How Filmmakers On matts can Avoid Common Problems.

[AgentDick]

Unless your film looks like you have parkinsons and happened to be riding a mechanical bull while filming Then you might need to reconsider it!

[Ornsack]

Ha ha! Grant's right though, there's no rules, just tried and tested formulas that seem to work. So if your film does indeed look as if you were getting electric shock treatment all the way through production, try harder

[AgentDick]

Another thing I would suggest is to avoid unnecessary gore, unless you are going for the campy look. Focus more on substance to gross/creep out your audience. "The Cell" does a great job of this. Yes, there is gore, but it's the way set it up that messes with you. Some blood and violence happens whenever two people fight. If you want an example of what I mean, watch ultimate fighting or bumfights. Not Pleasant, but fairly realistic. The last Scene in american history X is not a good example. There is WAY too much blood there.

[Lawriejaffa]

Righto, ive got loads of rendering to do so i can post some convoluted replies.

- Video Artifacts

There are a number of video artifacts that can occur, these range from macro-blocks (the coloured squares) to pixilated edges and even worse random colour variations (there not random, and i forget the name but basically the 3 neon like colours that can occur on the edges of video.)

This all of course normally occurs as a problem less so from video straight out the camera, and much more so on video edited profuesely with lots of filters, effects and other goodies.

Magic Bullet for example is a great plugin BUT if you use it for example on a compressed video file (or say u export ur filtered AVI into an mpg then re-import that mpg later to do more editing) then BANG you can bet your a** that things will degrade.

This is because the pixils can only take too much pain before they give up (turning into artifacts) so how do you get around all this!

Well, this may seem obvious to some but is not so to many who tinker with effects. The simple way around is to ensure that when you put on all ur filters, graphics and other stuff that you export uncompressed videos all the time UNTIL you are making an mpg of your entire scene or film. The drawback is the huge sizes of files of course but there is no way around it IF you want to do more editing on that video file.

[Jperson]

I read the entire thread. SOme interesting info in here. I'd also like to add that for the level that most filmmakers on Matts are at you don't always need to buy. People have made this point before with bluescreen/greenscreen. Ultimately the green and bluescreen materials you buy will be the best, but that doens't mean that a sheet with the right blue die will be awful.

I made my boom and it works perfectly. I got that white stuff you put cables in and used that as a boom. It is slightly bendy which is useful since it creates a nice curve.. And on thet issue of scripts/being prepared. WHat I finds helps is once you have written your scripts you create other files with ceratin points you need to look at. Maybe intense effects. How are you going to do it? How are you going to make the blood hit the camera? Digital or physical? This always help, you make a word file or whatever with all the intense fx listed and then go through them and put how you are going to do them.

You can do the same with props, costumes and locations. Create a seperate file listing suggestions and items. This all helps.

And acting. A lot of people say, 'just be your character!!'. Well sometimes this is harder than it sounds. What I prefer to say is that pretend the character is your best friend or whatever. Empathise with them ad imagine that they really exist and you really know them well. What would they do and how would they react. For a moment forget the script and try imagine your own script for the different situations. Then look at the real script and see how close your character came to the director's

Well that is about all I can think of right now.

[angusware]

heres another thing, double the amount of time you think something will take to shoot, if it doesn't take as long as the doubled time, think about how the shot/scene can be improved and work on that.

[AgentDick]

I generally find a half to a full hour per minute of filming is about right in terms of getting a decent take.

Do not be afraid of weilding your power as the producer/director/writer/editor! If someone starts trying to take control who doesn't already have it (director or producer), whip up a power point production for them that explains exactly where to stick it. I wasted almost 30 minutes of tape because of this kind of s***. If you want another take, do nother take. If you don't like the sound, do another take. If you don't like the line, tell the writer or the director or if you are either one, change it. but DO NOT disrupt the heirerarchy! It's what allows the film to get done!

Also, as far as acting goes, work on it in advance! A long time in advance! Don't show up with no idea of what the f*** is going on!