Would festivals have a problem with this type of short film?

[Ryan Elder]

Well I will take the audit then. I still want to get into directing as it's the area I enjoy the most. I will try to get better at it, and find out what my skills are and try to apply those. I don't mean to be exhausting, just like taking in as many variables as possible, and I am thankful for all the advice and input.

[Roger Gunkel]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

Oh okay, thanks, I'll do the audit then.

I would say that my vision seems to look much better on paper, in script and in storyboards, compared to the later product. So something goes wrong, during production, but it's different each time. So maybe my talent is having a good pre-product, and I need to figure out how to not make it go wrong during the process after.

I'll refer back to the flying a plane analogy.

So you have written a plan as to how much fuel you need, where you intend to go and how long it will take you. You have filed a flight plan, checked the weather, and written down the appropriate ground and air radio frequencies. You have been told that the V1 speed is 80knots and V2 90 knots. You have also been told your take off flap settings, engine revs, climb rate etc and you have written it all down and drawn diagrams. You have been told that moving the yolk or the stick to the left or right will bank the plane to that way and that you may need to apply rudder in the same direction to prevent slip. You have also been told to pull back to climb and push forward to descend, so you are ready for takeoff. However as soon as you start rolling, things begin to go wrong because no matter how much you have written down, you have no experience to get the feel of the plane or be able to judge crosswind corrections, turbulence and a myriad other things. It's no good asking for advice on how much rudder to input or how far to move the ailerons to counteract a wing dipping. You have to experience these things multiple times to gain judgement and perception.

Your film making is exactly the same, you can write infinite notes and ask unlimited questions, but you will never learn anything unless you put things into practice and find out for yourself what works and what doesn't. Without doing that, you are doomed to failure. You can't start at the top of the mountain, you have to climb it first.

Roger

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

I would say that my vision seems to look much better on paper, in script and in storyboards, compared to the later product. So something goes wrong, during production, but it's different each time. So maybe my talent is having a good pre-product, and I need to figure out how to not make it go wrong during the process after.

It’s hard to believe you’re just realizing this. Executing a plan and dealing with all the issues you couldn’t anticipate is harder than the plan. I could hand you any storyboard/script from an Oscar winning movie and ask you recreate it. Do you think you could even reproduce any semblance of it’s greatness?

One thing you can count on is every movie, scene, location will be different and will pose unique challenges. Obviously the more experience you have, better prepared you’ll be at handling reoccurring issues.

Like Roger and others have said there is no way to talk you through the process.

[Brian Drysdale]

I know people compare making a film to fighting a battle (that's a lot worse), but one saying seems to hold for both;" No battle plan survives contact with the enemy"

https://blog.seannewmanmaroni.com/no...y-966df69b24b9

You can plan for things, but something always seems comes from left field that you need to react to and make the best of, especially if you're being ambitious with the film you're making.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh, okay, thanks.

One filmmaker I talked to said I should stop trying to do these shots I have seen in other movies and just come up with a style all my own, cause it will probably have more context, than trying to find contextual shots from other movies.

However, I'm afraid that if I went with a style all my own, then it would be like re-inventing the wheel maybe. Jean-Luc Godard was able to get people to accept a new style in the 60s, but would I be able to do that and people would accept it, or could it very well fail, and I should stick to filmmaking rules and guidelines that have been established before, to remain more safe?

[Paul R Johnson]

In suspect you need to grab hold of this friend as he's given you for the first time sensible advice.your need for rules and framework is stifling your creativity. You are using the rules, joining them together and finding conflict. Quite normal. You are trying to paint by numbers. Remember those? You have a rigid format to follow. Each box with a number that denotes the colour you MUST put in it, and setting rigid edges between them. On e other hand you could choose the Bob Ross method. Which gives a better result? Why not try changing your collection of rules into a set of gentle guidelines?

It's so clear you are not a natural filmmaker. You don't have, or reject gut reactions. You don't have vision. You also lack technical skills so are always on the back foot. You've clearly done considerable research. Again quoting people I have to Google. I was alive in the 60s, and my film making input from that time was just exposure to movies. There's no need to create a style of your own. That might come later, but what you need to do now is just make some movies and stop trying so hard. Maybe you're going too fast. All these people who are keen amateurs who don't let you do your thing. Go smaller and shorter and downsize to a few people who will follow your direction, and you be the director and cameraman and start getting results, rather than everything falling down around you because they didn't understand your storyboards, or questioning you. Stop claiming the title, but letting other people size control. Stop endless respect and incidental stuff. Generate an idea and go and do it. Stop asking all these questions over and over again, you're not benefiting at all from what I read, just getting more and more confused. We can see your thought processes violently flipping from left to right but not moving forwards.

Surely your goal is to tell a good story. You seem to be expert in watching and remembering scene from movies. Don't take them as excellent in entirety and recreate them badly, do your own thing.

You need to perhaps pick a few critical features from good movies. Good believeable acting, camera movements that are solid and stable, decent lighting and decent sound. So far this is still a problem. Forget all the subtle stuff, practice with these 4 critical elements. Camera types, video formats, clever features and other technical things come second when you get the basic right.

[Brian Drysdale]

It really comes few to a few basic things, get good performances from your actors, have the camera in the right place to catch the key elements of their performance and have them doing it in a location that is part of of their world.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, thanks. And that's the thing I was told before that if I could get better actors, that good acting will trump over everything else, and that other things will be forgiven or even work better, if the acting was better, if that's true.

I feel I have visions, it's just later, they turn out to be incorrect though, but they are still there I would say.

[Brian Drysdale]

The audience should be more aware of what the actors are doing than your cuts.

You never get everything you want, even with huge budgets.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, from now I can try to edit for smoothness of the cut, more than performance, if that is better.

[Brian Drysdale]

Cutting for performance usually refers to camera flaws, such as slightly soft shots, camera moves not quite perfect etc, but using a performance that's much better than shots that are perfect from a camera point of view. It doesn't refer to the editing, which should be of the same standard as with the camera perfect shots.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but are the camera shots more important than the acting if you had to pick between the two usually?

[Brian Drysdale]

You usually go for takes that have both good performances and are technically good. Don't stop doing a shot because you've got good enough performance and the camera people are unhappy, the choice for the performance take will come during the editing because there's something extra about it

The other takes are usable, but there's more to the performance in this take, but say there's a slight flaw in say the focus e,g it's not quite on the eyes, which may mean the camera people aren't happy, although not so objectionable that the average member of the audience is going to call it out of focus.

There are no rules, you may have to reshoot if it's not working for either reason.

[Josh Bass]

And I'll complicate it even further...

In editing (watch shows or movies to see what I mean, plenty have "mistakes" in the final edit), you will have to learn to judge, and correctly, whether a good performance take outweighs the technical flaws. Not just focus, continuity errors, etc. The ultimate questions are these...is the performance good enough to outweigh technical flaws, compared to the technically better takes with performances that are lacking? And secondly, will the audience/average person catch the technical flaw?

[Paul R Johnson]

A good case was today on British National News - the BBC! An interview with Prince Harry doing good deeds in Africa. Remember, Harry is well thought of here, and despite tabloid attempts to make him look bad, the public think he does a good job generally. The cameraman who shot the interview made a great job of getting the background really sharp, but somehow missed the fact that Harry's face and nose were blurred. Probably either a camera fault or I suppose incompetence? However - the content and what he said were important and I've not seen one complaint on social media. The UK professional cameraman's forums are of course very miffed, but the viewers seem not to have noticed. This is where real faults can be excused because it really is the story that does the work. In this case, the words did it - sharp pictures without the words in this case would have been ruination.

I always like to look at the edit and try to imagine what could be cut without spoiling the narrative. I'm a heavy Cubase user, and audio wise, I colour code my projects - looking at the screen, clips go from green to red, so I can see which takes are better - I wish we could dob this in Premiere - it would help me to keep quality up.