Indie Pro Tip: Keep the team small

When you are building a crew for your first, second, or even 100th movie, it’s always good to ask yourself just how much crew is necessary to complete the film. Do you really need all those people loafing around the set? Trust me, you won’t have to worry about left over donuts…the actors will take care of that.

Unfortunately, there is something of a Hollywood stigma that it takes a ton of people to make a movie. There is a Los Angeles based company that has just moved to my little town that operates this way. They try and hire 30 people at $100/day, and everyone runs around with their heads cut off for 5 days, until half the crew quits and the other half finishes the movie 10 days behind schedule. The fact is in my town there aren’t even 30 people who can make a movie…there are 10, and I know them all. None of them will work for $100/day for a big production company (but they’ll work for free for friends, or students).

Is this logical? In this particular production companies case….yes…well sorta. The problem is that these sort of companies produce B movies with has-been and never-was Hollywood actors from the 80s, and dump them off on the DVD and foreign markets for a couple hundred thousand bucks. Unfortunately, these minor league Hollywood actors are still Hollywood actors, so if they showed up on set and saw only a dozen people, they’d call their agent, curse them out, and leave. These people –with few exceptions– have that stigma built in that it takes some ungodly amount of people to make a film. These companies have their core crew, and the rest are just ‘props’ to convince the big name that a real movie is being made. Now, every now and then, one of the low paid people steps up to the plate and makes a difference. Then they get pulled into the real crew.

But more importantly, is any of this logical for you? Absolutely not! Even when you aren’t paying people, every extra person on set costs you something. Whether they are sucking down the craft services, standing in the way of the people actually working, or maybe just bothering you with the suggestions of “you know what would be cool”, any unnecessary person is a burden. In the world of computer engineering, it’s a well known fact that 3 good programmers will finish a project on time, while 20 will never finish. The same is true for film.

This is why I stress that every beginning filmmaker should work for free (but not for those big companies –for students and other indies). The reason I say this, is you aren’t really working for free…you are auditioning your crew. As you work for free on someone else’s project, you can see who is good to work with, and who is more trouble than they are worth. I’ve done this for the last two years. In the process I’ve found ten extremely skilled people, who are great to work with…and who can shoot an unheard of 10 pages per day.

How to determine what you need
What you need will depend alot on the complexity of your project. A five minute short might not need a script supervisor, but a feature definitely will. That said, the best way to determine what you need is a priority system. You need crew in this priority:

1. DP/Camera - Someone to run the camera
2. Sound/Boom Operator - Someone to hold the boom
3. Gaffer / Lights - Someone to move the lights
4. Script Supervisor - Someone to take notes and Slate
5. Make up - Someone to make the actresses look pretty and embarrass the guys
6. Production Assistant / Runner - Someone with a car to go get all the stuff you forgot.

And that’s it. Yes…that’s it! You can shoot a movie with only 6 crew members. And for that matter, if you are even more crazy you can have less than this. In fact, ultimately you only need two people : One to work the camera, one to work the sound. The reason is that for 99% of scenes, those are the only two people with an active roll while the camera is running. In other words, when the camera stops, there is no reason the sound person can’t apply make up and write script notes while the camera person moves lights. But ideally, I like shooting with these 6 people because it keeps everyone active constantly. Your worst enemy in keeping a set running properly is people sitting idle too long.

I’m sure I’m getting nods from some people out there, but others probably think I’m nuts. Only 6 people???!!! Yes…and it is my preferred method of shooting. In fact, I can say that even on sets with as few as 3 people, I’ve never said “Damn I wish we had more people here to help out”. On the other hand, I have been on sets with 9 people and said “I wish all these $*&#*#@* would get out of my way.”

When you have 50 million dollars and 4 months to throw around, go ahead and go crazy with a 100 person crew. But as an indie, you’ll never regret keeping the crew small.

Don’t make this indie movie mistake.

There is a conventional wisdom when it comes to making movies, that is often expressed as “Show, don’t tell”. But that can mean alot of things to different people. I really think its one of those things that, essentially is good advice, but can be so easily misinterpreted, that it actually does more harm than good. Ultimately, it results in a huge mistake that first time directors always seem to make.

This weekend I saw the movie No Country For Old Men. First off, I must say the movie is amazing. But more importantly, it got me thinking about the above mentioned ‘conventional wisdom’. Is it really necessary to show everything? Is it possibly better to leave the audience guessing a little? After watching No Country For Old Men, I certainly think so.

At the very beginning of the movie, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon what appears to be the aftermath of a horrific shootout. The movie approaches this scene very slowly, as he examines each detail…the parked cars, the bodies lying everywhere, the shells casings scattered around, and the truck bed full of drugs. It is very clear to the audience just what has happened, despite the fact that up to this point hardly even a word has been spoken.

The movie continues very much in this same vein. Rather than showing someone get shot, it will instead show a hitman walking out of there home, then checking his shoes (making you assume he’s checking for blood). You don’t actually see the killing…and in some ways you aren’t even sure if it really happened.

Are they violating the rule? Did the fail to “show”, and instead “tell” you what happened? No…not exactly…and its that misunderstanding that is a huge mistake for indie directors.

What is the mistake?

The mistake is believing that because you have to “show not tell”, that that means that you have to show something beyond your means or budget. In No Country for Old Men, the first scene is essentially a common scene for most mobster or cop movies. A drug deal goes bad. However, you never see the actual gun fight, but you can still tell just how serious it is from the aftermath. For the budget conscious indie filmmaker, there is an enormous savings in simply showing the aftermath of a gun battle, rather than showing the shootout itself.

And doing so doesn’t really violate our “rule”. You are still showing the audience what happened, you’re just doing it from a different point of view. Telling would be if you did something like have a scene at a bar where two cops say, “Did you hear about that shoot out?”. That is certainly not as good as showing the aftermath, but is still far better than a poorly executed shoot out.

In the realm of indie filmmakers, we need a new rule. That rule is:

Show what you can, tell what you can’t.

You have to know your limitations. If something is dangerous, expensive, or difficult then you really have to ask how important it is to your story that it actually be shown. If you do it poorly, then its far worse than if you didn’t do it at all. For example, lets say the bad guy blows up the good guys car. You don’t have the budget for insurance, a licensed blaster, fire marshals, etc. Now, you could do a really cheesy after effects explosion and cut away really fast. I’ve seen it done in some DV movies before…and it looks stupid.

Perhaps you could do it differently. Instead, it would be far better to spend your time looking through the junk yards for a duplicate of the car. Have the actors talking inside of a bar, when they hear a sudden explosion (offscreen) outside. They rush outside to see the junk car on fire. Such a scene might cost you only $200 more than your after effects version. But it costs you $15,000 less than actually blowing the car up….and as far as the audience is concerned the effect is much closer to really blowing up the car. The audience will never think, “Oh..they were too cheap to blow up the car”…because they see a burning car. The audience is far more willing to suspend its belief based on the sound of an explosion, than it is based on actually seeing a really fake looking explosion.

Ultimately, you are trying to show concepts, not absolute realism. The blood circling down the drain in Psycho tells you everything you need to know, while allowing your own imagination to make up the rest of the scene. That is the beauty of movie magic.

How to find top quality crew.

It’s your first film, you’re under the gun and have to get things done. Money is disappearing by the second. The actors are getting antsy (or possibly drunk). You look up into the sky and scream…”Where the hell is everybody?”. Sound familiar? You need to learn how to find a good crew.

Finding a good crew isn’t impossible, in fact its probably not nearly as hard as you might believe. Paying for crew members certainly helps, but it doesn’t solve the problem completely. And some of you can’t afford to pay the crew so you’ll have to just live with what you got, right? Well, maybe but probably not. There are, in fact, ways to find great crew members, who are often willing to work for free. And the most beautiful thing is, once you’ve found a good crew your troubles are practically over since you can stick with them over and over.

Where to find film crew members
Well…first things first…where not to find crew: your non film making friends . If you’re friends are filmmakers like you, its fine, but absolutely do not beg friends who are not filmmakers unless they are you’re absolute best friend who would take a bullet for you (in some cases they might have to). If your shoot is less than 10 hours, you may get lucky and have a successful shoot…but more than one day is impossible. Film shoots can ruin friendships. In addition to the generally high stress factor, there is a great amount of knowledge, skill, and perseverance needed to complete a film. Your non-filmmaker friends will have none of those.

Don’t get me wrong, your friends will want to help…at first. They’ll show up ready, eager, and willing. Then they’ll quickly realize they don’t know what the hell is going on…and so will you. So your friends end up holding the clapper, or getting you a coke, and generally feel useless. By the second day, they feel more useless. By the third day they don’t show up. By the end of the third day, you suddenly realize you need six more crew members than you have for one particular shot…but everyone’s already left. Take my advice…use only people genuinely interested in making films on your crew.

So where do we start our search? Craigslist and myspace are a great place to start. Regions where film productions are popular often have meet up groups, trade organizations, or other community oriented events where filmmakers can go to network. One of our local groups in Louisiana is H.U.R.D Meetup Group.

The absolute best way to find crew
The absolute best way to find crew, is to volunteer for someone else’s production. It’s alot of hard work, and your doing it for free. But wait…isn’t that exactly what you want other people to do for you? Maybe its a good idea to get a feel for just what you are asking out of people, before you go on thinking that your brilliant film is so great that everyone is dying to join you. Once you’ve done this a few times, you’ll have a good idea of the kind of directors you like to work with, and the kind who you absolutely despise. So now when it comes time for you to direct, you what your crew will expect out of you.

But, most importantly, joining another production helps you to meet people and see how they work, before you are actually dependent upon them. You can see who disappears, who is always late, and sometimes you might even catch someone stealing (they are less afraid to steal in front of a PA than you might think). More importantly, you’ll see the AD that does everything in her power to keep 100 extras under control…you’ll see the production assistant who runs to the aid of the grips, regardless of whether or not its his job or not. You’ll see the people you want to work for you.

Third, those people will see that you work. If you work, it means you’re serious. There are alot of wannabes in this field, and working for a week only to have a production fall apart is every crew member’s worst nightmare. I may not be getting paid…but I at least want to see the movie I worked on. People who show up and work their ass off for someone else, will only work that much harder when its for themselves.

So now that we’ve found a crew, my next article will cover how to keep them working hard for you.

Four ways supply your film with wardrobe for next to nothing.

As they say, the clothes make the man. Never is that more true than in the realm of film. Pay attention the next time your watching any Hollywood, or even well produced indie movie. They aren’t running around in jeans and a t-shirt. Wardrobe counts for alot…but unfortunately when you are buying clothes for a full cast it gets quite expensive, but not if you know these tips…

In this article, I’ll tell you some great ways to get free clothes for your indie production. However, let me first start by pointing out the type of clothes you can’t get for free…clothing to be used in blood effects scenes. The majority of the ways I’m going to list here are going to open up access for you to get one unique copy of each article of clothing. Unfortunately, when you are doing effects shots that involve your character getting covered in fake blood, you need multiple copies of anything that could get bloody. After all, what if you don’t get it in the first take…are you going to wait for someone to dry clean everything before doing the shot again. Even if you get the shot on the first take, what if the next scene you shoot occurs earlier in the story when the character should still be clean? My only advice here is to buy cheap clothes in bulk, usually in quantities of at least six.

Wardrobe for cheap
But on to the point of this article. How can you get excellent wardrobe on the cheap?

• Goodwill, thrift stores
  Stores such as goodwill sell lots of old clothing for extremely cheap. If you are in a city of any decent size, there are probably a ton of these that you can visit.
• Garage Sales
  Most people have clothing on sale during garage sales. There are basically two approaches to getting what you want: Show up ridiculously early, or ridiculously late. Most people show up very early to garage sales in hopes of being the first to peruse the merchandise and find some hidden treasure. You can join the crowd and fight for the deals. I find though, its far better to show up very late, just before the sale is closing. People putting on garage sales, for the most part, aren’t as concerned with the money as they are getting rid of their crap. If its getting late and there is still stuff, then people putting on the sale aren’t happy. Show up late and offer a big bulk deal, such as $10 for all their remaining clothing. You may also want search around for any random props you may want and get that tossed into the deal. You’d be surprised just how cheap you can get things at garage sales when it looks like no one else wants it.

Clothing for free

If getting a bulk of clothing for $10 is still to pricey, here are some ways you can get wardrobe for free:

• Old People
  Grandma and Grandma probably have tons of old crap…excuse me…vintage clothing just lying around. This is especially great for picking up men’s jackets, hats, purses, and jewelery. One warning though…if it doesn’t fit, don’t use it. Nothing looks stupider than a mobster in a suit that’s way too big.
• Buy it and return it.
  You might have to put a little money up front, but pretty much every clothing store in America will let you return any item so long as its in good condition and still has the tag on it. Make sure to check the refund policy though, before you end up with $600 in store credit to a place you never normally shop.

Shoot your movies in style, but don’t pay the high cost of trendy fashions. Except of course when it comes to sunglasses. Every action hero needs badass sunglasses.

Should you rent or own your equipment?

In the indie film world there has always been a debate over whether its better to rent or buy equipment for your production. Given the same amount of money, you can usually get much better equipment (and theoretically better production value). On the other hand, if you buy your equipment, at the end of the day you still have that equipment left over. You could use that equipment on your next production, and spread the costs out over two, three, or however many productions you make. Its an interesting quandary, which in this article I’ll show you how to solve…

In economics, there is a classical problem called the view point problem. Imagine you manage the technology department in some random large company. Inside your same company is the copy department. They charge you 25 cents for every copy you make. But the copy place down the road charges you 15 cents. You make a million copies a month. Being the brilliant manager you are, you start sending your people down the road to make copies, saving your department $100,000 a month.

The problem is that your view point is centered from inside your department only. When you look at the whole company, those copies only cost the company 10 cents itself. The rest of that 15 cents is staying inside the company…its just changing hands. By switching to the place down the road, you aren’t saving $100,000 your losing $150,000.

When it comes to film equipment, the problem sorta works in reverse. If you buy film equipment you see yourself as spending X amount of dollars on your company as a whole, but in return you make the mental leap that it isn’t costing the production anything…after all, you still have the equipment after your done right?

Returning to our copy department example above, you’ve essentially ignored the fact that the copy department still costs 10 cents a copy. You’ve said, “Well, I’m keeping it inside the company so its essentially free”. If we change the numbers a bit…lets pretend that copy machine really does cost the company 25 cents per copy. Meaning when you make a million copies there the total cost to the company is $250,000. At this point you’d be crazy not to go down the street where it costs 15 cents a copy.

So in order to make any real judgment as to whether buying is better than renting, what we need is an accurate estimate of how much using a piece of equipment really costs the production. But how do you do that?

How much does rental equipment cost?
Well, this is easy. Just find a quote and use it. Rental equipment is usually listed by the day, but remember many companies will work on a 2 day, 3 day week. This means you pay for X days, but you get it the whole week. Zacuto is a good resource for pricing, and it lists prices by week and even by month rather than doing the sometimes confusing 3 day week deal. Simply figure out how long your production will take, and estimate your costs.

How much does my own equipment REALLY cost?
The much harder thing to figure out is how much the equipment you own really costs. Remember, regardless of whether or not you’re producing anything, your equipment is still costing you money. So, we need some sort of device to figure out what equipment really costs. Fortunately, our friends in accounting have come up with a perfectly useful device - depreciation.

Depreciation is the accountant’s way of showing that over time things wear down, and become less valuable. There are several different ways depreciation can be done, but for our purposes we’re going to use the simplest method - straight line depreciation.

Straight line depreciation explained
It’s very easy to figure out straight line depreciation. Just estimate how long something will last (or how long it takes before its obsolete), then divide its price by that length of time. Here’s an example:

One 3-chip digital camera: $5000
All the bells and whistles, extra batteries, etc: $2500
Life expetency: 60 months

Cost: $125 / month.

Easy right? Well not quite. There may be additional costs you have to figure in, such as interest. But for simplicities sake, lets just pretend you bought it cash (economists forgive me if I don’t feel like doing some insanely long ROI benefit vs. risk analysis). Even without interest we still have to factor in the fact that the camera is costing us money even when we aren’t using it. A side note: If you did finance your equipment, rather than figuring out the depreciation of your equipment, you could simply take your monthly note as your cost.

So we have to make some way to figure out how the additional down time costs factor in, so that we can reach our ultimate goal of comparing renting to buying. The easiest way I can think of to do this is to include all time from the beginning to one production, until the beginning of the next. Let me give an example to clear it up:

RENT
One 3-chip camera: 100/day
Number of days: 6
total cost: 600

Very straight forward. But now lets say we do that same exact project

BUY
Straight line depreciation or monthly note: 125/month

If from the start of one production to the next is 3 months apart, then renting costs you $600, while buying costs you $375. Buying is cheaper using this example. If you take 5 months between productions, buying cost you $635…it would be cheaper to rent.

In fact, this example leads to a pretty simple formula.

Cost to rent / Cost to buy per month = # Months between productions.

Meaning that if the real number of months between productions is greater than the number from this formula, you should be renting. If you shoot more often than this number, then you should buy equipment.

Special Considerations

When you rent equipment, you usually rent just what you need for the production you intend to do. When you buy equipment, you tend to buy everything you can afford that you intend to use. When doing this calculation, you cannot factor out the equipment you buy, but do not use. For example, just because you do a music video where you don’t capture field sound, you still have to count your field sound equipment in your ‘cost per month’ of buying.

Practical situations
The above example is far from the real world situation. In the real world, you may be looking at buying more than $30,000 in equipment, versus paying $1800/day for equipment worth $120,000 plus. In addition, your needs may change long before the useful life of your equipment runs out. This year you may buy and HVX, and by next year you’ll need a Varicam, or even be shooting on 35mm film.

In the practical sense, my honest opinion is that unless you are shooting every month, doing commercials or other paid ventures, buying is probably not in your best interest. But everyone is different. Perhaps you are planning on shooting a web series, and even though you aren’t making money with your camera directly, you will be shooting two days out of every week. But using the formula I’ve presented, and adapting it to your own situation, you should now know whether renting or buying is better for you.

Get rid of bad acting once and for all.

Nothing puts a nail in the coffin of independent film like bad acting. You can get away with bad camera work…people will call it ‘Cinema Verde’ (that’s latin for too shakey to see what the hell is going on). But your film absolutely cannot escape a slow agonizing death if it contains even a hint of bad acting.

But, hey…what can you do? You can’t afford to hire professional actors. The only people willing to be in your movie are your friends, and your crazy aunt Kathy. Ok, so maybe your shooting DV and you can afford to shoot alot more takes than the average film…but by the time your taking 15 takes for each shot tempers begin to flare. So now you have to settle. Stupid actors…what’s wrong with them?

Well, sorry buddy….you’re the problem. The fact is there bad acting is more often than not really bad direction in disguise.

Have you ever caught yourself saying things like this:

• In this scene, you get really angry and start throwing things around.
• Here your sad because your boyfriend is leaving to go to the war
• Here your trying to be sneaky and creep up on the guard

Can you catch the problems with these statements? Each and everyone of these statements is an example of bad direction. Unfortunately, sometimes statements like these yield good performances. I know you may think that is a good thing, but if sometimes it yields a good performance then, as a director, you’ll never learn that its bad technique. Instead you’ll think, “it worked last time….this guy must be a terrible actor”. Then later it will work again and you’ll think, “damn, finally a good actor”. Pretty soon you’ll feel at the mercy of some random and esoteric quality of acting ability. What is really happening is your getting random results because you’re giving poor guidance.

You’ll find yourself in a similar situation at every audition. Trying to find some magic quality that is going to work when you get on set. But once again…you’ll find everything to be random. What is going on?

Lets examine the above “bad direction” statements for clues.

In this scene, you get really angry and start throwing things around.
One of the worst thing you can ever do is tell an actor how to feel. When you tell someone to act angry, what you’ll end up with is someone who looks like they are trying to act angry. Their face will tighten up and they’ll try to act super mean. But is that how we really react to anger? We react all sorts of ways to anger…sometimes we yell, sometimes we say nothing. Sometimes we even cry. But if you tell someone to be angry, they will always act the same way….mean.

Lets say for example a man and his wife is having an arguement. The wife is talking extremely fast and he can’t get a word in. You want him to get angry at a specific point and throw his coffee mug across the room so she stops talking.

Pretty much everyone will throw the coffee mug perfectly. Its easy…its just an action…you throw a mug fast. The part that will really show up as bad acting is the part just before the throwing. As the wife rattles off a continuous stream of words, the male actor will act more and more angry, until finally he gets mad enough to throw a cup. And it will look completely stupid.

The reason it will look stupid is because he’s trying to look angry. Don’t think in terms of the actor, but think in terms of the character. The wife is going on and on, and her husband is trying to look angry at her….trying to make her see that he is angry. Does that make sense? It doesn’t….he isn’t trying to show her he is getting angry…its just happening naturally as a result of the situation. If he is trying to show her he is getting angry it almost gives the impression that he’s been planing to pretend to be angry even before the conversation started.

So how do we direct our actor the right way? Easy, you tell him what he is trying to do. The wife is rattling off so many words he can’t get a word in. Tell him: “You are trying to get her to listen, but she won’t let you get a word in. Keep trying to cut her off, and when she doesn’t stop, throw the cup so she shuts up.”

Notice that there are no feeling words in that statement….its only actions. After all they are called actors not feelers.

If you give an actor that sort of direction the scene will play out a bit more like this: The woman will begin talking, he’ll try and say something…almost timidly…not angry but she won’t stop. Getting a little more frustrated he’ll try to say something, but she’ll just get louder and more intense. Finally, he’ll get so frustrated he’ll throw the cup.

NEVER TELL YOUR ACTORS HOW TO FEEL

Here your sad because your boyfriend is leaving to go to the war
This one is along the same theme, but a bit tougher. Once again, you’re telling your actor how to feel. But wait, there is no real action in such a scene. Maybe a girl and her boyfriend are having their last meeting before he leaves for war….or possible its even a scene where she is just sitting at home thinking about the fact that he is leaving. But unlike the previous scene there isn’t really a specific action that you can tell her to do. So what do you say to your actress?

Tell her: Think about your boyfriend leaving, and that you may not ever see him again, but you’re trying not let anyone see how you feel. We humans rarely wear our true emotions on our sleeves, we’re always hiding our true thoughts and feelings. A girl whose boyfriend is going off to war is never trying to act sad (unless she really isn’t). Instead she tries to stay strong, and not let anyone see how worried she is. The beautiful thing is that when you tell someone to pretend they are not feeling a certain way, they come across as feeling exactly that way. Think about it…how many times has someone sad to you “Don’t laugh…” and of course the very next thing you do is laugh?

With some actors and actresses such a suggestion has a risk of creating what will seem (on set) to be a flat performance. If this is the case, shine a dim light in the actor’s eyes (try not to blind them). Just enough to where you can see the light in their eyes on camera. If it still seems flat…then keep it. The camera (and editing) does some pretty magical things. You’ll be surprised at how these “flat” performances really sizzle once you add a sound track and intercut it with other elements of the scene.

A short side note: You film history buffs may remember a little thing called the Kuleshov Experimen. Essentialy Kuleshov made a short film where he intercut the face of an actor, Ivan Mozzhukhin, with various other shots. Mozzhukhin had a completely blank expression, but when the shot of his face was intercut with a bowl of soup, audiences said he looked hungry. The same shot of his face and a baby girl in her crib, and audiences thought Mozzhukin was cheerfully watching the little girl. The same shot of Mozzhukin again, but this time with an older woman in a coffin, and audiences thought he was in solemn mourning over the death of this woman. Not only did these audiences think he was feeling these emotions…they even raved at his performance. Not bad considering all he did was ‘look down at the camera’

Here your trying to be sneaky and creep up on the guard
Ok…so this one doesn’t contain any feeling words…but its still not quite right. After all, you’re telling the actor to try to be sneaky. How do you do such a thing? Well, unfortunately, more often than not an actor’s usual attempt at being sneaky is only slightly more realistic than a kid trying to sneak up on a leprechaun to take his lucky charms.

The solution though is still the same…tell the actor what he is trying to do. Tell him: Don’t let the guard hear you or see you, and take them out.