How does a filmmaker decide which aspect ratio to shoot in?

[Brian Drysdale]

The mental processes are the same for film and stage acting, just how you project them is different. If you're working with stage actors at least you'll know where they're coming from. Also, you do need to spend more time tuning their performances, so you have to be in a position to watch them. You may require a few takes to get things right.

Dropping a character can completely change the dynamics of a film (especially with a small cast) casting another actor would male more sense or postpone the filming until the actor is available again.

The auditions would reveal to you if an actor is unable to take direction, it's one of the things that should be checked for during the casting process..

[Paul R Johnson]

I think acting schools would be smiling. The processes of stage vs screen acting use exactly the same skills. The differences are in how they are used. Characterisation, voice, posture, facial expression and the acting core are exactly the same. An actor can act. Look at the big names, they may be movie or TV based and swap happily into theatre, or they could be Royal Shakespearian actors and become captain of a spaceship. Some people even have a totally different natural accent to their on screen one - it's called acting for a reason. They learn different techniques for theatre vs the others because the viewer is in a perpetual long shot wide angle vista. Film actors can convey with an eye twitch or glance so much, but they're taught all this. They do radio too don't forget.

Re: the crash edits - just watch it. There's no point me telling you the timecode of the non-sequential stuff because you need to learn to spot them. They are mainly edits where the flow is broken - maybe a cut at just the wrong moment, or one that makes you go 'what happened'. Leaning against a wall in one shot - being away in another, that kind of thing.

here's one though. "You found something, what's it going to cost me". He is on her right, stick in hand. It cuts to her facing 180 degrees around and now he is on her left. That's not crossing the line, the actors have actually moved and it goes BANG in my brain. Then it swaps back? Over and over again - every edit shots out. Did she then exit through a wall? Certainly not the entrance?

she leaves and we see her in a car. Then we saw the red soft top which didn't register at first was not her, second time, I saw the roof of the suv, and realised the red car was not her. the driver too small to identify. Who is it? No idea? The red car pulls in and just at the end I think it could be the fella who warned her? Probably, but not definitely.she walks up and suddenly we see an open space? I thought he parked at his home - looks like a suburban street? I've gone into teacher/essay mode, sorry. In the field with the two guys, what is the messy pile of junk on the right? What is it's importance? He says he thought he was being followed - we saw him drive out and her pull out to follow, just once, then he parked. just down the road? Miles away? what made him think she was following? No interior of him glancing in the mirror, or her trying to hide - we saw none of that? His secret raging process done in the open air, next to a busy road? Really? One bottle at a time? He can time travel and choses to age bottles of wine, one at a time, requiring a car journey?

There's another continuity error in the Is this a time machine section. He has the stick in his left hand, with the end visible at the bottom, the stick going up. Then in the next shot, he's probably let it slip down to the dangling position while out of frame, then it moves again. Very small slips but they jump out. He wasn't coached on the stick actions, so probably didn't even realise they were not continuous.

It's not bad Ryan - but the script is mangled in places, the locations simply odd, and the story so full of holes it's like Dutch cheese. However, so much was really fixable. You need to think hard about shooting two handers - continuity is really important, but messing up a head pointing direction was a big one. We also only got to see one view of the filing room - the second shot had a blank wall? So many shots had no need for camera movement apart from pan and tilt, so why hand hold them? Nothing in it made me even think about the aspect ratio. There were no vistas, or amazing locations. 16:9 would have been fine. The various over the shoulder shots were not that brilliant - especially the one where you didn't get all the reverse head in like in the office 34 secs in - did you even need her in the shot at all? A detailed shot of his face would have worked probably even better.

The killer for me is the time machine inventor telling her not to look in that particular filing cabinet as that one is the secret one. That stretches imagination just a little too far.

The story could have worked well, but the script was mangled to death, and I just don't think real people speak like that. You threw away the ending. Let's try a bottle of that time wine while we still can - you get her get out of frame, when the perfect ending would have been for her to say that to his face, and to finish on his silent response as it sinks in.The end edit is at a perfect cutting point to see him stand in the next clip - a kind of comma, for what comes next, when we wanted a full stop (period), exclamation mark final bump.

Don't take it to heart - but this is the kind of thing that people do on a media/film studies course in their first year. By year two and three, they don't make these mistakes any longer.

For what it is worth, I'm afraid I would not work with these actors again. After watching the thing two or three times, there are so many basic acting mistakes. actors make mistakes with lines, especially with re-writes, but you have to repeat it until they sink in before moving on. I got the impression these were probably take 4 or 5 and they were getting fed up, and you put up with the passes and odd bits because you could't face saying "and one more time".

One of my old jobs was floor manager for TV, and in your earpieces you'd have the director screaming "For F**ks sake, can't they get it right - do it again", and you'd translate this to "nearly there, if we could just have one more please, positions everyone'

[Brian Drysdale]

That reminds me of Richard Attenborough telling the AD how the thousands of extras at Gandhi's funeral should be feeling in full gushing luvvie terms, this got converted by the AD into "Gandhi's dead and you're sad".

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

I think acting schools would be smiling. The processes of stage vs screen acting use exactly the same skills. The differences are in how they are used. Characterisation, voice, posture, facial expression and the acting core are exactly the same. An actor can act. Look at the big names, they may be movie or TV based and swap happily into theatre, or they could be Royal Shakespearian actors and become captain of a spaceship. Some people even have a totally different natural accent to their on screen one - it's called acting for a reason. They learn different techniques for theatre vs the others because the viewer is in a perpetual long shot wide angle vista. Film actors can convey with an eye twitch or glance so much, but they're taught all this. They do radio too don't forget.

Re: the crash edits - just watch it. There's no point me telling you the timecode of the non-sequential stuff because you need to learn to spot them. They are mainly edits where the flow is broken - maybe a cut at just the wrong moment, or one that makes you go 'what happened'. Leaning against a wall in one shot - being away in another, that kind of thing.

here's one though. "You found something, what's it going to cost me". He is on her right, stick in hand. It cuts to her facing 180 degrees around and now he is on her left. That's not crossing the line, the actors have actually moved and it goes BANG in my brain. Then it swaps back? Over and over again - every edit shots out. Did she then exit through a wall? Certainly not the entrance?

she leaves and we see her in a car. Then we saw the red soft top which didn't register at first was not her, second time, I saw the roof of the suv, and realised the red car was not her. the driver too small to identify. Who is it? No idea? The red car pulls in and just at the end I think it could be the fella who warned her? Probably, but not definitely.she walks up and suddenly we see an open space? I thought he parked at his home - looks like a suburban street? I've gone into teacher/essay mode, sorry. In the field with the two guys, what is the messy pile of junk on the right? What is it's importance? He says he thought he was being followed - we saw him drive out and her pull out to follow, just once, then he parked. just down the road? Miles away? what made him think she was following? No interior of him glancing in the mirror, or her trying to hide - we saw none of that? His secret raging process done in the open air, next to a busy road? Really? One bottle at a time? He can time travel and choses to age bottles of wine, one at a time, requiring a car journey?

There's another continuity error in the Is this a time machine section. He has the stick in his left hand, with the end visible at the bottom, the stick going up. Then in the next shot, he's probably let it slip down to the dangling position while out of frame, then it moves again. Very small slips but they jump out. He wasn't coached on the stick actions, so probably didn't even realise they were not continuous.

It's not bad Ryan - but the script is mangled in places, the locations simply odd, and the story so full of holes it's like Dutch cheese. However, so much was really fixable. You need to think hard about shooting two handers - continuity is really important, but messing up a head pointing direction was a big one. We also only got to see one view of the filing room - the second shot had a blank wall? So many shots had no need for camera movement apart from pan and tilt, so why hand hold them? Nothing in it made me even think about the aspect ratio. There were no vistas, or amazing locations. 16:9 would have been fine. The various over the shoulder shots were not that brilliant - especially the one where you didn't get all the reverse head in like in the office 34 secs in - did you even need her in the shot at all? A detailed shot of his face would have worked probably even better.

The killer for me is the time machine inventor telling her not to look in that particular filing cabinet as that one is the secret one. That stretches imagination just a little too far.

The story could have worked well, but the script was mangled to death, and I just don't think real people speak like that. You threw away the ending. Let's try a bottle of that time wine while we still can - you get her get out of frame, when the perfect ending would have been for her to say that to his face, and to finish on his silent response as it sinks in.The end edit is at a perfect cutting point to see him stand in the next clip - a kind of comma, for what comes next, when we wanted a full stop (period), exclamation mark final bump.

Don't take it to heart - but this is the kind of thing that people do on a media/film studies course in their first year. By year two and three, they don't make these mistakes any longer.

For what it is worth, I'm afraid I would not work with these actors again. After watching the thing two or three times, there are so many basic acting mistakes. actors make mistakes with lines, especially with re-writes, but you have to repeat it until they sink in before moving on. I got the impression these were probably take 4 or 5 and they were getting fed up, and you put up with the passes and odd bits because you could't face saying "and one more time".

One of my old jobs was floor manager for TV, and in your earpieces you'd have the director screaming "For F**ks sake, can't they get it right - do it again", and you'd translate this to "nearly there, if we could just have one more please, positions everyone'

Okay thanks, I know what you mean in some of the spots. One of the actors didn't show up, so I had to write the character out of the plot, but doing so, caused me to have plot holes as a result. The location where the time travel was suppose to take place, also became unvailable so I had to find another one, fast.

I guess next time, the lesson to learn is, don't rewrite during shooting cause it will just lead to plot holes? And instead take time off to rewrite the script, but make sure it holds together, and get several opinions first, instead of trying to keep the shoot dates?

When you say I didn't break the 180 degree rule and the actors moved instead, how did they move exactly? They both seem on the same sides of the screen to me, so how did they move, if I didn't break the 180 rule?

[Josh Bass]

The unfortunate thing about zero budget land (which I assume this was done in) is that you can't really protect yourself against this kinda stuff. Somebody's almost always going to have something better to do instead of working for free on a given day unless you have really really devoted people who take their obligations seriously. It's happened to me, other filmmakers I've worked with, probably all of us.

Best thing you could do is be willing to reschedule days or scrounge up a few hundred bucks per day per actor (or however much folks in your area need to hold them in place). It sucks but that's flimmaking.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. Well for the feature I will pay the actors for sure. I hope that helps. Do you think I should have someone on the set like Mel Gibson did for Braveheart, that I could get opinions on, as to how the acting is, and what can be done to direct the performances?

[Brian Drysdale]

My advice is to make a few more shorts before attempting a feature film. Directing is like other skills, you have to practice them. I know someone who directed a full professional feature film after making a short, but he had the background and had developed the skills through working in theatre and TV in order to do this.

From the questions you're asking I suspect you may not be ready for directing a feature film, so I would hold off and make a few more shorts. I know one director who did this for a few years and they had a name for making good shorts.

Sometimes you do need to get someone to replace a no show actor. I did it on a film I made, I got one of the extras to replace the missing actor, it wasn't the ideal casting, but it worked. On another I had the costume guy play a helicopter crew man because the person supposed to be doing the role had to take one of the electricians to the hospital.

Scriptwriting involves a lot of rewrites, Get people who will be critical to read through it, however, it's not a mechanical following what they say, you've got to interpret it so that it works for what you're trying to do. In the end you have to own it.

If you can't find suitable readers, leave it for a few days, print it out and go to a coffee shop or similar and read it again. Strangely, printing it out gives you a fresh perspective on what you've written.

Again there lots of books on scriptwriting, acting for the screen (Micheal Caine has written a good one) and directing.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks. I read some books on screenwriting. The one that helped the most was John Truby's The Anatomy of Story.

Are their any books that give advice on how to deal with actors dropping out, and losing locations, without having it result in plot holes? How to keep the plot holding together, while having to do rewrites during shooting, and therefore, not having time to get people's opinions? Cause it seems a problem I had before is the plot not holding together, if you make any changes, resulting in holes then. Any books that talk about that specifically though?

Cause Truby's book talks about rewriting the script till it's perfect, not keeping it perfect, if you have to make changes during shooting though.

[Brian Drysdale]

It's your experience that prevents plot holes etc. You need to know your story and the characters' relationships and their needs backwards and know how the changes will affect these. There are lots of examples of reality bringing about changes; you have to think it out, so that these alterations are working out to the good, rather than causing a disaster. Plus what works on the page as written may not work when you have actors having to speak the lines or play out the action.

A couple of Steven Spielberg examples are:

Harrison Ford is ill, he can't do the big fight with the Arab swordsman, instead Spielberg gets Indie to pull out his gun to shoot the blade swinging warrior.

In "Jaws" the mechanical shark called Bruce isn't working as it should, instead Spielberg works it so you don't see the shark so much, resulting in more suspense than might have possibly been the case.

Scripts will always go through a "rewrite" when you're filming and again when you're editing. The answers won't be found in a book because your film doesn't have a "how to" manual, so you need to go back to the first principles of your film's story. If you know these well enough, you can make those decisions fairly quickly and mostly make the right ones.

[Paul R Johnson]

Blimey Ryan, you seem to be doing everything - I didn't realise you wrote the script too. I wrote one show script - a musical. I figured I'd worked on hundreds so could do it easily. My wife read it and said it was terrible. My friend read it and said it was terrible. The guy I asked to direct it said it was terrible, and stupidly I pushed on with it, making tweaks and changes. The opinion was that the music was nice and the script was terrible. One review said "The cast should be commended on their performances with a simply shocking script'. So for me - I shall never do another.

The cuts that really needed sorting are when you are near the lockers. When you reset for the reverse angle, she looks the wrong way. Watch her turn to the left, or to the right.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks, I will try to look out for that.

As for actors looking the in the right direction, one scene I wanted to do, was where two actors were talking but I wanted dead on shots of them looking straight forward into the camera at each other. Kind of like in an Ozu movie.

However, one of the actors refused to look dead on to the camera, and kept saying that he would be breaking the forth wall, and refused to do it. So I was forced to use the wide mastershot as a result. How do you get an actor do shots like that, without them thinking they are going to break the fourth wall?

[Josh Bass]

You dont hire those people. Those people are idiots. You make better choices during casting. An actor’s job, literally is basically to do what you tell them as the director.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, but I don't know if an actor will have a problem like that in the audition at the hiring period. I don't find things out till later.

For example, the woman in the short film did much better in the audition than she did during shooting. During shooting, I couldn't figure out why but I could tell that the audition was better.

[Josh Bass]

My answer was perhaps a bit brash.

But seriously, I think all of this comes down all of these people (hopefully) being amateur/nonprofessional actors. I'm willing to bet these issues would magically disappear if you start using professional actors from a talent/casting agency. They will be consistent from audition day to shoot day, and not say stupid things about not being able to look into the cam 'cause it breaks the fourth wall. Unless maybe if you get Edward Norton. So don't get Edward Norton.

In the amateur/unpaid world there are still good people who care, but you will have to seek them out and no I don't know how to find them without wading through a sea of garbage people. But if/when you do, you can use the same people over and over instead of auditioning new ones. A bit stale/predictable, perhaps, to see the same faces over and over again in a filmmaker's work, but surely preferable to people who can't actor or take direction.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks, I didn't think you were being brash I don't think. I thought the problem was me as director not being able to bring out the performances, and it was all me and not the actors.

But how do some directors, bring out good performances in non-actors, like movies like City of God, or The Battle of Algiers, or El Mariachi, which I read used a lot of non actors as major characters, if that's true.