes, that means writing a script.
Our judges can tell when a team has simply started shooting without a clear idea of where the story is going. Improvisation can absolutely be part of your process, but your movie still needs structure. You should know who your characters are, what they want, what happens to them, and, most importantly, how the story ends.
Two weeks is enough time to make a short film. But it isn’t enough time to figure everything out as you go.
So whether you’re joining us for Love Notes, Moon Rocks, Carson Creepy, or another Carson City Shorts competition (we’ve got some ideas cooking), here’s a step-by-step game plan for getting from kickoff to finished film.
Step 1: Read Your Prompts and Brainstorm
When the prompts are revealed, resist the urge to immediately run off and start shooting. Get your team together and spend some time throwing ideas around first. What does the required prop make you think of? How could the line of dialogue mean something completely different than it first appears? Could the required sound become an important part of the story instead of something you simply check off the list?
This is also the time to think about what your team actually has to work with. Talk about actors, locations, costumes, props, equipment, and any weird resources someone might have access to. You may discover that a teammate’s creepy basement, vintage car, or collection of medieval armor leads you to a much better idea than the one you started with.
Don’t worry about writing the script quite yet. By the end of this step, you just want to know what story you’re trying to tell, who it’s about, and how it ends. Then you’re ready to start writing.
Step 2: WRITE THE SCRIPT
Before you pick up the camera, write the script.
This is probably the most important advice we can give you. Our judges can tell when a team had a story on paper before shooting, and they can usually tell when everyone showed up with a vague idea and decided to figure it out as they went. You can improvise dialogue. You can change things on set. You can throw the entire plan out the window when somebody comes up with a better idea. But you need a plan to begin with.
For a 5–9 minute film, your script doesn’t need to be complicated. Screenplays generally work out to roughly one page per minute, so keeping the script lean will also help you keep an eye on your eventual runtime. Know how the movie starts, what changes, what your characters are trying to accomplish, and know your ending.
You also don’t need expensive screenwriting software. There are plenty of tools that can help:
- WriterDuet is very beginner-friendly and automatically handles screenplay formatting for you. Its free plan currently allows up to three projects, which is more than enough to write your competition film.
- Beat is a free, open-source screenwriting program that uses the Fountain screenplay format. It’s lightweight and includes outlining tools, scene organization, and other useful features. It’s an especially nice option for Mac users.
- Trelby is another free, open-source screenplay editor. It handles formatting and pagination and can export your finished script as a PDF.
- Save the Cat! isn’t really about formatting your screenplay; it’s about figuring out the story. Its well-known Beat Sheet breaks a story into 15 major beats, and there’s a free online Beat Sheet Mapper you can use to work through your structure. For a short film, you obviously don’t need to obsess over hitting every beat, but it’s a useful tool when you’re staring at an idea and wondering, Okay… what actually happens next?
And don’t get so hung up on proper screenplay formatting that you never actually write anything. If all you have is Google Docs or Microsoft Word, use it. A plainly formatted script with a beginning, middle, and end is infinitely more useful to your team than a beautifully formatted blank page.
Once the script exists, everybody can finally answer the same question: What movie are we making?
Step 3: Make a Simple Production Plan
Now that you have a script, it’s time to figure out how you’re actually going to make it.
Go through your script scene by scene and make a list of everything you need: actors, locations, props, costumes, makeup, special effects, camera equipment, lights, microphones, and anything else that appears on screen. This is called a script breakdown, and it can save you a ton of trouble once shooting begins.
This is where you may discover that the really cool scene you wrote requires a location you don’t have, an actor who isn’t available, or an effect you have absolutely no idea how to pull off. That’s okay! It’s much easier to rewrite a scene now than discover the problem while everyone is standing around waiting to shoot it.
Next, figure out everyone’s availability and build your shooting schedule. Group scenes by location and actors instead of automatically shooting your screenplay in order. If Scenes 1, 4 and 7 all happen in the same house, shoot them while you’re at that house.
This is also the time to create a shot list. You don’t have to storyboard every frame, but your director should know what shots are needed before arriving on set. A simple checklist can keep you from getting into the edit and realizing, Oh crap, we never got a close-up of the thing that solves the entire movie.
Tools That Can Help
You don’t need professional production-management software for a 5–9 minute short. A shared spreadsheet can honestly do the job. But if you’d like something designed specifically for filmmaking, there are some useful options.
Filmustage is probably the most interesting free option I’ve found for this particular stage of the process. Its free plan includes manual script breakdowns, shooting schedules, shot lists, storyboards, call sheets, location management, and team collaboration. You can essentially take the script you just finished and begin turning it into a production plan.
StudioBinder is another very user-friendly option. It combines script breakdowns, schedules, shot lists, storyboards, locations, calendars and other pre-production tools. Its free plan is fairly limited, though, including up to 10 shots, 10 storyboard panels and a 10-scene shooting schedule, so it’s best for a very small production or for trying the system before deciding whether you need more.
And don’t overlook the simplest option: a shared spreadsheet. Create tabs for your cast, locations, props, equipment, shot list, and shooting schedule. Share it with the team and keep everything in one place. For a two-week short film competition, sometimes simple is better.
Whatever system you choose, the goal isn’t to create a mountain of production paperwork. It’s to make sure everyone knows where they need to be, when they need to be there, what they need to bring, and what you need to accomplish while you have them.
Two weeks is plenty of time to make a short film. It is not plenty of time to spend three hours on set figuring out what you’re supposed to be shooting that day.
Step 4: Schedule Your Shoot Early
Once your script and production plan are ready, get your shoot on the calendar as soon as possible. In a two-week competition, you do not want to spend the first week planning and leave yourself three days to shoot, edit, and finish the movie.
If you can, aim to complete the majority of your filming during the first weekend of the competition. That gives you most of the second week to edit, discover what you’re missing, shoot pickups, work on sound, and deal with the inevitable surprise that nobody planned for.
When building your schedule, start with the things you can’t control. When are your actors available? When can you access your locations? Do you have a scene that needs to be shot at night? Are you depending on a business that’s only letting you film during certain hours? Build around those restrictions first.
And be realistic about how much you can shoot in a day. A two-page scene might take considerably longer than you expect once you factor in lighting, rehearsals, multiple takes, moving the camera, and recording clean audio. Give yourself some breathing room rather than scheduling every minute of the day.
Most importantly, don’t save your most important scenes for the end of the competition. If something goes wrong on Day 5, you still have time to fix it. If something goes wrong on Day 13, your options become considerably more limited.
Your schedule will probably change. That’s filmmaking. The point isn’t to predict every problem. The point is to make sure editing starts while there’s still enough time to solve them.
Step 5: Get the Shots You Actually Need
You’ve written the script, made a shot list, and scheduled the day. Now that you’re on set, make sure you actually get the footage your editor will need to tell the story.
It’s easy to get excited about the cool stuff. The dramatic close-up, the elaborate camera move, the monster reveal. Get those shots! But don’t become so focused on them that you forget the basic coverage that will hold the scene together.
For most scenes, think about getting a wide or establishing shot, shots of the individual characters, close-ups when they matter, and reaction shots. If someone picks up an important object, you may need an insert of the object. If a character reacts to something horrifying across the room, make sure you have both what they see and their reaction to seeing it.
Whenever possible, give your editor options. Let the camera roll for a moment before the action begins and after it ends. Get a clean take without someone immediately yelling “CUT!” over the final line. And if you know you need a particular shot to make the story work, don’t leave the location until you’re certain you have it.
Continuity matters too. Keep an eye on where actors are standing, which hand is holding a prop, how full that glass is, whether a door was open or closed, and what your actors were doing at the beginning and end of each take. Taking a few quick reference photos with your phone can save you a headache later.
And while you’re checking the picture, check your sound. Wear headphones. Make sure the microphone is actually recording. Listen for air conditioners, refrigerators, traffic, airplanes, and anything else your brain may be tuning out. Record a little room tone at each location, too. Your editor will thank you later.
You don’t need to shoot every scene from fifteen different angles. You need enough good footage to assemble the scene you wrote.
Before you move on, ask one simple question: Do we have everything we need to tell this part of the story?
Because discovering you’re missing the coolest shot in the movie is disappointing. Discovering you’re missing the shot that makes the movie make sense is much worse.
Step 6: Start Editing Before You’re Done Shooting
Don’t wait until every scene is finished before you start editing. As soon as you have footage, start putting your movie together.
This doesn’t mean your editor needs to create a polished cut while everyone else is still filming. Start rough. Drop the scenes onto the timeline, see how they fit together, and make sure you actually captured what you thought you captured.
This is where you’ll discover things you simply can’t see on set. Maybe two shots don’t cut together well. A scene that worked on paper suddenly drags. An important line is difficult to hear. You’re missing a reaction shot. Or that brilliant plot twist makes absolutely no sense without one more piece of information.
Finding those problems on Day 7 is useful. Finding them on Day 14 is terrifying.
An early rough cut will also give you a much better idea of your runtime. Remember, Carson City Shorts films need to be 5–9 minutes including credits. If your rough cut is already 14 minutes long, you want to know that while you still have time to make decisions about what stays and what goes.
If possible, have someone who wasn’t on set watch an early cut. Your cast and crew already know what the story is supposed to be, which can make it surprisingly easy to overlook something that isn’t clear to a fresh viewer. Ask them where they got confused, where their attention wandered, and what they thought was happening.
You can also start organizing sound, music, graphics, and credits while shooting continues. Anything you can take care of now is one less thing waiting for you during the final days.
Most importantly, keep your project organized and back it up. Label your footage, save versions of your edit, and keep a second copy of your files somewhere other than the computer you’re editing on (my external hard drive has saved me on more than one occasion!). Two weeks of work should never exist in only one place.
The sooner you start editing, the sooner you find out what movie you actually made. And if something is missing, you still have time to go shoot it.
Step 7: Plan for Pickups
No matter how carefully you planned your shoot, there’s a good chance you’ll discover something is missing once you start editing. That’s why you should leave room in your schedule for pickups.
A pickup is simply additional footage you shoot after principal photography to fill a gap, fix a problem, or make the story clearer. It doesn’t necessarily mean getting the entire cast back together and recreating a whole scene. Sometimes all you need is a close-up of a hand grabbing something, an insert of an important prop, a reaction shot, an exterior of a location, or one line of dialogue recorded again.
Your rough cut should tell you what you need.
Keep a running pickup list as you edit. If something feels confusing, don’t immediately assume you can fix it by cutting around the problem. Ask yourself whether one simple shot could solve it. Ten minutes with a camera might save you an hour of trying to manufacture a solution in the edit. The age-old saying, “Fix it in post!” doesn’t always work.
This is another reason we recommend shooting early. If your main shoot happens during the first weekend, you still have several days to call an actor and say, “Hey, can I get you for twenty minutes? We forgot something.”
If you wait until the end of the competition to start editing, you may discover the same problem after your actors have left town, your location is no longer available, or there simply isn’t enough time to shoot again.
And don’t think of pickups as evidence that you did something wrong. Professional movies shoot pickups and reshoots all the time. Sometimes you can’t know exactly what you’re missing until you see the pieces assembled.
The goal isn’t to shoot everything perfectly the first time; it’s to discover what your movie needs while you still have time to get it.
Step 8: Work on Sound
Once your edit is taking shape, it’s time to stop watching your movie and start listening to it.
Audio is one of the most common areas our judges comment on. You can have beautiful cinematography and great performances, but if the audience is struggling to understand the dialogue, they’re going to have a hard time staying invested in your film.
Start with the dialogue. Listen through your movie with headphones. Can you clearly understand every line? Are some actors much louder than others? Is there distracting traffic, wind, an air conditioner, or other background noise competing with their voices? Adjust your levels and clean up what you can.
Editing programs such as DaVinci Resolve have some surprisingly powerful tools for reducing background noise and isolating voices. These can rescue imperfect recordings, but they aren’t magic. You’ll get much better results if you captured clean audio with a decent microphone during production.
Next, think about everything else we should hear. Footsteps, doors closing, clothing moving, objects hitting the floor, distant traffic, a creaking floorboard, or whatever makes sense for your movie. Adding these sounds in post can make a scene feel much more complete. For free sound effects, resources such as Freesound can be incredibly useful, but always check the license attached to an individual sound before using it.
Music deserves some attention too. Don’t simply drop a song underneath the entire movie and call it done. Think about when music actually helps the scene and when silence might be more effective. Most importantly, make sure your score isn’t fighting with your dialogue.
And please use music you actually have permission to use. There are royalty-free and Creative Commons options available online, and you may also have a musician on your team who would love to create something original. Don’t assume that because a song is available online, you can put it in your movie.
Finally, listen to your finished mix on more than one device. Your expensive headphones may sound great, but your film is eventually going to be played through a theater sound system. Try it through headphones, computer speakers, and a television if you can. Listen for sudden jumps in volume and dialogue that disappears when you’re not wearing headphones.
Sound shouldn’t be something you remember five minutes before you export. Your audience needs to hear your story just as clearly as they can see it.
Step 9: Cut What You Don’t Need
By this point, you’ve probably fallen in love with at least a few moments in your movie. Unfortunately, now it’s time to be ruthless and kill your babies as they say.
Carson City Shorts films need to be 5–9 minutes including credits, but that doesn’t mean you should automatically aim for nine minutes. In fact, many of the best short films we’ve seen in our competitions have come in under eight minutes.
Your movie should be as long as the story needs to be. No longer.
Watch your rough cut and look for places where the story slows down. Does it take too long to get started? Are two scenes giving us the same information? Can you enter a scene later or leave it earlier? Is there dialogue explaining something the audience already understands?
And don’t be afraid to cut something simply because it took a lot of work to shoot. Maybe you spent two hours setting up a beautiful shot. Maybe someone delivered a hilarious line. Maybe you built an entire prop for a scene. If it isn’t helping the finished movie, it doesn’t need to be there.
This is especially important with short films. You don’t have a lot of time to earn the audience’s attention, so get us into the story and keep things moving. A tight seven-minute movie will almost always feel better than the same movie stretched to nine minutes because you wanted to use everything you shot.
Try showing your cut to someone who hasn’t read the script or been involved in production. Pay attention to where they get confused, but also notice where their attention starts to wander. Those moments can tell you a lot.
Remember, nine minutes is a limit, not a goal.
Tell the story. Make it work. Then get out.
Step 10: Finish Before the Deadline
You made the movie. Now give yourself enough time to actually finish it.
The final hours of a two-week competition should be for last-minute polishing and submitting your film, not finishing half the edit. Set your own deadline a little earlier than the official one and work toward that instead. If films are due Wednesday night, pretend yours is due Tuesday. Your future self will thank you.
Once you have a final cut, go through the competition requirements one more time. Did you use all of the required prompts? Is your film within the required runtime? Did you include your credits? Make sure you haven’t overlooked something simple after spending two weeks concentrating on the movie itself.
Then export your film and watch the exported file from beginning to end. Don’t just watch it inside your editing program and assume the export worked. Check the picture. Listen to the sound. Make sure the credits aren’t cut off. Look for missing media, strange glitches, accidental black frames or anything else that may have appeared during export.
And don’t wait until an hour before the deadline to export for the first time. Computers have an uncanny ability to sense when you’re in a hurry. Rendering takes longer than expected. Software crashes. Hard drives fill up. Uploads stall. The internet goes down. Give yourself time for something to go wrong.
Most importantly, submit the film that you have. Don’t miss the deadline chasing one last tiny improvement that your audience probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. There will always be something you wish you could change. That’s part of making movies. At some point, you have to stop editing, hit export and say: We made a movie.
Now get it submitted. We want to see it on the big screen!
The Two-Week Game Plan
Every team works differently, but here’s a basic schedule that can keep you from discovering on Day 13 that you still have half a movie to make:
Days 1–2: Brainstorm and write your script
Days 3–4: Cast, scout locations, gather props and plan your shoot
Days 5–7: Film
Days 8–10: Edit and identify anything you’re missing
Days 11–12: Pickups, sound and finishing work
Days 13–14: Final edit, credits, export, review and submit
Your schedule doesn’t have to look exactly like this. The important thing is that you have a schedule.
Two weeks go by quickly. Things will go wrong. Someone will get sick. A location will fall through. You’ll discover a shot doesn’t work. Your computer will decide that right now is an excellent time to install an update while you’re trying to export your files.
That’s filmmaking.
But if you start with a script, keep your production realistic and leave yourself enough time to edit, two weeks is absolutely enough time to make something you’ll be proud to see on the big screen.
And after watching hundreds of Carson City Shorts films over the years, there’s one piece of advice we can give every team: Don’t just start shooting. Make a plan. Write the script. Then pick up the camera.
