A Two-Man Band’s Filmmaking Checklist
by Evan Marlowe
Sweet Home Films, LLC, had a busy 2012. The company, co-owned by me and my wife Kerry, produced two award-winning indie horror
features (Blood Rush and Horror House), a reality show pilot (Man
School), and many short films (Trippy, Romantic Hideaway,
Smasheroo and The Moment).
And we achieved this all with a skeleton crew that consisted
almost exclusively of the two of us. She handles production and
writing, and I take care of directing, editing and all the other
technical aspects. Now, this arrangement isn’t ideal, and will
surely cause many people to go insane, but it is possible if you
simply don’t have the luxury of bringing in a full crew.
In order to maintain this sort of intense, masochistic schedule,
we had to have in place a very efficient workflow. Here now is a
twelve-point checklist, a holistic overview of the process, from
pre to post:
1. Is the script ready? The cheapest, fastest and least
painful way to fix your film is in the script-writing/revising
process. Make sure all action and every scene is necessary.
Nothing in the script is written in stone. It’s a blueprint. If
there are concerns, resolve them with the writer in advance.
2. Have you planned the shoot thoroughly? Draw a storyboard,
even if it’s sloppy, and create a shot list. Send notes to your
actors and answer their questions about the characters; set up
table reads if possible, where you can evaluate wardrobe,
delivery and chemistry. Once you’ve planned well, you’ll find you
can shoot more and better footage.
3. Is the project legally above board? Have you got all your
location and talent releases signed? Are your shots “sterile”
(free of any logos, music, et cetera, to which you don’t control
or own the rights)? In the case of logos, it’s so much easier to
turn bottles around to hide labels and to pan to avoid
billboards, versus fixing it in post.
4. Are you capturing clean audio? You can fix bad audio in
post, to a degree, but you’ll thank yourself later if you get the
best quality sound in the first place. This means placing the mic
close to the source, and turning off extraneous sources of noise
like fridges and air conditioners. They say you’re supposed to
monitor audio at all times, but I never do; I do, however, make
sure the recorder is rolling and levels look good on the meter.
Great audio is invisible. This means that no matter how good your
film looks, lousy sound will absolutely kill your project; and
yet when the audio is right, nobody will notice.
5. Did you light properly? Are your light sources motivated?
If you don’t know what that means, look it up. Don’t let a boom
shadow fall onto the background or actor’s face. Many good versus
great shots are the result of how they were lit. So have some
tools at your disposal: a reliable key, a form of diffusion, a
way to bounce. Then enhance the lighting in post using tools such
as vignetting and contrast.
6. Is the shot composed well? Keep an eye on head space,
symmetry, background and foreground. Are edges perfectly
horizontal or vertical? If not, that should be fixed in post. You
can shoot a wider frame than you need and do a slight digital
zoom in post, but you can never expand a tight frame if you need
to see more. Check and recheck focus many times before a take.
7. Did you get enough coverage? Get wides, mediums, OTS’s and
close ups. Just do it, even if you didn’t story board it. You
will appreciate it during the edit when you find a solution to a
bad continuity error or performance.
8. And while on the topic, are you watching for continuity
errors? Not just inconsistencies in dialogue, but with hand and
body gestures, props and lighting. Even placing the mic
consistently from one shot to the next is a continuity issue.
Many editors, however, will tell you they select shots based on
emotion and not continuity, so don’t get too worked up over these
imperfections.
9. Are you meticulously logging audio and video files to refer
back to during the edit? Jotting all these numbers down on set
will make your life a breeze later. I use Pleuraleyes
(Singular/Red Giant) to synch tracks in post. The industry
standard is slating, but I personally feel this is antiquated so
long as you rigorously record file numbers as they correspond to
shot numbers. I know it’s considered blasphemy, but slating to me
disrupts performances, eats into the production time and isn’t
necessary at the editing bay. I’ve slated one shot out of
necessity. Ever.
10. Are you adding foley and sound effects? Subtle things like
the movement of fabric, a car passing outside and room tone make
the world you’re creating believable. Without these sounds, the
film will subconsciously seem less alive. Nothing says “amateur”
more than chunks of silence between lines of dialogue; fill those
gaps with room tone, and make sure to capture a minute or so of
it on set. If you absolutely can’t get rid of a hum or hiss
during the shoot, remove it in post with something like Audacity.
11. Are you correcting and enhancing colors in post? Shoot
flat to give yourself more options later, such as contrast and
saturation.
12. And possibly most importantly: FEED YOUR CAST AND CREW. In many parts of the world, people will work for free, for
credit, or for deferred payment. But nobody will cooperate if you
don’t feed them. We have been fortunate to work with many great
actors, always for free. We develop these relationships because
we not only feed them, but we give them IMDB credit, always
listen to their suggestions and concerns with respect, and
provide footage for their reels (particularly once sales or
distribution is secured).
I won’t lie. The above takes an enormous amount of sustained
concentration. That’s why in the real world of big budget
filmmaking, we delegate to other specialists. Having a large crew
is super, but the lack of one is certainly not a valid excuse NOT
to go shoot your movie.
Copyright (c) 2013 Peter D. Marshall / All Rights Reserved
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