Do I tend to overthink things in filmmaking?

[Brian Drysdale]

Going back through x years of threads on various forums, Ryan currently has a crime thriller feature film as a pet project. This has been on going for a while - nothing new about that feature projects tend to take years to get off the ground

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

Tell you what Ryan, If you produce something good, I'll do the music for you. Here's something I did for an aborted project from a couple of years ago. The funding dried up so it went nowhere, so the clip is a re-edit of the opening.

I'm serious. If you produce something that is good, I'll do it for you, but only if it's not cringeworthy.

timescape titles with audio on Vimeo

Oh okay thanks for offering, that is good music! Are you usually a composer?

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

You can use theatre actors, but you do need to take the time during your shoot to tone down their performances. You may have to train them for film, if you're prepared to do that you can get good performances from them

However, you can't film a page every 30 mins with them while doing this, which also probably explains why you're currently getting such poor performances.

Regarding editing, you tend to over cut as if you feel every action needs a cut.

When you say I overcut do you mean during the dialog, or mainly during the action, or both? During the fight scene for example, I didn't want to ask the actors to do a lot in a long take, but should I have asked them to do more long takes?

As for a page every 30 minutes being too fast, a lot of times, the people are only available to shoot for about 6-8 hours a day, as well as the locations only available for that long as well. So I feel the longer it takes to get done, the more something goes wrong such as an actor getting a hair cut, or a location changing between shoot days, which has happened before... What would be a reasonable amount of time to shoot a page for example if I want good performances?

[Brian Drysdale]

You over cut during dialogue.

The 30 mins a page is a real limitation on the quality of your films. Don't use locations that you can't access for long enough to shoot the scenes. 10 to 12 hours is pretty standard for a day's filming. That will be even more vital if you plan to make a feature film in a week, when 14 hour or longer days is extremely likely.

[Paul R Johnson]

There really is no answer that will work for you Ryan - I know you need a figure, but it always depends. You can get a figure once you have finished a p0roject and can look back and see how long each scene took, and how that differed from your predictions. Next time you will be closer because the problems that happened first time will be in your head.

In the pro world, the contract always includes a clause that prevents actors changing their appearance. No beards to be shaved, no hair colour changes etc etc. Even moustaches get detailed. Younger people with designer stubble seem incapable of keeping it the same - a real pain. You really have to look at the script and imagine the things that will happen, and you will get it wrong, but you get more accurate each time.

I have had to have words with a Director, quietly, because an actor I have worked with before is going to need many hours of coaching to get a scene right, and the Director allowed just two hours of mixed rehearsing for that scene with the expectation the actor could go away and work on it himself - I knew he needed constant guidance. From a script I guess it will take maybe 90 minutes till its of performance standard, and we're there in 30 minutes when all the actors have really learned the script. Others will hardly have scanned it and slow the process down dreadfully. That is how it is.

On the music front - it's like everything else in my career. I can do most things averagely, and I excel at none, but that's me. If I need excellence I pay somebody else who can do it better, faster and with less grief. However, when the phone rings I usually say yes, then work out how to do what I have agreed. Ten years ago somebody asked me to join a tribute band, I said yes. I didn't tell them I had never sung and played bass at the same time, ever. I blagged it. I don't get stage fright or get stressed. Two weeks later I had learned the songs and was out on stage in front of 5000 in a festival. I remember looking at the audience and thinking how odd this was. I spent hours learning the songs, but I knew in my head I could do it!

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I don't want to be too hard on Ryan even though it seems like he is unaffected by 99% of what we say.

I only watched 3 minutes of this recent movie and but I didn't notice any improvement from his previous one, Time Wine. In that movie, I remember the acting was flat, the dialog was terrible, and the lighting/colorgrading wasn't good, the cuts were abrupt and jarring. All of those faults seemed to have been repeated. Without knowing I'd be hard pressed to say which movie came first. Does anyone else see any progress or am I being overly critical?

Considering Ryan's responsibilities how would you rate them ?
Director: Casting the actors and getting the best performance out of them, shot selection, over all look, monitoring and approving of what was recorded before wrapping a scene,...)
Script writer: the dialog
Editor: the cuts
Color grader: did he grade it?

[Paul R Johnson]

I think he tries to do everything because he doesn't trust other people - but his real problem is that he asks everyone under the sun for opinions, and he takes every bit of advice, no matter how ridiculous or simply wrong, as gospel - then pops up here and says "I've been told......" without ever considering the reasons why people tell him these crazy things. He doesn't have the courage to trust his own judgement. He has to learn this before anything else really, or it's not evolution, it's stagnation.

I've tried to explain that you need the courage to believe in your abilities but I don't think he gets it. negatives are so common he simply dismisses them and grasps the remainder.

[Josh Bass]

Im still going with his brain is simply not wired like most peoples’ and therefore things that are patently obvious or simple to you or me are not to him. Really the root of all of this.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

On a more positive note. Paul I just watched that opening for the movie you posted . I was impressed, nice job on the music too bad it never got produced. It's nice to watch something I could actually enjoy.

[Paul R Johnson]

Thanks for the compliment - Yes it was a shame - really a case of the promised funding evaporating. I knocked that title sequence up with the intention of convincing the sponsor. In a way it was perhaps good that it didn't get off the ground because the business has virtually shut down now, making the staff redundant. They don't/didn't have any connection with the movie industry but I'd produced some business videos for them and the MD was very keen and wanted to stick a bit of money into the project, but looking back now, it would probably have gone wrong. There are a quite a few of the old music tracks on YouTube - slow ones fast ones, the oldest I think going back to the late 90s.

https://youtu.be/tjvLDMGxq10?list=OL...GvQajrUjWGZ3mk

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

You over cut during dialogue.

The 30 mins a page is a real limitation on the quality of your films. Don't use locations that you can't access for long enough to shoot the scenes. 10 to 12 hours is pretty standard for a day's filming. That will be even more vital if you plan to make a feature film in a week, when 14 hour or longer days is extremely likely.

Oh okay, it's just that the locations I have access too, as well as the actors do not have that much time, unless I ask them to take sick days in their day jobs. By shooting a page every 30 minutes, I was able to get everything done in under 8 hour days, and everyone was happy. But is it possible to still do 30 minutes a page, if I can have everyone well rehearsed for the shoot days? Another thing I can do is, if I choose not to have much coverage, perhaps that will give me more time to work on the performances, and still keep it at 30 minutes per page, because there is less shots to do if there is less coverage. But would more rehearsal time still help shoot faster on the shoot days or no?

But also, if a regular shoot day is 10-12 hours, how many pages would that be usually? My film school professor for example, told me I should aim to shoot 10 pages a day on my budgets, but is that too many?

Also, I wouldn't say I am 99% unaffected from what I have been told. I feel I am taking everything in, it's just there are some complications in the advice I have to work around here or there, but I thought I was taking everything in.

[Brian Drysdale]

Unfortunately, I suspect the quality of your films won't improve because of the time limitations you're imposing because you don't have the experienced actors or crew to shoot at that speed. Even if you rehearse the actors, the chances are you'll still need to fine tune the performances on the shoot day, which will take up time. That's assuming you want much better acting in future productions.

The maths is simple, you roughly shoot a page every hour with a 10 to 12 hour day, which is probably what your professor has in mind, because that's a normal filming day.

Unfortunately, you don't appear to be taking everything in, because it appears to be going around in circles.

If you're limited in the number of hours you can film in a day, the answer is to film on more days. It's all about man hours,

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, it's just that I film on more days, I am worried about the lighting changing if I have to come back to a location since that has happened before, and was wanting to avoid that.

Well I would like more hours at a location and for the actors to have more time outside of their day jobs, but you how do other fimmakers turn a no into a yes? Especially since in the past, location owners have cut down the time by surprise on the shoot day, because something came up and that has happened to me three times, now, so how can I stop them from doing that? I even had one location owner sign a contract, but the cut us short and didn't care about the contract because of something that came up that day. I'm just not sure how to prevent them from changing their minds adimately.

It's that I refuse to shoot for 10 hours, I have planned shoots for that long, but someone often pulls the plug after a few hours, whether it be a location owner, or a cast or crew member that has an emergency come up. I am fully willing to, but when those surprises come up, what do you do?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Ryan why do you think it costs millions of dollars to produce feature films? Film making is labor intensive. It's naive to expect the same reliability and dedication of amateurs who have day jobs. It's like you have to learn in slow motion first hand for yourself all the reasons why it's hard to make a movie.

[Rainer Listing]

Not bite off more than you can chew.
(in reply to #208)