| SpraCoalee wrote: |
| l need tips man, future filmmaker |
There's a lot of advice that people can give you regarding camera angles, shooting styles, editing rhythms, acting, storytelling, structure---- but because it's art, and because there's a thousand different ways to do something, it's really a matter of opinion and taste. There's no right or wrong way to do it, really-- it all depends on what you're trying to do.
For example, if you're trying to ground your film and its characters with a strong sense of reality-- a noble aim, to be sure-- then you
don't want to use a whole bunch of shaky-cam up-in-people's-business let's-count-all-the-nose-hairs close-ups. Close-ups are great for many things, but because you're basically giving us a succession of severed heads, floating in empty and ill-defined space, they actually and actively work against any sense of physical reality, of body language, of bodies at all.
Which worked great for Carl Theo. Dreyer's JOAN OF ARC-- that's an absolutely intense silent film that's almost all close-ups-- because it was about disorientation and it was about ideas. But if you're trying to do a film that "keeps it real", that's not trying to be quite so transcendent, then going a bit wider and using a tripod are probably a good idea.
There's no such thing as a good or a bad way to make a film-- some choices are just better for certain things you're trying to do.
The one bit of universal advice i can give to first-time and future filmmakers is, make the film. I've known so many people over the years who talk incessantly about the films they're going to make and they never do it, because they're waiting for this or that. What they're really doing is setting up obstacles for themselves-- ways to fail. Don't fall into that trap-- just get some people together, get them rehearsing, and then start shooting. The technology is so cheap now that the only thing preventing someone from making a film is themselves.
To give some perspective, I've never spent more than three figures making a feature film-- and most of that is buying pizza for the cast.
Oh, that's actually the other bit of universal advice that I can't stress enough: you have to feed your actors, especially if you're not paying them otherwise. Don't expect them to brown-bag it and don't just give them a bag of chips or a few different slabs of slimy lunch meats. Buy a pizza, cook some pasta-- give them something hot and delicious. A hungry cast/crew is a grumpy cast/crew, and that can lead to a lot of tensions on the set. Which, in my experience, is something to be avoided.
I could give you some more tips, but they'd mostly reflect my own working methods and proclivities-- for example, other than a couple of main characters, the other cast members are almost always "guest stars" who have one long scene and that one scene only, which gives the structure a looser feel and makes scheduling a whole lot easier and feeding them a whole lot cheaper. Stuff like that.
