Making a film? Great! Your friends are starring in it? Be careful...

Gary the Llama

Gary the Llama

Well-known member
Hi guys. Figured I'd post a short opinion piece, cultivated from my own experience with my recent short.

A few months back I was told there was going to be a program on a local television channel called Screen Wars. Local filmmakers would submit their work and watch the awards come rolling in... Right? :undecided:

Each month would be a different genre starting with comedy and going through action, western, and finally ending the season with horror/sci-fi.

I found out about it after the show had already started so I got to see some of the competition that had already been submitted. (They were halfway through the comedy genre.) And ya know what? Most of it was pretty lame. Technically, they were all pretty bad. And the stories just didn't make up for the technical problems.

So my friends and I decided to submit something to the end-of-season horror genre. We knew we could be technically better than everyone. We had two great cinematographers to help out... We all pitched in and built a 35mm lens adapter for the Panny GS-400 camera.

We had a short that I had written - a small piece based off a full-length feature I was working on. And so we attempted to tackle this project. And what a project. We did everything we weren't supposed to do for our first project. We shot at night and simulated rain! The only other thing we could've done worse was used a child actor and a dog! :laugh:

Well, we scheduled our shoots and did some test footage at the location. The test footage turned out great, proving that we could make the (cheap) lighting and rain work. We were all confident and morale was high.

Next up, finding actors. I needed 3. 2 of them I already had and knew could do a passable job. Although our lead was proving to be more difficult. With the deadline looming, I decided against sending out a casting call and picked a friend. (Actually all of the actors were friends, hehe.) The guy playing the lead had plenty of acting experience... IN HIGH SCHOOL! Somehow, I thought this would translate.

How wrong I was...

I gave them all copies of the script. They liked it. But we never rehearsed. Until the first night's shoot. Oh boy. So we did a quick rehearsal and that's when I started to get nervous. Oh well, no turning back now. :cheesy:

So we started shooting. And the actors got restless. Fast. We storyboarded beforehand so our setups were fast and painless... But for the actors it must've felt like an eternity. By the end of the first night's shoot we had covered 90% of our shots and figured our 2nd night would be for the last 10% and any reshoots we needed. Easy as pie. (Our first night was 9 hours - this of course, after everyone had worked all day too, so we were all ready for a nice bit of sleep.)

After sleeping a few hours, I woke up and went to look at the footage at my DP's house. Oh my... Oh no...

Thanks to an incredibly crappily calibrated monitor we lost 90% of our footage. It was all way too dark. There were only 2 or 3 shots we could use. Thankfully, one of them was our gore shots, which would've been impossible to recreate since we didn't take pictures during the process. Good... (The establishing shot also made it, which was great because it took forever to setup.)

So the second night shoot starts... I deliver the bad news. We're going to have to reshoot most everything. The actors groaned. They thought tonight would be a quick 3 or 4 hour shoot. But alas, it was going to be another 8 hour shoot. Could we even make it in 8 hours? The pressure was on.

So we started. And this time the crew moved fast and efficiently. Like a well-oiled machine, we really rocked the house. I was very pleased. We were getting through each setup in record time. With a little luck we would go home by 2:00am instead of 5:00am. :shocked:

Alright, it's nearing midnight. We have our final setups... And our lead actor starts getting grumpy. Oh man... Geez... Really grumpy... And it starts to rub off on the other actors and crew. I mean, sure, it was my fault, I wanted another 2 or 3 takes - but just to be safe. I got my way but I was afraid he was going to walk off the set and we'd be left without a lead actor. Not good.

The highlight of the night - our lead actor went downstairs and my DP and I started to discuss the problem of our lead actor being a "crybaby" (and many other words). A much needed venting session right? Well, I noticed a red light out of the corner of my eye. And guess what? There's my wife, recording some "behind the scenes footage for the DVD". That's right, footage of us bad-mouthing the lead. A friend. Awesome. (It will make it onto the DVD, I can assure you of that. It's too funny not to.)

So we finally made it through. The production was complete. On to post. Right?

Oh man... After finally sitting down and watching the dialog scenes... I could die. It's all wrong. Well, most of it. But I don't need to explain it.

I can show you.

http://www.twinfallsroad.com/almost

There you go. There's the film. View it. And weep with me. Now the whole thing isn't a waste. We had brilliant cinematography. Oh yeah, except for the few shots with the barrel distortion (thanks crappy monitor!) But yeah, other than that... It's good... Oh wait... It's going to look different on different monitors! :cry:

Yeah... So... Wow, night shoots are hard. And it's good to not use friends as actors. Don't do them a favor. Do yourself a favor. On the other hand, I used all friends for the crew and they were excellent but then again, I kept 'em nice and busy all night.

So that's my story. Watch the movie. Tell me what you think. Whew.

Oh yeah, and we didn't make it on the TV show. Why? I dunno, maybe the acting. Maybe we didn't have enough time to tell the story properly. (Limited ourself to 3 minutes, the maximum the show would allow.) Maybe I'm just a bad director.

I don't mind taking the blame though. We definetely should've rehearsed more. I should've spent more time with my actors. Oh well, a lesson learned.

Feedback and discussion is appreciated.
 
Haven't watched the short yet, but I think I missed something from your post.

If you admit that you should have put more prep into it, that you should have had them rehearse more, that footage was lost because of a monitor, then why are you blaming your friends as actors? It sounds like they handled a tough situation pretty well. Granted I wasn't there, and don't know what "crybaby" entails, but reaction to a situation that you placed these people in sounds normal.

But again, maybe I missed something.
 
I guess I was just trying to tell a funny story and warn people about using friends as actors. It puts strains on relationships. He knew going in that there would be long hours with a little bit of acting and then long waits between setups. Yet he complained anyway. We could make an entire reel of him rolling his eyes every time I yelled "cut" and asked for another take or gave more direction. I just thought it was a funny story and a bit of advice to find real actors - or at least people with experience acting on film.

I wasn't trying to place blame or whatever because I can look back and realize twenty billion things I did wrong as a director. Or a writer. Etc., etc.
 
OK, watched it. The rain looked outstanding. I've seen worse acting, but I've also seen better. The biggest problem that stood out to me was the sound. Most of your foley was great. The dialog needs some work. It sounds too much like ADR. Also the radio sounds bugged me, but that might be an aesthetic thing. I understand what you're were getting at, I just didn't feel like I needed to be pounded with the static and reverberating sound through the whole short.

I think you're being overly hard on yourself. Count it as a learning experience.
 
Ha, yeah I know what you mean about using friends as actors, straining relationships and whatnot. We casted a major pothead for the role of someone that happened to be a pothead in our feature. He didn't want to do anything at all. Nothing. First he called for a rewrite, and wanted a larger role. After he turned the second page of the script, he realized his role was pretty large, and was satisfied. His first two lines were one five-word sentence each. He couldn't remember them. After two hours of him messing up five words, I decided to poke fun at him by blaming it on all the pot he smokes. He got mad and tried saying it was the "horrible script's fault." We replaced him that day with someone who loved the script as much as the rest of us. The problem with this was he wasn't a pothead. To give an example about how nieve he was, we needed to make a bowl for one scene. After I messed up two pieces of tinfoil, he told me to "just mold it around a cereal bowl."

Another scene involved him rolling a joint. I tried to show him how (it's funny to watch a kid that has never done drugs school a kid that's never even seen drugs about doing drugs), but his joint was pathetic. It wouldn't get your baby high.

Now, we've (hopefully) got all of the kinks worked out, because everything is comming together quite smoothly. Slowly but surely. We're getting a teaser up online within the next week. A full trailer will hopefully be up 2-3 weeks after that, and it will be screened a week or two after that. Hopefully our graphic designer will also finish our website within 2 weeks after it screens so we can get an online shop up. So far we've been getting an excellent response from Indie bands/artists (some of which will be donating songs) and the small number of people we've shown clips to.

As for feedback on your short: The cinematography was well done. Like someone above me said, the dialogue sounded way too much like ADR (especially the woman with her mouth gagged). The rain was done well, but I could see that it was following the person walking *EDIT: I looked at it again. It was just on the right side. Left side was fine. This must have been because of wind, random pattern or raindrops falling in this particular way, etc. Not because the rain was following the person.*
 
krestofre said:
OK, watched it. The rain looked outstanding. I've seen worse acting, but I've also seen better. The biggest problem that stood out to me was the sound. Most of your foley was great. The dialog needs some work. It sounds too much like ADR. Also the radio sounds bugged me, but that might be an aesthetic thing. I understand what you're were getting at, I just didn't feel like I needed to be pounded with the static and reverberating sound through the whole short.

I think you're being overly hard on yourself. Count it as a learning experience.
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Yeah, the sound was a nightmare. We didn't have a dedicated sound guy and the sound we did shoot on location turned out pretty bad so we overdubbed it. Every single bit of dialog was overdubbed and that's what you're hearing so that's the problem there. Next time, dedicated sound guy. For sure. Lesson learned. :)

And yeah, we did too much with the static and radio sounds... After all was said and done, we should've gone with a straight up slasher. 3 minutes wasn't enough time to easily convey what I wanted to but ah well...

It was a great experience and the crew is pumped to do another short.
 
CrackerJap said:
Ha, yeah I know what you mean about using friends as actors, straining relationships and whatnot. We casted a major pothead for the role of someone that happened to be a pothead in our feature. He didn't want to do anything at all. Nothing. First he called for a rewrite, and wanted a larger role. After he turned the second page of the script, he realized his role was pretty large, and was satisfied. His first two lines were one five-word sentence each. He couldn't remember them. After two hours of him messing up five words, I decided to poke fun at him by blaming it on all the pot he smokes. He got mad and tried saying it was the "horrible script's fault." We replaced him that day with someone who loved the script as much as the rest of us. The problem with this was he wasn't a pothead. To give an example about how nieve he was, we needed to make a bowl for one scene. After I messed up two pieces of tinfoil, he told me to "just mold it around a cereal bowl."

Another scene involved him rolling a joint. I tried to show him how (it's funny to watch a kid that has never done drugs school a kid that's never even seen drugs about doing drugs), but his joint was pathetic. It wouldn't get your baby high.

Now, we've (hopefully) got all of the kinks worked out, because everything is comming together quite smoothly. Slowly but surely. We're getting a teaser up online within the next week. A full trailer will hopefully be up 2-3 weeks after that, and it will be screen a week or two after that. Hopefully our graphic designer will also finish our website within 2 weeks after it screens so we can get an online shop up. So far we've been getting an excellent response from Indie bands/artists and the small number of people we've shown clips to.

As for feedback on your short: The cinematography was well done. Like someone above me said, the dialogue sounded way too much like ADR (especially the woman with her mouth gagged). The rain was done fairly well, but I could see that it was following the person walking. You needed to use another hose (or whatever you were using to dispense water) or 2. The effect would've been perfect if it had covered more area.
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Haha, good luck with your project man. Can't wait to see the teaser/trailer. Always good times working with actors (stoned or not, hehe).

As for our dialog... It was all ADR. :( And the gagged girl... I don't think we got it across that the sound of her voice was coming from the radios. So when it shows her gagged... And she's saying something. She's not actually saying it. It's more or less coming from the radio. (This is explained much better in the full-length script, once again, we limited ourselves too much time-wise.)
 
Yeah, I didn't get the impression you were blaming the friend/actors.
Some very good shots in the short. Sound felt a bit off, and the flashback dialogue could have used some tweaking, toning down, or reverb or something to make it feel like it was in that room. The officer's reaction felt a little... meh.... Good flick though. enjoyed it. Great images.
 
Next time, dedicated sound guy.
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A dedicated sound guy is definitely a benefit, but you can make ADR work. It just sounds too clean with the rather dirty foley that you have. Mess it up a little bit in your NLE or audio program. Add some room tone. I bet you could make this 3 minute short a lot tighter and more effectual with a litte more sound work. But, if this one is behind you and you're not interested, then keep it in mind for the next one. :thumbsup:
 
krestofre said:
A dedicated sound guy is definitely a benefit, but you can make ADR work. It just sounds too clean with the rather dirty foley that you have. Mess it up a little bit in your NLE or audio program. Add some room tone. I bet you could make this 3 minute short a lot tighter and more effectual with a litte more sound work. But, if this one is behind you and you're not interested, then keep it in mind for the next one. :thumbsup:
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I do plan on tightening it up a bit. I'm about to buy Vegas for myself (the editing was done at my DP's house) so I can work on the ULTIMATE DIRECTOR'S EDITION... Heh... So yeah, we'll see what we do. But for the most part, we're already looking towards our next project.

Thanks for the great advice though.

Oh, also - I should mention - the reason we used ADR for the flashback scene was because I actually went back and wrote entirely new dialog. The original dialog sucked really, really bad. So we changed it, recorded it in-studio, and tried to match it up to the footage. Good times... :cheesy:
 
I just watched it. Review:

Directing- 8/10 - I thought the directing was pretty good.
Cinematography- 9/10- Loved the shots, lighting looked pretty good to me.
Writing- 7/10- Nothing too original, but it was interesting and fun.
Effects- 8/10 The blood, and the atmosphere the house seemed to have was great, loved it.

Sound did have some problem, but it wasn't terrible. Acting wasn't terrible, I've seen much worst.

What did you shoot this with ?
 
FilmMakerr said:
I just watched it. Review:

Directing- 8/10 - I thought the directing was pretty good.
Cinematography- 9/10- Loved the shots, lighting looked pretty good to me.
Writing- 7/10- Nothing too original, but it was interesting and fun.
Effects- 8/10 The blood, and the atmosphere the house seemed to have was great, loved it.

Sound did have some problem, but it wasn't terrible. Acting wasn't terrible, I've seen much worst.

What did you shoot this with ?
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Glad you liked it. Thanks for the comments!

We shot it with the Panasonic GS-400. We build a 35mm adapater so we could use a wide variety of lenses and get a better DOF. Unfortunately, we didn't get to show off much shallow DOF - except for a shot or two, where it's barely noticable. :thumbdown:

Once again, thanks for the kind words. At this point, it's hard to looka the project without seeing all the things I did wrong. :)
 
One more thing... The footsteps... Anyone have problems with them? Do they sound too loud? Too soft? Out of sync at any point? Feedback would be great on that part. Gracias!
 
My two cents (CDN$).

They thing looked fantastic. I really really loved the visuals.

But that was all I liked. I have seen worse acting yes, but there wasn't so much acting in this as there was "speaking".

The sound was not great; your foley work just sounded like you plopped in the sounds and didn't attempt to mix the audio track at all. But I understand how that is, I myself have no audio experience and the audio for my first film was horrid. And you also mentioned this, so this is just more of a comment I guess.

It sounds as if your actors either a) Couldn't sync up there performances during the ADR or b) that you just recorded them saying the lines without having them watch anything for reference.

Is there more to this? There isn't really a story at all, it is too short to be a "short " film if that makes sense to you. You imply there is more to what is happening but don't follow through with it. Now I enjoy watching abstract shorts, and films that are ambiguous in nature, but it seems to me that there was a "story" on paper. The only thing that held my interest in the piece was watching the great shots, they were lit very skillfully.

And in response to above statement, I don't understand how people can say "Directing 8/10" .. what does that even mean? How do you arrive at this arbitrary number without having been on set? Just a thought...
 
Loki said:
My two cents (CDN$).

They thing looked fantastic. I really really loved the visuals.
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Thanks, I agree!

Loki said:
But that was all I liked. I have seen worse acting yes, but there wasn't so much acting in this as there was "speaking".
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Couldn't agree more. I need to find some real actors for my next short and learn more about directing actors.

Loki said:
The sound was not great; your foley work just sounded like you plopped in the sounds and didn't attempt to mix the audio track at all. But I understand how that is, I myself have no audio experience and the audio for my first film was horrid. And you also mentioned this, so this is just more of a comment I guess.
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Hmmmm... What sounds really bothered you? Do you think that all the sounds are horrible? Or just some of them? Do the footsteps sound off? The rain? Does it all sound bad?

I don't even know the basics of mixing audio tracks. Our one HUGE mistake was not recording room tone at each location. That killed us.

A nudge in the right direction would be great. (Although, a full-time sound guy with experience would be great too, I'd still like to know what's going on with all the audio stuff. Can anyone recommend books or anything?)

Loki said:
It sounds as if your actors either a) Couldn't sync up there performances during the ADR or b) that you just recorded them saying the lines without having them watch anything for reference.
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Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! :laugh: We have a winner!

The actors weren't looking at any visual queue to sync up their lines. We had no way to set that up because of the location where we recorded our post sound. Ah well, you live and learn. We won't be doing that again.

Loki said:
Is there more to this? There isn't really a story at all, it is too short to be a "short " film if that makes sense to you. You imply there is more to what is happening but don't follow through with it. Now I enjoy watching abstract shorts, and films that are ambiguous in nature, but it seems to me that there was a "story" on paper. The only thing that held my interest in the piece was watching the great shots, they were lit very skillfully.
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Oh yes. Much more to this. But not filmed. We limited ourselves by entering this competition and we didn't have enough time to tell the story we wanted. There's a full-length script behind this and it explains so much more... It's a lot better. We just tried to do a simple "slasher" piece really. It was really all about the final scene. We wanted it to be effective and chilling.

So did we pull it off?

Loki said:
And in response to above statement, I don't understand how people can say "Directing 8/10" .. what does that even mean? How do you arrive at this arbitrary number without having been on set? Just a thought...
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You could say the same about any director. Have you ever been on the set with George Lucas? Errr, okay... Have you ever been on the set with Uwe Boll? Wait... Okay, bad examples... :lipsrseal
 
Loki said:
And in response to above statement, I don't understand how people can say "Directing 8/10" .. what does that even mean? How do you arrive at this arbitrary number without having been on set? Just a thought...
Click to expand...


By directing, I obviously mean angles, getting everything right, and the way that everything flowed. I thought he did a good job at making it 'dark', and of course like you stated the tilted shots were great.
 
Oh hey heres my unproffesional opinion also.

Man that rain was awesome. If I produced those shots Id be happy.

I really didnt understand the full story.. I am going to assume a little, but the radio was trasmitting some evil force over the guy turning him into killer / possesed person? Dialogue worried me.. not suggesting I can do better Especially when the cop calls for backup, wouldnt they have some protocol.

With the flashback shot I think you could change the colours up or down add some effects so there is a difference between now and flashback, I think that would also give you the opportunity to mess with the sound a little, keeping it audible but getting rid of that recorded feel.
 
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