Blog #14 7 Things I learned from shooting a Short Film
Just last month, I shot a short film in Birr as part of a training event, organised by Film Offaly and Poca Productions. See blog post #12 for more nformation on the writing process.
My film was shot over the space of 2 days, with the meat of the film (a conversation between two people) shot in a few hours and the b-roll of the film shot on a second day over a couple of hours. I’m going to share some practical insights on shooting that I learned from the filmmaking process.
Sometimes less people is better on a film set - 99% of the time, the opposite of this is true. But for the conversation scene we shot in an office room, there was very little space. So for tight spaces, everything needs to be minimal. Also, lav mics work so much better for small rooms! If we had used a boom mic, we would have needed at least one extra person in the room and had smaller framing options.
My first mistake - I wanted to backlight the scene but the light was visible in shot. To remedy this, I positioned the camera so that the actor was covering the backlight with his head. This was a mistake, I should’ve just left out the back light entirely. By positioning the actor in front of the light, the light was indeed blocked but I was sacrifing the frame aesthetic. The most important thing to have is an aesthetic frame, positioning the camera in the best place to tell the story, so really I should have left out the backlight entirely. So that take didn’t make it to the final cut…
Audio - when using lav mics (that aren’t 32 bit float or have built-in compression), the audio will clip when the actors shout, or even raise their voices loudly. Also, sometimes they speak very quietly, which doesn’t sound good when brought up in post production. How do you fix this? Tell the actors to speak in a consistent volume. It’s a skill in itself and may require a little practise but will give the editor way more options in post. My second mistake - I had to cut out certain parts of takes because the audio clipped or just sounded a bit too quiet and when brought up, sounded fuzzy. What can you do?
Dialague - dialogue should feel natural. In my script, I had the receptionist in the scene introduce herself as Eimear. How many times does a receptionist introduce herself in real life? Almost never. So, I quickly gave a note to the actor to just say the end of the line instead of also introducing her name because it felt off. Without the name, the scene felt so much more natural. In general, my script was good, it didn’t need many changes and it’s always good anyways to make little tweaks on the day. The important thing I learned is that the script must drive the scene forward. Therefore, cut out the waffle and make each line count.
How do the actors feel? My script had a lot of notes in it on how the actors should feel and boy was I amazed at their performances! All the little words I put in like ruffled and annoyed, gave depth to their performance. What I learned also is that it’s good to give them extra notes on the day, like “give it 10% more angry“ or “slow the line down“.
Edit the film and put it down. After a couple days of editing and making little tweaks, I had to tell myself to stop. Once the film is cut and then refined, there is no reason to keep going. I had to remind myself while editing that the changes I’m making from this point on will make up to 1% difference, so put the film down and send on the first cut. I’m glad I did.
Every frame a painting - Camilla and the others on-set were gracious enough to help me with the production design inside the office room. Re-positioning flower pots and tidying up made each frame interesting and aesthetic. What I learned from this is that every fram should be a painting! Viewers eyes will wander so make each corner interesting and relevant. We also created a super cool shot of a frame within a frame, i.e. the actor was inside a window frame inside the frame. It’s one of my favourite shots from the film.
Thanks for reading and if you’ve any comments, let me know down below.
Good luck out there.
-D.C.