Do I tend to overthink things in filmmaking?

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

Gravity may work against you. The occupants will have difficulty getting out sideways, while tying to look like they're trying to to climb out vertically. You'd need to rig a support system if they're going to get more than a head out.

The vehicle doors usually dom';t stay open, so the occupants need to pretend that they're holding them open as they get out. Although, if the door windows are large enough they could use those to get out, but the gravity issue still applies.

Yeah that's what I was wondering about. They will of course have to have short hair, and try to act like they are climbing out as it if was vertical and not horizontal.

[Brian Drysdale]

You'll either have to work it out with your team, change the concept or drop the idea and put something else in. It's a test to see how practical you are and if you can improvise something. You'll find the answers in the area where you live, not here.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. Well I guess I would need a special FX expert to help with it as well.

But there are all sorts of other unconventional things I have to do as well, and just not sure what is acceptable and unacceptable to an audience. I cannot do tests for every little thing, so I am not sure how other filmmakers know what works and what does not, when they do not have to time or money to test everything, every time a challenge comes up in a project. Am I doing things wrong, that I do not have time or money to test every thing that comes up?

[Brian Drysdale]

With what you're proposing, you need to things that don't require "exports". You seem to have been aware that would be difficulties in doing the shot and what they would be. You have to be aware of how far you can push things in order to create a passable shot.

You can do things that are acceptable for an audience being accepting that what they watching is amateur movie and get away with less than professional standard results. However, if you want a mainstream audience to accept them, you need to know how to use slight of hand to suggest things, rather than show them

If you don't have the resources to show things fully, don't do so.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, it's just in the past, whenever I didn't show something, the audience got confused because they didn't see it. So I just wonder how do you do slight of hand, and the audience is even aware of it if they don't see it.

[Brian Drysdale]

It's something that magicians do, you have to learn how much you need to show and much you can mislead the audience into thinking they've seen it. You need experience to learn how to do that.

[Paul R Johnson]

No they got confused because there was a hole. We explained that you don't always need to show things, you can hear them happen or you can hear the cast talk about it - the classic telephone call and the one ended reaction shots. You don't need to see a head get chopped off on a guillotine to know it happened. For years Directors, had restrictions and just had to work around them.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh ok. Like for one short film for example I wanted a character to get handcuffed but didn't have the cuffs. So I thought well I will just imply it and add in a handcuff sound effect later. But the audience couldn't tell the character was being cuffed without seeing the cuffs though.

Well I talked to my film school professor and he says as far as confidence goes, I should just make my own feature like I wanted to before and every filmmaker has to eventually put their mouth where there money is so to speak, if he has a point?

[Paul R Johnson]

With no handcuffs you shoot the character from the front with his arms clearly awkwardly 'cuffed' being him, and he ACTS like he his cuffed. The audience do not need to see the cuffs, they know he is cuffed because of the acting. You probably don't need the overt sound effect, to be honest, it's classic magicianship, we know he's cuffed because we saw it. We just didn't, that's all.

[Brian Drysdale]

With the handcuffs, you didn't show the handcuffs..You were missing the set up of seeing the cuffs. the sound effect would then work if the actors only mimed putting on the cuffs without actually seeing them in shot. They would know what the sound effect is, without seeing the cuffs before they can't make the connection.

You could've made a prop that vaguely looks like cuffs, to set up the scene. It doesn't have to work. Although, good acting would probably allow you to get away without seeing them, there are a few scenes in films where you don't see the cuffs. They could've mined taking them out of their pocket or from their belt (the set up) and slipped them on the restrained suspect, their bodies hiding the nonexistent cuffs. A line like "turn around" or "don't struggle" or "I have to do this" would cover it.

With the guillotine, seeing that is the set up, so you cut to a cutaway giving the reaction, without seeing the head being chopped off. You only have the sound effect.

That's what magicians do, they set things up, However, there may be a deliberate misdirection in there, so that they do a slip of the hand for the trick to work..

There is a point where a filmmaker has to put his money where is mouth is. However, you have to decide if you've got the available resources to make a particular film and if you've got the skills (or members of your crew have) to make it. That's why some filmmakers don''t proceed with a project, but make another one instead.

If you've got a broad range of skills and are good a persuading people to lend or offer facilities/locutions/props for a very short period, you can do a lot more than if you don't.

On one of my short films we manged to get a joint police and army patrol driving in their armoured Land Rovers for half an hour. On the same film we got to use the local international airport's arrivals area as a location for a morning. You'd probably have a harder time getting that today with all the post 9/11 security rules.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Once again, sounds like it could have been done, but you did it poorly and left a gap without the proper cues needed for the audience to understand what happened. The larger point is as a film maker you should be good at visual story telling and making the right decisions. Instead, other people have to tell you something is wrong because you don't recognize it, and how to fix it. In essence, we are having to do your job for you. This doesn't bode well not for only for this specific example but in general going forward as a film maker, who can't recognize these issues or know how to fix them.

I was watching a Columbo episode last night. He pulls out the cuffs, cuts to cu of suspect expression as you hear the sound of the cuffs going, then wide shot of her being led away. The reason here to not show the cuffing is an artistic one. The point of the scene is the interaction between the suspect and Columbo so the filming of the actual cuffing is unnecessary. This is an example of showing only what’s important not hiding the fact you didn’t take the time to get an important prop.

The other reason to not show something and is what other posters here are talking about is that you don’t have the budget for stunt or action like a car crash, suspect jumping off building and hitting the ground. Rather than show something poorly, you would show the reaction and the sound. But in the example you gave, the cuffs seem to be an essential prop for a cop movie. Sounds like you’re lazy or cheap not to get the prop whether they were real or not.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh ok, but if you say the audience doesn't need to see everything though, and I can just imply, then why is there an exception when it comes to needing a shot of the. cuffs? Why is it an essential prop when everyone knows what it is without needing to see it?

Saying that I need a shot of cuffs seems to contradict that. So where does not needing to see something begin and where does it end?

[Brian Drysdale]

You have to provide enough information so that the the audience, from their experience of the world, know that the person is being handcuffed. You don't need an insert shot of the handcuffs, unless you're making a film that has a bondage scene.

A wider shot with something (even if unseen) in the cop's hand that looks like cuffs and the suspect with their hands restrained behind their back with cops is all you need. The action will say it all, very few cop films have a close up of the cuffs, unless there's something psychological about them for the suspect. The closing of a Columbo, is a dramatic closure to the TV show, a bit of theatre - he's got his man again.

The body language will imply a lot.

You as the director have to decide when things need to be shown. If you set up scenes properly, the audience is subconsciouslt prepared for what is about to happen, however, you don't want to let them get ahead of you, so they guess it before it happens.

[Paul R Johnson]

It's an exception if you, the creative person in charge , make it one. If the key feature is the character secretly putting a knife in his pocket we need to see it. Or maybe we see something put in the pocket but it's in shadow, so we know something went in, but not what, but not seeing anything wouldn't work. It's plot features. The script says "We see John surreptitiously hiding a knife in his pocket" So you shoot it. The Columbo one is a common trick - we want to see the face of the guilty, we want to see if Columbo is pleased the cuffs are on or if he's disappointed? This is just one example when your rules setting obsession is getting in the way and preventing you seeing the real goal - the story telling.

You've dropped straight back into the formula based approach, and you're handcuffing yourself!

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but it seems to be the audience that cares about formula more than the storytelling, if these little things bother them, or no?