Film 1a

My First Movie: Taking Those First Steps
Part One: An Introduction
an article by Rob Lohman
They say the beginning is never easy. This seems to be at least partially true. It has taken me a long (and winding) road to get me to making my first little short (a short little movie). When I was in high school there where two things interesting to me: acting (which turned out to be a love of things visual instead of acting) and computers. Somehow I rolled into the computer branch and began my career as a computer programmer.

Move forward a few years later and this is what I am doing professionally at this very moment. How this all relates to my first movie? Well, the love of things visual never went away and by 2001, the year I was mostly 23 years of age, my collection of DVD's had grown quite large. I saw every "making of," if you get a chance rent the El Mariachi DVD disc. Watch the movie, then watch it again with Robert Rodriguez's commentary track and play his 10 minute film school extra. Now if this is too your liking I suggest checking out his book Rebel Without a Crew) and got more interested in making movies. All these years reading internet sites, books and magazines about the subject suddenly caused an electronic charge in my brain that I needed to do something. Why was I not doing anything with my information and love? No clue.

The Beginning
I am a firm believer in preparation and doing things the hard way. Learn a lot, do a lot, fail a lot and get good at what you do. I immediately decided things were required: books, camera and ideas. Bought myself a pile of books about directing, lighting, digital movie making, etc. A while earlier I already had begun writing down movie ideas, scene ideas, character ideas. Anything and everything that could come in handy some day (even things I thought would never come in handy). I encourage anyway who wants to make movies to start the habit of writing things down. In about a year's time, eight ideas have been written down by me, what I call large ideas (a movie, a TV show or a short movie). Next to that there are also numerous ideas that are committed to paper about all sorts of things. It might never get used (some if it already got used now), but there is a lot of stuff for me to fall back on later!

While reading all the books (and still continuing to read the articles on the Internet) my mind started thinking about a camera. After a month or two the choice had been nailed down to the Canon XL1S camera (PAL edition since I live in Europe). Why this one? good preparation! This is one important piece of it. The camera is well known for its beautiful picture, extendibility (different lenses, third party support etc.) and support from Canon. The only thing against it was the price. Everything in Europe is expensive, cameras included. Fortunately for me there was a heavy project at work during the last months of 2001. This allowed billing overtime to the company, in turn allowing me to buy the camera (together with some savings of my own). First week December 2001 I picked up my camera: happy day in my life!

After some two months of experimenting (December 2001, January 2002) I bought myself the Canon filter set containing the following: ND (less strength then on the manual lens), UV filter (filters out UV light and protects your lens from dust, scratches etc.) and a Circular Polarizer filter (this filter can be rotated so that you can remove reflections etc. on surfaces like glass and water. On a car window you can rotate it so that you see through the window into the car or that you see the reflection instead). All of these filters have been used on my little short movie, they came in very handy! The UV filter is on my lens permanently to protect it. Also bought myself a case for the camera (not a real camera case but a toolset case) which has room for cables, tapes, batteries and all sort of things that need to be dragged along for the ride (this turned out to be a very wise thing to buy as well, it protected my camera and allowed me to bring everything with me in an easy to move case). At this time there was no money left to spend so the tripod had to be borrowed from a friend, a Manfrotto (no fluid head unfortunately).

The Movie
The feeling came that I needed to do a movie. What about was the question. Some ideas where already on paper (as described above), but I wanted to start small and easy for a number of reasons. My friends and myself all have jobs or school, so time is limited. Furthermore it usually is wise to begin small (and thus also making small mistakes), which has some nice side effects: it will be much cheaper, easier and faster too make! While looking around in my country for film schools I might wanted to attend (there are only 2), one required a movie to be submitted (on a very tight deadline, but we will get to that later). This was interesting. It gave me an opportunity to make something that could also be used if deciding to apply for this school, also giving me a deadline in which to work to stimulate me further. Splendid! The deadline was 3 weeks away (that is a very short period of time). What was needed was a simple idea, easy to execute: a story about a burned out business man. It wasn’t a very big interesting story, but it allowed me to make the following shortcuts:

Easy access to locations:
Since I am a business man myself (where did you think part of this story came from?) there was direct access to all of my sets without needing to dress them. If asked gently we would be allowed to film at my own work. This was granted (swell). The other location was my own house (and my lead characters house) which was easy to use as well.

Traveling time:
Driving from my home to work is only a 15 minute drive. This was handy because my 2 person crew (friends of mine) could sleep at my house. The only downside to this was they had to picked up from far away and dropped off at the end of the weekend (some money went into car fuel here). This tremendously cut down on the time to shoot this movie. We shot this movie in 3 days, 2 of which we where at work.

Even though things were looking favorable two more things where cut: sound and light. While one of my crew (the lead actor) is an audio engineer (and had brought professional audio equipment with him) I decided to not use any audio. My idea was to let the movie be told from the perspective of the character, as if he was looking back on his own live. To add to this feel the movie is going to use music and VO (Voice Overs) of the character talking about his own life). Second, we probably would not have any time to do extra takes if the audio was not correct. Besides this I also choose to not use any additional lighting, due to a number of reasons. Money (of which there was not much left), no time to buy any lighting gear or rent it (which cannot be done easily here), and again the time that would be required to learn how to light and place these lights. These two things together saved me days of time (really). If I had not done this all the footage that would was needed to be shot would never have been shot, no way!

Equipment
The following equipment was used to make this short movie:

Canon XL1S PAL (standard 16x II lens)
Canon filter set (ND, Circular Polarizer & UV filter)
Manfrotto tripod (no fluid head)
Dolly (a little car from work with big wheels)
2 MiniDV tapes
Some power extension cords
Firewire enabled laptop from work (comes with my job)
Windows 2000 professional
Adobe Premiere 6.01 for editing

Pre-production
The total project was supposed to last three weeks, one and half weeks where spend on pre-production (idea, script, planning etc.). Came up with my basic story idea in a couple of days, putting it down in a couple of sentences. The next thing I did was to write down the number of scenes the idea needed, describing and numbering them (came to 20). although I had started writing a true script there was no time to finish it (had no vacation during my pre-production). This was mistake number one. I should have taken the time to write at least a very basic script outline (this should not take too long if you already have a scene/story outline).

One thing that triggered my slow script writing (and therefore running out of time) was language choice and my choice to do voice over. Since my native language is not English I was debating with my self to make the voice over English or my native language (Dutch). This together with actually coming up with voice over lines was too much in the small time available. From my first thoughts voice overs did not seem that more difficult than "normal lines". I was probably wrong in my assumption. It is probably "easier" (not implementing that the craft is easy!) to write character dialog then voice over dialog, because you do not want the voice over to be cheesy, easy and tell the viewer everything. It must, however, grab an audience, inform them and keep them interested in what they are seeing as well. This turned out to be more difficult than I had initially thought. It really became a double cutting sword. On one side it was working in my favor (not having to record audio on set) and on the other side it was working against me (more difficult to come up with interesting lines). This problem must still be tackled this very moment. Wish me luck.

My second mistake in pre-production was to not storyboard, mostly out of time constraints. The other part was a little arrogance from my part thinking that I had the shots in my mind and that the movie would not need that many (since it was a little short movie). How more wrong could I have been. I realized there was a problem after the shoot was over and editing had started. Suddenly there were scenes that could not be put together. Let me explain this a bit more with an example from my movie:

My main character has entered his work and is walking down a hallway. The camera is following him with a dolly down the corridor as he turns into a office room. This scene needs to be cut to a scene where he is working. The problem here lies in that I do not have any footage to go in between these two shots. It feels very unnatural to see a person walking down a corridor (with his coat etc. on) and then suddenly working. Something needs to happen in between. Now if the jump in time was bigger, say from leaving his home to working, that would have been acceptable. An audience just simply fills in the blank here. In my case the jump is just too small. It does not seem to work.

If there had been an storyboard session (even if it was rough with pictograms or something) this probably would have been noticed before it was shot. I am currently thinking about drawing some pictures, shots and sequences that where in my mind before the footage was shot to help me in my final editing moments. It can be quite disorienting to have a pile of footage and no visual guideline other then a scene list! Not every movie will need a full drawn out storyboard, but I truly have learned that it is a good thing to really think about how scenes and shots will connect to each other both before it is shot (also handy while you are shooting).

One final thing I did in my pre-production phase was planning: calling all the people again to make sure everyone was ready to go, writing a second scene list in the order I was planning to shoot it (instead of the order they would appear in the movie). Planning all the shots around locations is a good idea, it allows you to go through your sets as fast as possible. You also ensure that important things do not change in the mean time. First day and half were at work and the last day and a half at home. We started out at work because this was the most important set where we could only be at specific times. My own house was available to us whenever we wanted. This list proved to be a very good thing to make because everyone knew exactly when we where going to be where and what we were going to shoot. It also allowed me to track everything while my mind was in a thousand different places (working with equipment, instructing actors etc.). I am going to drop the bomb here. Take half of the scenes of the first day of shooting and mirror them on the second day of shooting, moving everything half a day back. Why? Two reasons. You are not going to shoot everything within your chosen timeframe so over calculate. Reason 2, your very first day (ever! Remember this was my first movie and perhaps yours too!) will be chaotic, disorganized and above all very informative and learning. That last part is a very, very good thing. It takes a lot of time though, so double half of your scenes from the first day to the second day.

Production (the actual shoot)
There we were. At my work with a car full of people and equipment (it was a small car). It was end of the afternoon of a Friday. Out three day shoot was about to begin, boy, was I nervous! For the first time in my live I was embarking on creating something of my own (truly my own) with the help of other people. We unpacked our gear from the car and headed inside, some co-workers interested in what was about to happen. Luckily for me not much people were around. When you set up your very first scene to be shot in your live, I don’t need anyone to watch other then the people who I truly need (and trust around me).

Only one scene got shot from the 3 planned the very first day, luckily for me the most important one: my main character working during the evening. The scene was shot in about an hour. The rest of the time was spent unpacking, fiddling with the tools, discussing the scene, instructing the actors and repacking the equipment. although this scared me off a bit at first it turned out all right the next day when we shot a heck of lot more scenes. We had gotten our important scene which we couldn’t do any other time (we needed an evening scene and only had access to work the next day during day time). The other scenes where miscellaneous scenes which could also be shot during day time.

I learned an important lesson here: as with everything in live it takes a lot longer then you initially think (or perhaps hope). Later that evening, after dropping of equipment at home, I took my crew (3 people total, including myself) out for diner in a very nice restaurant. We had a nice time eating, laughing and discussing our first day of shooting.

Do not forget to feed your crew! Sounds simple enough, and it is. Everyone needs food and drinks to survive the day. Your actors and other crew will be happier with a full stomach (not too full) then an empty one! For my movie I needed to shoot a short little lunch scene where everyone was eating around a table. Knowing this when scheduling my scene and knowing that we needed to lunch ourselves as well on Saturday I planned this scene in the middle of that day. Just before we needed to shoot this scene we went off to a bakery to get all kind of things for lunch. When all the crew (including the actors) and myself sat around the table to eat our lunch letting the camera roll (and moving it around a couple of times). This worked out very well! Together with fuel for my car these where the only costs I truly had. Pretty doable.

While filming the second day I made my next big mistake: forgot to bring an important piece with me: the lead character’s laptop (actually my laptop from work). It was still at home. Instead of going back to get it (which would have taken at least 30 minutes plus the time to get everyone working again) we found some old unused laptops and used that instead. No-one will probably notice the difference anyway since the focus is not on the prop, but on the character using it! During shooting I was also very please with my earlier made decisions to not record audio or do lighting. In simulating working (and phoning for example) the characters just talked about anything they want (some pretty hilarious things like trading an old car tire for a mother-in-law). The sound will not be used, so it does not matter! Together with not having to set up lights, which I have never done (so removing lengthy testing and fine tuning), this turned out to be great time savers. Without these "restrictions" the shooting would have never been completed in 3 days!

Together with my crew I learned a lot of things: thinking about how to shoot a scene, moving the camera around, doing more then one take, different angles to shoot at etc. etc. Listen to what you crew has to say, in my case they had some very good ideas! My first shooting experience has certainly been an exciting journey! I can still remember the thrill of seeing your first footage on the TV, raw, just shot. Together with my crew we watched the "dailies". It was a fun experience. Some things worked and looked great, others did not. One thing we all noticed immediately where auto focusing problems. These where most evident during our dolly shots down a hallway (these could have been shot in manual focus since the character keeps the same distance throughout the "walk") and shots inside an elevator (here the auto focus had difficult focusing on a light surround a button). Next time I will try to shoot as many things in manual as possible, otherwise beautiful shots look now rather dull. Oh well, this was mainly a learning process anyway!

This is it for the first installment, I hope everything was readable and you did not got an information overload. Next time we are going to talk about the editing process, color correction effects work and a bunch of other things. I promise to include a whole bunch of pictures then to balance out the text some more. If you have any comments (positive, negative or any you want to share), ideas, suggestions, remarks or questions you can reach me at visuar@iname.com