Arturo plays Miguel, the main character, in Adán. The full interview will be included on the Adán DVD, (coming soon!).  For now, here’s what he had to say about comedy on set.

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For this week’s post I wanted to share a few thoughts on how to keep your budget low, with lessons I’ve learned from my last few films.  This is geared toward people making low-budget shorts, but I think the information can be readily applied to a film that costs $300 or one that costs $30,000.

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Write a script you can shoot

It’s tempting to write a script as it comes to you, to use the locations, props, and special effects that seem natural.  The risk in writing this way is that the budget for your script will far exceed the amount of money you have on hand.  Sure, you could spend the next year looking for financing, or you could spend that year making your movie.  If it’s a good script that you’re passionate about, then its heart has nothing to do with the pyrotechnics.  You can tell your story with a tiny budget as long as you’re willing to package it carefully.

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A couple of years ago I made a short film that followed a renegade reporter as he took on censorship in a futuristic dystopia.  I was a junior in college and several people asked me, “How the hell do you think you’re going to pull this off?”  But I wrote the script so that it revolved around the friendship between the reporter and his boss.  The two men had been college buddies and now found themselves on opposite sides of the censorship argument, so the real tension and excitement came from their interactions with one another, (cheap to shoot).

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I was very careful to write scenes with specific locations in mind, and I made the most of the visuals these places offered.^[1] My total budget was $150.  Although the film wasn’t polished enough for a festival run, it was as good a movie as I could have hoped to make in my college town and it served as a stepping-stone to my next project.

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Choose the right camera

There are two important factors here: what does the story require and what are your goals for the film.  Documentaries generally don’t need to look great, (Marshall Curry’s Street Fight was shot on a small, standard definition camera and was nominated for an Oscar), and depending on the story, a narrative film might not need to have a polished look either.  A gritty, character-driven drama, for example, could benefit from a rougher look.  A glossy romantic comedy, on the other hand, might require more polish, for which you’ll need a higher-end camera.

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It is important to be honest with yourself about where the film is headed.  If it is designed primarily as a learning experience for the production team and a stepping stone to larger projects, (like my film from junior year), then there’s no point in spending a lot on the camera.  Find one you can borrow or rent cheaply and shoot with that.  Learning to tell a story visually has very little to do with the camera you’re using.

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If you’re aiming for a festival run and feel like your story requires higher quality visuals than what a basic camera offers, it may be worth spending some money.  I shot my last project on a Canon 5D and used a Sony EX1 for the project before that.  Each has distinct benefits and drawbacks, but both provide a very nice HD image at a reasonable price.  The only reason to shoot on film or a high-end camera like the RED is if you’re aiming to get into top tier festivals and feel that your story requires a professional look.  This is the point where it is critical to be honest with yourself about the prospects of your film.  If you’re on your third or fourth short and your previous projects have had solid festival runs, then it may be worth finding extra money for film or a high-end camera.^[2]. Otherwise, I would recommend saving your money, (and the money of the friends and family members you’ll be borrowing from), for the next movie.

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Of course in order to make decisions about what camera to use, you need to be familiar with their relative capabilities and prices.  Find samples of footage you can compare and call up a few rental houses to get quotes.  If you call on a slow day, you may be able to get advice and recommendations.  Keep in mind that different cameras require different amounts of light, which will affect the size and price of your lighting package.

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Use the locations you have

Locations can be an enormous drain on your budget and a major source of production-planning headaches.  Write, (or re-write), your script to take advantage of locations that are free or cheap.  This often requires some creativity.

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On my short film Adán, I had scenes taking place in four different apartments.  I was able to find one very large, empty apartment that the landlord was gutting for renovation.  I counted on my production designer and art director, (pictured), to transform four sections of it into the four apartments in the script.  I had to do a bit of re-writing to constrain the scenes to the spaces created within the apartment, but for $750 I got my four main locations and never had to move the equipment.  On my most recent short I took this one step further and shot the whole film at my family’s cabin.  I was able to focus my time and money on other aspects of the production, and the quality of the final product improved as a result.

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Since money is such and important topic for low-budget filmmakers, I plan on using as a topic for future blog posts.  I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say, so please post your thoughts, additions, and anecdotes below.

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¹ The best example of this is the final scene.  The reporter gets arrested, but of course I didn’t have money for cop cars or a prison set.  I knew that there was an institutional-looking, concrete tunnel on campus, so I wrote the scene as: “Two policemen march the hand-cuffed reporter down a bare, windowless hallway.”  Several people have told me that this is their favorite scene in the film. back to post

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² I want to emphasize that these higher end cameras can give you professional look if they are in the right hands, but renting an expensive camera is not in any way a guarantee, (the RED in particular can be very tricky).  Be sure to watch any prospective DP’s reel and ask plenty of questions about his or her experience with whatever cameras you’re planning to use. back to post

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Other resources:

- How to Get Donated Goods and Services for Your Film blog post by Cinereach Fellow Courtney Hope

- Getting Financing an interview with Children of Invention director Tze Chun about how he funded his early projects and ……………his first feature

- Making Movies book by Sidney Lumet

Charles plays Neil, the father, in The Drawing.. Here is what he had to say about the experience.

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Preparing for the role of Neil

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Working with young actors

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Building to the perfect take

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Charles as Neil

]]> http://www.saltboxfilms.com/conversationwithcharles/feed/ 0 http://www.saltboxfilms.com/lessonsfromthefirstscreening/ http://www.saltboxfilms.com/lessonsfromthefirstscreening/#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 18:34:13 +0000 Gabe http://www.saltboxfilms.com/?p=227 May 31, 2010

After working on The Drawing for six months, I finally finished in mid April.  Cinereach, (the group that sponsored my film along with three others as part of their Reach Fellowship), organized a screening at the Sunshine Cinema for all the fellows and it was my first chance to see the film with an audience.  The experience was uncomfortable and invaluable.

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There’s always a bit of pain involved when I watch one of my films with an audience because I see all the mistakes, but I also feel that this is the closest I get to objectively viewing the movie.  When I’m surrounded by audience members I’m aware of their reactions, which helps me judge the film, but more importantly I’m detached from the piece because I know I can’t change it.  As long as I’m watching the footage in an editing suite or at a test screening, I’m analyzing it.  I’m thinking about whether a certain shot should be 3 or 4 frames shorter or if there is a better take of a given moment.  Once I’m in a theater I have to give up all that because I know that there is no going back and making changes, and that makes me more receptive to the film.  I feel that watching my movies this way, even though it’s uncomfortable, is the only way I can grow as a filmmaker.  It teaches me what I need to do better next time.

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The biggest lesson I learned this time around?  The necessity of tension and clarity.  I think I’m going to write these two words on an index card and keep it in front of me at all times when I’m making my next movie.  I had these elements in the back of my mind throughout the production process, but the screening brought home their importance.

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Without the question, “What is going to happen next?” (aka tension), the audience has no reason to keep watching.  Part of the challenge in making a short film is setting up the fundamental question of the story at the very beginning.  With a feature you might be able to divert the audience’s attention with minor questions while building to the fundamental one, but with a short it has to be right up front in order to hook the audience.  I did ok with this.  My question was “Will the brothers overcome their differences and form a bond?” and it is stated within the first minute of the film, but this brings me to my second point.

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The tension has to be stated clearly.  This may sound obvious, but in my film, for example, I didn’t immediately clarify the stakes.  The audience is curious to see if the brothers will form a bond, but the importance of that bond only becomes clear halfway through the movie.  A good counter-example is The Maltese Falcon.  Immediately following the opening titles we are in Sam Spade’s office and Brigid O’Shaunessey is setting up the question, (a mysterious man has something she wants and Spade will try to get it), and clarifying the stakes, (a lot of money on one side and death on the other)*.  The dialogue is a little expository, but the viewer is immediately engaged.  The stakes are one aspect of the question that needs to be stated clearly, (the obstacle is another big one), but every question is unique, and I’ve found that each has to be stated clearly according to its own demands and characteristics.

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The need for clarity extends beyond setting up the fundamental question.  At the screening, the moments the audience really reacted to were the ones where the story was clearest.  When the set-up of the action and the intentions of the characters were clear, the moment worked.  The reverse was also true regardless of great lighting, a well delivered line, or any other non-story elegance.  Of course the best moments are the ones where all these elements come together, and I had a couple of these, but clarity in the story trumps all else.

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On paper this sounds very simple.  In practice, for me, it’s been a lot more complicated.  But what holds true is that I learn more and more with each project.

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Titling this film was a struggle. The story follows two brothers as they try to navigate their complex relationship over the course of one afternoon, so naturally my first title was Brothers. It worked fine and stated something very simple about the story, so it stuck. But as I got into production and post-production, I realized I needed a new title.

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Brothers isn’t very evocative and the word has various connotations, so it doesn’t give a potential audience member much information. Furthermore, anyone who searched for Brothers online would have to dig through dozens of results related to the Jake Gyllenhaal/Toby McGuire movie to find anything about my project, (a bit of IMDb research revealed that my film would be one of many, many films with this title).

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So I set out to find a more evocative and unique title. My first strategy was just to think about it. I thought that if I concentrated enough, inspiration would strike. A week later I didn’t even have any good ideas, so I decided to take a more structured approach. I made lists of possible titles, asked my cast and crew for ideas, and I re-read the script looking for moments or lines of dialogue that could yield a new name. This gave me some decent options, but nothing that really seemed to fit.

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Finally, I sat down to discuss title options with Reva Goldberg and Margaret Shafer, who run the Reach Film Fellowship. As we debated various ideas, for the first time I was forced to articulate what I wanted from the title. It couldn’t simply be unique and evocative, I realized, it also needed to reflect the simple, solid feel of this story about boys trying to become men. It couldn’t be too soft, (The Drawn Boy), or too plain (The Bat), nor too stylized or complex, (My Chair at the Table). The Hideaway had the proper solid feel, but Reva correctly pointed out that it has connotations that don’t fit the film, (“It makes me think of pirates,” is how she put it).

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Ultimately, Reva suggested The Drawing and when she said it, I knew that was the title. It had the simple structure and solid feel that I wanted, and it evoked the boys’ process of growing up. You could say that the lesson here is to get other people to title your film, but that’s not quite it. In order to recognize The Drawing as the right choice, I had to have a clear idea of what I wanted from the title. Without that knowledge, I was stabbing in the dark both in terms of coming up with ideas and judging those suggested by other people. Only when I knew how I wanted the title to look, sound, and feel could I select it.

I started editing about two weeks after we wrapped, so at this point I’ve been working on the project two or three days a week for the past month and a half. I’ve had several people look at successive versions and revised based on their input. The film has come a long way as I’ve explored more and more options, but about two weeks ago I realized that I needed to work with an editor. Cedar Daniels, (The Third Wave), generously agreed to work on the project.

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I don’t find that I’m overly attached to specific material, but because I’m so intimately familiar with the story, my perspective of the film is distorted. This realization came primarily out of my back and forth with different people who watched my film. I would show a cut to someone and they would say, “You really should think about changing such-and-such,” and when I went back to look at the film, their comment would highlight something that now appeared as an obvious problem, but something I wouldn’t have seen beforehand.

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In the opening scene, Nathan, the older brother, comes into the room and tries to get a book away from his younger brother Joe. The film revolves around the relationship of these two boys as they learn to survive in an abusive home, and Joe needed to be really scared in the opening scene to set the tone for the film. A friend of mine watched an early cut and responded to the first scene by saying, “One brother wants to get a book away from the other one and then they talk about football, so what?” To me there was a strong sense of fear in the scene because I knew what was going to happen later on, but as is obvious from the description above, there is no sense of danger inherent in the action. By going back and re-editing the scene I was able to create the tone I wanted, but I wouldn’t have seen the problem if not for my friend’s input.

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This is one example of a problem that appeared in a variety of ways simply because I bring so much information to the film that the audience doesn’t have.

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I could continue the editing process by going through the cycle of getting feedback and re-editing as many times as needed. Even now that I’m working with an editor, I’ll still need feedback from people unfamiliar with the material. However, the advantage of working with an editor is that I can shortcut the cycle. In effect, he is a filmmaking-savvy audience member capable of correcting the problems I can’t see. Not only will editing move faster, but I’ll end up with a better, more polished film.

Frames from a sequence in the film's second scene

There were a lot of things I liked about my script going into this process, but I felt it could be better. The story didn’t feel as compelling or engaging as I wanted it to. It was tight, but a bit predictable. In terms of re-writing, I felt I was at a bit of a dead end. I felt that every element of my script was so connected to the whole piece that unless I overhauled it, it would be difficult to improve.

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During my second meeting with my mentor, Laurie Collyer, we talked about my script and how I might go about improving it, and Laurie suggested that I do a complete re-write as an exercise. She thought it might free me up to continue improving on what I had.

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The idea of writing an “exercise” script allowed me to get past my attachment to the interconnectedness of the previous draft. The resulting draft wound up involving the same location, characters, and subject matter, but was very different and significantly better. I allowed myself to completely re-imagine scenes with the knowledge that if they didn’t work I didn’t need to use them in the final version.

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Rather than taking the best elements of the exercise script and melding them into the older draft, I did the reverse. I ended up taking the moments in the older draft that I thought held the essence of the story and constructed a new narrative around them. The end result was a more natural and compelling story.

Nathan looks at Joe in a scene added during the re-write

During our recent Cinereach advising workshop with Writer/Director Tze Chun (Children of Invention), there were some very useful takeaways related to casting and working with children.

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Tze talked a lot about how, when casting a role, it’s critical to keep in mind the specific demands of the part. A very natural young actor who doesn’t have a great deal of acting ability can work well for a role that doesn’t contain many highly emotional scenes. If the character needs to display a great deal of strong emotion, however, more acting ability is necessary even if this means sacrificing naturalness to some degree.

Director Tze Chun discusses working with child actors

When I entered the casting process and had to begin making decisions, I took Tze’s advice and looked for the right balance of acting ability versus naturalness. We auditioned 20 actors for the two open roles and had four, two actors per character, come in for callbacks.

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At callbacks, I was careful to go over the most emotionally subtle parts of the script several times to see what each actor could bring to the moments. In this script there are no highly emotional scenes that call for crying, or throwing a tantrum, so I decided I could err on the side of naturalness over acting experience, while making sure that the actors were skilled enough to understated and convey the emotions of the scenes.

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Also critical to me, was looking at the chemistry between each pair of actors. My two actors will be playing brothers and the story hinges on the subtle interactions that make up their relationship.

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Now that my film is cast, I am looking ahead at how I will work with my actors in rehearsal and on set. In my discussions with my mentor, Laurie Collyer (Sherrybaby), Laurie has really emphasized using improvisation as a lead-in to scripted scenes in order to get a more natural performance from child actors. Tze also advised that I give my young actors a set of actions to execute whenever possible, rather than a single action, in order to keep them from over-emphasizing each one. I’ll definitely be employing these tactics.

Cinereach has announced the names of the 2010 Reach Film Fellows and their mentors, launching the third year of the programme designed to nurture socially conscious film-makers.

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The Reach Film Fellowship (RFF) is an intensive six-month programme in which four film-makers work with individual mentors, a team of advisors, and Cinereach staff to take their short fiction and non-fiction films from concept to completion.

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RFF fellows each receive a $5,000 grant and production resources. At the conclusion of the fellowship cycle, an additional $5,000 award will be presented to one of the four Fellows for the completion and distribution of his or her RFF film.

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The 2010 Reach Film Fellows, mentors and films are: Nadia Hallgren (mentored by Annie Sundberg) for Love Lockdown; Courtney Hope (mentored by Jeremy Kipp Walker) for Wild Birds; Gabriel Long (mentored by Laurie Collyer) for Brothers; and Anthony Morrison (mentored by Marilyn Agrelo) for Our Principal Intent.

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http://www.screendaily.com/news/production/cinereach-names-2010-reach-film-fellows/5006226.article

Cinereach has announced the names of the 2010 Reach Film Fellows and their mentors, launching the third year of a program that “nurtures socially conscious filmmakers at early stages in their careers.”

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The Reach Film Fellowship (RFF) is a six-month program in which four filmmakers work with individual mentors, a team of advisors, and Cinereach staff to take their short fiction and nonfiction films from concept to completion. RFF fellows each receive a $5,000 grant and production resources. At the conclusion of the fellowship cycle, an additional $5,000 award will be presented to one of the four Fellows for the completion and distribution of his or her film. Mentors this year include: Marilyn Agrelo (“Mad Hot Ballroom”), Laurie Collyer (“Sherrybaby”), Annie Sundberg (“The Devil Came on Horseback”) and Jeremy Kipp Walker (“Cold Souls”). Fellows are: Nadia Hallgren (“Love Lockdown”), Courtney Hope (“Wild Birds”), Gabriel Long (“Brothers”) and Anthony Morrison (“Our Principal Intent”).

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“We’ve seen how access to mentorship and advising from successful independent filmmakers really makes the difference for those just starting out,” said Cinereach founder and executive director Philipp Engelhorn in a statement. “It’s critical to encourage young filmmakers who are inclined towards making films of social relevance, and to help them do that effectively through cinematic storytelling.”

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http://www.indiewire.com/article/quickshots_polanski_precious_cinereach_fellows_thessaloniki_news/