Heywire
February 10th, 2009, 11:13 AM
Film is a medium that has fascinated people since its invention. The techology involved gets more and more impressive and budgets keep soaring. However, the idea of the latest wizz-bang special effects isn't such a novelty for audiences as much as it was when the original Star Wars trillogy came out. Special effects and heavy action sequences are being taken for granted more and more each year... so where does that leave us?
Now, we return to the good old days. A well written plot, carefully managed shots, gripping performances and well timed editing will make any film outweigh a multi-million Hollywood production without at least one of these. In my experience, it all begins with a simple idea.
The premise for your story is key. Most premises can be summarised by filling in the blanks in this sentence: "A ____ wants ____ but can't have it because ____. So, ____." For the short film I made for school in the second semester of 2008 ('Spaghetti Man'), our premise was:
"A 17 year old boy wants to become a superhero but can't have it because he has no powers and his mother keeps trying to stop him. So he goes out and trys anyway."
From there, it was fairly easy to begin writing. It is important to note that the second sentence ("So, ____") is what will make your film great, just good or even terrible. How it all resolves is also very mportant. A good, solid ending will make a film satisfying. Always remember that whether you like it or not, your film will say something about something when the credits roll. In Spaghetti Man, we considered having Jerry being beaten at the end, but we decided to let him win so we would be saying "folow your dreams" not, "you have to grow up sometime".
Developing character in film is a little different to that in writing. In film, you only have actions to speak for your characters, unless you employ a voiceover. I personally feel that adding voiceover shouldn't be done unless totally necesarry. We used a voiceover in Spaghetti Man to show how determined the main character, Jerry Spaghetti (played by Jesse), was to become a superhero while played over a montage. While without that sequence, it still would have been fairly clear he was very determined to chase his dream, the voiceover really gave the character some much needed depth and really drove the point home so that the audience were really on side with him. We had other voiceovers in the script, but they were edited out.
To reitterate: while voiceovers can be useful, use them only when absolutely necssary.
Interaction between chracters can be incredibly powerful as far as character development is concerned, however, it is really more the concern of the director than the writer to pull this off in the film. Body language and tone can make people seem submissive, powerful, overconfident, depressed, anxious... the list goes on. As a director, ensure your actors are in the right frame of mind to deliver what you want them to project, right down to the subtleties. For example, during the filming of Spaghetti Man, while filming an argument between Jerry and his mother (played by Lovefish, by the way) we got them to get into chracter and simply fight it out ad lib for about a minute before getting them to ease into the scripted dialogue. Lovefish comes across as perfectly frustrated in the first two shots of that scene (which were the only two shots for which we used this technique). This, coupled with the upwards tilt of the camera (to make her seem bigger and more imposing) made her seem almost frightening. We used a downwards tilt for Jesse (who was sitting down in the shot) which balanced out the agression he was showing to make him seem more assertive, thus bringing the audience on side.
While the performances in the rest of the film were quite good, this scene was the one on which ther were the most convincing and powerful. Working up your actors by getting them to do somehting that will lead into the scene can make a world of difference. I reccomend it highly.
Directing in other areas is equally important. As a director, it is not your job to be really dramatic and showy for the sake of it. It is to enhance the mood of the story through shot types. Make sure you get a good range of shots for any given scene. Do numerous takes from numerous angles. Lighting is also very important. Floodlights are easy to obtain, and are quite powerful. Bed sheets can be used to diffuse the light which is very useful.
Audio is very underated. Make sure you have access to a decent microphone. Some of the wisest words I've heard on the subject were "You can fudge bad vision, but you can't fudge bad audio." Make sure you get it right. Changes in the background noise will show up in cuts between shots, however this can be cleverly hidden when a constant ambience can be played underneath. Record the ambience of your location for a couple of minutes when filming (ie. leave the lense cap on and shut everyone up and record whatever sound is occuring naturally around you).
Finally, we move into my area of real expertise. Editing. First things first: for the love of everything, don't use Window's Movie Maker. Just. Don't. Do. It. If possible, splash out and pay $100 or so for a decent editing program. See what's out there. But anything's better than WMM. For those of you on a Mac, iMovie isn't so bad, but if you can, use something better.
Now, to the actual editing bit. The job of the editor is very underrated. Bad editing can suck the life out of a film (but don't worry, the director gets blamed if that happens). Timing is the key. For fast scenes, or scenes where tension is being built, keep the shots short. When things are more relaxed, make them longer. Simple. This alone will improve a film greatly.
Continuity is also important. Not just in the way you straight away think of. Where characters are when moving between shots is important. Say, you want to show a person walking out of a room, down a hall and into another room, but the half-witted director doesn't have a shot of them walking down the hallway in this instance. Assuming that the hallway [is visited later / was visited earlier] in the film, you need to show that they are not walking into an adjacent room. So, in the shot in which they leave the first room, show them close the door, wait a moment, then cut to them opening the second door. That will then imply that they have been somewhere between the two rooms. Similarly, if they are running down a street, have them leave one shot before they enter the next (except in tracking shots, of course). Hopefully you can make sense of all that.
Similarly to the director, your job as an editor is to add to the mood of each scene without being speccy for the sake of it. Keep your titles simple, unless otherwise called for. Same goes for transitions.
My final pieces of advice are:
- Think things through.
- Be nice to the actors as they are often forgotten in small productions.
- Try to leave the editor alone unless he asks for your input.
- Politely suggest things to the director, but don't challenge their authority. Peace must be kept.
- Make sure everyone understands the story.
- And finally, and most importantly, this goes for all involved: When in doubt, trust your instincts.
Now, we return to the good old days. A well written plot, carefully managed shots, gripping performances and well timed editing will make any film outweigh a multi-million Hollywood production without at least one of these. In my experience, it all begins with a simple idea.
The premise for your story is key. Most premises can be summarised by filling in the blanks in this sentence: "A ____ wants ____ but can't have it because ____. So, ____." For the short film I made for school in the second semester of 2008 ('Spaghetti Man'), our premise was:
"A 17 year old boy wants to become a superhero but can't have it because he has no powers and his mother keeps trying to stop him. So he goes out and trys anyway."
From there, it was fairly easy to begin writing. It is important to note that the second sentence ("So, ____") is what will make your film great, just good or even terrible. How it all resolves is also very mportant. A good, solid ending will make a film satisfying. Always remember that whether you like it or not, your film will say something about something when the credits roll. In Spaghetti Man, we considered having Jerry being beaten at the end, but we decided to let him win so we would be saying "folow your dreams" not, "you have to grow up sometime".
Developing character in film is a little different to that in writing. In film, you only have actions to speak for your characters, unless you employ a voiceover. I personally feel that adding voiceover shouldn't be done unless totally necesarry. We used a voiceover in Spaghetti Man to show how determined the main character, Jerry Spaghetti (played by Jesse), was to become a superhero while played over a montage. While without that sequence, it still would have been fairly clear he was very determined to chase his dream, the voiceover really gave the character some much needed depth and really drove the point home so that the audience were really on side with him. We had other voiceovers in the script, but they were edited out.
To reitterate: while voiceovers can be useful, use them only when absolutely necssary.
Interaction between chracters can be incredibly powerful as far as character development is concerned, however, it is really more the concern of the director than the writer to pull this off in the film. Body language and tone can make people seem submissive, powerful, overconfident, depressed, anxious... the list goes on. As a director, ensure your actors are in the right frame of mind to deliver what you want them to project, right down to the subtleties. For example, during the filming of Spaghetti Man, while filming an argument between Jerry and his mother (played by Lovefish, by the way) we got them to get into chracter and simply fight it out ad lib for about a minute before getting them to ease into the scripted dialogue. Lovefish comes across as perfectly frustrated in the first two shots of that scene (which were the only two shots for which we used this technique). This, coupled with the upwards tilt of the camera (to make her seem bigger and more imposing) made her seem almost frightening. We used a downwards tilt for Jesse (who was sitting down in the shot) which balanced out the agression he was showing to make him seem more assertive, thus bringing the audience on side.
While the performances in the rest of the film were quite good, this scene was the one on which ther were the most convincing and powerful. Working up your actors by getting them to do somehting that will lead into the scene can make a world of difference. I reccomend it highly.
Directing in other areas is equally important. As a director, it is not your job to be really dramatic and showy for the sake of it. It is to enhance the mood of the story through shot types. Make sure you get a good range of shots for any given scene. Do numerous takes from numerous angles. Lighting is also very important. Floodlights are easy to obtain, and are quite powerful. Bed sheets can be used to diffuse the light which is very useful.
Audio is very underated. Make sure you have access to a decent microphone. Some of the wisest words I've heard on the subject were "You can fudge bad vision, but you can't fudge bad audio." Make sure you get it right. Changes in the background noise will show up in cuts between shots, however this can be cleverly hidden when a constant ambience can be played underneath. Record the ambience of your location for a couple of minutes when filming (ie. leave the lense cap on and shut everyone up and record whatever sound is occuring naturally around you).
Finally, we move into my area of real expertise. Editing. First things first: for the love of everything, don't use Window's Movie Maker. Just. Don't. Do. It. If possible, splash out and pay $100 or so for a decent editing program. See what's out there. But anything's better than WMM. For those of you on a Mac, iMovie isn't so bad, but if you can, use something better.
Now, to the actual editing bit. The job of the editor is very underrated. Bad editing can suck the life out of a film (but don't worry, the director gets blamed if that happens). Timing is the key. For fast scenes, or scenes where tension is being built, keep the shots short. When things are more relaxed, make them longer. Simple. This alone will improve a film greatly.
Continuity is also important. Not just in the way you straight away think of. Where characters are when moving between shots is important. Say, you want to show a person walking out of a room, down a hall and into another room, but the half-witted director doesn't have a shot of them walking down the hallway in this instance. Assuming that the hallway [is visited later / was visited earlier] in the film, you need to show that they are not walking into an adjacent room. So, in the shot in which they leave the first room, show them close the door, wait a moment, then cut to them opening the second door. That will then imply that they have been somewhere between the two rooms. Similarly, if they are running down a street, have them leave one shot before they enter the next (except in tracking shots, of course). Hopefully you can make sense of all that.
Similarly to the director, your job as an editor is to add to the mood of each scene without being speccy for the sake of it. Keep your titles simple, unless otherwise called for. Same goes for transitions.
My final pieces of advice are:
- Think things through.
- Be nice to the actors as they are often forgotten in small productions.
- Try to leave the editor alone unless he asks for your input.
- Politely suggest things to the director, but don't challenge their authority. Peace must be kept.
- Make sure everyone understands the story.
- And finally, and most importantly, this goes for all involved: When in doubt, trust your instincts.