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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Best Microbudget Film Setup

number6 said:
But if an Independent movie maker does a film, should it be done with the idea of finding a way to shorten or lengthen the film and not disrupt the flow of the story? I am also assuming there is seldom a deal between a distributor and the maker of a low budget movie done beforehand,
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An indie filmmaker makes the best film he can and shows it to a potential distributor. Now sometimes there are discussions about changes before or after a deal is made, not always good ones. Depends on the distributor.

But you can't really make an open-ended film -- you just make the best film you can. Just try and make it a length that is commonly used in the market you are aiming for. Yes, sometimes it runs long and the distributor wants it shorter. Even more rare is when it runs short and the distributor wants to lengthen it. That may be as simple as adding a scene back in that you cut out, or adding more scenic shots, or going out and shooting a new scene to put in.

I photographed this indie film called "The Quiet" which went through many months of editing to solve certain problems, and a version showed at the Toronto Film Festival and was bought by Sony / Screen Gems. They asked for fairly serious recuts before it was released, and the released version is quite different than the Toronto Film Festival version. But this is not very common -- usually a distributor is happy with the movie (that's why they want to buy it) and they don't want to spend money on more post work, reshoots, etc. if they don't have to. So changes tend to be minor ones, if any. You have a choice not to sell the movie to anyone who wants to make changes to it.
 
Thank you David for the great insight, as always of course. It's interesting to hear about a scenario like that.

My personal interest as a hopeful writer-director with features is to have the kind of creative control that would allow me to produce work I'm proud of rather than just being paid to make something that could be edited in any given way by the studio that funded it. I'd rather make small projects on my own and sell them as is than huge projects even with huge pay where I have to endure a stressful fight every time with idiotic execs who have no clue what's going on trying to meddle with what I created. This happens constantly on TV and in movies, and it's just something I'd prefer to avoid. If I'm doing work for a client and it's like a music video, heck, they can tell me to do what they want, they're paying me for it and it's not really my passion, it's just their video. But if I write a script and I want to make my movie, it's going to get made my way. Even if that means I have to fund it myself.
 
JonathanLB said:
Thank you David for the great insight, as always of course. It's interesting to hear about a scenario like that.

My personal interest as a hopeful writer-director with features is to have the kind of creative control that would allow me to produce work I'm proud of rather than just being paid to make something that could be edited in any given way by the studio that funded it. I'd rather make small projects on my own and sell them as is than huge projects even with huge pay where I have to endure a stressful fight every time with idiotic execs who have no clue what's going on trying to meddle with what I created. This happens constantly on TV and in movies, and it's just something I'd prefer to avoid. If I'm doing work for a client and it's like a music video, heck, they can tell me to do what they want, they're paying me for it and it's not really my passion, it's just their video. But if I write a script and I want to make my movie, it's going to get made my way. Even if that means I have to fund it myself.
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Jonathan, if I understand correctly, you are saying pick your battles. If so, then I certainly agree. Sometimes I think you let your work be redesigned to fit the buyer's needs. When you have a vision, you fight for it, unrelentingly. Which is, I guess, pretty much what David was advocating as well.
 
Yeah, basically that is what I am saying. I guess from my perspective, this is just how I feel and I understand it may not be true of everyone, but I see the writer, the person who made the story, as being the voice of the project. When someone else directs it, to me, their job is to bring the writer's vision to the screen. Not to screw over the writer and re-imagine everything themselves. So although my style is much more in the auteur theory of directing, i.e. write and direct my own films and have as much creative control and input as possible, I can't honestly say that if one day a studio admired my work and said, "Well, hey, how about directing this franchise film we've got, we'll pay you $10 million to do it," that I would turn that offer down. Because there's just no way. But then I would have a different attitude about it. I would direct it to the best of my ability, working with the screenwriter(s) to make sure their vision gets told. If the studio then stepped in after it was done and made a bunch of edits I thought were lame, I'd give it a half-hearted battle, more like suggestions about why I think it plays better with those scenes untouched or as they were before, but ultimately I wouldn't be too angered by the experience. I would consider it the writer's job to be angry if they didn't like how it turned out. It wasn't my project, really, I was just hired to do a job, and I got paid for that job, so if the studio wants it this way or that way, they paid for it, they are free to do that.

But on my projects where I write and direct them, I would much rather write something I know I can fund myself completely out of pocket where I have ultimate creative control -- even if that's a documentary or something -- than to write and direct something that eventually turns to crap because someone else funding it decided they didn't like the way I made my own story, which to me is nonsense. It's my story, there's only one right way to tell my story and that's however I decide. Otherwise it wouldn't be mine. That's how I feel, anyway, I'm very adamant about that. I'm the same with book writing. I'd rather publish the book myself and have ultimate control than to publish with a major publisher that says I have to do what they tell me to do. I am the artist, I expect nearly 100% creative control over my work. Otherwise I don't want my name attached to it. Now like I said if someone else wrote it, I don't consider it my work, then I consider it a job and it's never going to be my vision really, it's just going to be the best I could do with that material and it's a much more collaborative process where the writer, director, and studio all have a certain degree of input (and the actors, cinematographer, etc., really). Then there's no use really stressing out over it.

That being said, film is a collaborative medium, and when I say creative control I don't mean telling the DP what his job is, telling the actors exactly what to say, etc. In fact I'm far from that. Their vision of what I may want may be much more distinct than mine. I'm not an expert DP, I'm not an actor, so I find that actors' instincts are often superior to what I had written, and I prefer to let actors go with the flow and become the character, even if that means totally changing what I had written. The DP, same thing, I will give him an idea what I'm looking for, the mood I want, the feeling of the scene, etc. But what he does with that information is his creative control, and since he's presumably far better at it than I am, my film benefits from his expertise and letting him be in control of that aspect. Same with production design.

When I say creative control all I mean is the ability to say, "Well, no I don't really like that, could you stick with what we have in the script because I think in this particular instance it works the best for the character," or "That lighting is good, but what about...?" That's totally different than having a studio say, "Well we find that 87% of males prefer that a horror movie has a naked woman who runs for at least 50 feet before being slashed to pieces by the killer, so we're going to need to do reshoots to add that scene." Umm, no, I'm the film expert, you are the money expert, let me do my job so you can do your job. That part is unacceptable to me and not something I want to tolerate, even if it means toiling in relative obscurity on personal projects that have small devoted fan bases rather than making huge budget films and big bucks selling my soul to the corporate machine. ;)
 
Bruce Allen said:
The aim is to write your script so it is the right length for your target market, not make the film so that you can shorten or lengthen it to match a distributor's whims. With a tight script, every scene drives the story forward. So, you can't take a single scene out easily because then the story will be missing something without it. That's a good thing.
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I suppose the key phrase here is "tight script". My feeling is that any scene is capable of bifurcation. Many times the writer or director cannot see more than one way, so it is assumed that the finished product of a successful movie was the one true way. But in movies, unlike in real life, we can go back and see what would have happened if we had taken the other path. It's like writing... sometimes you don't like what you have written and you go back and change it. Maybe you even change it back. But you walked doun a different path when you rewrote it. To me, movie making is not linear. That is why I do not plan to use a set script. If I'm not restricted by time, money, outside influences, then I can work at making the best movie I can. If I am constrained by said influences, then I'll make the best one I can under those parameters.

Bruce Allen said:
Scenes that aren't essential to the story always feel boring. It's not like a modular thing that you can add pieces to in case the distributor wants more. The best way to tell if a scene should be in a movie or not is to take it out and see your movie gets worse. If it doesn't, you made the right move in taking the scene out.

Of course, that is only the ideal and in reality a lot gets chopped and changed. And that's sometimes a good thing!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
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I think if you can get enough footage you can change a scene in edit that conveys a completely new meaning. I don't see scenes as modular, but as pieces of action that are pieced together to create a scene. Some probably do treat a script as modular, but I just don't view the process that way, and I think one can shoot in such ways, by thinking ahead, to say something using more or say the same thing using less. But as David said in his post, it's probably best to just put what you think is your best foot, forward. If you got hammer toes, someone will tell you and you can present the other foot.
 
JonathanLB said:
Yeah, basically that is what I am saying. I guess from my perspective, this is just how I feel and I understand it may not be true of everyone, but I see the writer, the person who made the story, as being the voice of the project.
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To me it seems a bit like the game "Telephone" where you wisper a sentence in the ear of one person and then it goes round in a circle and when it comes back to the origin it is a completely different sentence.

At each stage of the process the project changes a little, some ideas are very clear to begin, and they may remain true to original form, some change dramatically and become completely different end results.

In both cases where the story remains the same or when it changes, all the people involved are part of the voice of the story, either to have the strength to keep it focused, or to have the creative genius to change and perhaps improve it.

Most of my favorite movies are unique versions that have been "adjusted" from the original written form. And this is even more true when the writer is the director, as they tend to change and alter the material as they are filming. So if you always alter your own material when you are on set, why not alter someone else's.
 
I'm not sure that total creative freedom always produces the best movies. Art thrives under restrictions sometimes, even seemingly arbitrary ones (like the Dogma 95 "rules of chastity" or whatever). Even budgetary ones.

Certainly having a solid script that you believe in is a great anchor for making decisions around, directorial, acting-wise, budgetary, etc. Open-ended projects tend to have open-ended budgets, and ultimately, almost no one has endless resources. And working from a good script doesn't mean that you aren't free to deviate from it if something inspired happens at the moment of shooting. Being prepared doesn't make you less creative -- it can make you more creative, because you have a launching-off point for trying things.

Trouble with improvising is that not everyone is a genius at it.

I remember this story about Hitchcock where Truffaut asked him the value of using dreams for story ideas. Hitchcock told this story of a director who had a dream of a brilliant movie so he wrote it down immediately in the middle of the night. When he woke up, all he had written was "Boy meets girl." Which is to say that not all flashes of inspiration are always great or particularly special or original.
 
All good points, and I think all valid. Sometimes when a director has too much control, I think he abuses it, or can't handle it. There are directors who absolutely cannot cut their own work down, so the director's cut ends up being ungainly long and you almost end up thinking sadly the studio release was superior.

I'm generally only like that at first. I mainly have my two books to use as reference, but at first I know what kind of research I put into every section so I'm reluctant to cut any of it. Then as the book goes to its 4th, 5th, 6th drafts, and on and on, everything gets cut that doesn't benefit the book because by that point I can't remember and don't care how long I spent finding X or Y piece of information. All I care about by that point is how good the finished product is, even if that means cutting pages I spent many hours writing. Ultimately, who cares how much time I spent on them, if they don't work as part of the whole they are worthless.

For the first short I did, that was also the case, we had a really good scene that worked in the script and seemed to make sense, like narratively I thought it was necessary, but the scene didn't turn out quite as planned, it was still good but had flaws, and I ended up saying, "Why do we even have this here? Do we really need this scene?" It got the ax. Too bad because it was one guy's only role in the film, haha, but what can you do?
 
This editor told me a story about cutting a bunch of low-budget movies. There was the bit actor who played small parts in all of these movies, and for some reason, all his scenes usually ended up being cut out for various reasons, not necessarily because he wasn't a good actor.

This actor found out that the same editor was behind these movies and told him at the wrap party of the latest one -- "I'm almost every scene in this movie so there's no way you're going to be able to cut me out!" But sure enough, as the movie was edited, for some reason every shot of this actor was cut out. But while cutting a love scene between the lead actors, the editor needed a cutaway of some nudity that wasn't filmed, and the only footage he could find was a shot of the naked rear end of this bit actor that had been removed from the movie. So now he found himself in the awkward position of having to call that actor's agent to get permission to use a shot of his rear end in a movie that he no longer appeared in.

Don't know what happened though.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
This editor told me a story about cutting a bunch of low-budget movies. There was the bit actor who played small parts in all of these movies, and for some reason, all his scenes usually ended up being cut out for various reasons, not necessarily because he wasn't a good actor.

This actor found out that the same editor was behind these movies and told him at the wrap party of the latest one -- "I'm almost every scene in this movie so there's no way you're going to be able to cut me out!" But sure enough, as the movie was edited, for some reason every shot of this actor was cut out. But while cutting a love scene between the lead actors, the editor needed a cutaway of some nudity that wasn't filmed, and the only footage he could find was a shot of the naked rear end of this bit actor that had been removed from the movie. So now he found himself in the awkward position of having to call that actor's agent to get permission to use a shot of his rear end in a movie that he no longer appeared in.

Don't know what happened though.
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Hah! I guess the moral of the story is, "keep working (out), you never know when you will be called upon!"

Great behind (no pun etc.)-the-scenes story, David. For some reason, I am often more drawn to the behind-the-scenes tales than a particular movie itself.
 
JonathanLB said:
I think it's a pretty tongue-in-cheek argument to suggest that you're cutting to make the story "flow better," when really you're just cutting for commercials and everyone knows it. The story is only important insofar as it allows more commercials to be played in the future. It bothers me, but that's how they make money.
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Don't forget the story in feature films is only important insofar as it can get people into the theatre to buy popcorn, soda and chocolate bars at the concessions stand.

Just sayin'
 
*grin* I'm a capitalist pig who welcomes those commercials and that concessions stand which allow the creation of some very engaging material such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Lord of the Rings. If a person has to work within a few restrictions to make it go smoother... I just see it as another set of parameters.

If you are making an animated film for children then you don't start throwing the F bombs around as well as laying off the nudity and the decapitations... these are bigger restrictions than trying to put in an audience grabbing moment every 8 to 12 minutes.

I do feel that these restrictions can actually make us think more about the subject and story, to the point where we come up with better and more interesting possibilities than if we just went with the first idea that worked.

I actually enjoy writing to the four or five act structure that is network television one hour drama- and I think it makes my stories faster paced and more exciting than they might otherwise have been. I'll even look at my feature film scripts through an eight act structure just to keep it as tight and engaging as it can be.
 
Yeah, that's true, I mean sometimes working within a framework like that produces a tighter, more interesting final product.

I love Buffy by the way. ;) But Angel to me is even better, maybe that is blasphemy, but when I got into Angel after being into Buffy I just thought it was amazing. What was greatest to me is that every season, for me personally, was fantastic, I couldn't even choose a favorite. For Buffy, Season Six was mostly pretty rocky, I won't say bad, but I won't say good either.
 
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