I have researched everything I need to think about when filming a programme, I need to consider the editor with the footage I obtain, whether that be with the coverage, quality of production and actors performances:
Give Money to Production Design
The importance of this will of course vary
based on the nature of your project, but in micro-budget filmmaking if there’s
one thing you should be throwing money at it is the art department (and
catering, but that’s relevant to the well-being of your crew, not the quality
of the film). There’s no point getting the most expensive camera on a steadicam
if they’re going to film actors in a terrible setting. What will make your film
look good are your locations, props, and costumes.
Don’t Ignore Sound
When scouting locations, keep sound
recording in mind. The obvious is being near a busy road, but there are more
sneaky less predictable events like being in a flight path, or in an office
where you don’t have control over the air conditioning. If you’re shooting on
the beach, you’re pretty much going straight to ADR (which has never sounded
great, in any movie ever, so it should be avoided as much as possible).
And get a great sound recordist. I know,
they are hard to find. For some reason, they don’t gravitate in the same
circles as the rest of film people. They seem to often be in a different
section at Uni, and they are rare enough to be quite expensive as soon as they
are good.
It’s also not enough to get good sound. You
have to get usable sound. Your sound recordist should know the script. They
have to follow who will be talking next and point the mic in the right
direction (pointing the mic “in the middle” is lazy and sounds awful). Don’t
bother booming the characters that are not in shot. The audio from other angles
will be used.
Little things like asking your actors or
extras to take their shoes off (when their feet are not in shot, obviously)
will make sound mixing so much easier. If you’re filming in a kitchen, unplug
the fridge if possible. Any source of hum will deteriorate your audio, and
while a lot of it can be fixed, it’s a lot quicker and easier to think about
these things while on set.
Record atmos for EVERY scene. If you have
extras in a scene, make sure they “mime” conversations, without making a sound.
Then record a “walla” track at the end, which will be pasted over the whole
scene and sounds a lot more seamless than having bits of background chatter
that cut every time your angle changes.
Plan Coverage
Improvising on the day with the camera
might seem great for creativity, but you will end up with a lot of unusable
footage. Crossing the line is the most obvious example on how you might render
a shot unusable, but there are plenty of ways you might ruin it. The most
important shots to plan are the opening and the closing shot of each scene.
Think of how it might cut together with the previous scene and the next.
Storyboard is your best tool to plan for
all of this. If you can’t draw to save your life, take photos; it doesn’t need
to be in the right location or with your actors, what matters is shot sizes and
eyelines.
Shoot Less Angles
Unless you are filming a car chase or a
fight scene, you don’t need 12 angles for a scene. Focus on performance and on
getting varied coverage. By varied I mean different shot sizes, focusing on
different elements of the scene.
If you film a character over the shoulder
of another one, try to hide the mouth of the one turning their back to the
camera. This gives a lot more flexibility in the edit and allows to be really
in control of the rhythm.
If you have a strong vision for a scene
with minimal coverage (like a complex steadicam sequence shot), because no
shoot is perfect and nothing goes exactly to plan, you should plan some “extra”
coverage. If things don’t work out, having just a few cut-aways or alternative
angles as a safety will save your film in post.
Film More Action
You don’t need much coverage to make a
scene work and your editor’s life easy. One thing that will make them very
happy though, is if you let them choose when to cut. The main problem
encountered when cutting scenes, is the lack of action in the close-ups.
Get Closer
Wide shots are great. They are also your
worst enemy (or at least your editor’s), for several reasons.
Performance:
It might seem counter intuitive, but it’s
harder to get a great performance from an actor in a wide shot than it is for a
close-up. The first reason is that they need to perfect their whole body
language to convey an emotion, instead of just their face. In a close-up, an
actor needs less “acting” to convey an emotion, making it easier to achieve
(but it also requires subtlety, so be wary of over-acting).
Photography:
A wide shot is harder to light, harder to
compose (in terms of placing things in the frame) and less dynamic. It requires
a lot more preparation and attention to detail, making it a lot more difficult
to pull off. In the edit, I personally tend to favour the closer shots. So it’s
always frustrating to get 12 takes of the establishing wide shot, and only 2 or
3 of the key close-ups.
Continuity:
Unfortunately, one of the main obstacles an
editor faces when cutting from one shot to another, is continuity. The position
of the actors has to (somewhat) match, and the wider your shot is, the more elements
have to match between each shot. If you’re running late on schedule, getting
just the master shot (or prioritising it) is the worst possible idea. Despite
its name, it’s probably the least necessary of all.
Actors need to get all their lines perfectly,
including the timing, and there is no way to cheat in the edit. If you’re
pressed for time, get your close ups secured first, and ditch the master shot
if you must lose one.
Speed Your Actors Up
You will not realise it on set, but
everything your actors do is too slow. They take too long when they “think”,
and they’re late with their reactions to other actors’ lines. I have rarely
seen a performance when I thought: “It’s going too fast” – the opposite is most
often the case. Especially with comedy, dialogue should be snappy. So push them
to be quicker.
Slow Your Actors Down
When filming single shots on one character,
make sure to slow down your actors, and avoid lines overlapping between your
characters, both in and out of shot. This is to make your editor’s life easier.
It feels quite strange while on set, but the overlap is then created in the
edit, where your editor can control the length of the pause between lines,
allowing them to overlap when needed.
If your actors’ lines overlap while you
shoot, the rhythm is set and you lose control of the pace for the scene. Not to
mention the fact that the boom (probably) wasn’t pointing towards the person
out of shot, meaning you also end up with bad audio that you can’t get rid of.
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