As for how many camera set ups a day, it depends... How many takes should I do? I've been doing 4-5, usually, but I was told by one director that for me to get better acting I should be doing at least 20 takes. But that would take a lot longer, so is that too many? I assume she means 20 takes per camera set up?


Who does 20 takes other than a few directors who have the time? The number of takes you need varies and some actors give better performances on the 1st take, while others do it take 7, there are no rules. If you've a tight schedule, 20 takes is a luxury you don't have.

To get better acting get better actors, spend time in the auditions.

In your briefing scene, if the SWAT team are just extras, don't feature them with a CU, a group shot is fine as a cutaway, I meant characters who are featured in the story for CU, not background action. They must be of some significance to be worth a CU. otherwise why are you doing the CU?

Oh well it's just I miss details that people ask questions about later, so I thought maybe I should get a CU of everyone for safety, to avoid any kind of questions or confusion. I don't think I need a CU of all of them but, I don't want to be wrong later.

As for number of takes, I can keep going till I feel the actors got it right then, just don't know how long a shoot will take a result.

A bad shot in a critical part can ruin the entire film. Case in point, last weekend it happened to me!

Our granddaughter had her 18th birthday and she had just started a new job at the university as a TA (Teachers Assistant), but instead of being just an assistant she is actually teaching and was assigned two courses, so very important birthday. In one of the courses there is a good chance she’ll have some students she went to high school with when she was a freshman so this day was a big deal.

This is an unscripted event (unfortunately, as you will see). The day started out well and as it went on I was taking shots here and there to fill in the story. The luncheon went well, rolled into afternoon, and a really nice dinner with extended family. Time to relax around the dining table with family while some others went elsewhere. While we were having interesting discussions some of the family started joining the discussions and the next thing I knew a few who were in the kitchen started walking through the doorway carrying the cake (Surprise!) with the candles lit and singing Happy Birthday. Oh my God, and me without my cam set up.

In a panic I grabbed my iPhone (better than nothing), hit camera icon, selected video, then hit the red button. Saved! Sometimes there is no alternative. As the saying goes, “If you want it bad, you’ll get it bad”.

Well, not only did I get it bad, I got it really, Really bad. When I went to press the record button again to Stop I discovered it hadn’t been recording!!!

Can we do this again? Nope. There is NO take two.

After all this work all day long I’ll have to rely on others camera pictures (seemed everybody was taking pictures but I think some were rolling). It might be so bad I’ll have to scratch it but maybe some kind of a montage? There might not be any audio. The only way this movie will be saved is in the cutting room and with good luck from others smart phones. *Stuff* happens.

We just might have to all fall back on our good memories for this one. If things can be salvaged this will be one bad shot (or lack there of) that will degrade the whole film and be remembered. Certainly by me. This is my confession and now y’all know it.

Some bad shots can be fixed in post, some one can get by with, some stick out like a sore thumb and degrade the movie, some are so bad … there is no way they to describe them.

Yeah that's why I don't like shooting unscripted events as much :).

Well I helped out another filmmaker with his feature film and he managed to shoot his in only six days. That's really impressive for a feature so I would like to get mine shot as quick as possible still, but still have it be good of course.

What exactly would you determine a 'feature' to be? I've never shot a proper movie in my life myself, but I have worked on all kinds of productions. Is it the destination of the end product - so in an actual cinema style theatre, with seats and popcorn, or direct to TV on a high numbered channel, or old fashioned DVD, or distributed on a special interest platform? Is it based on time? If it's 1:20 long does that make it a 'feature'?

My local video club make 'movies' or 'video feature films', but they're just video. They bear no resemblance to the products the big studios put out. Is it TV or a Movie? With Netflix now, the 'features' seem to be a style, and that style costs money. Are the documentaries or special interest material on Netflix, that have much lower budgets, features too?

I find it difficult to imagine a real movie, of movie length, made in a movie style to have been made in six days. I can shoot a factory industrial job in three or four days and probably have a running time of twenty minutes maximum. So that's maybe 240 minutes of video shot for a 20 minute edit. This is with minimal reshoots, and just the downside of industrial videos where you have tons of very boring footage from processes that just aren't exciting - so the ratio for the shoot is bad.

I also n' get my head around the notion of recording a bit of each extra? Why? You have the establishing shot for cutaways, and every other shot surely you must have planned? You seem to do some very strange and detailed planning for some things and none for others.

You can shoot a feature in six days, however, there will be limitations, so don't expect to shoot an action film in six days. You most certainly won't be doing 20 takes on every shot.

I also see little point in just shooting a film as quickly as possible for the sake of it, especially with an inexperienced cast and crew.

Shooting unscripted events would be good training for someone who obviously can't make decisions. It's like learning to speak in public, the only way to get better is by doing it and getting practice.

One director described directing as being like having your house on fire and deciding on what are the most important things to save before it burns down.

Oh by feature length it seems that a movie that is 80 minutes or over, I thought was considered a feature. Unless I'm wrong :). As for shooting unscripted events, I've done it before, but I feel I have more experience in other areas, such as editing and sound, and want to learn more about directing, rather than being the camera operator or cinematographer. I thought I would learn more by directing scripted events therefore.

The feature length project I was storyboarding is a horror thriller, so it would have a lot more set ups though. Like an action movie, a horror movie still has actors running away from other actors, and hiding and things like that. So there would be more shot and lighting set ups, right, compared to a comedy or drama?

There are no rules about complexity, horror genre films have traditionally been lower budget and many have short schedules.

There are shorter feature films than 80 minutes. The Academy of motion arts and sciences, AFI and BFI give 40 minutes or longer, the screen actors guild 75 minutes or longer. Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée in France 58 minutes and 29 seconds. Since you don't have double bills these days in the cinemas, you're less likely to see many of the shorter features.

You can learn a lot by filming real people and how they interact and their body language. Most of human communication is nonverbal, up to 93% according to some, with 7% though the words themselves.

Oh okay thanks. Well I can shoot with however many takes are necessary, and just hope it doesn't take a lot of days, if that's best?

Well, the psychology of the actors comes into it and if you're not paying the crew they'll get pissed off if you keep doing large numbers of takes, like some directors.

One advantage to shooting film on a lower budget is that forces discipline onto the director and crew, there's a point where you'll run out of film, so you need to ensure that you've got all you need to tell the story without excessive shots.

One director of an award winning short said she thought it was tough on the actors because they had to stop after 2 or 3 takes if they had got what she needed, rather than going for even better. If you have to do 7 takes on a couple of shots, it really throws out your shooting ratio on a short film.

Having the expensive stuff going through the camera concentrates the mind, even more so if you're shooting with a clockwork Bolex so you're limited to 28 seconds for each shot. "Bait" is a current feature film shot this way, the director also processed the film himself. The dialogue was done in post production.

New trailer for Bait - In cinemas 30 August | BFI - YouTube

interesting

Oh ok.. Well as far as planning shots go, i feel i should shoot two masters and a close up of each major character for coverage, and then any other shots that are emotionally called for. But do i need more than that, when trying to save time?

There are no rules, it depends on the scene and its content.

A pretty standard TV method is a master, which you may or may not be used used in the final edit, but it also acts a rehearsal and everyone can see what's going on, then move in for the closer shots, you may or may not need CUs - MCUs may be enough - it depends on the scene and may only need one CU at the dramatic point.

However, that's a bit predicable and probably relies on talking heads, so it's used mostly in TV soap, where you have a tight schedule and everything is on the nose,

Where's the master shot here?

All That Jazz - Chicago (1/12) Movie CLIP (2002) HD - YouTube

I would say in that clip, the mastershot starts in the opening, with the camera behind the audience members heads and then it keeps cutting back to it, off and on, throughout the sequence. Would that be right?

For my project, I was thinking of shooting it like High and Low (1963), which relies a lot on wide shots. Here are some clips from High and Low I found:

3 Brilliant Moments of Blocking (in Kurosawa's High and Low) - YouTube

You've already mentioned "High and Low" in another thread, since you've seen this video on blocking, it gives more information than can be supplied in forum messages, it's a matter of you doing. As it' says. you need to position the camera so that it reveals the nature of the characters, behavior as they interact with each other and you can't learn that from forum messages.

You need to know each character better than the actors and that means more than knowing the lines, it's knowing their needs and how each moment moves towards towards successfully or failing to reach the need of each character. Telling that is a directors job.

Well for the conference room scene for example, I was thinking of having these shots:

1. Master shot of meeting room with the police inspector (it's a police station), giving a briefing in front of a project, in the background of the shot.

2. A medium close up of the inspector.

3. A gimbal shot, where the camera moves horizontally, past the officers from one to the other as they observe what is on the screen.

4. A medium close up of the main character in the meeting.

5. A medium close up of another major character.

6. A close up of what is being shown on the projector screen.

Is this enough shots for a scene that will last about maybe 3-5 minutes, or do I need more coverage than this to be safe?

Thar’s an interesting point...

*I* would say maybe yes, MAYBE add a few CUs of other people’s faces or hands just to cover yourself for potential problems later. That’s just me.

HOWEVER, I have noticed many movies and shows cover the living crap our of their scenes. Multiple angles of wides, CUs, OTS’s, etc. I dont know if this is just to not have to keep repeating the same three shots in a five minute scene or to give them more flexibility (cutting entire lines, changing things around from how scripted etc.) in the edit, or what.

I remember a scene in the Sopranos where it was just Tony and his Therapist in her office for a few minutes and it seemed like there were 10 setups or something...multiple angles of wides, Clean mediums, OTS’s, CUs, profiles in several focal lengths, maybe a few shots with a slow side to side dolly.

I see that a lot more often now, shots of hands. But why... I worked for another director a while ago, who would get shots of the hands doing so many things, and I felt that it was unnecessary. Even if it's just for coverage, a lot of these hand shots would be emotionally awkward to cut to I felt. But even though you see it more now, if you watch older movies, like High and Low even for example.

There are no handshots in those older movies. Unless maybe a hand was going for a gun or something really important, but otherwise no handshots, compared to modern movies.

So were older filmmakers able to do a better job of not needing so much coverage compared to modern ones, or what?

I don't know. Hands were just a suggestion. I retract it. I just meant a few extra CUs of...something. Something relevant to your particular story. Some CUs that you don't have to spend a lot of time setting up for, that you could get quickly and not blow your day on.

If you're talking about a 3 to 5 minute scene, I would look at something like "12 Angry Men".

Also, is this scene just exposition or is there something dramatic doing to happen? For a scene that long you need to be something that going on between the characters, a power play for example. If it's a just a talk by the inspector I would start throwing out anything that's not important otherwise the audience will be shuffling in their seats by the end, if not changed channels.

HSB Pilot- roll call - YouTube

Have a look at "Spiral" for its briefing scenes. It's a French cop series.

TEASER SPIRAL/ENGRENAGES .mov - YouTube

Ryan’s Rule #32
All movies with shots of hands are good. Beware of any storyboard without at least one shot of hand. This is a clear indication the movie is poor. Equally, adding at least one guaranteed success.

I haven’t been following this thread closely recently but in the other thread the general consensus was he should be using his own vision to make his movies instead of borrowing and combining ideas from hollywood movies.

I’m starting to be able to read between the lines. That if he studies award winning movies and replicates how they were shot his movie will be good too. This approach is both bad for the final result and for one’s development as a film maker. How can you think independently and have your own style if you’re reliant on other’s source material?

To be worthwhile, any such reference to other films should fit within the context of you own film and work even if you're totally unaware of the other film, plus make these ideas your own. However, don't use other director's mistakes as a reason for repeating them - e,g. crossing the line.in error, rather than a deliberate and planned switch across the line.

A film reference in the middle of a gun fight

The Stairway Shootout - The Untouchables (8/10) Movie CLIP (1987) HD - YouTube

Switching across the line - going left field at dramatic points

The Prisoner opening titles - YouTube

Ryan’s Rule #32
All movies with shots of hands are good. Beware of any storyboard without at least one shot of hand. This is a clear indication the movie is poor. Equally, adding at least one guaranteed success.

Oh okay, but there are lots of good movies without shots of hands though, that are considered classics. I mentioned High and Low before, or even the movie M (1931), which is considered a classic as well. I don't think 12 Angry Men (1957) had shots of hands either, accept for the part where they examine the knife, but you don't see shots of hands thrown in simply for coverage sake.

So I thought there were lots of movies without shots of hands that are not considered poor.

Shots of hands are a quick cutaways sometimes used in interviews, often used to shorten clips of the interview.. In dramas, best only used if they providing information to the audience that's key to the scene, otherwise best avoid them.

I guess it’s pointless to try to dissuade Ryan from reverse engineering his movies. Famous director did x in this film, I will do x. Really should be concentrating to mastering the basics and putting into practice the fundamentals of film making.

I suspect Ryan is taking Paul's rule #32 comment seriously.

Well what about the shot list i posted before for the scene I storyboarded? Is that original enough, or is that copying too much from other movies?

From what it says in the list, that wouldn't hold a 3 to 5 minute scene

Do you mean in the context of not enough variety/too boring/not holding audience interest?

Well I'm trying to get the shoot done faster and more efficiently. Plus I feel that there really isn't much else to make a point about in the scene, I think everything point and emotion wise, is covered in those shots. Am I missing anything perhaps?

I think they're saying you're going to bore your audience with that amount of coverage for that long.

Unless something is unusual is happening, 3 to 5 minutes is too long for a police briefing in a film. It's pure exposition from the sounds of it, which is what you try to avoid in a film script The shot list doesn't suggest anything is happening other than a straight talk by the inspector.

Perhaps it won't last 5 minutes, and maybe just three. It's three pages on the script, cause the inspector has to go over the case and the evidence they have so far, and what the next plan is. But it might only last 3 minutes maybe.

[edit: delayed post, wrote all this except the last paragraph after post #117]
It’s very interesting to read the posts on this subject area written by the pros in the business. Much of the DVinfo posts over time tended to be about technical things and this thread has drifted into a new area which is very interesting, for me at least. This is all about story telling and how one tells a story.

I’ve always considered that video is about story telling and every clip says something. With regard the part about what to shoot in the way of faces, hands, or anything else for that matter, it begs the question of why (whatever it is) it is being shot and included in the film/movie. What is being “said”? What is the connection to the previous clip and the following clip? If there is no “message” or reason for the linkage than why do it?

Anyway, connecting the rational for going from one clip to the next, If a movie was a book then clips would be like sentences, or perhaps a paragraph. Chapters in a book are often written with the ending paragraph or sentence that leads to the next chapter.

If one is making a shot of heads, hands, and things like that, what is the message or what is the story in that?

Case in point: In an official (not church) wedding I shot last year there was a singer that was singing to the the small (~ 40) group in attendance and the bride and groom were in the front row. It was a song about love and that love isn’t a game. At one point the bride reached over and clasped the grooms hand. Fortunately I had this on the wide 4K B-roll cam while shooting the singer. Haven’t finished the edit yet but instead of doing a cut to that I’ll probably do a fade overlay. This was very moving and that’s one place where cutting to hands would be telling, but just to shoot hands for shooting sake, I have a hard time with that.
[sorry for the delayed post]

The longest briefing I can think of is in a film that in "Apocalypse Now", but there's more going on in that scene just the facts about Kurtz. also it's much longer film. They don't give everything, it's the bullet points, the rest is drip feed in sections through the film and they probably reveal as much about Willard (through his reactions) as Kurtz.

If it's 3 pages of script, be brutal and keep it to 3 minutes, ideally even shorter. You're making a genre film, so you don't want to take too long on the briefing. Come in late and get out as soon as possible, only give the information the audience requires, otherwise they'll forget the important stuff

Paying for a script report from a script reader/editor may be money well spent, although, you do need to interpret the feedback and make it your own. However, that will require work your part, since you can't ask them endless questions. This part of the process that feature films go through.

Okay thanks, I was thinking of spending the money on that as well. The briefing scene was originally shorter, but some readers said there were unanswered questions, though, like why didn't they go over any dna here, why didn't they search the suspects trash, if they couldn't get a search warrant, etc.

I have scene movies with longer scenes that do not use a lot of shots. Kurosawa's types of shot set ups do that, but would today's audience think that is cheap, even for a microbudget thriller?

If readers are asking these questions there may be something missing elsewhere in your script. You may need to check on the admissibility of evidence in Canadian law regarding searching the trash and the location of that trash. It might give you a funny line .

I assume something has happened before this briefing.

While you should have an understanding of the process, it’s more important that the story be engaging and entertaining. I work in the legal field and I commonly see all sorts of disparities but it matters little if I like the movie/show. Do you know light sabers and traveling faster than the speed of light are physical impossibilities. Does that invalidate Star Wars? In film you have artistic license to do whatever necessary to concentrate on what matters most.

briefing scene is always a copout - explaining stuff in a lecture style is so dull. The only briefing police scenes that worked were Hill street blues in the 70s. Short, precise and very well designed.

A good briefing scene is always about more than the information about the case, if that's all that going on you should throw it away and think again. The other stiff can be more important in story terms and the characters can take the whole briefing off course because of the personalities involved and their flaws.

The main character in the French TV series "Spiral" is a female cop in Paris in charge of a small team of detectives: "she is known for her energy and tenacity but also for her tough and sometimes borderline methods. Devoted to her work, she is very attached to her men and would do anything to protect them when they make a mistake. Her private life is a mess and she seems unable to build a lasting relationship."

How would that affect your briefing and what happens in it?

If readers are asking these questions there may be something missing elsewhere in your script. You may need to check on the admissibility of evidence in Canadian law regarding searching the trash and the location of that trash. It might give you a funny line .

I assume something has happened before this briefing.

Oh well this is the second sequence. The first sequence is a crime that happens, the this second one, the inspector is presenting what evidence they have so far, to the others.

I suspect you'll lose the audience, those cops have to visit the scene, not talk about it. Show don't say.

But I don't think the audience will get more information, if they visit the scene. I figure they would have less, because if I skip ahead till later, the cops have more to talk about now that information has been processed, compared to at the scene, where it is not so much.

You're not giving a lecture, you're telling a story and by giving a briefing at this stage you're falling into the trap that scriptwriters should avoid - a scene that is nothing else but exposition. Have the cops struggle for this information, actively engage the audience and they won't be asking about the DNA and the trash.

In "Heat" they don't have a briefing about the robbery, Lieutenant Vincent Hanna arrives on the scene and has to make sense of it. The audience quickly sees if he's good or another Inspector Clouseau by his actions.

The nearest I can think of for a straight briefing of this length is in 2001, at which point in the movie the first time audience was probably wondering at this stage, what is this film about? It has a certain corporate formally, which would fit with the public's image of these people when the film was made. However, it's not a thriller.

2001: A Space Odyssey -- Dr Heywood Floyd Moon Base Briefing - YouTube

Oh okay. Well I feel that with Heat though, the way it is written that way, is because everything was able to be figured out on the scene that they wanted.

Where as with mine, they have to wait for forensic evidence to get back to them, and they cannot have forensics figure out everything on the scene, DNA wise, so they need to wait for the report, before revealing the information to the audience, don't they?

They don't figure out everything at the scene in "Heat", they're just reading the scene, but there's still a long way to go finding suspects in the film and to prove the case.

You still need to find possible suspects for the DNA to be useful. Or the perpetrators were so good they didn't leave any DNA, .e.g. the escape vehicles were burnt together with the clothing, alternately they're not in the records. .

Yep in mine they don't leave DNA, but I thought that if I show a previous scene where the cops check out the place, and then show the briefing later, that I would just be going over the same information twice, only the second time with the answers, so I thought it would be best to kill two birds with one stone and just show the second scene. Plus if I were to show the scene of them at the crime, and then have the answers later at the briefing once the reports come in, wouldn't that feel like over explaining it, to have one scene follow the other like that?

I also wanted the script to be as short as it is now, and not add any scenes if possible, which means extra shooting of course. Perhaps I could have the police at the scene looking around, just not sure how to write it without it coming off as expository, if we get the same answers later.

Why do you need a briefing scene?

If it's just to say there's no DNA, that can be said anywhere.

Information can be given walking down the corridor in the police station, pouring coffee in the detective's office, at the shooting range, while in the middle of conversations about other things, buying fast food. The detectives may be working on other cases, so the info comes while on the other cases, plus it puts pressure on your characters. The inspector's boss wanting results, so a quick verbal report is given while trying to get him off the inspector's back.

Oh they have more to go over besides lack of DNA. Who this suspect is, who this victim of the crime was, etc.

I just thought that a briefing scene would add a sense of urgency to it for the audience. Movies like The Departed (2006), The Hunt For Red October (1990), or The Battle of Algiers (1966) or even High and Low (1963), for example, all have briefing scenes, cause when they discuss it in that kind of environment, it adds a larger sense of urgency compared to by the coffee machine, or at the shooting range, or something like that. Isn't that why other movies have it in briefings to show that the police mean business on this case?