Thursday, September 9, 2010

Lessons Learned...

They say that you can learn from adversity just as well as, if not more so, than from joy. I'm not so sure about that, but I DO know that, in the world of independent film, knowing what NOT to do can be a very, very valuable thing.

The project that I call “The Extended Casting Call For Dark of Moon” taught me a lot. It was an ambitious project: shoot an independent TV show for one 7-episode mini season, and try to crank out one episode per month. "Not too bad", I thought, "we should be able to do this...." (Of course, I WAS just a writer on the show, and we're known to be an optimistic lot)

The project had a lot going for it: It was set in a comic book store, and we had a fully-stocked comic store we could shoot in. We had an extremely talented cast, 3 of whom our Producer/Director/Lord-And-Master had worked with before...a haunting beauty of a lady, an absurdidly talented gay character actor, and a rubber-faced fat man who could be the next John Belushi. Added to that were some great discoveries during casting. Mix all of this with an enthusiastic writing duo and the potential for greatness was there.

And yet, very few of you, if any, will ever get to see what little was shot of the show. Far from the one-episode per month goal that was set, we spent five months producing one pilot episode. And that, it appears, will all that will ever come of the project.

The reasons that this endeavour fell apart are numerous, but I'll limit the ones I list to those that impacted how I would (and wouldn't) run things during the production of Dark of Moon.

Lesson One: Location, location, location!

First of all, let's look at shooting locations. The comic store we shot in was great, and it provided a production value that the producer/director of the project would never have been able to afford to create himself. We (the writers) were instructed to place most of the show's scenes there.

However, the one big (huge) drawback to this location was it's (extremely) limited availability. We could shoot one day per week there, on Sundays. They were closed that day, but the store owner graciously came in on his day off to let us shoot there.

Independent productions, however, are unpredictable things. You just never know when life (or a gig that actually pays) will step in and prevent one or more cast members from being available on a given day. When you only have one day per week to film, losing that day means losing the entire week. This alone set us back months.

So, when I wrote Dark of Moon, I set the vast majority of the scenes in a private home. Shooting at private residences means more flexibility in shooting schedules, so the loss of one day isn't so catastrophic. While I am shooting at some more exotic locations (an occult/magickal store, 7 acres of Druid-owned land, etc), those are limited to 2 days each. If I were writing the TV show again, I'd set more of the scenes at characters' houses, and limit the time they spent in the store.

Lesson Two: Rehearsal is key.

Both “The Extended Casting Call For Dark of Moon” and "Dark of Moon" are dialogue-driven comedies. This means that the humour is delivered in the form of verbal jokes and one-liners, as opposed to situational comedies (where humour is in the setup of the story...think "Three's Company" where an overheard conversation out of context drives the comedy) or physical comedies (pie-in-the-face, pratfall gags). While all comedy depends heavily on timing, dialogue comedies are absolutely nothing without good timing.

Have you ever heard someone massacre a good joke? You know, a joke that you've heard (and laughed at) before is told by someone who just CAN'T tell jokes, and they turn a funny story into a painful exercise in awkward silences? Most often, it's because they lack comic timing...they don't emphasise the punch line, they tell portions out of order, etc. Without the right timing, the funniest gag on the planet can fall flat.

Because of this, most dialogue-driven comedies have extensive rehearsal schedules. Kevin Smith is notorious for having weeks of rehearsal. Even your garden-variety sit-com rehearses for four days and shoots on the fifth. This gives the cast a chance to shake out the cobwebs, work through the jokes, and find the perfect comic timing for each scene. It also gives the director a chance to start directing the cast before the cameras ever roll, and THIS saves time and money.

On “The Extended Casting Call For Dark of Moon”, the actors basically had no rehearsal. We did a table-read, read the script twice, and then started shooting. They didn't even get any rehearsal before the shooting started...take one was the rehearsal. This might work on a horror film (because let's face it...the dialogue in those can be pretty dreadful and nobody cares. In fact, the higher the cheese factor, the more popular some of those films are)...but on a dialogue-driven comedy, it will only work against you.

On Dark of Moon, however, we spent the entire month of August rehearsing. I was busy 5 days a week with various combinations of actors. Even supporting roles had to rehearse. And it's paying off, too...we're getting great takes, pretty much every time. We're getting the takes we need so quickly, we're getting the chance to experiment, get different angles, try different moods, have fun with cutaway shots, etc. In the end, the more choices we have when editing means a better, more nuanced film.

Lesson Three: You cannot be too prepared.

This isn't so much a lesson I learned from “The Extended Casting Call For Dark of Moon” (I wasn't privy to pre-production much on that project), but from the stories that I heard from the cast and crew on that project about OTHER projects they had been on. Stories about how poor pre-planning either sunk the project, or took what was a great idea and turned it into a so-so finished product. They're so varied...scenes that get forgotten and never shot, locations that suck, closeups that never get done (ever see a low-budget movie and find that, suddenly, an entire scene is played out in one wide, static shot? Yep...they forgot to shoot the close-ups)...that I could never go into detail about them. Instead, let me tell you (briefly) what I and my tech crew did to prepare for the shoot:

We story-boarded the entire film: Yep, we went, scene by scene, and drew primitive sketches (VERY primative...my DP refuses to let the cast see the drawings because they were basically stick figures with some exaggerated feature to denote different actors) for how each angle and edit would look.

When she goes to do the rough edit of the film, the storyboards will be her basic guide. They also made us look at the composition of each scene and ask ourselves "is this the best we can do? Is there some way we need to liven things up here?"

(As an aside, let me say that this step has permanently changed the way I look at movies. Now I notice things like edits, angles, transitions... sometimes to the point of missing what the actors are saying!)

I made a list (and checked it twice) of each and every angle we needed: This is under the mantle of script supervision. Basically, to avoid unhappy discoveries come editing time ("What do you mean, we never shot his close-up?!?"), I listed each and every angle and camera setup that we needed to make each scene "complete". I then made another version of the list location-by-location. This way, if we finish the "needed" shots for our planned
scene early that night we can choose between getting extra angle and takes for that scene, or having everyone change clothes and shooting part of another scene at the same location. Either we get creative, or we get ahead...a win-win situation!

Costume Meetings: The cast of the film supplied their own wardrobes, but we all wanted to make sure that the clother fit the character. So we sat down with our cast and talked about their characters...who they were, how they saw the world, and how this played out in how they dressed. We never got too elabourate with this part...after all, this is a contemporary comedy, not a period piece. However, knowing which characters dressed a bit more modestly and which ones were more flambuoyant in their style helped with the consistancy of the overall piece.

Shooting a film can be tedious...setting up lights, laying the dolly track, re-setting the lights every time you move the camera, shooting every angle two or threee times IF every take is perfect...poor planning can make it torture.

All in all, this may be my first film as a director, but I like to think that I've recieved an education in film...even if it's what not to do. To paraphrase Sammi in the film: we can make bold, new mistakes all on our own. There's no need to repeat the mistakes of others.

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