modifoo

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1. Save on food
   Budget properly for catering. The more so if your crew is underpaid. The more so, the longer the shoot is.
   Doesn’t cost much more, but does wonders for crew morale.
2. 16 hour days, 5 days a week
   Just because this film is the No.1 priority for you, doesn’t mean it is for everyone else on set. Not only does the crew have a right to a life as well, and not only do they need to be able to work on their next film, but overworking the crew makes you liable for accidents that may - and eventuall will - happen.
   If all these arguments don’t count: My experience is that 6 days with 16 hours are not more productive than 5 days with 10 hours.
3. Concentrate on the money shots
   While nice for marketing and your show-reel, the audience will only sit through your film if it is good in its entity, not just some scenes.
4. Who needs a DP - I can buy a camera instead?
   An experienced cameraman will free you to concentrate on telling the story by giving your actors good instructions. An experienced cameraman will speed up the production by knowing what to shoot, what will work visually, which lenses to use, which stock to use, and many more things that you have never heard of.

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The web can be a (as in: one of many) resources for inspiration. One of my favourite sites is BibliOdyssey, which regularly shares its visual bounty from dives into old libraries. With high quality scans and informative text, it shows glimpses of a rich cultural past.

When you work in a creative field - or maybe in any field - how do you measure your success? And what is success? Those artists who are successful in their lifetimes are often forgotten in later centuries; and vice versa. Just think Kafka, who wanted his work do be destroyed ( – though Mozart, as often wrongly assumed, did not die poor.) Many a famous writers are long forgotten. (And who bothers to watch E.T. these days?)
Are those people who are paid most automatically best at their jobs? Is James Cameron one of the best film directors? Or just one of the most ruthless ones?

But more to the point; while you are a struggling artist (be that an Actor/Actress, Photographer, Script writer, Director, or even Producer) – how do you know if you are good at your job (and just not yet discovered)? (more…)

Extras are the people in the background of a film that give life to a scene. A less-than-glamorous job (lots of waiting), they are usually directed by the assistant director.

Usually the extras are furnished with simple instructions like “Hey you in the grey shirt - walk from here to there. You with the cap, sit here, count til 10 and then get up. Don’t look into the camera!”. On some films, each extra gets his/her own role description, including a motivation.

In Wim Wender’s excellent film “Wings of Desire” you can see Peter Falk talk to extras.
And if you happen to see the Oscar nominated film “Elling”, you might even spot yours truly - on 3 occasions
Thanks to my iceland-based informer, I found out that the BBC has a new series named “Extras”, and here is a hilarious clip from it:

Over at the Apple discussion board, I stumbled upon this gem:

I’m a film editor who’s had the privilege to work on $100 movies to $100 million movies.

Story is king. If your story is working, and crafted well, and paced properly, you can get away with almost whatever you want. For instance, when I cut scenes, I cut for performance… I don’t toss out takes because the glass of water was full in take one but empty in another. 9 times out of ten, even the seasoned filmmakers I’m working with never see the continuity errors because the performances are working.

Occasionally I work with first time directors, helping them with their first short. I see two main mistakes. First, they think that if someone knows how to operate [an editing station], that they are an editor. This is simply not true. I know how to use a chisel, but there is no way [...] I could sculpt the David. Editing is the same: knowing what buttons to push is the least important part of editing. Knowing how to tell a story well is everything. In fact, I know one Oscar winning editor who spent many years never touching the equipment at all. She chose the cut points, and had her assistants do the physical cutting.

The second main mistake amateur filmmakers make, IMO, is that they are not vicious enough when cutting their material. Every single frame of film you project should be conveying new information to the audience. If it’s not, get it out.

The same applies to the craft of cinematography. On discussion boards around film-making I often read questions from wanting-to-be directors on what camera they should buy, which lens they should use. Ocasionally I take the time to point out that if they want to become directors, they should not concern themselves about equipment. They should spend all the time they can on the story, developing the characters, working with the actors to achieve his/her creative vision.

Rather than buying a semi-professional camera, I advise to hire in a professional DP. S/he will not only bring superior equipment, but - most importantly - experience to the shoot. Take a good story and a knowlegdable DP, and you will have something in the cutting room to work with. Your chances of getting your film into a festival and ultimately to actually sell it, have tremendously increased.

Or you can spend all your money on a second-rate camera (never, ever believe the hype that the new HDV camera for $10.000 is as good as a $100.000 camera. But that is another blog…), and end up having to both direct and shoot on your first film. Not a good idea. Leave the technical worries to someone you can trust, and concentrate on your job: story telling.

Movie tip: Living in Oblivion by Tom DiCillo. 

I took my first photo when I was about 7 years old. Growing up in Germany of the 1970s, it was not a Kodak moment, but an Agfa moment. Anyway, the object in question was a cat on a field that apparently grasped my attention of my new Agfamatic kamera. Processing was expensive (when you had to pay it from your own pocket money), and I had another 23 pictures to take before I would get the film developed. So, it took a couple of weeks to find out that what I had seen had absolutely nothing to do with what the actual picture looked like. But still, it amazed me that it was possible to keep a moment frozen onto paper.

And that amazement never left me.

Later, when I started more seriously (as in: very interested hobbyist), I was lucky that the German Democratic Republic disappeared. With it it’s own film-making (and incredibly polluting) factory, ORWO. But between those two events, the west German mark bought incredible amounts of the ORWO black&white film. I think I must have purchased a 3-digit number of those rolls. I built myself a little robot, that would develop those film-rolls in batches of 4, thus giving me plenty of freedom to experiment.

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