5 terrible mistakes you might make while shooting your first indie feature film.

nandan (61)in #filmmaking • 7 years ago (edited)

As I told in an earlier post, I have finished shooting my first indie feature film and right now its getting edited. In this post I will tell you the mistakes I made during the production of the film. This post is keeping in mind that we are making an indie film with zero or very less budget and not for professionals. This mistakes were made mostly because of my lack of experience. If you are trying to make an indie film, this post will help you save a lot of quality time on set by avoiding the mistakes. Lets dive in

As a beginner, you are ought to make mistakes. It is always better to make mistakes in earlier stages of your work. This post is not about trying to stop you from making mistakes. But, to tell you about only the worst things that you should avoid. You should always be looking forwards to make mistakes, its applicable to any kind of work. Here, I will tell you some of the MOST terrible things I did which sucked up a lot of my time during the shoot and also cost a bit of money.

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. - Albert Einstein

As its written above, if you don't make any mistakes it means you are doing something that's really easy and probably not original.

Mistake #1 - Not knowing the importance of Costumes:

The mistake which I totally regret, was to letting my actors choose clothes for themselves. If you let your actors choose their outfit for the scene they will definitely wear an expensive Zara shirt trying to look great. This will work sometimes, but most of the time it will backfire if the scene is supposed to be dull.

If the scene is very emotional and your actors are wearing bright yellow or red colored outfits it will completely distract the audience. I had to send my actors back home to change their clothes, this took up a lot of my time on the set . Some of the scenes were shot with bad costumes, because there wasn't enough time, I totally regret this.

I realized that the color of the outfits also influences the emotion of the scene. While selecting the outfit try to match the actors character with it. Always select your actors clothes no matter what, because it can make or break your scene.

A simple way to decide what color to use according to the characters and the emotion of the scene is by using this cheat sheet. Here, different moods are allotted to different colors. You can easily pick color by using this and save a ton of valuable time.

You can see many of this colors and moods in David Fincher's films. Fincher is a master in selecting colours according to the mood.

Mistake #2 - Underestimating the out door shoot:

Due to the low budget, I wasn't able to afford expensive lights. So, I decided to shoot most of my scenes outdoors where there is plenty of light. This turned out to be a huge mistake. I live in South India, and this is a tropical climate region. Well it means there will be a lot of clouds in the sky and a lot of variation in the sunlight. If you live in a place where climate stays the same for a long periods of time you won't have this problem.

Because of the variation in the sunlight some shots came with a lot of sunlight where as other came with comparatively less or no sunlight. I had to wait till the clouds cleared, this will take a lot of time and your actors will think you are wasting their time.

So, if you are ever planning to shoot outdoors, do it in summer. In summer there will be very less or no clouds in the sky.

During the scheduling of the shoot, also take a look at the weather conditions in the internet. A simple google search will provide you with weather conditions and you can schedule your shoot accordingly. So, don't underestimate the weather. I wish I had known this before ( crying).

Mistake #3 - Losing patience and getting satisfied too easily:

In indie films you will not be able to afford professional actors. So, you call your friend or family member for help. Since, they are all non-actors they need time to get comfortable. When you tell them to say a dialogue or do some actions they will end up laughing, its not their fault. They are still learning.

You tell them to try again, they will again laugh, you tell them again to try, they will laugh. You will end up taking more than 200 takes for a single word dialogue and you be cursing yourself "Why did I call this idiot to act in my movie?" you will have no other option.

After re-taking shots continuously for 3 hours your face will look something like this

You'll easily lose your patience by now. When you lose patience you'll either shout at your actor or you'll just end up getting satisfied with a shot which is bad. I did them both (sadly). When you are shooting it is really common to lose patience, because you are juggling a lot of things in your mind.

But, even after taking 500 takes you should still try to get that perfect shot. I've made this mistake, when you are doing this you will not realize it. But, when you start editing you'll be really sad for what you have done. So, don't lose patience.

Jackie Chan took more than 1000 takes over a period of 40 days for the famous hacky sack scene in Dragon Lord. As told by Quinton Tarantino in Director's chair.

Mistake #4 - Not planning the chase/action scenes:

If your movie has a foot chase or an intense fight scene, it would save you a ton of time if the entire scene is planned or story-boarded. It may seem very overwhelming and expensive, but simple one line descriptions of how the shots should be taken is enough.

By not doing this, most of my action scenes look dull. But, hey this is my first film and things like this are supposed to happen. If you can't draw story-boards, simple descriptions with stick figures can also do the job. Try not get overwhelmed, because of the excitement of making a film you will always be in a hurry to get out there and shoot. Try to keep your feet on the ground and plan. Because, it gonna be worth it.

Here's the story-boards of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, as you can see it doesn't look like comic books. But, most important thing is it delivers the plan.

Mistake #5 - The walls matter:

One of the biggest lessons I learnt was that the walls play a major role in a scene. If you are doing an indoor shoot then you have walls all around you. Walls impacts our mind in a subconscious way, just like the color of the costumes color of the wall also plays an important role. Not only in film making, but also in architecture and interior designing.

On a recent architectural study, a baby was taken into a rooms of different colors. It was observed that the baby became very violent when taken into room with lemon yellow colored walls. The colors of the wall play a major role in adding tension or relaxation to the scene.

I realized this during my earlier works with short films.I noticed some of my scenes were not creating the emotions it was supposed to create. I tried to correct it in my feature, and it was quite successful. I included this in the post, because beginners like me might not have noticed this and can implement it in their work.

You can use the cheat sheet from #1 while deciding the colors. But, there is no correct way to deciding this. One of the ways you can learn this is by watching the works of Chuck Jones, he is famous for his works on Looney Tunes. His animation has a great value. Notice the walls next time you watch Chuck Jones directed Looney Tunes.