I'm having trouble storyboarding a movie because of covid restrictions.

[Paul R Johnson]

I've never had a piece of artwork as a storyboard. who cares? They are private documents and not public - if they are scribbles that work, nobody cares? If as we've said, you have serious problems elsewhere, nobody is interested in them.

[Brian Drysdale]

Martin Scorsese's storyboards are fairly rough affairs, more high school level than a professional artist's work. All they need to do is get the shot ideas across to the camera crew and the art department, so they know what to dress on the set.

[Paul R Johnson]

(a comment to an earlier question) If you watch TV being produced under covid guidelines, it's very strange - in one two people who are having an illicit affair were kissing - I thought how weird this was and illegal probably, but then discovered the two actors are actually married - so for them it's fine - yet everyone else is 2m apart and it makes the thing very obviously a covid production. In years to come, we'll watch TV reruns and movies and say - 2020/2021 - it's that obvious.

If you get everyone to have an injection and probably have to pay for them, it doesn't mean everything is safe - there will be cases of people who are not immunised, and of course, our isolation doesn't mean we're immune to other infectious diseases, and the separation for covid means we're perhaps more likely to get flu and the other things. Unless you really need to produce the movie now, don't. Especially as your cast and crew will not be that keen.

[Josh Bass]

To add to that, even when you ARE vaccinated, you are still not immune; it’s just an extra layer of protection. STILL need masks and distancing. This is per a doctor friend of mine who deals with this stuff every day. I donf know about Saskatoon or rest of world but here in the US we are still a long, long way from normal.

[Ryan Elder]

Well there have been movies made during the pandemic that have come out, so the government is doing something to give them special circumstances. Mine cannot get recognized as a professional production, but if I can, then I can hopefully get those government granted circumstances that others are acquiring.

[Josh Bass]

Theyre following strict protocols you wont be able to afford (cost of on set testing, medic, etc) to enforce and those actors are getting proper industry rates to make it worth it for them, that you also cant afford.

[Paul R Johnson]

Being honest Ryan, it isn't a professional production, it's an amateur one, and your trying to make it as high quality as you can. You are trying to emulate some of the things professional production companies do, but that doesn't make it 'professional' either in legal reality or quality. There have been amateur, cheap and really good movies and simply awful professional ones. With your amateur cast and somewhat random crew, and a director producer who runs around planning his heart out, but having to cope with indifferent and uninterested composers, dodgy locations with silly rules, makes it far from professional in real terms. It's a one-man band with a mix of hired help and volunteers, with no responsibility and from what we've seen from some, any real interest. People do seem to be involved because they have nothing better to do. Covid will mean you will become more stretched, and even more things will go wrong forcing you to abandon your careful planning and find new locations, new bits of script and new actors when they get ill, or bored.

Can you not see these issues from previous movies have not been resolved. Did you not learn from Timewine and the two silly guys and their martial arts, that proper planning must be followed. You lost the battle with things outside your control big time - what has changed?

wait for covid to be over, and your people will have such a better time. I feel awkward in the line at the post office when some idiot without a mask comes in and nobody has the courage to stand up to them.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but I don't think it's going to be over, and I think covid is hear to stay for the next generation, so I thought I would therefore have to make the best of it.

[Paul R Johnson]

Then movie making is dead.

[Brian Drysdale]

Covid 19 is going to be around. like flu and other diseases that exist. That's why people should get vaccinated, so that there is a herd immunity. It's possible for certain jobs it's requirement that you must have the jabs and possibly keep them up to date as new variants come out.

[Bob Hart]

While this COVID straightjacket still hangs around, you might do well by taking a break from your current script and write a complete different project which you can live with while carrying the COVID monkey on your back.

I realise that you may be anxious about losing momentum but sometimes, things improve or resolve for want of intervention and action.

It can be a surprising revelation when you go back over a shelved project and find yourself asking, "what in the hell was I thinking, believing this or that would work."

The trees of the forest can get a bit thick, especially when you are rolling your own and wearing very many hats.

Why not write and shoot a small one-hander simply for the fun of it and come back to your passion project when conditions permit you to stay truer to your original vision. If you hack it up now and make too much compromise, you may regret it later.

You might also need to examine the leadership and management skills which are so essential to a director. Now is as good a time to take off to research and study leadership and managerial psyschology.

Directors are ideally remarkable team builders with more than a small dose of personal charisma, careful recruiters of people so they can confidently, delegate and trust them to get it right every time.

It is too easy for directors to be distracted by or take refuge in the tech and turn their actors loose when they are desperate for guidance.

You can't do it all on your own, certainly not when you are still developing your own skillset. Although there are a few souls who can pull it off, you may also discover they are incredibly intelligent, are old hands with very much experience or both.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks for the ideas. I started writing another project, a Santa Clause type story more so. But anything has to be put to the same covid restrictions though, so not sure if this can be shot any differently, because of covid, but maybe.

[Bob Hart]

In suggesting a "one hander" I should have expanded that comment. It would have to be a short film.

A feature-length single character film could run out of steam quickly unless told with flashbacks which then brings back the need for actors to be gathered together.

Examples to mind are "Castaway", "The Spirit Of St. Louis", "21 Hours", "2001 A Space Odyssey".

There will be films which become "typed" as COVID films because the story is founded in this time period with COVID as a topic or a style dictated by the safety conditions gives it away.

By "one hander", in present circumstances, the story might be written from the point-of-view of a person, maybe as a guard in a booth at a boomgate, a drive-through MacDonalds or a checkout operator at a small shop, with the camera locked off, triggered by your actor if need be.

Your separate single characters can be on the other side of a window if you want to have a live operator at the camera.

[Greg Miller]

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

In suggesting a "one hander" I should have expanded that comment. It would have to be a short film.

That's a new one to me. I've heard of a "one reeler" or "single reeler" referring to old shorts when 35mm film reels were 1000 feet long, thus a running time of under 15 minutes silent speed, or under 10 minutes sound speed. Perhaps this is this related to your slang "one hander" (which sounded rather ... ahem ... questionable to me).

[Josh Bass]

I was gonna "go there" but feared my comment would be summarily deleted.