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Fair Enough Friday: 8 Simple Rules for Making a Movie
By Jason Santo
Oct 17, 2003, 10:01
Since December 1997, I’ve been pretty busy working on something like fifty or so short movie productions (some of which are dangerously close to feature-length) while also doing small bits for several other small production companies. It means I’ve been behind the camera a lot, and for those of us who have been doing the Microcinema thing for a while, it’s pretty much understood that “behind-the-camera” means a person is most likely the producer, writer, director, key grip, director of photography, and caterer. In extreme cases, it even includes being “in front of the camera” as an actor.
When you’re working with no budget, the crews are as lean as Red Sox and Cubs fans’ hopes for another shot at the World Series next year. Though I have a rather great crew on a movie I’m making right now called Table Scraps, I recently found myself shooting a few quick takes alone, working both camera and sound while wearing directing and co-producer hats. All this, and post-production will introduce even more roles.
Alas, by doing shoots in this fashion I’ve learned a lot of lessons regarding how to properly put a movie together. Shooting for the edit, directing actors, and shuffling production schedules due to unforeseen circumstances are just a few of the “bigger” lessons I’ve been taught by experience. But there are also several simple rules I’ve picked up - two handfuls of straightforward leanings that are of the “do-this-and-thwart-Murphy’s-Law” variety. Some of them may seen foolishly simple to a few of you, but if you’ve made many shot-on-video movies with no budget and very little crew I’m sure you’ll agree these things can slow up a production’s pace, or in some cases even break its back. With that, I give you “8 Simple Rules for Making a Movie.”
1.) Bring the Battery Charger for Your Camera
I can’t even begin to explain how important this first, admittedly very basic rule is, and yet I’ve heard war stories time and time again of people who run out of battery power during a shoot. This results in two things: (1) not getting all of the needed shots in the can, thus necessitating another day of shooting and/or (2) rushing to beat the dying battery so you won’t have to re-schedule, thus compromising the quality of your work.
Unless your shooting with one of Sony’ cameras that can live for 13 hours on one battery, or you have enough money to buy enough batteries to get you through any amount of shoot time, this rule is applicable to you. Do you think you’re smarter than this? Well, that’s good. That means you bring your charger with you to every shoot, find an outlet immediately, plug it in and as soon as one battery expires, you start recharging. Don’t forget, as you’re most likely the production manager on your movie as well as the director and cameraperson, you’ve got to remember when your NEXT shoots are as well. This means keeping batteries charged at all times. Fortunately, lithium ion battery technology keeps improving, keeping charge times down. This means that while you’re shooting your next few scenes with one battery, the other could be ready for use again by the time you’re done. But without a charger, you’ve fallen victim to a hard-fast deadline for your shoot.
2.) Bring the Instruction Manual for Your Camera
At this point, I’ve worked with almost every three-chip digital video camera that’s been brought to the pro-sumer table, and with each one I have been rather impressed with the straightforwardness of its manual. Alas, each camera has little quirks about it that, if not quickly diagnosed could potentially slow or even stop production on your movie.
Case in point: very recently I was on a shoot in downtown Boston outside historic Fenway Park. Working with extras in a very crowded area that was growing more crowded by the minute, we were moving as quick as we could to get the first shot set up. When we were just about ready to start rehearsing with the camera, I noticed that when I pressed the record button on my Panasonic AG-DVX100, I got a flashing error message along the lines of “Internal Lock Error.” It was the most vague message I’ve received from a piece of electronics since the days of my old Mac system telling me nothing more than “Sorry, A System Error Has Occurred.”
Horrified, I tried a number of trouble-shooting methods, but nothing worked. The camera simply would not respond. Then I did something really smart. In front of the producer, the assistant director and all of the extras, I went to my camera bag and calmly took out the manual. It was a bit of a blow to my ego. I mean, how good a shooter could I be if I was looking something up in a manual while on set? But, after looking for a few minutes, I came up with what I thought was the answer and implemented it, resolving the issue. Had I not kept my manual with my camera always, I would have had to cancel a very important, fairly large-scale shoot. Had I tried to protect my ego by not using the manual, I would have had the bigger issue of looking like a fool because I couldn’t run my own rig!
Fair Enough Friday: 8 Simple Rules for Making a Movie
By Jason Santo
Oct 17, 2003, 10:01
Since December 1997, I’ve been pretty busy working on something like fifty or so short movie productions (some of which are dangerously close to feature-length) while also doing small bits for several other small production companies. It means I’ve been behind the camera a lot, and for those of us who have been doing the Microcinema thing for a while, it’s pretty much understood that “behind-the-camera” means a person is most likely the producer, writer, director, key grip, director of photography, and caterer. In extreme cases, it even includes being “in front of the camera” as an actor.
When you’re working with no budget, the crews are as lean as Red Sox and Cubs fans’ hopes for another shot at the World Series next year. Though I have a rather great crew on a movie I’m making right now called Table Scraps, I recently found myself shooting a few quick takes alone, working both camera and sound while wearing directing and co-producer hats. All this, and post-production will introduce even more roles.
Alas, by doing shoots in this fashion I’ve learned a lot of lessons regarding how to properly put a movie together. Shooting for the edit, directing actors, and shuffling production schedules due to unforeseen circumstances are just a few of the “bigger” lessons I’ve been taught by experience. But there are also several simple rules I’ve picked up - two handfuls of straightforward leanings that are of the “do-this-and-thwart-Murphy’s-Law” variety. Some of them may seen foolishly simple to a few of you, but if you’ve made many shot-on-video movies with no budget and very little crew I’m sure you’ll agree these things can slow up a production’s pace, or in some cases even break its back. With that, I give you “8 Simple Rules for Making a Movie.”
1.) Bring the Battery Charger for Your Camera
I can’t even begin to explain how important this first, admittedly very basic rule is, and yet I’ve heard war stories time and time again of people who run out of battery power during a shoot. This results in two things: (1) not getting all of the needed shots in the can, thus necessitating another day of shooting and/or (2) rushing to beat the dying battery so you won’t have to re-schedule, thus compromising the quality of your work.
Unless your shooting with one of Sony’ cameras that can live for 13 hours on one battery, or you have enough money to buy enough batteries to get you through any amount of shoot time, this rule is applicable to you. Do you think you’re smarter than this? Well, that’s good. That means you bring your charger with you to every shoot, find an outlet immediately, plug it in and as soon as one battery expires, you start recharging. Don’t forget, as you’re most likely the production manager on your movie as well as the director and cameraperson, you’ve got to remember when your NEXT shoots are as well. This means keeping batteries charged at all times. Fortunately, lithium ion battery technology keeps improving, keeping charge times down. This means that while you’re shooting your next few scenes with one battery, the other could be ready for use again by the time you’re done. But without a charger, you’ve fallen victim to a hard-fast deadline for your shoot.
2.) Bring the Instruction Manual for Your Camera
At this point, I’ve worked with almost every three-chip digital video camera that’s been brought to the pro-sumer table, and with each one I have been rather impressed with the straightforwardness of its manual. Alas, each camera has little quirks about it that, if not quickly diagnosed could potentially slow or even stop production on your movie.
Case in point: very recently I was on a shoot in downtown Boston outside historic Fenway Park. Working with extras in a very crowded area that was growing more crowded by the minute, we were moving as quick as we could to get the first shot set up. When we were just about ready to start rehearsing with the camera, I noticed that when I pressed the record button on my Panasonic AG-DVX100, I got a flashing error message along the lines of “Internal Lock Error.” It was the most vague message I’ve received from a piece of electronics since the days of my old Mac system telling me nothing more than “Sorry, A System Error Has Occurred.”
Horrified, I tried a number of trouble-shooting methods, but nothing worked. The camera simply would not respond. Then I did something really smart. In front of the producer, the assistant director and all of the extras, I went to my camera bag and calmly took out the manual. It was a bit of a blow to my ego. I mean, how good a shooter could I be if I was looking something up in a manual while on set? But, after looking for a few minutes, I came up with what I thought was the answer and implemented it, resolving the issue. Had I not kept my manual with my camera always, I would have had to cancel a very important, fairly large-scale shoot. Had I tried to protect my ego by not using the manual, I would have had the bigger issue of looking like a fool because I couldn’t run my own rig!