Should you go to film school?

Many aspiring filmmakers don’t know if film school is right for them. Some people are dead set against the idea of going to film school, while others say you aren’t actually serious about being a director if you don’t go to film school. So, I’m sure that those of you who are confused about what you should do have gotten some advice that has been pretty across the map by now.

The important thing to realize is that everyone has different goals when they get into the film business. Some people want to be famous, others want to express their art, still others just want to make a big paycheck working with movie stars. Some, like me, decided to try it once and got addicted to the fast paced problem solving and creativity aspects of it.

I think its best to make an analogy to music. Many famous musicians, in fact, most of the best of them, did not go to school to study music. They simply learned from a family member, or taught themselves, and then just joined a band and went for it. Some of them eventually lucked out and got a record deal. This is similar to a director who makes short films and enters them into festivals hoping to get discovered. The idea here is that this type of person requires absolute artistic freedom, and is willing to sacrifice the big (and small) pay checks for the love of their art…whether that be music or film. This sort of person could go to film school, or could not. At best it will give them access to equipment to make a really killer short film. At worst it will give them time to sit around and procrastinate while wasting their (or their parent’s) money.

Conversely, a person who goes to school for music tends to move on to being a studio musician, classical concert musician, or studio engineer. You work for hire. On average, these types of people tend to be significantly more technically astute than their self taught counter parts. However, this type of person is hardly ever the one with artistic control…because they’ve essentially based their livelihood around their chosen career. If you have a masters in Piano and Music theory…then you pretty much have to play Piano to put food on the table. So either you work as a bartender the rest of your life, or you start accepting paid gigs in which you may not be 100% in love with the music. The same is true for the film student. They come out of school with much more technical knowledge, but won’t have the trust of major studios to direct the next big budget extravaganza. You’ll be doing working as a PA, an AD, or at best directing some small studio films, and sci-fi originals…because you have to make a living. That being said though, it is a good living. As a director you’ll make at least $13,000 a week under DGA minimum.

The third stream sort of finds itself in the middle…the film entrepreneur. If I had to make an analogy to music, this is a person like Ani Defranco. They make the music, then start the record label to distribute it. This is the person that just enjoys the process of making films, but doesn’t like the restrictions on how it should be done. You like the run and gun atmosphere of doing it yourself, and hope to make a small living self distributing. For this type of person, film school is a terrible idea. All you will end up doing is fighting with your professor the first time they say film is “organic” (*this is me holding back from ranting*). If you are this type of person, go out and help someone else make a movie who is like the first type of person listed above. This website is mostly for you (and a little bit for the first kind of guy). If you are this type of person you are probably the micromanagement type. You really don’t care much about what the overall plot is…but then next shot won’t be right unless we crane downwards while dollying forward just as the bear jumps out and attacks the alien, and the pick up truck flies off the cliff and explodes. If this sounds like you, then save your money (and prevent stress) by not going to film school and just start filming things.

A tip to improve your fight scenes

You can’t make an action movie without a few fight scenes. However, fight scenes come in all flavors…there’s the stylish martial arts type, the american bar fight style, weapons fights, and the two people who don’t know how to fight beating the crap out of each other style. But regardless of the style, there is one often overlooked technique that can turn a snooze fest into an edge of your seat thriller: Sound Design…

Sound design is basically building the sound of a scene largely, or sometimes entirely, from scratch during post production. A fight scene is typically shot without capturing any field audio…so the sound must be built entirely in editing. Many independent filmmakers put little effort into sound design, and that is a huge mistake. I’m not sure where I first heard it, but I really believe the old saying, “Sound is 80% of what you see”.

To prove the point, how many times have you seen a scene where two people are fighting and one has a baseball bat or other similar weapon. The other person falls behind some object, and the person with the bat pummels them. You aren’t actually seeing anyone get hit (and probably a slyly placed cut means that no one is even near where the actor is hitting). But even without seeing it you instantly get an impression of the beating…is it vividly painful…or is it commical? This impression is based entirely on the choices made in sound design.

So lets cover some essential sounds and their impact on a fight scene. Remember some of these sounds may only be barely audible, but still have a huge impact.

• Hits Obviously you must make careful consideration of what sort of sound to use for any actual body to body impact. A broad mixture of high and low frequencies is usually best. The low frequency is the power, the high frequency is the sting. For this reason its good to layer several different sounds to produce one powerful hit. Try to mix deep sounds like the sound of punching a table or wall, with higher pitch “whip-like” sounds when doing foley for this type of sound.
• Foot Steps In real fights on footwork is a major part of determining who comes out the victor. By the same token, the sound of feet moving adds depth and realism to the fight. Pay special attention to the surface and environment. Should the steps echo because they are in an large empty room with solid floors? Or maybe the surface isn’t so solid. I remember seeing an excellent sound design test online where a fight scene took place in the snow. The footsteps in snow sounds were made using a light sand bag. For comedy: Minimize the presence of footsteps.
• Breathing The exhausted pants of two actors gripped in battle adds a sense of urgency to any battle scene.
• Grunts By the same token, grunts and screams add alot of emotional impact to the fight. Grunting doesn’t have to be perfectly in sync with the actors face because grunting is guttural. Big grunts should occur before punches, or when one fighter over powers another while wrestling. Smaller grunts should occur when both are struggling but neither is over powering the other.
• Clothes Rustling Barely audible, but adds a great deal of realism. Clothes rustling is especially important for martial arts to help give the impression of unbelievable speed to punches and kicks.
• Enviroment Sounds Depending on the setting, very distant sounds of the environment are an important addition to the overall sound design. These could be birds, trains, or a refrigerator humming. These don’t add any particular emotional impact to the fight scene, but they help to make the sound design feel less like a sound design. In other words, adding these environmental sounds makes it seem like the audio is the real audio of the scene.
• Casual Impacts You absolutely have to add the sounds of minor impacts as well. This is particularly true of weapons. For example, the sound of a bat hitting the floor when its knocked out of the actors hand….even if you don’t cut to a shot of the bat hitting the floor and the bats landing is completely offscreen, there should still be a sound at the approximate moment of impact. Other types of casual impacts are if the actor his a wall, or when the actor hits the ground. Remember that each limb hitting the ground should have its own impact sound.
• WrestlingIf the fight scene involves the actors wrestling on the ground, then sounds should be added of skin to skin, and clothes to clothes rubbing. If at any point one actor gets the other in some sort of submission hold the sounds need to be exaggerated greatly. Rubbing a balloon is a good foley for this type of sound

The next time you’re editing together a fight scene, be sure to experiment with these subtle sounds to enhance the mood and impact of the scene.

Back in action.

After a long hiatus I’ve finally decided to come out with a blog post. Here is what I’ve been working on all this time:

• KillerFilm - We’ve been really working hard to try and get Killer Film up and running properly. Most of my work has been on the programming (so yes IE7 users who see a messed up gob of junk can blame me for that). We will probably also be covering the next upcoming Texas Frightmare. We covered the last one and it was a blast, and this time we hope to have a bit more video equipment at our disposal so we can do live video updates.
• Trance - Written and staring John Fallon, and directed by Donny Broussard is a feature film about ravers who take a drug which turns them into crazed zombie-like monsters. Donny, John, myself, and others have been working on this for most of the summer, but it looks like a local studio wants to buy the script. So, in the end we may not actually end up producing it. For the sake of potential future business relationships, I’m being a bit vague, but lets just say some of us may have gotten burned on this one…so we are all just trying to get out of it. I may be wrong, and things will fall in place…but right now it looks like I may have made some bad decisions, and vouched for people who couldn’t deliver what they said they could deliver
• The Red Hours - Another John Fallon script, which this time Fallon will direct. Probably Donny and I will coproduce along with Canadian filmmaker, Christian Viel. I’m really excited to be working on this one as it will involve working with Christian, a very experienced producer, as well as being a fun action script. I tend to like action movies because they present the most unique chances for creative filmmaking for effects and stunts.
• The way to You - Donny Broussard is considering creating a full length version of a short he made in college called, “The way to you”…sans rotoscoping. The script is pretty funny, and with the right cast this one could be a pretty good flick. It’s one that is a little scarier for me though, since is a festival type flick. If you know anything about selling movies, then you know its way easy to sell even bad action and horror movies, than it is to sell a good comedy. Donny has a bit of experience on the festival circuit, but I don’t. Fortunately, though its almost entirely a dialogue based film, so we can keep the budget pretty low.
• This website - I’m hoping to get back into writing for this website much more regularly. I have so many more articles that brewing. Unfortunately, some of the really good articles are going to take me days to write and require me to actually go out and film and edit some video tutorials…and these days I’m having trouble finding the time to do that. So for now I’m going to focus on articles that can be covered without me having to break out the cameras. Immediately following this article I’m going to post an article about sound design for fight scenes.

And on that note, if you have any question regarding film production…or hell just about anything feel free to Contact me. Just know that if your question is good enough I’ll want to post my answer online (and I’ll link back to you if you have a website).