I am DPing for a relatively new crew, and I was wondering what is the average amount of footage you all are getting during a typical 9-12 hour day. Right now we're only getting about an hour of footage recorded on an XL-2. Does that seem about right for a short dramatic film? Or should we be capturing a lot more footage during a 10 hr day? I normally shoot commercials so I'm not very familiar with long shoots.

The director thought that the production would last for 4 weekends (8 days) and we're currently on our 7th weekend and I believe we're about halfway through the script. I set out to shoot this probono for a few weekends, but as it drags out with no end in sight I can't really afford to continue at this rate.

Travis, is that your real name? what are the odds!

It's not about how much footage you film, but how much of the script you cover, in terms of the finished movie. Most short films reckon to shoot between 3-5 minutes a day - that is 3-5 minutes worth of the finished film (usually represented in terms of how many pages of the script you get through). It depends on your director that might mean anything from 10 minutes to 1 hour of raw footage, depending how muck coverage the director wants, how long the takes are, how much the actors improvise, how complex the camera coverage is.

Yes that's my real name, but I believe you have Binkle (pronounced bink-lee, sorta like Nestle) confused with Bickle which is I believe is the real last name of the character in TAXI Driver.

Anyway, I think they're averaging about 2-3 pages of the 60+ script. Perhaps the director just seriously mis-underestimated the time it would take to film his movie.

I don't work in the pro ranks, but my experience is that it's the number of setups in a day that measures how efficiently you're working - or how complex/simple your setups are. A second take might burn five minutes. A second setup might take... well, who knows!

Yes that's my real name, but I believe you have Binkle (pronounced bink-lee, sorta like Nestle) confused with Bickle which is I believe is the real last name of the character in TAXI Driver.

Anyway, I think they're averaging about 2-3 pages of the 60+ script. Perhaps the director just seriously mis-underestimated the time it would take to film his movie.

Ahh, but I think you're missing Dylan's own reference to his and yours last name, a play on Dank and Wrinkle, my favorite TV series about two detectives fighting messy unkempt people.

Travis, I shot www.thelifeguardmovie.com on 12 one-hour tapes and it definately took more than 12 days of shooting, so I think you're on the right track.

Personally my jaw would be in the dirt if someone expected me to be able to shoot a 60 page script in 8 days. And, if we were standing on a mound of dirt.

The 16mm indie feature rule of thumb (prior to DV or vast use of DV) was always 3-weeks. 18 days was basically the minimum that the average indie filmmaker would spend shooting something about 90pages long.

It's going to vary, obviously, based on number of factors including locations, actors etc, but it was pretty accurate in my opinion and getting 5 pages covered in one day can be really tough. But yeah, I think what you really want to be thinking about is how many pages you're covering in a day instead of how many hours of tape.

Shooting ratios can vary dramatically but those numbers dont necessarily indicate anything about how quickly you're getting through the shoot. I can tell you that you could shoot 11 minutes of film in a 12-hour day and possibly be doing well.

Oh, also, shooting 6-day weeks is going to be more efficient than shooting weekends. If I were shooting an indie feature on weekends, I'd expect to be working for months and months. again, somewhat depending on the kind of film.

I shot a short film I wrote/directed last year, over three weekends (6 days). It was a 30 page (albeit incorrectly formatted) script, that seems like it's going to end up being around 35 minutes finished. We had 9 hour or 4 hour days (depending on the day, working around someone's schedule) including meal breaks, covering about 5 pages on the longer days, and 2 or less on the shorter days. Had around an hour and a half of footage each day, due to multiple takes, multiple angles, etc.

The crew was me as director/DP, and a friend assisting as grip/PA/everything you could imagine, and his brother helped occasionally. Most of it was shot outdoors in available light, some indoors with nearly available light (maybe one light for ambience/bounce), and one day indoors where it was actually attempted to be lit decently. On all days, regardless of lighting, it was a struggle to get everything done in the time allotted to me.


I've always heard a feature is better to knock out in consecutive days (like the person who mentioned the 18-day shoot), rather than doing weekends for two years, the theory being that if you can get your buds to agree to bust their asses for that three week period, they can look forward to it being over and out of their lives afterward, whereas if it's weekends, it just seemlingly goes on and on and on for them. Plus, people get haircuts, grow beards, lose interest, get new jobs, etc.

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Anyway, I think they're averaging about 2-3 pages of the 60+ script. Perhaps the director just seriously mis-underestimated the time it would take to film his movie.

No, 2-3 pages a day is about normal for a feature film, and 60+ pages is pushing feature length.

Thanks to all for your input and answers. It has put my mind at ease a little bit about what we're covering during a day, but opened my eyes a little to the fact that this weekend only business can drag on and on, esp. with a 60+ page script.

Ben: I enjoyed "the lifeguard" a lot; loved the crane/jib shots, what did you use for them? what model?

Dylan: was the reference- Pank & Binkle : Dank and Wrinkle or Travis Binkle : Travis Bickle ala Taxi Driver? I'm at a loss as I've never heard of Dank & Winkle before.

Thanks to all for your input and answers. It has put my mind at ease a little bit about what we're covering during a day, but opened my eyes a little to the fact that this weekend only business can drag on and on, esp. with a 60+ page script.

Ben: I enjoyed "the lifeguard" a lot; loved the crane/jib shots, what did you use for them? what model?

Dylan: was the reference- Pank & Binkle : Dank and Wrinkle or Travis Binkle : Travis Bickle ala Taxi Driver? I'm at a loss as I've never heard of Dank & Winkle before.
Glad you liked it Travis! The jib shots were done with a ProAm 14' video crane I bought off ebay for around $400. It works real well.

And the Dank & Wrinkle thing, was just a joke I typed in on a whim. When I get in my lame joke mood, It's best to ignore me :)

I'd certainly never heard of any "Dank and Winkle".

I worked on a film with my wife, which is 8+ minutes long and it was shot in about 10 hours (one 8 hour day, plus a couple of hours for exteriors) but it was primarily in one location, two actors and a crew of 4. However every (interior) shot was lit and had sync dialogue sound so we did pretty good. In total we shot about 90 minutes of footage.

At that ratio, you could do you 60 minute film in four weeekend with longer days. It really depends, but to shoot a film that fast, you have to write a script designed to be shot that fast.

On the other hand, as a student I shot a 9 minute film in 8 days, averaging just over a minute a day, but we had loads of locations (including a bus), about a dozen in the cast (though many non speaking) night shoots, crane shots, a crew of over a dozen, etc. We shot about 3 hours of footage so averaged about 20 minutes of footage a day. We were one of the first to shoot on digital video, so that was considered extravagant - most of the 16mm projects were shooting about 5-10 minutes a day.

Like that "Tape" movie by Richard Linklater. . .two dudes in a room for two hours.

what's sucking up your time in ways that weren't predicted by your initial schedule?

Like that "Tape" movie by Richard Linklater. . .two dudes in a room for two hours.


Exactly. Roger Corman is alleged to have shot a movie (Either Bucket of Blood or the original Little Shop of Horrors) in two days for a bet. Which ever movie it was it went into theatres and probably knowing Corman turned a modest profit.

The fastest I've shot a feature in was 15 days. I did a number of 18-day features. The longest so far has been about 40 days. The average is around 25 days.

If you figure a 100-page / 100 minute feature (to make the math easier) then you'd be averaging 4 pages a day on a 25-day schedule.

If you're shooting a 10:1 ratio (typical for low-budget film shoots, but video shoots have higher ratios since they burn more footage) then 4 pages should be 4 minutes of final screen time, so 40 minutes of footage a day (roughly 4000' of 35mm stock). But since with video, you tend to not stop the camera as often and are less worried about waste, that can be doubled.

with a 60+page script to be finished in 8 days = should be shooting 8 pages a day !
if you're not then you end up where you are sitting now ...
in general from experience: when you work for free there is no pressure on producer/director to shoot X # of pages a day - they just add on more weekends ... note:i'm pretty sure ( i'd lay $$ on it) if the director was PAYING you would NOT be in your 7th weekend and only 1/2 way finished -

when i shoot for friends ( free) i always look at the production schedule - if it says X pages a day - i along with AD push for X pages - so towards end of day those 10 set up might get condensed down to 3 set ups ...

IMO... you worked 7 weekends ... if you are learning & have time then stick with it .. if you are leaning nothing and you have other things to do - sit out that weekend or tell them to find another DP .... or tell them to show you a schedule that is realistic that has a finish date ...

A lot depends on how visually complex a production is, how many locations and camera set ups your film has. Our local short film scheme - part funded by the UK Film Council and shot on video - this year mostly on HDCAM - allow a schedule of 2 x 12 hour shooting days for 5 to 6 minute films. These films can be fairly complex for their resources, but for a short film that's going to stand much of a chance around the film festivals I think you should be considering around that sort of schedule.

Also, and just as important, they spend weeks on serious script development with feed back from script editors as part of the scheme. So don't ask your friends for comments, you need some one who's going to be brutal with the poor material.

BTW The success rate of these films is pretty high, I believe a quarter of last year's shorts in the scheme won awards.

My rule of thumb would be 3 to 5 minutes of edited film per 12-hour day, meaning 3 to 5 pages of formatted screenplay. I have a shooting ratio of ca. 8:1 with HD in fiction, but easily 15:1 in documentary. I do complete pre-production work, all scenes are storyboarded and laid out. I rehearse extensively with the actors and with key crew, for complex scenes especially. I walk through the locations with the DP well beforehand.

Brian's comment just above is to the point - good development and extensive pre-production are very helpful for a satisfactory shoot in a reasonable time budget, for feature or short, fiction or documentary. Keeping shooting ratio as low as possible also takes a lot of strain off cast and crew.

Alexander Sokourov shot the admirable "Russian Ark" in a single 96 minutes HD take with a steadycam. So that's 96 minutes in a single day - but I understand the rehearsals took months...

We did a feature I directed called 9:04 AM in either 12.5 or 13.5 days, and at least two of those days we finished at least 3 hours early. Not enough time to try and do something else, but it was nice.

We never went over 12 hours, and we had a large van full of gear (check out the photo of most of our G & E here (http://904am.com/photos.php?pic=111)).

What helped us was a talented, fast and experienced crew, tons of rehearsals and blocking with the actors and because it's a dialogue-driven film like Clerks and Diner, we didn't need a ton of coverage (only one scene went over our average of 3-4 angles/set-ups per scene, and with that one it was around 15).

The least amount of pages we did in one day was probably at the park all day and we did around 6-7 pages. The most we shot was 15 pages in one day at an office. That was primarily dialogue stuff inside, so it was much easier than fighting weather (we only dealt with heat and the occasional sun-behind-the-clouds).

The hardest day was actually shooting at a coffee shop, harder than our mini-sci fi convention at a comic book shop, because we had to fight the sun setting. Because Florida is flat, once the sun drops below even a one story building, that's it. Here's a clip from that scene (http://homepage.mac.com/hmcknight/suzyandmonique/iMovieTheater57.html).

Also that day, we did a poetry slam at the same place, and it took a longer time to light because it was at night and we had to hang tons of lights (see this pic (http://904am.com/photos.php?pic=82) and a pic of me stressing and cursing that we're running out of time, lol (http://904am.com/photos.php?pic=87)). We couldn't shoot one scene, so we added it near the end of production and set it outside vs. the coffee shop. We couldn't get the coffee shop again because polo season was starting.

We also used a lot of Kinos, and that seemed to keep things moving fast, too.

heath

I do 30 second spots.

I normally have 20 minutes of footage and it take me 2-3 hours to shoot that footage.
I'm a FTE fanatic (Film To Edit) so I try to get at least 5 angles for each shot and sometimes up to 15.
For a 30 second spot with 17 shots we average 10 different angles/versions for each one of those shots.

I think having a 40 to 1 ratio makes for a lot better product and an awesome amount of choices when it comes to editing.

I've found this to be incredibly variable. Changing location steals hours from your day. Also you will improve your effectiveness by having the cast fully rehersed and blocked, and the crew briefed. For indie film making I've found the question is 'how much time do you have?', then cut your cloth to fit. More a case of get it done, than get it right.

In a very unusual situation, we did 63 pages of script in a 1 day shoot! That, edited in with pre-shot monolog made the entire feature length "One Last Kill" I was DP and couldn't believe it myself.

See: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=42737 for a discussion

Thanks for all the information... Needless to say I guess I dropped out of the project due to the lack a solid schedule and no end in site. I keep in touch with them and anyone who notes when I first posted the question and that we/they started filming in Feb. I droped out of it in April, and they just finished in September. Four weekends turned into 8 months! I got into the project thinking I would learn something, but unfortunately I had the most experience there, and couldn't continue giving my time to that project while my own would be put aside.

Hi,

So this is simple. it depends on many facts, such as, is the film slow, meaning in our world, long takes. also the coverage, like wide shots, close-ups and so on. Now with all of that in mind, the amount of pages is also a key thing, are you covering one page or half or even 3 pages, per day. but as i see it, you key thing is simple, you do the DP and lighting and leave the rest to the director, producers, upm and AD's, they have to do things, that ensure that they have a film, complete, at the end of the entire shoot.

PS, I've worked on many films, about 15 shorts and 21 features and on some days, we have gotten up to 5 pages done, other just half a page. so just do your best and dp the film.

Yes Christopher, you're very correct, but I need to mention again that I was DPing for free with the understanding that the production would not run longer than 4 weekends 6 at most. 8 months is a far cry from 1-1.5 months, especially if you're asking people to work for free.

I don't do this as hobby like they were. I film and edit for a living. I got into this project because I had never shot a short narrative before, (only documentaries, corporate vids and commercials) and wanted to learn/ gain some experience. Which I did. But it was more of 'what not to do' and not enough 'what to do' that was gained.

Given that the project had no budget and that time wasted during the day didn't cost anyone anything I feel the director & producer(if you can even call him that), didn't have the proper motivation to make a deadlines and stick to them.

Not that 'money' has to be the end all motivator, but it certainly keeps most of us on task during our jobs.

On a side note: I don't want this to seem like a total bash against them. It is not. I give the director/crew great credit for sticking through it and finishing their film. I just couldn't give nearly 32 weekends away for free.

Travis,

On ultra-low budget features, the effective way to handle things is figure out how many days you can afford to shoot, and adjust your schedule from there. If your cast and crew costs $2000 a day, and you have $30k to make your movie, you're looking at a ten day shoot. Max.

On a well run indie set, you should be filming 5 - 10 pages a day. If it's primarily a dialogue scene, you can do more than 10 pages comfortably. Even if you have a fair amount of action, you should able to get through 5 pages minimum, and make it up on more dialogue heavy days. The trick to doing that is having a script (very important) and rehearsing the actors before you get to the set. If I were shooting on weekends, I'd rehearse them during the week nights. Also, your actors must know their lines.

When we shot Shakespeare's Merchant - an adaptation of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice - we had a 45 page court room scene to get through in 3 days. Not only did we do it comfortably, with plenty of coverage, we actually left early on the third day. You can see a clip of that scene here:
http://www.bradmays.com/sm7.mov

Try to keep your shooting ratio 7-1. Go light on the number of takes on the master shot, if necessary. One of the things we see indie directors do all the time is get take after take of the master shot hoping to get a perfect one. They actually run out of time then when they go to get coverage, which means the imperfect masters become an even bigger part of the edited scene. In terms of how much footage you will have actually shot - at a 7 to 1 shooting ratio, you should be putting a little more than hour of footage down a day.

It's not too bad to record a whole scene, no matter the length. How long can it take to get actors to say a few lines? Even 5 minutes of dialog.... not too bad.

However, the issue comes with multiple setups. Lighting, moving the set around, crew setting up various things, blocking/directing on the go, etc., can really add up. You may end up spending nearly as long on a single shot of someone walking across a street as you would on a 5 minute dialog shot.
Also to consider are things like FX. If there's a lot going on in a scene, it'll take longer as well.

Thanks Lori, I've learned more from this thread on shooting indie shorts that actually working on that one.

I think the biggest problem they had was the fact that there was no budget in place. $0.00 No one got paid, not the crew or actors. Nothing was rented as all the equipment was mine (cameras/lights etc.) We knew that going in, but I could see how having an actual budget would help keep things in check. If the crew would have been paid by the hour or day, you can be sure the director/producers wouldn't have left the actors wait till the day of filming to run lines. And there would be far less general wasted time and that would constantly be costing them money.


Daniel: Mostly the entire film took place in an apartment. I was always set up and ready before the actors and director were ready to film. I spend most of the days sitting and waiting for one reason or another.

Sounds fine, Travis. I wasn't commenting about you specifically.
What you had, then, was a pretty easy shoot [in terms of setup/time]. One place, same general scenes (I'm inferring this), and a ready environment. Sounds like good shooting to me.
Then, of course, it's the whole getting the actors to act and actually filming them part. :)

Yeah, that was one of the parts that could have been tuned in a little more.

It was a relaxed easy shoot. I guess it was just to relaxed for me since it felt like wasted time. Either way it's behind me now and I'm on to other video things that actually pay the bills, which is great.

I'm not sure where I heard the phrase: "Find something you love doing and then figure out how to get paid doing it" but I certainly feel fortunate to be able to "play" with video cameras and computers all day and have people pay me for it.

My feature took around 14 days to shoot last October, and we probably could've shot it in 12, had I brought in my Assistant Director earlier to schedule it better.

heath