Shooting
There is nothing more exhausting, frustrating, backbreaking, and incredibly rewarding than directing a film. At the independent level, filmmaking is all about long periods of frustration punctuated by moments of artistic and emotional euphoria. It took me three incredibly long days, but the film is in the proverbial can. I would reccomend giving yourself as many days to shoot as possible, but when your cast and crew can only come together for three days, you shoot your film in three days.
For this film, I experimented with not rehearsing anything ahead of time with my actors. We had a little dinner party to get to know each other, so everyone would be comfortable enough to get on set and start playing off each other, but that was it. I wanted to throw them into the space and let them settle into the material in front of the camera. Not giving your actors a lot of time to rehearse can get them to do some really interesting, creative things, but it can also make them second guess themselves. Two of my actors, in particular, had a problem breaking character and asking to start the scene over again. Unfortunately, what actors often think isn’t working really is, and many times they end up ruining perfectly good takes.
Shooting with a DSLR camera made me bold and I thought I could put the camera anywhere. While this is msy be true, on the first day of filming I soon discovered that I, unlike my small camera, cannot fit everywhere. A lot of this shoot was comprised of me contorting myself into various tiny nooks, car trunks, closets, and bathtubs. My style of directing is not sitting in a chair, drinking a latté, and issuing orders; you can’t do that on a small shoot, especially when you aren’t paying anyone. Also, how are you going to get an actor to trust you if there is always a camera between you? But even if I could sit back and watch, I’d still choose to wrap myself up in a giant garbage bag and contort myself in a tub for a shot.
While directing is a lot of work, I had an amazing crew and I am indebted to Abby, Andrea, Alec, Avidan, Emily, Janice, Michael, and Will, who all were essential to making the film work. Crewing on a shoot like mine, everyone does everything. Sometimes you run sound for a shot, sometimes you slate, sometimes you need to clean a couple gallons of fake blood out of a tub. There is very little glamor on my sets. The key is to believe in the end result so much that you don’t care.
Working long days with subject material that is somewhat dark, it’s important to keep the mood on set lively. I do this two ways, one by giving my actors and crew enough room to be creative and offer suggestions and ad-lib. Some of the best shots in this film were the direct result of suggestions that weren’t mine. As I wrote my script with my actors in lines, I encouraged changing things up and cutting lines that didn’t work. I don’t have an attachment to the script, so much as I have a commitment to making the final film as good as it possibly can be. The second way to keep people happy on set: buy them food. After four hours of filming, they joy you get when two crewmembers arrive with Subway is unparalleled.
This film marks the first sync sound film I’ve ever made, so I currently have a lot of video and audio files sitting on my computer that I’m nervous to look at. I have a lot of syncing, post-dubbing, and editing ahead of me. But, for now I’m taking a few well-deserved days off before I go through the hellish experience of post production. More on that next time.
Cheers,
John
Photo Credits
1. Production Still
2. From personal collection of photos of me in trash bags
3. Flikr - Like_the_Grand_Canyon
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