More than 85 members of the Visual Effects Society, all visual effects practitioners in areas ranging from vfx supervisors to technical artists to animators to vfx producers, contributed subsections about their areas of expertise.  If you are interested in Visual Effects, whether as a hand-on practitioner, or as a Director, Producer or Production Designer, this book will give you a comprehensive overview of the field.

It is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com (it is slated to come out in August 2010). Click the cover image below to buy your copy today:

http://www.wildsound-filmmaking-feedback-events.com/film_scripts.html

It was one of 3 juried winners of the contest, and now there is an audience choice award.

The way this particular contest works is that the first acts of each of the 3 winning scripts is read aloud in front of an audience, and the videos are then posted and the Internet audience at large can vote for an audience favorite winner.

That Internet audience favorite winner then gets the full script read in May, in front of an audience in Toronto, which would be a useful tool for me for refining the script further.

You can view a video of a reading of the first act by clicking on the thumbnail at the left of that page. A few minutes of your time to view and vote would be much appreciated.

The way it works is this: the first act of my script will now be read at a WildSound event in Canada in March. If it is selected as the audience pick, then the entire script will be read in May. Fingers crossed for coming out ahead in the audience voting, as I’d love to hear the script read in its entirety in May.

My screenplay “Let The Games Begin” is a finalist in the 2010 Wildsound Feature Screenplay Contest, a contest which includes feedback on all submissions and gives the winner an opportunity to hear their script performed by professional actors in Canada. I think that’s a pretty cool prize for a contest, and would really love the chance to hear the script read by professionals and make edits and adjustments to it based on that experience.

The same script was also a Finalist in the 2009 Austin Film Festival Drama Screenplay Competition. I am a big fan of Austin as an experience — I’ve met several folks through Austin who I now consider friends — and I’m proud to have placed two years in a row (in 2008 my script “Welcome To Akron” was a Quarterfinalist).

Plus, the example used in the DVD isn’t some toy example created for pedagogical reasons. The model is a character Neil designed, modeled, and shaded as part of doing Production Design work on an animated short film project called Measured Assessment, which I wrote and am starting to put into preproduction (and am starting to build a mostly volunteer crew, in case any animators or 3D artists are interested). Here is the image from the DVD cover (and Gnomon Website):

Neil started working on the model by creating this original concept, based on the script, and conversations we had about the design:

Who’s that bot?

We call this robot the “Mortuary Bot.” That is shorthand for the most compelling (to us, as humans) job that this robot performs, which is retrieving dead bodies. But in the script for Measured Assessment, he is operated by the “Department of Sanitation and Human Services” and is actually designed to pick up both garbage and corpses. That is reflected in the bin-like chassis and hinged top (the cylinders on the top front and back contain hinges that allow the top to swing open so garbage can be dumped into the bot).

Neil’s designs reflect the macabre and inappropriate pairing of garbage collection and human remains collection being subsumed into a single entity, which is important to the story in Measured Assessment. This bot’s utilitarian design, combined with the nature of its duties, are visual shorthand that helps quickly convey a litany of things gone wrong with the society depicted in Measured Assessment. Without much verbal explanation or long, expensive expository scenes, when the audience sees a character they’ve hopefully come to care about getting scooped-up by this thing, they’ll understand just how morally corrupt the world of the story really is.

This other robot is also crucial to the story:

She is known as the A.N.G.E.L., and in the Measured Assessment world she’s operated by “The Department of Homeland and Social Security” as a combination personal defense and emergency medical response robot assistant. As you can see, she’s not much of an Angel — at least, not on the surface (but don’t judge a bot by her chassis). Another aggressively utilitarian design, A.N.G.E.L.‘s exposed instrumentation inspires tomophobia (fear of surgery) more than confidence in her lifesaving abilities. Her lack of sophisticated styling (she’s no EVE from WALL-E) is also a story point in the piece. The design reference I suggested to Neil for this robot is the fantastic work of Chris Foss (also Stewart Cowley, and the great John Berkey).

For science fiction and fantasy films, compelling and concise concept design is especially important because the world is unfamiliar to the audience. You don’t have much time to draw them in and make the scenario understandable. But even when creating more familiar worlds, concept design can help you nail-down a lot of ideas visually in sketches. For no-budget shooters, the trick is not to over-design (you can’t afford it) and also avoid becoming too wed to the drawings: you might not find that perfect actor, set or prop on your budget. But with concept drawings as guidelines, you at least know what you’re looking for.

What’s this concept concept?

The concept design process is an important part of the production design process, and not only for animated and VFX heavy films. Any part of your film where the design is important can benefit from concept design. Concept design is the preproduction part of the production design process, a time for reference photography and sketches which will feed into the production design process (and 3D previz modeling, if your project has budget for such a thing — or you have skills to do it yourself).

Concept sketches of characters can help with casting and wardrobe, or character design for animation. Similarly, for sets and props these early designs can help you find the right locations, decide when to build instead of use locations (if you can afford to build — which you may be able to, don’t rule it out until you do the research about spaces in your locale and find out the skills of your collaborators). Since concept design is often done roughly at the same time as storyboarding (often starting a little earlier), the concept artist(s) and board artist(s) can exchange ideas in ways that hopefully lead to a better result.

As concept designs can serve as a visual guide for storyboarding and production design, it ultimately filters down to every aspect of production. If you’re going to do it, getting it right is crucial. Your role as Director in this process is to have firm opinions about what you want, but also be willing to hear ideas from your designers. Indecision is the enemy of production, and you will harm your project through waffling — you can praise all the options and the people who are giving them to you, but you still need to make a decision. Always. And be ready to stand by those decisions, or else hundreds of well-meant opinions can turn your project into chaos. That said, films are made better by your ability to listen to your artists’ ideas first and have the confidence to then possibly make a different decision than you went in thinking you might, based on assessing relevant input from skilled collaborators. If you work with sufficiently talented people they will question what they don’t agree with. You need to be ready to both listen to them when justified, and sensibly defend your decisions when necessary. Concept design is the first phase of this collaboration, and the results of it can serve to visually explain your cinematic goals later on — a useful shorthand, especially in the heat of production.

I am very lucky to have a talented artist like Neil helping me with the concept design for Measured Assessment. Even if your concept designs aren’t quite as refined as Neil’s, so long as you feel they’re in the ballpark of what you’re looking for, they’re still a great tool for your production.

Shooting on location, especially for a no-budget production, can be challenging. Locations are easier and cheaper to get up and running than a soundstage. After all, they’re already set dressed. But with that convenience comes a litany of complications. Being unable to control the sound environment is a major issue, and one for a future post. There’s also the fact that when shooting in a location your production is utterly at the mercy of the owners of the location (even if you have a signed contract, if they kick you out, you’re going to lose time and perhaps have to re-shoot in a new location). For no-budget shoots there’s the added complication that often the location belongs to a friend whose friendship you’d like to maintain. You must then handle the location with the utmost care, and those kind of locations often have personal items in them which have inflated value in the eyes of the owner. Bad combination. Also, remember that “weird stuff sometimes happens” on-set: On a different shoot than Hitchhiker, someone wearing stiletto heels damaged an expensive hardwood floor. Repairs were quite expensive.

All those issues are things you need to keep in mind when working with locations, but his post is mainly about a case study in location lighting.

Lighting Locations: Watch out for that tree (or fence, or deck railing, or car, or…)

Locations are great because they’re already built and, sometimes, dressed. They can also be frustrating because they’re already built and, sometimes, dressed. When trying to light your location, you may find that there are trees, fences, parts of the building, furniture, and so on that you can’t move (or can’t easily move without risking the ire of the person who is letting you use the location). Your only remaining recourse is to light around these objects.

Sometimes, you can move part of the object (such as tying-back the branches of a tree). Other times you can quickly flag (or barndoor) your light in such a way that the shadow cast by the flag falls inoffensively relative to the frame, hiding a shadow from a location object that was distracting. Usually, however, you need to just keep moving, focusing (if you have fresnels), flagging, bouncing, and dimming until you find the right combination of light position, brightness, and modification that works for you (and the Cinematographer, if that’s not you).

Even so, you still need to run through the shot at least once and pay attention to where the shadows fall (the Cinematographer does, but if you’re the Director or Gaffer, you have to pay attention and be ready to confer with the Cinematographer and/or call-out anything you see that might be an issue). Only by going through the blocking once or twice can you really be sure that the lighting is doing what you want throughout the whole shot.

Sometimes, though, in the heat of shooting the Director and/or Actors will re-block the shot midstream, and it’s not always feasible to stop to relight (either due to schedule pressure, or because the Director doesn’t want to break the Actors’ rhythm). If that happens, the Camera Operator must tell the Cinematographer if they see something unusual through the viewfinder as they shoot, and the Gaffer must also keep an eye on what the new blocking is doing in terms of lighting. You might need to tweak the lighting as the Director gives the actors instructions for their next take based on what you just saw during the last.

Do these adjustments quickly and unobtrusively. During the take, don’t move around to assess the lighting, to avoid provoking any avoidable situations. Rather, you need a Camera Operator, Gaffer, Cinematographer, and Director who all know to work together to observe the lighting from their own vantage points and trust each other to bring any problems to the attention of the Cinematographer. The Cinematographer is then responsible for either deciding to sneak in a fix during the reset for the next take, or asking the Director to hold for an adjustment (the Gaffer and Camera Operator should never bypass the Cinematographer and go right to the Director, that can cause on-set confusion and destroy the trust relationship within the Camera and Electrical/Light department).

Even if you work together well, and have good communications and keen eyes, mistakes will sometimes still be made. Sometimes someone will assume that everyone else sees what they’re seeing and isn’t calling it out because it doesn’t bother them. Don’t assume. Always politely point out (to the appropriate person in the chain of on-set command) any issues you notice. Or, someone will see something that they think is just fine, which someone else doesn’t like at all once they see it in dailies.

On Hitchhiker, we ran into a situation with a shot where (a) if anyone noticed it from their on-set vantage point (I didn’t as I was viewing from the exact opposite angle), nobody said anything and (b) the Director likes the outcome, but the Cinematographer is less happy with it.

This is a frame from that shot:

Original Image

The vaguely knife-shaped shadow on the bottom screen-left side of the Actress’ face was not intentional (it’s probably a piece of equipment that got moved after the key light was placed, or an architectural detail that got overlooked because it wasn’t on the Actress’ face during blocking). Also, the blocking was altered enough that the lighting intended to reduce nose shadow isn’t having much effect. Since we don’t have a lot of coverage, some take of that shot is likely to get used.

It’s ultimately my fault, because I lit this sequence. So let’s see what I can do to fix it.

There are three basic paths you can take when faced with this kind of situation:

Embrace it

One extremely cost effective and morale boosting way to handle this kind of situation is to say to yourself (and your crew): I meant to do that. There’s not really any particular reason why that result has to be considered bad. The shot reads, so it’s then a matter of opinion whether or not the image is bad because something in it is unintentional.

Striving to keep shadows off faces, while it often flatters Actors, isn’t necessarily even the best shot design. Contrast gives visual interest. And there’s more to contrast than “hatchet lighting” (though that can be very effective). Check out the nose shadows (and the two slashing shadows the Actor’s arm is casting) on this shot:

Is it a bad shot (i.e. one that fails to be visually interesting and convey the Director’s intentions for the scene)? No, it works perfectly for the film it’s from. Sometimes, high contrast hard light is exactly what’s called for.

Reshoot

Before you choose to reshoot, which is relatively expensive even with a no-budget crew (in the no-budget case it may cost you more in goodwill than in money, depending on the attitude you take to your crew when you ask for the reshoot), ask yourself: Do I really hate it that much?

Reshooting is expensive. On a professional project, it costs a lot of money. On a no-budget project, it may not cost much more cash, but too much reshooting burns enthusiasm and goodwill. Avoid doing it unless it’s crucial. There was a crucial reshoot on Hitchhiker due to equipment failure causing a day’s shooting to be totally unusable, the above image is not totaly unusable, and sensibly we did not reshoot because of it.

Fix it in Post

Fixing it in post is also an option. You should never let something slide on-set because you assume you can fix it in post, but once you get into post, there is the opportunity to fix almost anything if you can afford to.

In this example, there’s not much we can do to make the two offending shadows go away. So, I decided to try to adjust things to make it seem more intentional (it already reads as possibly intentional, so there’s also the option of doing nothing mentioned previously — and given that Hitchhiker is a thriller and the shadow looks like a knife, that was my first suggestion).

I did a single-frame proof of concept so the Director and Cinematographer on Hitchhiker could have some ideas about what we could do with the shot if they decided something needed to be done. Under most circumstances, attempting to do the entire paint/roto fix on a shot shouldn’t occur until after it has been edited into the film. You only want to spend time and money on fixing frames you’re actually going to use.

Since the lower cheek/chin shadow is the more glaring, I started with that.

Option #1

1. Darkening the fill calls less attention to it.

Option #2

2. I tried adding a corresponding shadow slash at the top of the forehead. I didn’t like the direction that was going, but if I had, I’d have fixed the angle to match the angle of the bottom shadow.

Option #3

3. I tried making the darkening of the fill more subtle. It’s not a big difference from the original plate, but reducing that contrast makes it call a bit less attention to itself.

Option #4

4. I decided to try hiding the nose shadow in a hard shadow on the face. I realized I probably took it too far, but decided the general idea of darkening the whole left side of the face had promise.

Option #5

5. Trying to connect the nose and chin shadows but leave the eyes totally readable seemed an interesting idea. I have mixed feelings about the result. Mixed feelings is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. Next.

Option #6

6. A more subtle darkening of the screen-left side of the face, combined with the subtle darkening of the chin highlights, led to pretty good results.

Option #7

7. Taking it a little darker also looked pretty good. But it was starting to go too far again.

Which option is correct?

Whatever fits within your budget (embrace, reshoot, fix it in post), and looks best to you, is the right choice. As for the selection of paintfix options, while there are some above that I personally dislike (and others that aren’t shown which also have their merits and detriments), there is no one overall right choice. These sorts of decisions are a matter of preference on the part of the Director and Cinematographer / DP.

Since you probably want to know my personal choice: I’d go down the path of #6/#7 (#3 would also work, as would #0 — the original image). Some fine tuning would occur, of course. I’d likely make the neck and ear shadows and laugh-line highlight a little closer to #7 while leaving the rest more like #6, and spend some time tweaking the shadow shapes and falloff gradients.

There were options 8–12, but I realized I was noodling way too much, and creating too many options. Two of the biggest problems you can run into in post are creating too many options, and overworking the image. The former can lead to indecision in the face of a number of subtle variations that all seem “could be the one,” whereas the latter can lead you to abandon an otherwise promising path simply because you’ve failed to exercise restraint where it was called for.

When making this kind of decision, also keep in mind what the shot is about. Does the original mistake detract or distract from the intention of the shot? Is the cost of fixing the mistake worth your while, given the length, context and purpose of the shot when cut into the film? A number of great moments in cinema have started off as accidents, so before you make everything “perfect” in post ask yourself: Does this mistake look worse than what I originally intended, or better?

Preproduction Is Your Friend

Many a no-budget project has failed by simply falling apart due to lack of planning. My ongoing serial project has had problems with preproduction which I’ve been trying to address, but it is difficult to get collaborators excited about that phase of production, so it can be slow going. But it’s worth the time. Every hour spent on preproduction may very well save you two hours in production.

Creating things like script break downs, call sheets, location scouting reports, storyboards, and so on may seem like a luxury, but they are in fact a necessity. Good preproduction involves nailing down all the variables you can think of, so that you’re not completely out of your depths when something comes along that you didn’t think of. And, contrary to what some believe, preproduction doesn’t limit your on-set creativity. Rather, only through proper planning can you truly get creative on-set and make radical changes, because your planning gives you a stable base to fall back on when the new ideas go haywire.

Beat-boards (storyboards with only one key panel per shot) are an excellent and cost-effective preproduction tool that can make not only on-set life so much easier, but many other aspects of preproduction (selecting lenses, lights, and grip gear; spotting for props; making call sheets for cast; location scouting; and in our case, planning the rear-projection shots and acquiring the plates) and postproduction as well. Even simple beat-boards like the ones Emma did for Hitchhiker can give you a lot of bang for very little (or no, if you can draw your own) bucks:

All the “boring” up-front planning is part of the filmmaking process, not something that gets in the way of it. The better (and more complete) job you do in preproduction, the better your results will be.

Keep It Simple

Something I’m particularly bad at is keeping my short films simple. Hitchhiker is quite simple, and it’s going much more smoothly than some of my shoots for it. There are four actors in the whole piece, only two of which have had to appear for more than two shoot days, and there aren’t any set pieces, period clothes, or stunts. The outdoor dialog (outdoor dialog being the bane of no-budget shooting) is less than half the dialog in the film, and more than half of it takes place in a single location (inside a car). To avoid the problems of shooting (and sound recording) in a moving car, those shots will be done with the car in a building and the world outside the car being done via rear projection (which is easy to do if you don’t mind it looking like rear projection).

One way in which Hitchhiker seems less simple is the number of shots. If you count the rear-projection plates, there are over 170 shots from 9 pages of script. Many of these are reversals and same-as shots. This reduces the number of lighting set-ups to something closer to 30 (though that can balloon as lighting is subsequently tweaked on a per-shot basis “just a little bit here and there”).

There are two ways to shoot a sequence that is a series of reversals: shoot long continuous takes and then create the cuts in editing (doing one side of a reversal first, then the other) or call cut at the end of each shot (again, focusing on one side, and therefore one lighting set-up, first). Which one you can get away with depends on your actors, your style, and your own abilities. While you’ll probably get through more footage in a day if you can do continuous takes and then create the necessary shots in editing, doing this requires that the Actors and Director can deliver on this. The natural pacing that stems from this approach can be good, but the Director needs to guide the actors to deliver the scenes in a way that allows the editor to actually cut-away. If the Director and/or Actors can’t nail the right balance of pacing, or the Actors can’t remember the lines for the whole sequence (not all no-budget films manage to score experienced actors), you may be forced to cut at the end of each shot. Some Directors prefer the less naturalistic feel you get from doing discontinuous takes. In a highly stylized film, that may work best. And given time and ability, some Directors will do the continuous takes and then go back and do some or all of the shots discontinuous. Doing both creates more editing options, but can definitely can wear out a cast and crew. Director and Producer must work together to find the right fit given the abilities of their cast and crew and the specific needs of a given project.

On Hitchhiker, since Emma is working with improv actors, there has been more of a skew to let things roll and do continuous takes when camera angles are exactly the same across cuts specified in the boards. We haven’t done the main dialogue sequences (in a car, with rear projection behind) yet, so it remains to be determined if this approach will hold up — but if it does, for this particular project, it seems like the right choice.

Sometimes, Weird Stuff Happens

Especially if you’re a no-budget operation, your shoot schedule will almost certainly be blown at some point by weird stuff. On Hitchhiker we lost a shooting evening because a building caught fire across the street from the gas station where we were shooting. There was no plan in place for shooting different sequences should something go wrong with the location, so we all went home. When we lost this night, we were already re-shooting some shots that were previously wrecked by equipment failure. Because no-budget cast and crew members have other jobs, we didn’t have the cast members on-call for alternate options. Add slop time into your no-budget schedule for weird stuff to occur (in other words, book more shooting time than you think you’ll need — but not too much more, because you need to maintain good will with your unpaid cast and crew).

An entire weekend also had to be rescheduled due to an error in location scouting, resulting in at least a one month delay in the shooting schedule (because everyone has other jobs and projects). With no-budget filmmaking, preparation time is the only luxury you really have. Not only should you do careful preproduction (which Emma and Brandon did), you should also come up with plans for how to avoid losing whole days to random events (like fires) or mistakes you made in the original planning (like missing some small details that make a location ultimately unsuitable when the time comes to actually use it). Even in bigger budget filmmaking, it is best to always have contingency plans and fall-backs (for locations, actors, scenes to shoot in a given day, etc.), but in tiny budget filmmaking it can be essential. You need to spend a lot of energy keeping the cast and crew going when you hit speed bumps like this (I know from an ongoing serial project I’m working on, which has had several long spells of stagnant momentum), and it can be draining, especially on the Director and Producer. It’s better to try to avoid it in the first place.

People Eat Food

No-budget filmmaking thrives on volunteer efforts. Without people’s willingness to chip-in to make your project, it’s just not going to happen. Failing to feed people is, according to a couple veteran Indie Producers I’ve talked to, the number one cause of No and Low Budget projects completely falling apart. Considering how important it is, that’s an easy lesson to learn: make sure that you always set-aside time and money to feed your cast and crew. Period. No excuses. Fortunately for the project, Emma and Brandon are all over the food thing (though making your crew have to submit receipts to get repaid for some meals can become quite a pain when the size of the crew gets over 4–6 people).

Your Crew Have Other Jobs

Another thing that Hitchhiker production (mostly) got right is to understand that your volunteer crew isn’t earning a living from making your movie for free, and to take that into account. Except for a couple late weekdays, we’ve shot almost entirely on weekends or Friday nights, and generally ended early on Sunday. It is essential to accommodate your all-volunteer cast and crew in terms of their paid jobs, and also to understand that there may be other “resume builder” projects they’re going to work on after yours. If you don’t accommodate their work schedules, you’ll quickly lose cast and crew who need their day jobs to pay rent and buy food. Exhaustion sets in quickly, the people who stick it out despite the excessive demands will inevitably do a worse job than they otherwise would — and your production will suffer. Going past your allotted calendar time will cause people to vanish off into other projects that they’re working on. Hitchhiker has done a good job of avoiding the former, but has stepped on the landmine of the latter. It will be a challenge to schedule the last two shooting days, which have been pushed-back at least a month.

So Give Yourself Enough Time

Take the number of locations, set-ups, and overall shots, and make a shooting plan. Then, if you’re in a no-budget situation, factor in the fact that most of your cast and crew are inexperienced and therefore will inevitably be slow and make mistakes. Add to that a buffer that allows you to let people enjoy themselves, so they’ll want to help you again (and you’ll want to do it again), and then buffer that based on the assumption that you’ll mess up enough to burn at least 20% of your time. Do all that, and you’ve got yourself a no-budget schedule. So long as you can afford to buy food for all those shoot days (and rent any equipment you need, which if you’re a no-budget novice hopefully is basically nothing), and your schedule fits within your budget.

A mistake most inexperienced no-budget filmmakers make in scheduling (and in using their time) is to forget that set-up will be slow with an inexperienced crew (especially as they get tired — nobody but a triathlete or soldier comes into the business prepared for late night shoots and early next day calls). This leads to slow set-ups and rushed shots. That leads to getting into the editing room with only bad takes. Give yourself the time to do safety takes, and maybe even an alt here and there. Rehearse, learn your actors’ styles, and plan your schedule to allow your particular actors run the scene as many times as is comfortable to them. Don’t overdo it and shoot 40 takes of each shot (time is cheap as a no-budget filmmaker, but it’s not free — especially with borrowed locations), but generally moving on after 2 or 3 takes isn’t recommended until you’ve really gotten a feel for what is and isn’t a truly good take. It’s emotionally difficult to let actors do a safety take (and many will always want “just one more” — and feel unsatisfied if you never let them have it) when slow set-ups are dragging down your schedule, so make sure your schedule is realistic given your (and your crew’s) skill level.

Hitchhiker, a nine page script, will have shot over at least six full days, with at least five additional partial days. One day’s footage had to be re-shot due to camera problems. Three days had to be rescheduled due to problems on location. The original schedule was eight shooting days — a reasonable amount for a nine page script, even with a pretty small crew. Problems arose which caused the schedule to become scattered, but because of the good preproduction that was done (boards about what was to be shot, breakdowns and call sheets per sequence, etc.), it was relatively easy to flex the schedule based on the issues that arose.

Project Crew: Emma, Brandon, Dani, Austin, Danielle, Erick, Victor, Susan, Jesus, Jason, Jose, Sarah, Rebecca

The genesis of the project was this:
Around Super Tuesday 2008 my wife Anu and I observed that the tenor of the Democratic Presidential Primary race was an awful lot like the Best Animated Feature Oscar Nomination race: a plucky underdog whose supporters believed to represent the new face of contemporary society and a departure from the entrenched interests (Obama/Persepolis), and a popular establishment candidate whose supporters believed to represent a balance between something new and an overdue vindication of long-standing efforts to make the world a better place (Ratatouille/Clinton). To us, in both cases both choices were quite good, and we found the vitriol expressed by supporters on both sides was ridiculous. So we decided to write a skit in which debate about one (Animated Films) stood-in for the other (Presidential Candidates). To us (and as small group of others), this was utterly hilarious.

Here is the video:

It was fun to make, and the participants all found it amusing to watch, but it certainly has its problems. There are some lessons that can be drawn from the production, some specific to the type of project it is, some more general.

What went right?

• We got the thing finished, and released, by the morning of Super Tuesday.
• The actors did an amazing job of memorizing six pages of often fairly complicated dialog — in about two hours.
• We had fun doing it.
• If you’re into animation, politics, and dry sketch comedy, it’s reasonably funny.

Honestly, that was more than we expected to get right given the time constraints. The lesson there: set your expectations accordingly, and you can be satisfied with a project being what it is for its budget, time constraints, and time in history and be drawn into overworking a project into something it can’t be, or find yourself disappointed because it doesn’t reach standards that are unrealistic given what it is.

The thing that we got the most right was to keep it enjoyable. Anu really helped with that, because I was tired and stressed, which can lead me to get temperamental (which is something you never want to do as a Director — regardless of what some people seem to believe). She did a good job of the people management aspects of being Producer, which is the most critical aspect of managing a production. Good people management gets the best work out of your crew, builds trust, enables them to solve more problems on their own, and reduces overall stress for the Producer and Director. By helping me not take out my frustration on the crew, who were valiantly trying to make due with no time and no money to shoot six pages, Anu really “earned her stripes” as Producer.

What went wrong?

• It’s clearly a rush job.
• The dialog was too ambitious given the time constraints.
• The action was too boring to support the dialog.
• The space we shot in was too small — it was very hard to light, and we couldn’t move the camera or actors much.
• Equipment broke down. Without backup gear, we lost shooting time.
• I involved myself too directly in solving the equipment issues, wasting time better spent rehearsing the actors.
• I should have edited it rather than using one long take.
• I wore myself out by rushing through everything (which led to several of the mistakes above).

The cast and crew did a great job. Everything that went wrong was my fault as instigator of the project and Writer/Director/Co-Producer. I was so in love with my own clever writing that I didn’t consider what a mouthful I was asking my actors to memorize in basically no time at all, and I also thought that the dialog would carry the project with no substantial supporting action. Wrong. Filmmaking is a visual medium, and even in fast turn-around, guerilla sketch comedy some compelling visual element is critical. And without that visual interest in the staging, the lack of camera movement is glaring. We didn’t have any room in the space we shot in to physically move the camera (or the actors, really), so if I wasn’t going to move my actors more (already a mistake), I shouldn’t have worn myself out and left time and mental space for editing. Variety in the camera angles would have added at least some visual interest.

As for involving myself too directly in the equipment issues, I got in the way of my crew and neglected my own job (supporting the actors). Even with a very small project, one where you wear a lot of hats, you still shouldn’t take someone else’s hat off and try to wear it — even if they’re having problems (unless they’re so incompetent they can’t solve the problem in a timely manner and you must step-in — which was not the case with this project). Not only does this erode the trust relationship between Director and crew, but it distracts you from the most important business at hand: keeping the creative development of the film on-track. The crew is their to do their jobs specifically so you don’t have to.

Tiny projects like this are rarely objectively great, but you can learn a lot from them and have a good time while doing it. Making mistakes is part of the learning process, it’s far easier to learn from mistakes made on $50 mini-DV projects shot in a mailroom than on a $50million project.

Project Crew: Anu, Mach, Austin, Michael, Erick, Luigi, Fabio