Production

There are some keys things to keep at the top of your mind while you're shooting your movie.

Locations- The bottom line is DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU'RE GOING TO.

Mind The Way You Treat The Cast And Crew- Over the course of my career, what I am complimented the most on is my demeanor and attitude while on set.  I don't yell, I don't get angry and I try not to be too involved in what I'm doing to talk to people.  During "The Apparition", we were on our last day of shooting and the company had just spend three twenty hour days and everybody was a little spent.  For the first three days, this crew was magic, everybody was getting along and everybody was fire on all cylinders, like a well oiled machine. Well, on the last day, the company was stumbling some and things weren't going as smoothly as they had been the days prior and I thought that it was because we were letting our guard down thinking we had this one in the can.  So, I decided to get the crew motivated by barking some orders and telling them to get their shit together.  It didn't work.  All it did was make matters worse for a few more hours and make everyone uncomfortable and awkward. Not good when you're trying to pull something like a movie together. That was the first and last time I've ever done that. One of the worse things that you can do to your movie and the people who are taking their time to help you make your movie, is to ruin a good vibe and good creative flow by making everybody feel uncomfortable by yelling and getting upset.

The 180-degree Rule (per Wikipedia)- "In film making, the 180-degree rule is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. An imaginary line called the axis connects the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene, the first character will always be frame right of the second character, who is then always frame left of the first. If the camera passes over the axis, it is called jumping the line or crossing the line."

Keep in mind with the 180-degree rule that this is a rule that can be broken, but only if it's done the right way.  Make sure that you "jump the line" in one cut or it will seem like your characters are sitting next to each other instead of across from each other.


The Rule of Thirds- This is basically a "rule of thumb" to help you frame your character and sequences.  It's a theory that divides the screen into 9 equal parts and that your subject and scene should be lined up and inside these imaginary lines.  I personally don't buy into this one, but some think that it's an important theory when shooting a movie or photography (you'll notice that this video is completely outside the "Rule of Thirds" theory).


Trust your intuition, and listen to that little voice inside your head that's telling you how to do something.

Wear comfortable shoes!

HAVE FUN!! 


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To see the Cast N Crew blog now.