Barry_Green
Moderator
Excellent reminder. I see where you're coming from now. And it makes perfect sense.
You're right, you didn't set out to teach, I apologize for attributing motives to you. What makes this thread awesome is that you're just laying it all out there, your way, and that's very much appreciated. I focus on teaching, so I guess I was looking at it through my own perspective and not from yours.
Okay, as a teacher, I hope it's okay if I occasionally inject some observations as to why things have typically been done the way they've typically been done, especially when we watch you vary from that path. That's not to tell you what you're doing is wrong or whatever, it's that we have thousands of members looking for guidance on how to do this whole "feature film" thing, and the processes that have been developed have typically been developed for a reason, and especially when you're diverging from the typical path, it'd be nice to elucidate for them why you've chosen a different path, and why the existing path exists, so they can watch how this whole thing develops. It's not about "right" or "wrong", it's about watching this all play out. I totally love that you're showing us your way, letting everyone peek behind the curtains -- this is one of the best threads ever on DVXUser. And I know it's taking a phenomenal amount of time and effort on your part to continually update us while also balancing the load of preproducing an entire feature by yourself. Your efforts are very much appreciated.
So please indulge me to take an aside to explain as to why I think storyboards and a shot list are important and should be carefully considered by all filmmakers attempting to make a film: filmmaking is, at its heart, a manufacturing process. You're building a product. Yes it's an art, but the goal is to come out at the end with a finished product. It is, largely, not much different than building a house -- you have your architect draw up a design (screenplay), you hire a crew, and you go make the thing.
A shotlist and storyboards are the instruction manual for how to put the product together. In assembling any product, if you do not have the instructions, your job is obviously harder. Doesn't mean you can't get it done, but wouldn't it be easier with instructions? And what if those instructions included pictures? That's what the storyboards and shotlist are -- they're the illustrated instructions to all your crew members as to how you're going to build this product.
There are, of course, other ways to give instructions to your crew. The storyboards and shotlists don't have to be considered the one and only way to do it, but they are the typical time-tested way to do it. If you want to ignore these tools, you are going to have to substitute them with something else, because your crew will need to know what to do regardless.
The smaller your crew is, and the smaller your budget is, the less mandatory these particular tools may be. If you're Rodriguez shooting El Mariachi, then you *are* your crew -- there's no real need to communicate your plans to anyone, because -- you are everyone. But if you're on a production where there's six or eight department heads and a crew of 10 to 40 people, you need to clearly communicate to all of them as to what the plan is. Somehow or other, you have to let everyone know what's going on. The traditional way to do that has been through boards and a daily shotlist.
The bigger your budget, the more vital this becomes. I know that lots of times filmmakers are an impatient bunch, and they just want to go go go go. And taking the time to create these instructions may seem unnecessarily frustrating and "getting in the way" of you making your art. To which, I would like to point out: if you have a crew, you're going to need to communicate with them. You can do it verbally, during the shoot days, or you can accomplish it largely beforehand with boards and a shotlist. They will take up, all told, about the same amount of time -- either in preproduction to spend a lot of time drawing tons of boards, or during production in meetings and explaining. The difference is that with boards and a shotlist, you're doing that when the pressure's off and the money clock isn't ticking. As a comparison, let's take as an example Adam's schedule and budget: $300k, and 18 days. If he were aiming for 8-hour days, that means he'll be spending $2,000 per hour once production begins. He's spending roughly zero per hour prior to production beginning. That's why, generally speaking, the more you can get accomplished BEFORE production begins, the better off you are. Taking time during a shoot day to do what could have been accomplished before the shoot day begins doesn't seem the most efficient way to go. You may have to do it that way, but if you don't have to do it that way, carefully consider doing this all beforehand.
I am an advocate for an astonishing amount of preproduction. You cannot plan for everything, of course, but you can try. My advice to any filmmaker is that the more work you can accomplish off the clock, before you start the money flow, the better off you'll be.
(and just because you can't draw, that's not really a good reason to not have storyboards. I can't draw anything -- I couldn't even draw blood if you gave me a machete. My boards are typically stick figures. I bought a storyboarding program for 3-D boards, but it's largely too much learning curve. The method I've found that works best is to take a couple of people to your locations and board using a digital camera. You can slam together the entire storyboarding for a full film in a couple of days taking digital snapshots. And they'll be very useful if you know your locations before you start shooting. If you're building sets, well, that's not so easy, you'll need someone who can draw. But if you're shooting on locations, the digital camera boarding method is the fastest way to get the most usable boards that I've found yet.)
