New movie on the make,Advice required.

[Sam K]

Hey Guys ,

I'm starting a new thread basically because next weekend I'll be shooting a new short action movie, Giving me an extra week to get all the preparation down. ( We were due to film saturday, but for various reasons that's not gonna happen).
So anyways I'm looking for pointers on what I might be missing out, or any advice which will save me a lot of trouble, so here goes what I've done so far

- First I had an Idea, with an actual story, not much more elaborate than my two initial movies, but better idea still IMO.

- Next I made a list of all the stuff I had access to.
*My House for Location
* 5 gun props: a Steyr, an M15, An AK47, A pistole, and two M4a1's (one of them is broken and can be used more savagely)
*A load of old Debris: Wall paper, newspaper, sawdust etc
*3 "actors" plus me. Basically my two bros a mate of mine, and Me ( although I'm trying to limit the time I spend on camera so I can focus on being behind it, I only have to do the "stunt" parts, because I'll volunteer to do them, my brothers won't.

- I then thought it'd be cool, to have a few stacks of money, so I printed out a few of 500euro note pictures I found on google, cut out a shitload of newspapers to the size of the money and I then strapped an elastic band around em, and tadaaa. ( This was actually just trickin myself into thinking I was improving on getting on with preproduction.

- I then wrote down the main idea of the film on paper. One line per action. Showed it to my bros, they gave in a few Ideas, so I changed that. ( I'll call this piece of paper my first step towards a script)

- I then went through the scene myself in real life seeing how it all worked out, removing or changing bits which would hurt the pace of the movie.

- I grabbed my little bro, and started filming how the film would go, to try out the camera angles I had in mind.

- Put the sequence together on my computer

- Analysed it to see what was wrong with it, what shots looked wrong.

-Wrote down on a sheet of paper what should be changed, inspired by movies with similar scenes on which I analysed how they shot the scenes.

- Came to indietalk to ask you guys what to do next? Haha

Thanks in advance.

Sam.

[Tinalera]

Wow!


I would say next maybe do reshots of the stuff that went "wrong" or perhaps playing with editing see what you can "fix" as it were, your choice!

Maybe try and watch a rough cut of what you've done, see how you feel about it-but welcome to filmmaking! What about sound-don't forget the sound! Maybe see if you can clean it up.

There's so many "next" things to do-put this way, what do you THINK you should do next?

[Sam K]

Since we haven't yet shot the movie itself yet, I'm not gonna worry about sound yet. Because the final movie will probably have a very different feel to the rough version we did to analyse what I did wrong with my filming.
Anyways what I have done, is gone frame by frame with a few action scenes, to try and understand why they are cutting here etc.

I then rewrote an overview of the story again with one bullet point=one action. I did this with the new changed bits in the film.
I then went bullet point by bullet point and wrote more or less three lines( handwritten, probably a line or two on pc) explaining what camera angles I'd have and some rough timing of everything. We're getting closer to a so called script.

My next steps will be to start a short storyboard, and tell my brothers and mate about it.

[Alcove Audio]

Originally Posted by Sam K

Since we haven't yet shot the movie itself yet, I'm not gonna worry about sound yet.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! You start planning for sound on day one of preproduction. In fact, the smaller your budget and the less experience you have the more you should be paying attention from the beginning; it's a very good habit to get into.

[Sam K]

Originally Posted by Alcove Audio

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! You start planning for sound on day one of preproduction. In fact, the smaller your budget and the less experience you have the more you should be paying attention from the beginning; it's a very good habit to get into.

How do I go about preparing sound for a short?

[Alcove Audio]

Originally Posted by Sam K

How do I go about preparing sound for a short?

Go through the entire script as if it were a radio play and you have to assemble all of the sound FX props you will need. This way, when you are shooting, you know what is sonically important.

Scene 2

- Max answers the phone.

- Max: "Yeah?"

- Phone voice: [unintelligible]

- Max throws the phone across the room, jumps up from the couch, trips over the coffee table, falls down, gets up, runs to the door, opens the door, runs through the door and slams the door behind him.

In that short sequence - besides the one word of dialog - there are 14 sounds that are immediately "important" that could be captured on-set (I'll let you guess which ones). This allows you and your sound person/team to focus on capturing those sounds during the sequence. The more angles and B-roll you have the more you will be building your library of sounds with every take; in one take the body fall may be good, in another you get a great door slam, etc. You can draw on these sounds to "rebuild" the soundtrack in audio post.

[directorik]

Originally Posted by Alcove Audio

You start planning for sound on day one of preproduction. In fact, the smaller your budget and the less experience you have the more you should be paying attention from the beginning; it's a very good habit to get into.

I agree.

The biggest mistakes I made when starting out was not paying
attention to sound from the very beginning. "Fix it in post" just
isn't an option for most of us. Make sure you have a good mic
and a boom and headphones and the right connectors and cables.
And make sure you have a dedicated boom operator. You won't
have a pro, but you really should have one person on set who is
concentrating only on the sound. Alcove will have more info, but
for me just listening to the sounds of the location is something
most of us rarely do.

[Sam K]

hmm Thanks this just changes it all. I've realized flaws of my story when doing this sound thing.
If sound is half the experience and I'm relying only on the visuals for some shots then I can't tell my story properly..
GOnna have to go back to changing my story a bit. THanks guys

[Sam K]

Also if anyone has any tips on selling a punch?

[Alcove Audio]

I can't help you visually, but the right impact sound combined with the right "oof!!", grunt, groan, whatever makes a big difference.

Sound is half of the experience.

Watch any boxing or fight other film (not martial arts, however!); you know that they're pulling their punches - even real fighters couldn't pound each other for the days on end required to shoot some fight scenes - the sounds really sell how much they get "hurt".

Actually, "real" sounds don't mean much in the world of film. Layers of "organic" sounds create the emotional intent of what is matched to the visuals.

[Sam K]

^Yeah I've started to work this out, with some guy making awesome gun shot sounds, from door slams, video game laser shots and layering a bunch of stuff. You try and emulate sounds not reproduce em like they really would be. It's more about if it feels right, than actually being right.

[Sam K]

Does it happen to a lot of you that you have a great story, write it down and then have an other great better idea to integrate, so you write a new script and you're nearly done and damn, something better pops into your mind?
The amount of paper I've used on scripting+storyboarding this is getting excessive :p

[mahdy]

Originally Posted by Sam K

Does it happen to a lot of you that you have a great story, write it down and then have an other great better idea to integrate, so you write a new script and you're nearly done and damn, something better pops into your mind?
The amount of paper I've used on scripting+storyboarding this is getting excessive :p

man, it happens to almost everyone i think.. i mean, ideas always make their ways to come into heads..even if u r in middle of editing, u will think of a completely new idea that would make a great twist..

[Sam K]

Yeah but by then Man it's to late.
I've still got all night to get details finished, I reckon an other 5hours and it'll do it. It's just about midnight right now in france.
We will be shooting tomorow check list:
Camera oncharge: check
Cookie dough ready to be cooked: check
Guns: check
Loud inspiring voice: check
Outfits :check
Parents out of the house:check
Load of debris to chuck around in action: check
Pack of beer for the end of the day: check
script: check
screenplay: check
been nice to little brother and big brother for the last few hours: check

Although the audio for this film will have to be dubbed which will be a lot of work, but I won't have my hands on mics by tomorow

[IndieBudget]

You could do ADR for the entire project... prolly work better that way.. still be a mess ans may sound better the way it is looking... Good Luck ! When sound is an afterthought.. YUK !