Indie Feature Film Budget Question

[nycineaste]

another thing that often doesn't get talked about here is the difficulty of shaping and getting a good performance on camera with a tight shooting schedule. I'm lucky enough to be working with highly trained and talented theatre actors (my ex girlfriend attends a four year acting school, so I use her and her friends).

For my tiny one-day 5 minute stories, we do a table read (last time we did three) before we shoot, we discuss throughline actions, backstory motivation, I'm a KICKASS director when it comes to actors--- I understand acting technique(s), can speak their language, and since I do detailed character bios for my scripts, I always have a fully realized, three-dimensional, non-cliche character for them to play.

aannd....

It's STILL a challenge to get completely believable performances that are "on spine" with the text. Why? Cause were working against the clock, it takes TIME to adjust/shape a performance, and cause art is freeking HAAAARRRRRD and if you think otherwise youre either a genius (in which case lucky you- email me from Hollywood), or you dont have enough experience or talent to notice it.

I don't think most beginning filmakers have an understanding of the steepness of the mountain we are climbing--- a solid script, cast pitch perfectly, with naturalistic performances...when you hit this out the park, you've made El Mariachi, Primer, or Paranormal Activity, and you wont be hanging out here much longer..

This is why doing EXPLOITATION material (where the star is something other than the actors/acting) of any sort is a great idea for most of us on a nolo budget. Not that this is an excuse to skimp on script or acting, I'm just saying we can all talk about how those two are the secret sauce, but that sauce.......AINT NO EASY THING TO COOK UP..... we can only do our best and try.

 

[OldCorpse]

nycineaste, you speak wisdom. The real problems with most people's films cannot be fixed by the obvious, easy to address issues: picking the right gear, having enough money, having a great script, picking the right actors, getting great crew, great DP, music, editing etc.. The real problems I have honestly never seen addressed on these fora - because, really, it's not possible to address them in such a format.

And it starts with things like instinct, knack, talent, taste. Just a very simple example. You shoot a scene that is correctly lit, in a good setting, competent actors, good script. Yet, somehow the scene sits there dead. That's where the real separation of the boys and men takes place - at this stage. If the scene is not correctly lit, or the actors are bad, or the script is sub-par - geez, that's easy to spot and easy to remedy. But once you've done everything "right", and yet it still sits there, dead, that's when a film lives or dies. I have given this example before, but once on a film I was producing, I witnessed this. The director did everything "right", yet the scene seemed dead. He didn't simply ignore it - he addressed it. What transpired, was that he re-did the scene exactly as before, except this time he incorporated a very small camera move at a certain point, instead of having the cam on sticks throughout the whole scene. Suddenly, the scene came alive. That was the point at which I understood how much instinct and talent shapes the ultimate outcome - there was not neat "rule" you could invoke, it was simply a matter of instinctively feeling what's wrong/right with the picture.

And film is composed of thousands and thousands such choices and decisions at all points of the venture. There is no way to map all that with pithy advice and "rules". It comes down to instinct and taste, and talent. You can't teach that. I see many, many, many, many, many films or shorts which are technically very, very competent, even outstanding, often with good actors and decent scripts, which fail to "soar" - because you can't script that and surround it in rules. That's the ultimate challenge.

What we are doing on these boards is covering the basics - the elementary, the technical. This by itself will not make anyone a great or even decent filmmaker. So we must be aware of what is and is not possible to accomplish through this medium.