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I hope Jeff and Mike will have the time later to write few more details about the production. As it is often these days, everybody end up in different part of the world. Mike is in Calgary, Rob is in Thailand and Jeff is in Ottawa.
There are many books dealing with each of the production stages. It is always a great idea to first master the classic film-making process before you get into experimenting.
Since the title of this topic is Production tips, let's have few. Without going into too much details, I will try to focus on just two issues that are often misinterpreted by starting film-maker.
Pre-Production
It is not the actual production that actually needs the undivided focus of a film-maker, it is the pre-production. A good script is almost all the movie, if the script doesn't hold, nobody can save the movie.
That means most of the work on a film is done without a camera. It is crucial to see the movie making process as a visual story-telling where the film/video is just the vehicle for it. If you look at the industry leaders in Hollywood, you would see that the pre-production phase takes often many years, while the actual production is often just few months. Unfortunately many new film-makers focus rather on the actual technical details and this is why they often fail. In Hollywood anybody can direct a movie, but only few can make one.
A good story can be represented by a slideshow and it will be still a good story. This is in fact how the story in studios lives for most of its time before it gets onto film. A script is transferred to a storyboard. When storyboard is finished by a big studio, it is the peak, the best representation of the story ever. From there it usually only gets worst, scenes are removed to fit to the time or to be able to get better rating, ending is changed to be more politically correct (cheesy is a better word) etc.
| The reason Hollywood storyboard is often very detailed is the big cost of production and the number of people involved. It is the guide how to shoot the film from scene to scene and very little is left to be decided on the spot (every minute cost truckload of money). Because of the painstakingly detailed preparation, people can be easily replaced or a secondary unit can be hired to shoot parallel in different locations. |
For small production or a TV show a detailed storyboard is not that crucial as a good script is because such production team has seldom any budget to fit or build scene to follow the storyboard. It is often the other way around, you look at the location or set and then decide how to bend the script around it.
Our Cowboy Who? also benefits from the pre-production time. Writing script and dialogues took the longest period. The actual shooting of the whole season was done in a few days in total. There is never much time to change things on the set and if you do, often you choose the less good alternative, because of the pressure.
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Oscar's own bad example:
When I was a young student we were making a lot of amateur films with friends simply using single VHS camera. One day we decided to do a short film for a student competition because we had an access to an old castle in our city that offered a lot of great locations. A great opportunity, not to be missed! We quickly prepared a funny story about a treasure hunter who finds a map in a bottle and then he prepares an expedition to find the treasure. We left many things open in our story and because of the excitement and the need to start shooting as soon as possible we also didn't really decided on the ending, saying that we will surely figure that out during process. Having fun was our primary goal, right? The shooting took a whole day, we used a classic film approach, with one VHS camera on a tripod we performed each scene many times, shooting it from different angles to be able to later edit it. When we approached the final scene at the very end (which was already at night) in which the man finds his treasure we suddenly didn't know what to do. What will be the payback for the viewer? What will be the joke, worth sitting through the 10 minutes or so of our film? We were so exhausted from the whole day of shooting that we just simply couldn't think of anything funny or even remotely interesting! We just did some very quick end to finish the day and let the character to find another bottle.
This proved to be the best lesson one can get about how NOT to shoot! The edited film turned out to be quite good (at least for a young students with an old VHS camera and a VCR) - nice editing with a rhythm, sometimes even innovative usage of camera angles and interesting scenes - but no real end! No payback, just a miserable ending, that simply disappoints any viewer.
We actually did win one of the amateur award in the competition (I guess for the pure technical achievement), but to this day I am ashamed that we trashed a potentially good short film by not having a whole story prepared before the shooting. This should be a warning for anybody.
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Forget technicalities
I always crunch my teeth when I read the never ending posts on many forums about what I could characterize a "Film-look" madness. People would do anything to get a film-look adding even fake scratches and noise to the already noisy video and desperately crying for a true progressive camera.
They all whine that they could create amazing films and be the next big thing, only if they have a true digital 24p camera. It has to be 24p or nothing.
That is a total and true nonsense. It is just an excuse because most of the people are afraid of the truth - their lack of talent and vision. A good story is independent of any equipment. People could tell a great story with finger puppets, paper and scissors or a slideshow (La Jetée -1962 is a great example of the later).
The cry for 24 FPS for the "film-look" totally misses the real reason why Indie cinematographers were begging manufacturers for years to give them true 24 FPS cameras. From 24 FPS it is much easier to produce DVD for worldwide distribution: NTSC (pulldown to 29.97), PAL (speedup to 25) and also it is straightforward for film transfer for theatrical releases. It was for the pure technical reasons, not for the "dreamy" look of the slow frame rates. However as with many myths, people twisted this fact and now claim a "film-look" is the true reason to get 24 FPS cameras.
Most holiday film-makers do not realize that film looks like a film not just because of the different equipment used (frame-rate, higher dynamics of the film, shallow depth of field), but in great deal because it was shot like a film. Setting a movie scene and correctly lighting is the very first step to achieve a film look. It is not in 24 progressive frames as many claims (Everybody with a film camera would be a great film-maker?). In fact there were many attempts in past to get rid of the slow 24 FPS - because of exactly the look that troubled the big film-makers - the less fluid, choppy motions the slow frame-rate brings.
When you watch a good big movie next time, try to look how the scene was build. Look at the many light sources, the game of shadows, the reflections, the separation of characters from background... Then look at the composition. Every single scene in a big movie is worth studying. The rule of thumb is that if you take a still picture of any scene in a movie, it should be interesting and look like a good photo composition.
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