http://doubleshotfilms.com/index.htmlStep by step guide to indie filmmakingenpr@doubleshotfilms.comCopyright 2009 Doubleshotfilms2009-07-04T22:42:37-07:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:14:43 -0700pr@doubleshotfilms.comNone2009-07-04T22:42:37-07:00http://doubleshotfilms.com/blog/files/1a0a63de107e18609a54aa6959aba5f3-9.html#unique-entry-id-9http://doubleshotfilms.com/blog/files/1a0a63de107e18609a54aa6959aba5f3-9.html#unique-entry-id-9
The director on our films had been through the process and knew that while everyone was partying, he was just about ready to run a second marathon. He said that even after working 12 hour days thirty some days in a row – it will take roughly the same amount of total hours, the same time commitment to see the films through post-production and into a final mix and DVD master. The most essential work on the picture is finished and now the most essential work on the feature begins. I know that sounds confusing, but that’s just the way it is.

We had the editors compete for the job. We supplied a group of ten prospective editors with the first fifteen minutes of footage (about two hours of footage that would cut down to fifteen minutes) and saw how each of them handled the tempo, story elements and shot selection. The good news is that there is a lot of talent out there and the people who really love cutting will volunteer and dive into the project immediately. The bad news is that there are very few people who live the fine detail work that is feature editing. You’ll see talent in almost every person who cuts your film, but you’ll only see consistent master-level work in one or two if you’re lucky. We were very lucky. We landed an editor who set his own goals, met them and was constantly setting his standards above those of the last pass on the project. What I mean is, that he didn’t finish a scene until he’d cut it ten ways and decided which one was best. This level of commitment and talent is freakish and it made the endless days of editing and proofing with the Director and the Producer feel more like show and tell than give and go.

So we secured an editor for the first film and started him off. He was local, but realize that technology has made digital collaboration a reality. All of our VFX were completed by two different exceptional young men from San Francisco and Seattle. We posted the shots that needed to be rotoscoped and they would scope away, then upload the finished product to our server and minutes later (this does take time, so we’re talking 30-40) it was in the timeline. This can work for editors too. I worked with a very talented editor from another city who never really impressed the Producer, but even though he didn’t work out, I don’t think he soured me or anyone on the idea of collaboration over distance.

So, the contest for first fifteen minutes gets you a quality editor or two. Their work provides a rough cut in three months and a picture lock after three more months of close work together. Now it’s time to export the OMF (audio files) to take to your post production sound person. This is the most gratifying part of the production and if you’re lucky enough to have Dan Newman on your team, you’ll wish that this part of production never ends. Music cues by a skilled composer can add so much to the meaning of a scene. It can also bridge moments which seem to transition too quickly or make longer shots seem more like a lingering or leftover intensity from the scene before rather than an indulgence. I’ve seen it happen.

There are a lot of people who want to score films, so don’t just take the first resume off of the pile. See if you can advertise at an arts school with a dedicated film scoring faculty like UCLA or USC. These students have many of the skills and are looking for practice. Use the try-out method that we did for an editor and get multiple submissions. The sound work on your film will likely brand the professionalism of the entire production. The eye can trick people but ears do not lie. Weak sound post production will put the viewer in the mood of bad local TV production remote with Sassy Lane reporting- and you don’t come back from there. Ask Ms. Lane.

Plan on ADR for about 30 percent of your movie if it’s shot inside and double it if it’s shot outside with limited controls. ADR stands for Another Damn Reading of the script that most of the actors have forgotten by the time the ADR session comes along. Convince your sound guy to use most of the production sound and you’ll be doing yourself and the authenticity of the finished product a great service. For those times when a bus pulls up and parks on what sounds like the middle of your set or closer, open the door to ADR. This process takes about a week of recording and a week of placement. These are full weeks. Don’t let your sound guy think that he has a life or else you’ll end up waiting. Waiting to do the work on an indie film rarely helps anyone.

Once your sound is done, you’ll have a sound file to lay back into your editing window and you’re ready to output the project for screeners. You’ll want to start with DVD quality compression and then make a lossless backup copy of the quicktime file. Get lots of drive space as HQprores422 comes out to about 100gigs for a 90 minute movie. There are as many programs and formats to talk about as there are styles and genres of movies, but the workflow that we produced worked out very well so I’ll lay down the basics.

We used compressor which is paired with FCP. There is a setting for 90 minute best quality DVD. It takes about 12 hours to create the compressed video file and about a half hour to export the audio. These can both be opened in DVD studio pro and fit together on the time line. There is a preview button to make sure everything is still in sync and that the picture looks fine. Create the menus and make the front screen look pretty (don’t forget to add an MP3 audio file to play over the front menu a silent screen reminds me of the FBI warning too much). Then, you can make a .img file which will load in Toast and other UDF blah blah programs. You can also burn the disk straight from DVD pro, but having the image makes the film portable and burnable on any computer. Pop for a 4gb flashdrive (currently selling for less than 10 bucks) and you can keep your movie on your keychain just in case you happen to serve the head of the AFI film festival at your day job at California Pizza Kitchen.

Create a graphic for the cover. Again, Craigslist is an option to find a designer, but we’ve always kept it in house. Art students are cool people to know and you’ll get something a little less corporate if you hand the project to someone who doesn’t know what a DVD cover is supposed to look like. This is the one area, where I’ve been most impressed by people who didn’t have experience doing the job. Why does cover art always look like cover art? Because it’s done by cover artists. Just find a regular artist and you might really get some eye-catching stuff. Either way, talking to an artist is cool. He or she might rub off on one of your PAs and give them the confidence to shoot the next double shot film.

Printing the DVD’s is a snap. A regular inkjet can do the job nowadays. There are programs like DiscCover RE that is free and has enough features to get the job done. Get the same cover artist to provide a snap of the cover and weave it into the design. Make it look jagged like it was ripped off of the front cover and you’ll make my day. That’s what I wanted for the cover of these films. Alas, who listens to me? Bad question to ask at this time in the blog eh?

This is going to sound way too specific, but if it helps someone out there I might as well throw it out. Burn the DVDs on 4x speed. We had two DVD burners, one was a Pioneer and the other was a Panasonic. Both produced bad discs at 16. One was better than the other, but there were a significant number of discs that skipped at the end. If you don’t want to play every disc through to the end, use 4X speed.

Finally, you have something to show that real people can experience. Grab a small studio and have the cast over to watch the premiere. Use the “party” to start the process of getting the film out into the world. Make sure the cast and crew know that you’re searching for Film Festivals that fit the kind of films you’ve made. Start making contacts through the cast with people who can help you sharpen your message and get it out in a way that maximizes the positives of your particular production. If you have films that are going to capture the interest of an unsuspecting public, make sure you choose the right festival to let loose your finished works.

You can remember the top film festivals in the US using a simple numonic device.

A sailor nipped to Austin, sundancing lazily transmitted SARS.

Austin, Sundance, New York Telluride, AFI, Slamdance, LA, Tribecca, Seattle

Kick Toronto in there if you want to add North America to the list.

Everyone has their favorite, but there is no bad festival on this list and there are a few festivals that I’m sure I’m missing that are very close in stature. Basically, if you can find your way into them, you’re fantastic. Decide early on if one place is better than another to premiere your film however, because some places like Sundance require that your film is a world premiere if it is in competition. There are premiere requirements at most of these fests. Sometimes it could be a state or national, and I’m sure things change year to year, but be careful that your first festival submission is chosen as the best place for your work to be seen. There’s nothing wrong with getting shut down by a major festival. They are screening work from every country on the globe and sometimes your work will fit their bill and sometimes it won’t. Find a place to scream into a hollow tree and find out when the next deadline is for another place that might love your work. The founder of DS films got into four very good festivals with his first feature. It’s hard to take rejection, but if you don’t keep submitting you’re going to miss out on those four places that are going to give you an opportunity to show your work and let people know what filmmaking means to you. It sounds corny, but both are important things to express. Nobody who is making films like this is doing it for a bad reason. It’s just too much work for vanity and ego to clock in and out and run the joint. Films like this are about voice, expression, community and just a hint of something different – a little out of place.

Talk to filmmakers when you get to a festival. Most of them will be in a world that only orbits their projects, but some of them are there to bounce off of others and see where the interplay of creative minds take them. I got to be on one of the panels at a film festival once and it was so rewarding to listen to the way others had gotten there that I just listened. At the end of the panel someone turned to me and asked what film I was representing and I gave the name of the project. One of the directors there asked me why I didn’t talk about it and I realize it was because I enjoyed learning from others much more than I did promoting myself. I heard some of them banging their heads up against walls that I was sure that given the right methods and supports – they wouldn’t have to. I went back to the group and told them that we were awesome filmmakers, but we could be more than that. We needed to talk about what we did, but we needed to do it in a way that made others pick up a camera and start their own journeys with a bit of a guide.

We at DS films see this as the start of a company which builds off of these films and provides production grants to filmmakers in every state of the nation. Our goal is to kick off a fifty state Double Shot to give people who haven’t made films, but might be the next great storytellers of our generation, the needed support and organizational structure to shoot two films in their home towns. Over a two-year period, we could make 100 films and finish them with professional editing, sound and presentation. Fifty filmmakers standing behind one hundred films all made for distribution in a modern age by individuals who have trained themselves outside of the mold. It’s the excitement that film has been missing, and we’d like to bring to a very local level.

You’ve read about our rules, advice and my flying off on the tangents I could remember over a year since the productions. This is intended to just give any filmmaker the kind of platform that at very least should be shouted “IF THESE IDIOTS CAN DO IT SO CAN I.”

And good on you if you can do it better.
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First rule, if your schedule calls for the first shot at 11 AM make sure you start on time. This is almost impossible to accomplish, but it can be done. The producer joked that 11:07 was the best we did during the entire shoot, so don’t think that I’m saying we accomplished this perfectly, but I don’t believe we ever started more than 20 minutes late. The AD has the whip and he or she should use it to get everyone in place and working as close to on time as possible. You’ll remember those minutes if you’re going over schedule at 11PM that night. You’ll start counting those minutes over and over in your head thinking “WHY DID I START fifteen minutes late!” I’m getting a little dramatic.

Next rule: Start the schedule with the hardest scene you have to shoot. This isn’t always the longest scene, in fact often it’s a montage or a scene with lots of action that needs to be covered. The camera crew is sharpest in the morning (this is not a swipe at DPs or ACS – the energy to run a camera is a stamina play) and they usually take fewer takes to get the visuals correct. Actors are often the opposite. They warm up during the day and do their best character work on take one after lunch. That’s not to say that you can’t start with a dialog heavy, deep and moody scene at 7AM – each production and every actor is different. Our experience led to this rule. Make your own films and your own rules. We’re just here to share our understanding and maybe kick someone’s ass into gear.

Another rule: Don’t shoot a love scene right after lunch. I don’t want to go into an explanation, just don’t.

More rules: Remember that the fact that you made it this far rules. Very few productions of micro means make it this far. Remind yourself of this – don’t make it a rally cry until you’ve finished one of the films and people need to feel special just make it through the afternoon.

A fine rule: Make sure the AD is keeping track of every line spoken on camera. You should never wrap a scene until you’ve gotten the nod that every line has been shot from every storyboard angle.

Room tone, nobody gets room tone. I think you should. We always forgot. After all we were always at least seven minutes late.

Now I’d like to get into some of the challenges of shooting two films back to back. The rules were meant to knowledge up any indie film crew. Now we want to lay down some fresh tracks.

Don’t have anyone cut their hair for the second film. It makes pickups a nightmare. We wanted to see a big transformation for our lead, but then we had to actually wait two months for the exterior pickups for the first film. This was just an inconvenience, but I thought I’d pass it along.

Get someone working on editing the first film the moment it wraps. Don’t throw a party in between pictures. Use the crossover building days to start post production. We started looking for an editor, but knowing what I know now, I’d rather have started looking earlier and passed it all off the minute it was done. (as long as we still got Hove to edit, he is fantastic).

Make sure the props people from both films use the same system. It sounds like a small adaptation, until you’re looking for a poloroid camera at 11:06 and you know you’re not going to be able to beat your record because of a piece of 1940s technology.

Don’t record a thousand takes and push all of the decisions off on the editor. These actors are trained and primed. Back them up when they need it, but move on when they don’t. Throwing in an extra take after you know you’ve got the shot turns into hundreds of minutes over the course of a feature shoot. Know when to stop the camera and move on. If you’re really paranoid, add another coverage angle and get the performance there. Don’t grind on a single shot (especially a wide shot) until people are tired of the scene. It’s better to leave even the actors wanting more sometimes. (I only say this because I’ve worked as an editor and seen directors wear down their cast by thinking of “new ideas” constantly). Think of new ideas before the actors hit set. Put them into your coverage and when you get them, move on.

Make fun of the sound people. You’re missing a great opportunity for tension release if you don’t at least once play a practical joke on them. We made ours think that they missed an important scene – assaulting them with “Tell me you got that.” Just as they entered the room with burritos in hand. I also whispered secret messages to the sound board operator to see if I could get him to stop text messaging for more than ten seconds at a time. It did not work. How can you not make fun of that?

Don’t be fake. This is a real project. Your actors are often really connected to their characters. A couple of camera tricks are OK (shoot rehearsal, shoot an ad lib) but don’t tailor your comments on a scene to what you think they want to hear. Say what you feel and they will feel more free to be real themselves. I’m not telling you to brutalize your worst actor’s worst take, keep that in check. But what I am saying is that a cast that trusts the creative team around them, is a cast that will feel more comfortable taking risks knowing that only the best of their work will make it to the final cut. Helping out an actor in the moment by encouragement is fine, but showing indiscriminate encouragement throughout the shoot is draining and unrealistic. Sometimes just call for another take and don’t engage in on-site movie reviewing. (One of the best takes in Café Coexistence came from an actor who begged to reshoot the scene afterwards. The director wouldn’t budge and told the actor he was crackers and that scene is now on the actor’s reel, and is central to the film.)

Be ready to be homeless. The 34 day schedule leaves very little time to do anything but sleep and occasionally put together bunk beds (that’s what our director did on the crossover days between the films). It’s probably the most that everyone on your set has ever worked in the arts and there’s really nothing you can do to prepare them for the added weight in yours and their lives. Mock it. Insult it to its face and demean it with words and actions. Don’t let it become something that drags people down. There were days when I didn’t want to report to set. I’d say once every two weeks I would question my willingness to get into a car and fight traffic to volunteer my time with a bunch of people who used to be cool but for that day only SUCKED. This is natural. This is actually good. If you don’t have a life, you’re not interesting enough to hold the attention of others. I took it as a sign of great distinction that the actors and crew did not complain about their work, but I know that they must have felt like I did at least once. The secret of a day like that is to do a new job. Learn a new skill, find something new to pick up on set that fulfills you. I know it’s all about the collaboration, but in those selfish times, pick a monologue that you’d like to memorize for your next audition or choose a skill you’d like to learn for your next crew job. It’s not a spa day, but it can be a day that you look back on and feel good about the positive way you handled it.
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Get your grip and lighting as early in the morning as you can. Get to the production space and load in. Organize and label everything that comes off the truck. You might have to shout at someone to get a 5K – but without labels some of the grips won’t know what they’re looking for. It’s worth the extra hour of organization to have labels on everything. Have the gaffer and DP there to set the lights, gels, tape the electricals, swab the decks and whack a mole. Tell the carpenters to hold the ladders and brace themselves for the next wave of things.

Go to your art director’s house, or the garage where your art director has stored all of the items for the set. Get back to the location and have the grips unload and set your carpenters on any finishing projects. We had hinges that had to be set into place on the coffee bar and a door that couldn’t be hung until all of our furniture was in. That’s the kind of project that should be done, not major building.

Pick up the dolly and all of the camera extras. Mount the camera and do a test shoot the night before with at least three different looks. This is the tape that can really help a director. He or she has always thought about how it would look and now is the time to modify the image to adapt to how things are. It’s usually very gratifying to make this space look better overnight.

Have your UPM sleep in the space overnight. OK that was just our UPM. Take the portable valuables out of the space (read camera) and have a nightly breakdown chart. Who takes the camera? Who loads the sound onto the computer? Who puts the batteries back in the charger? Who pays for the beer at the end of the first day? There’s no wrong answer for any of these questions, just make sure you know the flow so that every night it isn’t some kind of chaotic modern dance where something might be missed. We opted to buy six extra batteries for the camera and an extra charger. This was thought of as an extravagance, but it was actually fit our needs almost perfectly. By the end of every day we were calling for the batteries which just finished the charge cycle. We switched the batteries 10 times a day minimum. Modern cameras are just sick for power. They remind me of our Executive producer, but that’s another story ;)

You can bring the food to the location on the load day or on the first day of shooting. Just make sure that you add three hours to your call time if you’re going to shop for and bring things to set. Don’t leave people without their Jerky or Vitamin water. A set without food is a sad, sad thing. It’s like a rock concert without drugs. Use the RV to store the food if there’s no space for a kitchen on location, but if you’re lucky enough to have the room, set it up early as a food and social room. This does two things, it keeps the food off of the set, and it’s awkward to socialize in a messy area. People tend to keep the place cleaner if they have to sit and look at it while talking. Our kitchen area swung between health code violation and pleasant. Pleasant was usually the product of someone sitting around chatting and then deciding to clean rather than abandon a conversation with one of the many very attractive actors or crew members we had. I’m not kidding, I’ve never met a more attractive crew. The women in the make up room broke many hearts and minds while they prettied up the cast with their skills and the general surroundings with their presence.

Don’t let food be the issue of anyone on the creative staff. Anyone can clean even the producer. And anyone can grab a cup of coffee for anyone else (the director used to coffee up one of the actors when he flagged), but don’t let any of the concerns of food come to the feet of the people on the set. Designate the lunch schedule and menu to your most popular grip. Nobody gets mad at a grip for a late lunch or a bad choice of food one day. Prepare for some problems with the food. It’s going to be bad. If you wanted to start a chef school this would be a real problem. Shooting a movie, it’s just part of the territory. Put barbed wire around this new land and relegate it to a kind of social DMZ. Have the grip informally poll the people for things they’d like to see on the shelves and occasionally spring for specialty items to let them know you listen and will provide them with comfort food when the budget and time allows.
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There are plenty of production scheduling options out there. You can get the templates from studios – but they’ll have a myriad of position call times that you’ll need to ignore. I doubt your janitorial staff needs to meet with security before going through the walk-through of how extras will be handled on a certain shooting day. You’re more likely to simply use the reports in Final Draft and create excel spreadsheets. We have these available as templates and it is suggested that you create a calendar for every event before shooting and a spreadsheet for every day of shooting.

Start two months before the first shoot date. Bring in all of the crew and make sure they all get to know each other. Hand out scripts to the head of each department which have capital letters on the top every page PROPS, COSTUMES, MAKE UP, and CONTINUITY. Go through the scripts and have the head of each department make lists on the pages of the production script. All will have scene numbers and you can assign each of the department heads to get you a list of everything they have and need for each scene. It’s important to do this as a group because you’ll be surprised at how many props and costumes can be hunted down just by pooling the resources of your department heads. We had half of the props accounted for by the time the first meeting broke. The props master of course had to collect them all and label them by scene, but it was a great start. The costume designer will take notes of all changes of costume and arrange meetings with every cast member in the next two weeks. By the end of the month, she should have everything in her possession (unless you have to rent certain items) and be ready to hang them separated by scene markers. Some of your cast will have to surrender some of their personal wardrobe to accomplish this, but it is in the best interest of the production to have everything on site well before the shooting begins. The UPM makes construction notes, and starts delegating construction projects. We had to build a plexiglass picture frame that had a drainage system in it. What I’m saying is that some things need to be built. You aren’t going to find that kind of thing lying around. Include make-up and hair and bring some fashion magazines that might help them understand how each person should look in each scene. They can cut out looks, and put them in the script. It will look a little odd, but it’s better to have a good idea of every aspect of production than it is to expect everything will come together and have no proof of that. It will keep the engine going on those days when you think there’s far too much to do. Look at work that others have already done and it will push the production forward.

That meeting breaks and the UPM calls the next day to go over the main points with each department head just so there are no miscommunications. This might sound like middle management bullshit, but wait until you’re expecting something and the people who are supposed to provide it claim it was never mentioned EVER. If people are not completely clear about what to do it’s a coin flip over whether it gets done. Underline every meeting with follow up calls. It’s not annoying if it’s only once a week.

The rehearsal schedule can start as early as two months before shooting or as late as one month before shooting. It depends on the director. We at DS films like to split the difference and have a 6 week rehearsal period. Three weeks for each film approximately. Don’t try to switch back and forth between characters in one rehearsal. It can lead to bleedover from one production to the next. The real novelty of this production style for actors is that it gives them the chance to create two different personas, and present them to an audience emphasizing the range and abilities of the actor. Playing a dramatic lead then a thriller villain is really quite an intriguing jump – and people who watch the finished product get to see the outcome right in front of them, back to back sometimes. It’s a powerful statement if an actor really invests in both roles. You can help him do that by rehearsing each film separately.

One technique our director used once everyone was comfortable with the blocking and the action of the scene, he’d give the actors sides to a new scene with all of the character names missing. The actors had to read the scene out loud and decide who was saying each line of dialog in the process. The actors started out by making tons of mistakes but by the end of rehearsals, they’d gotten accustomed to the different voices of each character and they barely needed character names even for added scenes or altered ones. This rehearsal method stressed the idea of understanding the unique way that every character expresses him or herself. Once the actor tuned in, it became easier to shift from one character to the next.

The director had everyone rehearse the feature we were shooting second – first. He wanted to go into the shooting of the first film with the momentum of three weeks of solid rehearsal on the project. He also chose to shoot the darker dramatic script first. I think that was the right choice, but I’m not sure if it’s a rule or just something that needs to be discovered in rehearsal. The darker themes might have been harder to digest at the end of a grueling shoot. But, if a director thinks that he needs that initial burst of energy to get their comedy off to the races, I don’t see why the decision should be set in stone.

Rehearsals were color coded and blocked off in two hour chunks. The director often would spend ten hours a day working with five different sets of actors overlapping some of them and having others come for only a short amount of time. The AD was often called in to watch a scene that the director had put on its feet while the director moved on to another group. Having two connected spaces for rehearsal is ideal. We used a music studio that belonged to a friend (shout Mark) and utilized the many rooms to keep things in motion. Some of the actors stayed well past their allotted time working scenes with their partner. This investment of time and creative energy is one of those things that many Youtube productions just don’t make time for. There are fantastic ideas out there and wonderfully talented people to realize them, but without practice many of these collaborations devolve into blind stabs at brilliance. One in a million lunges into the dark hits the heart of the mark. Spending the time to shape a performance before you hit the set is the best investment of time that you can possibly make. It speeds production, it helps continuity, it gives cast and crew a reason to believe that they can be good before they’ve seen it on the monitor.

The rehearsal process should convince everyone that the scripts are pieces of rock solid art – but don’t buy into the bullshit. Under the surface, people are discovering things about your scripts that you won’t be able to predict. Some of the cast have questions in their heads. Get them out on the table and address them now. Wait until you’re on set to address these questions and you might not like the outcome. We had the writer pen another monologue for one of the leads because of something she said in rehearsal. The director backed the script, but then with some convincing, saw that the actor’s point really could lead to an interesting twist. Using the talents of those around you includes rehearsal. Don’t be afraid to change or add something. Don’t be afraid to let your actors use their own words (especially after you’ve gotten what you want from the scene). The factory-style of production puts so many limitations on what can and can’t be done. Break free of that paradigm and find ways to take risks that actually benefit the finished product. It’s our assertion that the people you cast are talented and might be stronger collaborators is they see the door is open to their ideas.

I know that anyone still reading this must be absolutely sick in the head devoted to making their film. I applaud you for that while wishing that I could confer our experience in more entertaining flourishes or insightful anecdotes. Know that when I say something that sounds painfully obvious to me it hurts, but at the same time I want everyone to gain a full understanding of what led our film company to put these methods into place.

I’ll talk more about the charts because I know that was one of the best organizers of the actual shoot.

Set up Excel with different columns for props, art direction, costumes, and the name of every actor who is going to be there that day. Color code the schedule with two hour blocks of time. In our case we went 11-9 and every two hours we had call times for actors. Actors were expected to show up thirty minutes before their “SET CALL TIME” to get into wardrobe and make up. You can use the pictures from costumes and the prop list from props to cut and paste all of the necessary items for each two hour block. Try to schedule people in long chunks of time and avoid the dreaded swing shift (scheduling an actor from 11-1 then from 7-9 that same night) it’s just common decency to treat everyone’s time like it matters. It does matter. Let’s face it, sometimes people are going to feel like their time was wasted. This happens on million dollar production days. The money just eases over any perceived slight. In low budget land, respect has to be treated like currency. This is a bit dangerous because if you give one person more respect on set, it’s like you’re paying them more. These people are actors and they can perceive a director’s inequity with the same keen senses that allow them to get into the minds of characters they play. Be considerate and organized.

We shot the first film, The Best Sex, in sequence for the most part. The build of the drama seemed to make it easier for us to follow this mold. This is not common. Usually you shoot out of sequence and build schedules around other details of production (it’s usually easier to schedule an entire day of “night” shooting if you’re in a studio because the lighting can stay the same through the entire day of the shoot). Our second film we shot out of sequence and other than a couple of arguments, or should I call them a new term that we coined on set “arguscussions” about whether or not a certain scene had been shot from a certain angle or not – we got the most of both experiences of scheduling. The first, I think, plays into the hands of a drama where characters experience big shifts. The slow burn of the entire set up weighs into the progression of the character and you can almost see the actors carrying it with them, layer upon layer as the shoot goes along. The second method is more efficient and it really puts the AD through the ringer. He or she has to keep detailed shot list records, but as long as everything gets done, it will save an entire day of production (in our case we finished almost two days sooner than we did on the first film even though the shooting scripts were pretty close in length).

Post the shooting schedule on the internet and get ready for at least one person to call that night with a huge problem. Change the schedule, post it, then repeat again and again until the first day of shooting.

Shooting schedule advice:

Schedule the night scenes at night. I know it’s kind of a “duh” thing, but the energy of a nighttime scene is a bit biological. Since you’re usually working with people with limited experience on a feature film set, it’s helpful to make things as natural as possible.

Schedule at least one full off day for your lead. Even if they are in practically every scene, find a way to shoot one day without them. As a director, you get tired, and you’re not expected to carry the story forward in a convincing way on every take. Our director would actually limit the number of takes for certain actors to keep them from losing momentum later in the day.

Realize you’re not going to please everyone with the way you schedule. You and the crew are there all day every day. Remind people from outset that there will be times when you will be running behind and that is in no way a personal issue. It’s a production issue and everyone should treat it as such.

Schedule your lunch hour with the AC and AD getting insert shots. It will help coverage and it’s nice to eat knowing that important work is getting done.

]]>pr@doubleshotfilms.comNone2009-07-10T22:21:30-07:00http://doubleshotfilms.com/blog/files/20d77abdc5d421307781f7e32acc7cb2-5.html#unique-entry-id-5http://doubleshotfilms.com/blog/files/20d77abdc5d421307781f7e32acc7cb2-5.html#unique-entry-id-5Choosing your camera and grip package

There are two schools of thought here.

School One: this is the most important piece of equipment that you’ll have on the shoot. Extend the maximum amount of time and effort choosing this and get the best equipment available on the rental market. This includes digital prime lenses, specialty matte boxes and equipment that a professional director of photography will want badly. School one is for single shot films on a tight schedule. The first film I did with the director, we rented a Sony HD rig and even on double secret discount student off season pricing it cost 7K for two weeks. The security of renting is somewhat reassuring because the camera had to be replaced mid-shoot and the rental company Bexel actually drove it to our location to swap it out. The package came with prime lenses which added depth of field to the image and made a few “arty” wide shots possible that would not have been with a standard zoom lens. This is a great way to go, but the costs of shooting and posting on HD cam make it a luxury that we can talk about in this blog, but it won’t get both features shot on schedule or on budget.

School Two: the DS method. The camera is important, but recent advances in resolution of prosumer cameras make it less important to dive into the rental waters to get the kind of images you want. It is the attention to the story and the innovation of your methods that really grab a new audience of viewers who are tired of the techniques that have many movies looking a lot like television because of the visual grammar of the shooting. People are stuck in the mode of a kind of large budget malaise. How many films are shot in an innovative way today? Nobody wants to risk 30 million on an untried method of storytelling. DS is upfront about the fact that the stakes of a 5K production are extremely high to the people in production, but we don’t think that there are the kind of outward pressures to conform.

Our point is that a decent camera can be bought at Amazon.com or BandHphoto (be careful of the NY electronics stores that advertise unrealistic prices, you might find yourself with a product that arrives late and “just happens” to be a demo which had Dr.Pepper pilled into the SDI port) and serve as a lightweight production camera which can fit anywhere, be hoisted in the air by a simple crane pole and stabilized in a myriad of cheap steadicams. So what are the choices for these pint-sized powerhouses? And where do you go to find the kind of geeky commitment to every spec published and discover something that might affect a single low-light night shot on a fast moving object crossing the field of vision and requiring a frame rate of greater than 120 to adequately be used by your SFX post production manager? Dvinfo.net is probably the best place to hang out if you’re the director or the producer going into the camera acquisition phase of the production. Learn all that you can about the different cameras and the comparisons that might help your workflow. Do you want something like the JVC 700 where you can buy your own SD cards and go straight to hard drive on set? Would you like the dependability of Sony? Does your cinematographer like the way the rig feels? How about a Panny? The 200 really set the world on fire, but some complain about the ergonomics. The 500 is 10K so unless you have a high threshold on the credit card, that could be a deal breaker. It’s best to educate yourself no matter what your plan is. Speaking to the cinematographer on set sometimes requires a vocabulary that you will build after reading hours of GRUBHUB22 teasing JVCDUI about how the underwater housing for his camera leads to a pinkish hue in bright settings and how JVCDUI retorts that the lens on GRUB’s camera breathes especially in dry desert conditions. The fact that neither of these people want or plan to ever use their cameras in the desert or underwater really doesn’t figure into the conversation, but you’ve still picked up some of the lingo and the strengths and weaknesses of the products that they each tout. The big secret of the camera is that ANY camera can be used to film a great story and it will turn out well. Spend an extra afternoon deciding how to shoot a scene and it will show up much more than if you spend that time deciding what to shoot it with. That’s just our opinion here at DS, but we really are firm in the belief. Choose the camera quickly and get to the cool way you’re going to use it. Gaffers tape a skateboard and your father’s 18 wheeler might be the secret to the most interesting way to peer into the world that you’re creating. Plan it, shoot it and prove it. We used a JVC product on the set of our first HD feature and the value held up quite well. Proper color correction after the edit can push your finished product into competition with the best of cameras (we had ours done free on the hyper expensive Davinci through a friend of a friend, but you can find people from all over the world on mandy.com, upload the shots you need color corrected to your server and have the images completely done without ever meeting the artist). We rented the matte box and filter set from the cinematographer’s brother and bought the camera for around 5K. We sold it a year later with over forty hours of footage completed, for 4K. Find a company that will rent you gear for a year for a thousand dollars and we’ll publish it. This method gives you the flexibility to do pick ups, hunt for exteriors, get shots of cool visual transitions while you’re in post production. People are going to be interested in seeing the way you tell a story and the place you’re telling the story from. Don’t let time limits on equipment hold you back.

Lights, camera, action. Two down, one to go.

The camera is in the bag, now where and what else to you have to have for the production? Find a gaffer before you start into this next section. He will have a list of fixtures that he believes he needs after seeing the primary location. Remember, if most of your shooting is outside using available light, this part of the package is going to be minimal, but if you’re spending a lot of time indoors, you need to have this ready to go and ready to load the night before the production starts.

Hiring a grip truck is too expensive and you don’t need it. Rent an RV, yes an RV for around 45 dollars a day. The link is on the side bar. This costs about fifteen hundred dollars. It sounds like a lot, but with a 25 footer the transportation issues are solved. There’s a generator on site. You can store food, transport lights and grip. You can even sleep or gather your thoughts in a private place. This might be the best investment that you make. Use the back bedroom as the load area. You’ll be packing it with lights and c-stands and c-47s and gels. The front section is for food and socializing. The actors will probably enjoy saying that they are going to their trailer for the first few days. Above the driver’s seat is a loft bed where people can hide and rest.

Back to the grip. Keep your grip rental down to the amount of power that your site can handle. Don’t get 5 1500 watt lamps if you blow a breaker at three. Have the gaffer check out the location and get a lay of the electrical land. Use someone with experience, and someone who is organized. It’s a pain halting production for a blown light. It’s even worse when the person who is replacing the light doesn’t know which bulb to put in, or where the replacement lamps are. Our gaffer was pulling power from every side of the building to keep us lit. And all of the cables were secured and taped down like a pro set. If you don’t have an experienced hand, just talk to the rental guys. They all went to film school or at least know how to mock people who went to film school. It’s often a surly crowd, but if you can get past the first impression (you’re an idiot and they know it) and get to something more positive (you’re an idiot, but you’re at least working on it), they will often mentor you through the situation. Send Bob, not the director.

Gels, filters, diffusion, c-47, BTP and NDF. Look them up before you ask for each of them. I’d give you the rundown, but the surprise is really worth it. We rented our grip package for about five hundred dollars for the month. We were charged for two extra lamps that blew and that cost another hundred.

Other essential nick nacks.

Borrow a set of sticks from a local college but get a good one. Wherever you’re going to set your camera for the majority of the production it should be safe, secure and stable. Buy the extra gear if you’re going with a steadycam. Your operator will be able to work better and longer. Sometimes quality equipment is self-serving. We had a 23 year-old camera operator who was hunched over like a grandfather after five long takes using a hand-held rig. Think of operating a camera like doing yoga, there’s a reason why people don’t have 12 hour yoga classes. Anything you can do to ease the burden, do it. You can buy a dolly for less than a thousand dollars, but if that’s too rich, make one. There are several sites which show you how to mount casters and build the whole apparatus. You can also buy a decent fixed caster dolly from a moving supplies company. Check out some of the research on sites like this for DIY dolly and accessories. For something more professional you might want something with pnumatic rise capability like this for 200 dollars. Remember, you’ll need an extra grip if you’re doing dolly moves and you’ll need to train them before you hit set unless you want to go up to take 32 on a single camera move. Even a great actor loses it after take 31.

Your UPM should be the touchstone of the search for crew. The DS model calls for nine people on set. I can already hear some people screaming at the monitor that nothing can be done with only nine people on set, but to that I’d say that nine people is a luxury. Sound mixer, push his equipment into a corner and don’t let him eat until the end of the day. An essential person, he makes sure the sound is not peaking and tweaking and sets the microphone positions for each shot. He has to get along with the boom guy. He holds the mic and keeps it pointed toward the actors mouths. The director job is as different as the many people who have held it. In this kind of production, the director probably knows more about the stories than anyone in the room. AD, that’s the one exception. The AD calls out each shot and often calls action. The AD collects the tapes, sound cards, transfers batteries and keeps the actors aware of the upcoming shots. The art director is responsible for the visual elements of the set. Ours also did continuity and occasionally painted murals when the camera was pointed at the other wall. Make-up and hair can easily be one person. This person usually changes during the week, but it’s good to keep someone with a powder puff nearby in case an actor starts to shine. We used a production assistant for this sometimes, but we were lucky enough to have a separate room and our make-up staff was just too beautiful (I think everyone had a crush on at least two of them). The wardrobe person is especially important in the DS model. They put together a picture book of every look for every character in every scene. This is done with stills and often the costumes are pulled from wardrobes and old high-school costume closets. You’ll need a gaffer, and this person will also do some of the production assistant jobs. The final person you’ll need is the Director of Photography. I’m going to go into some detail on this job as it has been historically the position of high value and he is usually chosen by the director and the producer rather than the UPM.

Your DP can be consulted in camera decisions. He might also be your best connection for equipment and rentals. If he comes fully supplied, don’t fret the details. Make sure that he has the equipment to realize the vision that both of you bring to the project.

How do you find a cinematographer? Put an ad online at mandy.com or go local and find if there is a videographer’s club. Scout the people who browse the cinematography magazines in the middle of the day on a weekday. That way you know that they’re free as well as interested in shooting movies. A talented DP who doesn’t show up is of little help to the project. A DP whose ego overshadows his talent is likely to be your cross to bear in this undertaking. I’ve never met a DP who undervalued his or her talents. In three films I’ve worked with excellent people behind the camera, but it has sometimes been a rocky road. We at DS films have had only one actor who needed to back out. We have had a couple of grips who didn’t show up. We even had a day when the lunch truck didn’t show up and we were paying them! During the course of pre-production we have had six cinematographers who thought they were on the team. They all loved the scripts. They all loved us, but one thing about DPs is they LOVE themselves. Remember that, and don’t take it personally. They are not all the divas of production by the way. We had one who was so down to earth and talented, that I dare say I felt like the one we settled on could have worked with anybody and made their project the better for it. For every DP like that however, we’ve found four or five which need constant attention. This can be a positive. If the artisitry is good, don’t worry about the personality. If the personality asserts itself in a negative way, figure that out soon and get them out of the room. It is easier and most would probably say more effective to have your brother hold the camera than to have people bickering on set. It really depends on personality and that is why I’m giving you the choice to get the camera package before meeting the DP or after.

Why they are always worth the trouble. They are the only people on set who work as hard and as often as the director. A cool, efficient shooter will make the story more innovative and suggest things that a storytelling director can’t see. An insightful DP will provide a vital set of eyes on the performance of the actors when a visual director is more concerned with the fog flooding the stage than the lines being read during the shot. A good relationship with a DP is what makes all of the directing teams in Hollywood such a rare and wonderful collaboration. If your brother has talent, you might tell him about the Wachowski, or Cohens.

DPs often want you to employ an AC that they often work with. Stand behind the idea that nobody on site gets paid. If one person gets paid and that gets around – it is the end of the communal experience. That means one person is a professional and all of the rest of the people are just pretending. Talk about a morale spanking. I saw the director actually refuse the offer of one of the producers to pay for an AC. At the time I thought he was crazy, but we found and trained someone who turned out to be the coolest person on set. Even the DP had to admit that the end result was better than paying his friend. We all want professional results, but don’t let anyone tell you that you have to write a check to get them. If you work hard enough and long enough, you can put some professionals to shame (just watch cable TV series, but not the syfy channel because their series rock).

The auditions are done and the cinematographer is ready to ride the camera. Now it is time to organize the events leading up to your first day shooting. Keep to the schedule and you will have two feature films shot three months from the day you put up your casting notice.
]]>pr@doubleshotfilms.comhow we did it2009-07-11T17:39:19-07:00http://doubleshotfilms.com/blog/files/90466f69c1c24e30eb39144f60fb2136-4.html#unique-entry-id-4http://doubleshotfilms.com/blog/files/90466f69c1c24e30eb39144f60fb2136-4.html#unique-entry-id-4Auditions

I’ll start with an outline of events that worked well for our production then get into some advice that might be better for auditions outside of the major cities. Start by advertising the auditions. Let your casting director field all of the calls (again, the director should be in a room drawing storyboards or researching camera techniques) and make sure you use online casting call collection houses like Nowcasting.com. Go traditional too, put an ad in your local arts and variety paper, or in Backstage or Backstage West. When you put your ad in Backstage, expect to get several hundred headshots. Our first production produced five garbage bags full of headshots (don’t take this personally, but some had to go in the trash). Start creating piles of possible character choices and write the character names on the headshots. This will make it easier when you’re sitting down later to make decisions. Print out headshots from the web (or scan in headshots from the mail) and create a folder of people that you want to see. A good way to decide how many people to call in for auditions is to multiply your cast by 10. We saw nearly 200 people when I was AD for The Second Degree. For DS films’ first production we saw only 78. It turned out to be just as productive and we had just as many good options. It’s my belief that there comes a point where seeing too many people makes you focus on memorable auditions and not talented actors. Video tape every audition. We actually built the original montage of coffee orders into our finished film. We had asked every actor to look straight into the camera and order their favorite coffee house concoction and used that footage to open the film. This will not be possible for every kind of film, but see if there’s something you can use from auditions. Put a greenscreen behind the actors and have them hold up title cards that can be used as transitions in your film. Create a montage of screams that you’ll use in your horror film as part of the audio. Get creative with how you use your time and the time of your performers. It will feel good to check off things that need to get done and if you can do two at a time, fantastic.

Where to audition

Both of the productions that I’ve worked on used spaces at colleges to audition. It is easy to park there. There are people roaming around who can direct people to the right room. There are facilities there (like studio space and performance spaces) that you’re not going to find anywhere else for free. We found a current student at a local community college and paid him minimum wage to operate the camera in the studio while we auditioned 78 people over two days. The studio wasn’t being used anyway and it cost us 35 dollars a day to set up in the lobby of a college film department and share their facilities. Don’t audition at a house if possible. People are already nervous about the kind of production you’re running (it’s obviously not backed by Fox) and the first impression should be that you’re thrifty but as professional as you can be given the circumstances.

Think of other places, too. Audition at a local theater if they’ll give you a space. Talk to them and see if some of the actors would like to invite you to audition people there. It might give you an inside track on some talent that you can use in the production. Hotel rooms are a terrible choice, but hotel meeting rooms are fantastic. Do you know anyone who works in the hospitality industry and can get you the meeting room at the local Marriot for two days over the weekend when most business people are on their way home? On the lower end of the scale, talk to the parks department about any recreation facilities that they have that they might allow a member of the community to use for a day or two. There are a hundred options out there, make sure people walking in to meet you are presented with the best one available. Schedule two days wherever you choose because you want to give actors choices. Create a time table to see four to seven people an hour. This means you schedule seven and deal with how many show up. Post a website with a map to the auditions and create sides (scenes from the film) for actors to study before coming. Put information on the website about what you want the actor to prepare. We have some ideas on that, but they are merely suggestions and it really is up to the director and the producers.

How to audition

People in a small town aren’t going to want to memorize a Shakespeare monologue. People from the big city can polish a single monologue so well that it’s hard to tell what they will do when given a new challenge. With that in mind we’ve created a different way to audition that gave us excellent results.

The DS films audition model (thanks Sackerson): Have the actors bring an item from their past. A game, a stuffed animal, a baseball glove, and have them explain why this item is so special to them. It is an instant window into the personality of the actor. There is nothing false about our emotional connections to the past, and this kind of source material shows how actors deal with “real” moments in front of the camera. That does not mean that you know how they read in character, but it gives a great insight into who they are and how they communicate. A director can often use their natural cadence as part of the screening process. If someone is naturally like a character, and you don’t have months to draw that character out of them, it’s best to know who is going to be closest to each role when they’re being themselves. This is not the only measure of casting by far, but I found it valuable and it also was the start of a bonding process between the actors and the above the line people watching them. It felt like you were getting to know the people while you learned how they presented themselves. After that we had people pair off and read for the parts. It’s good to get a look at what they do with the material before you start dismissing people (or elevating them to the role through their personality alone). When you’re done with the auditions, have the actors turn to the camera and hold up a card with their name and contact information. Prepare the card for them and color code the cards. We had everyone we really liked hold up a blue card and everyone else got white. It isn’t important until you get to the final decisions and you want to look them up on the tape (or the digital media of your choice). Watching how each person looks on screen can be an important criteria. One of the leads of the DS films got her part over another almost equally talented actress because of the way she held a close-up. We had to go to the tape to decide and it’s great if the tape is organized to zip through quickly and find the ones you like best.

Leave the casting director in the waiting room. This might sound sneaky, but it really saved our hides on a couple of casting choices. Once, a person who was up for a major role was given a smaller one, and she turned out to be a very complicated person to have on set (and she was there only two days, we could not have done it for 25) and the other time we were weighing two people for a part and the casting director just threw away one of the headshots. Afterward we heard a story from a crew member who had worked on set with the one the casting director discarded and let’s just say it was the right choice. Seeing how actors treat each other between takes can be a vital part of a small community like the one you’re fostering with your films. People have to hang lights, hold booms and spray and make-up, and dress the people in your cast. Don’t you want them to WANT to do these jobs? Then don’t invite people into the production who are hard to get along with. I know talent is provocative, and it shows up on screen, but when given the choice between equal talents, it’s nice to know that one of them is a person you’ll enjoy the process with and the other is not. If your casting director wants to be in on auditions, find another trustworthy set of eyes and ears to work the lobby. Find someone who isn’t trying to make friends (this is why the casting director is the perfect choice as they notoriously have few to no friends in real life).

Call backs might be necessary so leave that door open at the end of the auditions. Most likely, you’ll find that there are more women than men who have talent. That’s just the way it is.

Auditions are probably not over. Be prepared to find specialty roles outside of your first casting call. We had a hearing-impaired role and in order to fill it we went to websites that dealt with hearing-impaired issues. We got the word out and in the end we auditioned a young lady who EVERYONE in the cast fell in love with. We had several Native Americans audition, but that again came through active participation in community websites. There was on role that we just didn’t feel we had seen the right actor for and we held off. We looked at three leading men outside of the main auditions. We eventually cast one of the leads from a meeting arranged through Nowcasting after the main auditions. The actor was a fantastic choice and we were glad that we didn’t simply try to fit in one of the people from the first wave of auditions. It’s hard to tell people that they’re not right for something, but you don’t have to, just hand them a white card with their name on it and thank them for their time.

Now it’s time to make choices. This is where personalities can clash. It’s safer for the director to take the temperature of the room and then take everyone’s input into a room with the casting director then make the decisions. Everyone is going to like someone who didn’t make it into the film. That happens, but if everyone feels like they were listened to and their opinion counted, it shouldn’t pull to hard at the fabric of this close-knit group that you’ve built. Give the producer a small role if he wants it. It happens to be a great way to make his efforts personal. We had one producer play a role in the film. He did an excellent job and it made working with him an even greater pleasure because we got to see his talents on screen. If the producer turns out to be a bad actor and he gets cut from the film, don’t tell him until the screening then run.

Other methods of casting in a smaller market:

In a less crowded market (LA has so many casting calls a day that one can be rejected twenty times a week if he is “lucky”) you may have to take your camera to the talent. You may have to convince someone to play a part rather than cast one from many. Reluctant actors sometimes have a nice energy about them. Cast a real cop in your town and you don’t need to get a costume. Cast a farmer and you won’t have to tell him what to do in between lines to his daughter, he’ll know his business. Casting like this is nothing new. Eisenstein did it, Ken Loach did it. Don’t be afraid of populating your films with real people. Acting is a craft and an art. That does not mean that a natural talent can’t be included and even featured in some cases. Your film can approach the story with a more naturalistic style if it fits the story.

You may feel enticed to bring in talent from out of state. This leads to lodging issues, and opens up the possibility for division in the group. If this person is the final piece to a puzzle, put them in place and figure it out. If this is a friend from out of town, tell him that you’re staying local.

I don’t know if this is the place for my friends rant, but I’ll go ahead. On every film shoot you can expect to make one or two new friends who will stay in your life and surprise you. The reverse is true as well. You can expect to lose one or two friends. I don’t know why, but in each of my three films I gained two and lost one. None of the gains or losses were expected. The additions became good friends and the losses tended to be very close friends. I’m not sure if it’s just me, or if it is some cosmic equasion to which those who are freakishly dedicated to film are tuned, but I’ve polled the top people in our last film and they had similar experiences (not quite as predictable as mine, the director claimed to have lost two friends and gained me which he called a half J)

Do not have friends fill the important positions in your crew or cast. If someone you know wants to audition, let them, but do not appoint anyone because you think they are great people and great people won’t let you down. This leads very often to a situation where the end result isn’t so great. The project is terribly important to you, and you can’t avoid it but your crew of friends just sees their responsibilities as a favor to you. Now, I’m not charming enough to warrant 32 days of 12-hour favors. You might be. If not, make sure that your friends earn their way on the staff or cast. It’s much more likely that someone who sees the films as their ticket to something big will come through big. It’s not a knock on your friends or the fraternity that brings people to lean upon social bonds when they themselves are in uncertain waters (Watters happens to be the name of one of the friends I made during the first production), rather it is a component of human nature. People who love you want to see you fail. People who don’t know you yet might be convinced that you’re the type who can beat the odds and produce an epic story out of pure passion and a few pages of paper - and you can carry that uncertainty across the finish line a lot more easily than the cumbersome load of friends piling into your clown car. Your social situation might be different and the people in your town might be the type who you know won’t ever let you down – that’s awesome. I’m just letting you know that in this situation, your best friend is the person who wants the job the most.

]]>pr@doubleshotfilms.comhow we did it2009-07-12T17:31:36-07:00http://doubleshotfilms.com/blog/files/14d1e853215d33c74cdb5ba3bd8a0c65-3.html#unique-entry-id-3http://doubleshotfilms.com/blog/files/14d1e853215d33c74cdb5ba3bd8a0c65-3.html#unique-entry-id-3Location

The location is probably the first large challenge to your film. If your film revolves around a bank vault, you might be able to build one inside of a commercial property that a local businessman donated because of the tough economy, so don’t set your entire story in a different location because you don’t know how you are going to get a certain space. We started by searching for a coffee shop that would allow us to film after hours, but ended up a space in a downtown studio that was donated to us through Craigslist. Put out feelers into the community. Look for abandoned business space in your community and bypass the commercial real-estate people and talk directly to the owners. Go to your county seat and get the names and numbers of people who own property if you’re looking for an exterior. You’ll be amazed at how nice people can be if you approach them palms up and welcoming. Don’t send the director to do any of the negotiating. The director is supposed to know all of the details and the conversation can turn into an argument over whether you’ll need access to the bathrooms or not, and how many actors will be on somebody’s lawn on such and such time in the day. These details can lead to an “I’m sorry” very quickly. Send Bob. Bob doesn’t know everything about the production, but he knows that the director is fantastic and the people doing the shoot wouldn’t do a thing that would annoy anyone anywhere or anytime. Bob can call the director to ask specific questions that have to be answered, but he doesn’t have to come up with all of the answers himself. This is important when you’re asking people to go out of their way to help you. They want to like the people who approach them and very few people immediately like a director (no offense). They often like a nice production assistant who is donating his or her time to the production because they feel it is so worthy.

Use every person at that first meeting to find leads for the main location. Send Bob to follow up. You’ll need the location for 34 days if you follow our model. By the end of that long month, you’ll have ninety percent of your filming done and you can start a rough edit. Once you find your location, you can start making schedules for rehearsals and preparing the production script. Really, once you have your primary location, your film can and will be shot with the proper structure and organization applied around the edges. I remember the meeting where the people at Treehouse gave us the keys to the small studio for February. Generally, November and February are great months for low-budget productions because so many of the pros have time to donate during these slow production months and also the rental companies are stocked with rigs that are doing them little good sitting there. We left the building, keys in hand, knowing that it was up to us now.

Buy a gift card with half of the money that you’ve allotted for the production. In our case this was around 5K. Let the director or producer hold on to this, and give it to the people who need to buy things for the production. This will save you from having to pay back a group of people who are already working for you for free. It’s a small comfort, but you’ll need it once the production staff grows to 40 or more.

You’re ready for the next step.
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Casting Director: Use somebody you trust. Find somebody who has an opinion that you respect. If you can walk all over the person in this job, you’ll be losing a vital eye on the project. Some people believe that the movie is made in casting. I’m not so sure about that, but I do think a movie can be seriously restricted by the wrong casting choices. Find a casting director who knows about all of the internet sources for talent like Nowcasting.com and Backstage West Online. The minute the casting notice goes out, you’ll feel like the project is really happening. Find someone who can maintain communication between the actors and the director, and set up a schedule for the auditions. If the auditions are disorganized, you have an extra hurdle convincing talented actors that you’re serious. Remember, they are donating their time because they see you as a viable step towards their own goals. The casting director might be in the room at auditions, but we’ve found that having the casting director sit out with the actors, he or she can really get an idea of the unvarnished character of the individual actors. The casting director on our first double shot did us a huge favor by weeding out people who we “really didn’t want to spend an entire month on set with.”

Producer: This is the person with the phone and the unbounded energy to pursue any lead. If the producer is ever late for a meeting, he or she is not your producer. They have to care about the way the machine runs and casual producing leads to hobby-like results. Nothing should be good enough for your producer. He or she should be able to find people to go out into the world and serve all of the needs of the production. Low-budget producers have to have a personal stake in the project. That is because this person also has to pick up any of the loose ends, occasionally step in and find locations, pick up food, or find the place where your DP’s car has been towed. Be careful of any clash of egos between the producer and the director. The best producer is one who cares so much about the project that he or she leaves ego on the sideline. Unfortunately, this producer hasn’t been invented by the publication date of this blog so here are the things to look for: connections. A producer who knows everyone in town is better than one who buys everyone lunch and likes to sit around afterward talking about how cool the movie is going to be. Another thing to look for, unlimited cell phone plan: a producer who returns calls every day before going to bed is the one who never lets anything drop. That’s the one you want in your corner. Finally, find someone with vision and creativity. You wouldn’t want a director of photography who had no vision, why would you want the person who is explaining with passion the reasons that you should be allowed to film inside the bear habitat while the bears are still there, to sound anything less than totally committed to his ideas and (if you are the director) yours?

UPM: The production manager is the one that has to be everywhere and unwilling to say no to any task. Get them while they’re young and energetic. Save their energy for when they get on set, but give them creative input from day one. This is the person who all of your crew will report to and therefore he or she must be ready to dig into the task of finding people to volunteer their time. Actors will come to the project, crew members sometimes need to be found - convinced and then superglued to one of the lighting fixtures to get them to stay and perform their jobs. The UPM should be on good terms with the producer, because he will be the main third arm of the producer. Make sure from the beginning that this person knows that a month of their life will be spent on this shoot (in production, it is a 24-7 kind of deal) and that before the shoot they will be needed almost every day for three months. If they have a job, they’re going to lose it. If they have a car, they’re going to wreck it. Ours did. He was great. Peace Vullin.

Business Manager: This can be the producer, but it really is best to have someone looking out just for the business end. If there’s someone who just looks at the numbers and statements and not the entire picture, it’s easier to keep it real when it comes time to shoot. The BM should immediately file for incorporation to protect everyone from litigation based on any liability claims during the shoot. We never experienced any danger in our first DS film, but we did have electrical problems (and, fortunately, a top notch gaffer who fixed things on site). Had it been anyone else, I would have worried about their safety; playing with a hot breaker box can get you burned. Rather than filing for a new corporation, you might want to find a friend who already is incorporated and simply become a shell company under him or her. Once incorporation is settled, pick a number with the BM (this is usually how much money you personally have in the bank although DS films wants to eventually give out 25K production grants once we’ve proven the model works and investors see the value in our kind of “outsourcing” of jobs into small town America). There is no flexibility in this number. Treat it like a constant, like PI, Napier’s constant or Brun’s constant. You can’t change PI so learn to work with it. The business manager is the person who most often says no, so make sure he or she has the kind of voice that makes that particular syllable sound pleasant.

Director: This is the person who will be in perpetual quicksand mode for the next six months, so get to know him early. This is the person he or she really is and it’s OK to like them for it. Don’t expect to see this initial director personality to reemerge until after post production however. The director can and will fill more than one job during the shoot. The more knowledge that this person has of the equipment, and the roles of the people handling this equipment the better. Our director knew the camera, NLE, post production workflow, audio posting and SFX process almost as well as the people who did the work. That was good because he could talk to them all and get them on the same page before the project even began. There will be more later about the choices going into production. What kind of camera do you want to use? Final Cut Pro or Avid? Do you want to use green screen and then shoot plates or does the background for your locations fit the bill? If your director can’t at least ask intelligent questions when these ideas are raised, it will be harder to achieve his vision of the film and that is after all the point of all of this preparation. Our director was fantastic at balancing several roles and piloting the projects through post production. Find someone who wants to make a low-budget film, not someone who wants to be famous. The latter group shows up on set to do their job, and the former shows up to do every job necessary to get the best finished product. More often than not the person who knows all the parts to a film can get it done.

Now all the people you need to start this journey are together. Get them in a room and have a meeting. Don’t just meet for coffee, meet and read both scripts out loud. This will be difficult, but it’s here we learn about the commitment of everyone involved. People who want to go home early are best let to do so. Then call and find someone new for their job. Talk over any scenes that don’t fit the mode of production. Everything should be set in the place you are filming. If anything needs to be shot in a big city or outside county lines, cut it or reimagine it. Every day of shooting will cost a minimum of 250 dollars. A chase scene that is written on a half of a page will take a day to shoot. A montage will take a day to shoot. Every time you come up against something that you don’t know how you are going to do – talk about it. If the room can’t figure it out – cut it.

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Double Shot Script Model:

Start with your choice of film. Make it local. Find a story that takes place in your backyard and invest in the idea that it will be shot completely within walking distance of the primary location (this rule can and will be bent, but some production schedules budget as much as 50 percent of the time for “production moves.” and with a limited budget and local talent with jobs, this is unacceptable). If you like thrillers, create a thriller that would occur in your town. If you live outside of the major cities, plan on using exteriors. They are the strength and the novelty of your setting. Nobody has seen Billings, MT the way you have. Use that. Police charge 125 dollars an hour to sit outside your set in LA, but in some places, they’ll shut down traffic just to let a hometown filmmaker practice his craft. This is especially true in small-town America. We shot in the desert after shooting interiors in LA and the entire community rallied around the production. People shut down their businesses just to be an extra in the film. THAT is the kind of help that you need when shooting a low-budget film.

Keep the page count to 90. This might sound arbitrary, and it is, but you don’t have the luxury of being long-winded. Think of each five pages as an extra day or two of production. Think that you’ve been shooting for thirty days already. Adding anything to the story that will be cut in editing is a real shame. Stay away from car crashes, laser battles and historic recreations of any kind. These just look silly in low-budget land. Once you’ve finished the script, decide if you want to commit to the Double Shot Model. It will give you and your actors a chance to show versatility and range, but it is not an easy road (neither is producing just one however, so think about it).
Count the characters and model your second script with crossover in mind.

Make the leads in the first film the supporting cast in the second.

Change the genre of film. If you have a drama, write the outline for a comedy and make sure you are interested in it before you jump in.

Keep the primary location the same. If the primary location is a diner in your sci-fi, make it the same in your second script. This isn’t as hard as it seems. If you wrote the first film around a diner, you must have an idea of diner culture. Flipping the script and looking at it in a different way is actually not that hard. We chose a coffee shop for our first double shot. We are using a diner for the next production.

Don’t worry if you have a gender gap. You can bring in a few new people for each film, but it is the goal to have everyone in the first play some role in the second and of course vice versa.

Age is important. A teenage lead cannot turn into a weathered farmer for the second film. Don’t force people into roles. You’re doing no one a favor by showing them in this way. We had a role for a deaf videographer in our first film and we decided to go with a hearing-impaired actress even though the part she was paired with was already cast. We split the parts when the need arose, but we kept to the plan everywhere we could. This modification provided us with one of the most memorable characters in our films, and the actress who played the hearing-impaired role was simply put astonishingly good in the role.

If you want to change the voice of the scripts (a great way to work with your own material and others) sit down and outline the second project with a writer. He or she will then work on the script independently and it will still feel like it fits in the DS concept. Directing a project written by another writer can be a liberating experience. You’ll be less likely to take things personally when they aren’t working and maybe more free to interpret a scene. Some of the best work in our first project was done by the actors when they were given the chance to re-invent their lines themselves. Some writer directors have a hard time allowing that. YOUR EGO HAS TO BE BIG TO START A PROJECT LIKE THIS, but you don’t have to let it show in production.

You’ve chosen your scripts, now it is time for pre-production. This is make or break.

Bob


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Let me know if I’m not giving enough information, or giving too much - the settings for FCP import can be fascinating, but I’ll understand if they only fascinate me. Mainly, this blog is here to create a community of people who want to make films the best way they can in LA or in their own backyard.]]>