Pre-production for a first time director

[Jason J. Gullickson]

We've been working up to this for about two years or so, starting with a few short (3-5 minute) experimental films, moving into slightly longer bits or more "professional" projects. We currently have a short running in the Amazon/Tribeca competition and are in post-production on a feature-length documentary project.

We still have a few more small projects do to between now and then to work out some bugs and develop some skills that we haven't focused on yet, but by next spring we hope to have enough under our belts to tackle a feature-length narrative project.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Originally Posted by Brian Andrews

Mathieu,

How many days did it take you to shoot your 28 minute short? Do you know how many script pages you got through in an average day?

Thanks,
Brian.

Sorry to respond this late, Brian. We shot for 6 days, but it were more half days, not that many hours a day (4-6 maybe). It was a school project. A friend of mine, had the same assignment (but another script, you got the assignment, but had to write your own script, mine was bigger than his) and he had many problems, and eventually was forced to shoot the whole movie in one daty, and it was ultimately a 15-minute short!!! But that was lots of stress, but he did it. We worked in the vacation, and we didn't had so much stress, because we actually had lots of time. I cannot really tell you how much we got in one day, because it realle depended on the scene, and if it was dialogue-driven, if it was technical more difficult. It's also almost 2 years ago.

Originally Posted by Dylan Couper

Sorry, that advice isn't applicable once you have to start working within a budget. If you only have the money for a two day shoot, you can't spend twenty takes getting a shot just right. I forget who said "directing is all about comprimise," but it is true.

Very true, I was indeed commenting about a non-budget movie. The project I tried after that 28 minute short was with a kind of budget (hard to explain) and with much more responsibality. You indeed have very less chance to be able to do everything the way you want it.
But what I also meant with my quote was: don't be happy TOO early, because in your editing process, you'll blame yourself for it.

[Eric Elliott]

The 1 page = 1 minute rule only works for dialogue, and only then if there aren't any soliloquies or a lot of short lines. A good way to get an idea how long a script will really run is have the actors do a read through and subtract about 10%. (Don't forget to act out any action scenes.)

[Heath McKnight]

The late, great Robert Wise once said that try to get through a scene quicker, because a slow-paced scene will be twice as slow in the cutting room.

heath