Krinkle's guide to film-making

[Henry Krinkle]

Inspired by Beckman's 'Any good How To books out there?' thread, I thought I'd compile some tips and tricks for all you budding film-makers out there. I spent nearly 5 years teaching film-making to newbies for a living, so I should have some good tips for you all.

This thread will be updated as and when I can post new stuff.

Ok, so here it is - the how-to guide for newbies.

Preamble:
Film making (proper film-making that is, not just grabbing a camera and messing around) is a time consuming, expensive and laborious process. If you want to do it well, you need to do it right.

That said, every rule have been broken at some stage - it's often said that there are 3 stages to learning and experience:

1) You don't know the rules and must learn them
2) You understand and work within the rules
3) You know why and when to ignore the rules

Just like the law, ignorance is no excuse for breaking the rules of cinema. They're there because they work - breaking them works too, but only with just cause.

Anyway, film making can be split into 5 stages, all of which are important in the industry, but from a 'gaining experience' point of view, there are parts you can gloss over.

The 5 stages of film production:

1) Script development

The longer you spend here, the better. Script development costs nothing but time, and chances are, it's spare time you're investing. Get it right at this stage and everything else falls into place. Screw up here, and the rest of your film making process is no more than polishing a turd.

2) Pre-production

This is where you work out how the hell you're actually going to do everything you've scripted. Remember - with computers and so on, there's very little you can't do now with no budget, as long as you're prepared to spend the time doing it.

3) Production
This is the bit everyone knows about - the part where you actually film your movie. This is the bit people think is the fun bit, but if you're actually working on something good, it can become quite a tricky business, and there are times where it can get very stressful and even boring. But that's why you spend time in script development, so you know this bit will be worth it.

4) Post-production
Taking all the stuff you shot and trying to stitch a film together out of all the pieces. This can be as simple as just editing, or as complex as editing, sound, ADR, digital grading, CGI, etc, etc. If you're not sure what some of that entails, don't worry, just read on. All will be explained...

5) Sales and marketing
This is the part where you go 'I've got a movie - what do I do with it'. Again, this bit can be as simple or as complex as the project requires. It may be simply posting your movie on the internet and telling us about it, it may involve festivals, competitions and lots of meetings with people who don't care about your artistic work or merit.


So, there you have the 5 stages. Over the coming posts, I plan to elaborate on each of these, with a view to providing a comprehensive guide to making better movies, regardless of budget or scale. For now, that's all. Hope you find it useful.

[Sebastian]

/Chimes in

Very good thread, I've been waiting for something like this! I'll add anything I feel you might've missed out that could prove helpful as well - if you don't mind me doing so ofcourse! 

/chimes out

[Henry Krinkle]

Very good thread, I've been waiting for something like this! I'll add anything I feel you might've missed out that could prove helpful as well - if you don't mind me doing so ofcourse! 

By all means Rusty - This is mostly going to be me listing things I've learned via trial and error, and by seeing where others have gone wrong repeatedly. If you have anything to add, I'd welcome it.

I intend this thread to initially follow the five areas I've just outlined, but I expect it will mutate into a general 'tips and tricks' thread.

I've been meaning to do this since I started moderating the Independent Film boards, but I've had so much real-life crap to be worrying about I've not had a chance - plus I used to do this stuff all day every day until last November, so the last thing I wanted to do was continue when I got home - now it's a hobby for me, I'm much more willing to spend my time here helping people out.

[Henry Krinkle]

PART ONE: WRITING

First off, let me say this is far from my area of expertise. I'm am not, and do not pretend to be a writer. In fact, truth be told I've never even tried writing for the screen - what can I say, I'm not an ideas man! I do, however, know quite a bit about screen writing - even if you're not planning to write your script, you still need to be able to look at it and judge whether it will work on screen. That's a skill you need as a film maker.

One thing people often forget is that as a nobody, you need to impress people a lot more that you would if you were an established film maker. So, your script needs to be strong - that's not to say it must be ground breaking, but you need a hook. You need something that's new. Whether you rate him or not, this is something Kevin Smith managed with Clerks. It's not a masterpiece, it's not very ambitious, but it is markedly different to what was the norm when it came out. The key here is believable characters. But, of course there's so much more than just characters you need to think about to make a film entertaining. More later...

Actually, Clerks is a very good starting point for a case study. There are 2 was to approach writing a script - number one - write whatever you want to see on screen, complete with gunfights, explosions and special effects. Number two (and this is the Clerks approach) - start with resource assessment. Work out what you have and what you can do with it.

Kevin Smith worked in a video store next to a convenience store - he had access to both of them whenever he wanted. So, he set about writing a film set there. Wise move - zero location costs.

Resource assessment is something some people do automatically, but it's worth pointing out as part of the process, because some people will just skip it and end up with a completely un-shootable script.

So, this is an AvP forum, chances are a lot of you will want to make sci-fi films. How? where are you going to get an interior for a spaceship? sure, if you have a garage that you can commender for as long as you need it you could build a set, but that's going to be out of the reach of a lot of you.

So, look at what other people have done - I've seen a lot of AvP fan movies made in woods - that works - similar setting to the first Predator film, and AvP-R. If you live near woods, set your film there.

And so the system goes, if there's somewhere you have access to, ask yourself 'could I set my movie there?'. So, that takes care of locations to an extent. Later I'll talk about using locations you don't have complete access to, but not now.


Characters.
It's very important that you don't waste characters. At the zero-budget scale of movie making, you want to try and cut out anything that's not needed. Actually that's good advice even if you have millions of dollars to play with.

What I mean here is, imagine you have three lead characters. Two guys who are hard-ass military types and one who's a scientist. Do you need two military characters? what defines one and separates him from the other? if the answer is 'nothing' then re-write your film so that you only have one military character. Same goes for every character.

Hot Fuzz serves as a good example here - the original idea was that Simon Pegg's character had a love-interest, but they found it detracted from the flow of the main plot, so they gave all her lines to Nick Frost's character.

So, evaluate your characters closely - ask yourself 'does my villain need six henchmen?' and 'would the film still work with two henchmen?' - again, if the answer's yes - get rid of four of them.

Plot.
Plot is actually very simple. All films are based on very, very simple systems. Every film, at it's core, asks a basic question and seeks to answer it. A good, well paced film will throw up more questions and answers as it unfolds.

Examples:
Film:   Lord of the Rings
Question: Will they destroy the ring?

Film:   Alien*
Question:   Will they survive/beat the Alien?

Film:   Shrek
Question:    will the ogre get the girl?

The answer is just as simple as the question. Yes (*well, for ripley and jones at any rate), but along the way, other interesting questions are raised and resolved.

This main question is the driving force behind your film. If it's not worth asking, the film isn't worth making. Period.

You will notice, every film has one of these simple questions to get the ball rolling, but it's not always the first thing you see. Often films spend some time on character development and scene setting first.

The moment when the main question of the film is posed is called the 'inciting incident.' The inciting incident in Alien happens when Kane gets face-hugged.

Even before that you have a question/answer system. What's the source of the distress call? You don't even find out the answer until everything has already kicked off. The point here is that character development still needs to hold the viewer. Even then you are posing questions that the audience invest in.


Ok, that's about it for now - there's lots more to talk about regarding plot.

Next up, I'll be rambling about plot reverses and a little bit of narrative structure. I'll try and wrap this section up soon so I can start with the actual shooting advice, which is what most people will be interested in, but always remember - you get this part right and you have something worth shooting - you don't get it right, you're film's already a dud.

EDIT: This is being written in a bit of a 'stream-of-consciousness' manor, so if you notice any glaring typos or spelling errors, or anything, please feel free to point them out - but for the sake of keeping this thread uncluttered, it might be best to PM me, rather than post them here

[Hudson]

Hudson's 2 Cents - Part 1:

- Filmmaking is an illusion of reality.  You have to use your imagination in the writing/planning/filming so the audience doesn't have to use theirs.

- Make the audience laugh.  Unfortunately, low budget, student, and independent movies without big names or budgets are just going to bore people unless there's a good amount of comic relief to keep them in a good mood and interested. 

- If the locations aren't interesting, compensate with something else.  Make the plot or character(s) stand out in some way as to detract from a boring location.  For instance, I'm in the planning stages of shooting a short over spring break.  It takes place in a house, school, on a road, and in a front yard.  We're there everyday.  The hook is that the main character wakes up and his vision is totally horizontally flipped.  Also, one of his teachers cusses him out, which would serve as my example of an interesting character.

[SM]

SM's 3 cents.

- Script - Keep at as simple as possible.
- Location - Keep it as simple as possible.
- Cast - Keep it as small as possible.
- Post Production - Sucks hairy donkey balls.  Big ones.

My experiences:

Script - I've written a lot of scripts.  Some I'm proud of; some that are shite.  Never throw anything away.  I wrote a short script that was to be shot all in the format of one guy stuck on a space station keeping a video log of everything that had gone wrong previous to the film starting.  Got the keep it simple bit down in terms of location and cast - unfortunately the cast was me, and my acting is not great; or even good.  Ended up scrapping the film, but held onto the idea which is currently being re-written into something a lot better.

After writing several feature length scripts, a guy who I do sound work for told me to make everything a lot simpler, which is how he does he's flicks.  The one we're working on now and the previous one he did, were all done in one location with one or two cast members.  And what Huddo said about humour is correct.  The one we're working on now is the funniest and I believe the strongest thing we've done so far.

So now I concentrate on short scripts 10-15 pages/ minutes or less.

Further reading - Screenplay by Syd Field, Story by Robert McKee (a MUST) and anything by William Goldman.

Location - The aforementioned short comedy was all done on one of the crew's properties.  No need for permits.  I have an idea for a short flick that would utilise my office building.  It's written but I haven't approached our security people about permits and whether they could be waived (unlikely).  If needs be I can come in on the weekend with a couple of people and shoot it guerilla.

Cast - Use local drama groups if possible.  There are a lot of actors around willing to work for nothing* in short independent films.  It can be tempting to use family and friends - but only do this if they have some acting ability.

*- Assuming they're fed as is the rest of the crew.  Very important.

Post production - The bane of my life.  Going back to feature length scripts, I co-wrote a Star Wars fan film (around 30-40 pages) that went before the cameras a month or two before my Firstborn arrived.  The Firstborn turns 7 in May.  About 3-4 years ago with the film essentially shot, but needing extensive effects work - I'm talking about 95% of shots; not scenes, but shots needing rotoscoping, green screen compositing, you name it - it got left by the wayside while the producer and director parted ways and moved onto other things.  Idiot that I am, I offered to edit the film and complete it.

Which brings me to delegation.  I'm too anal to delegate the work to others.  DO NOT BE ANAL ABOUT DELEGATING.  Especially with effects work.  It can be painful thinking someone else it taking over your creative vision, but you can always reject what others have done if it's not up to scratch. 

Which is another interesting point - rejection.  It will become a familiar companion.  Get used to it.  Hurts even more when you aren't getting paid.


Rambled more than I wanted to there... sorry.

Back to Krinkly Hank.

[beckmen]

Cool thread. Some useful advice here. I am with SM on never trashing anything. I can't speak from experience, but logic dictates that you should keep your shitty scripts around and cannibalize ideas, characters, lines, scene concepts, etc for other projects. You are not likely to write a whole script that is ALL bad, it's going to have at least some sound ideas in there... so if you finally decide not to make that movie, save the script and when you get writer's block in your next project...read that old awful script and see if there's anything there to steal. It's just common sense, IMO.

Also, I am one of those guys that isn't big on rules. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't know the rules. Like Henry said, ignorance is no excuse. I'll break all the rules as long as I have a reason for doing it, though. But I am still learning the rules, sadly. After all this time I actually have very little experience because my projects have been so few and far between. I am slowly learning...but right now I am trying to make an effort to apply myself more instead of half-assing it.

[Henry Krinkle]

Nice to see some readers and contributers already thanks guys. (+) to you all.

Ok, continuing from roughly where I left off - plot.

Plot vs. Story.
It's very easy top get these two confused, but they are very different things. The story is the entire histroy of what's happening in your film, and what's happened before your film. Plot is how you choose to reveal this to your audience.

If you take an film that follows a single character, a bio-pic (biographical picture), you can't show all the events in this characters life - you need to choose which events you will show, and in what order. Take, for example, Fight Club. This is the story of Tyler Durden. That's really what the film focuses on. Everything is told from the perspective of Tyler. There isn't a scene without either Norton, Pitt or both. So what we're looking at is a bio-pic in essence. What's worth looking at here is the timeline. Tyler is a 30 year old man. That's the only context we see him in, but we do hear fragments of what came before - The conversation between Pitt and Norton about their yearly calls to their fathers.

So, here's the timeline for 'Tyler' in fight club:



Notice the chronology of events. Now think about how these events are portrayed in the film.

We open with Ground Zero (5) 'Sometimes I forget about Tyler's whole controlled demolition thing and wonder how clean this gun is' this plays out for a few minutes, then we briefly jump to Marla Singer (3) with 'I realise this all has something to do with a girl named Marla Singer'. Before this is completely explained, we just back further to Sleep Deprivation (2). From there we follow a linear narrative through Marla (3), then Tyler (4), flashing back briefly to Father's Advice (1) before heading towards the conclusion.

The point is, this re-arranged chronology is the actual plot of the film. It was meant to be presented this way. Opening with the moment before the films climax provides a narrative hook, and poses our first question - 'Why is Tyler holding this man captive on the top of an office block?' follow by our  second - 'Why is Tyler blowing up these buildings?' Without that scene as the opener, we have no investment in the story.

A more extreme example would be Momento. Some stupid people might have you believe that the reverse chronology is just a cheep gimmick to make a boring film good. As I say, these people are stupid. Momento only works backwards, it was written to be told backwards. In the opening shot, the main question is posed - 'Why did he shoot that guy?' There's the inciting incident right there.

When you're laying out a film, don't sit in front of a computer and start typing. List the events that you want to form your narrative. Then write each event on a post-it note - you can then arrange them in a manor that presents the best flow for the plot. And remember, if your making a zero-budget film you'll need a hook - a distorted or mixed up chronology can provide this if it's used correctly.

Reverses.
This is something I mentioned earlier, but now I'm actually going to explain it. Every plot point within your film should reverse the emotional standing of your character.

If you think of a film in terms of a three act structure, each act seeks to change the character either positively or negatively. Think about every hero in every film and you have a very simple system - Act one builds the character up, act two knocks them down and act three sees them reign triumphant. This should happen on a scene by scene basis to, just on a smaller scale.

This time, I take an example from a really trashy film, just to prove how universal these rules are:

Eurotrip. The film opens at graduation, we see Scott and his friend approaching Scott's girlfriend, Fiona. Scott and Fiona embrace.

Presumption: Scott and Fiona are secure in their relationship
Reverse: Fiona dumps Scott in the opening scene

Within the first moments of the film, you have your hook and your reverse. Scott, who was happy in the opening scene is now depressed.

next scene: Scott (still miserable), his friend and his brother are watching the video tape his mother shot of the previous graduation dumping. Scott gets an email from 'mike' his German penpal, this lifts his mood making him optimistic as he heads to the graduation party. Again, his emotional state has, on a superficial scale, been reversed. As the film plays out, these reverses become bigger and bigger, building into act climaxes. Shit film, good structure.

Think about this when you're laying out your post-it notes. every scene should create a reverse. Once you have a structure, write a blow by blow account of what happens in the film in these terms.

Once you have the whole film written, you can start to worry about dialogue - yes, dialogue is something that comes from narrative, not the other way around.

There is, of course much more to it than that, but that should set you out on good footing. As SM said above, Robert McKee's 'story' is a MUST READ. It elaborates hugely on what I've just said.

Another good resource for you is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenwriting

I'm just going to round off this section on script development with a word on actual script formatting. Formatting makes a script very easy to follow. A correctly formatted script works wonders for actually planning your movie. Plus you have the handy rule - one page of script = one minute of screen time.

to learn more about script formatting and general screen writing, read this site from start to finish: http://www.scriptwritingsecrets.com/

if you can get your hands on it, finaldraft is a great formatting program: http://www.finaldraft.com/

or, if you have microsoft office, you can download some script templates here: http://www.dependentfilms.net/files.html to make your life easier.

Next up, I'll get stuck into pre-production. Stay tuned

[beckmen]

Final Draft is great and saves a lot of time by making formatting a breeze.

Oh, and not to be pedantic or anything, but Fight Club isn't told from the POV of Tyler Durden. It's the POV of 'Narrator', who is an alternate personality living in the same body. I guess this could be open to debate, but I count that as a separate character.

But some interesting stuff in your post...

[Henry Krinkle]

Oh, and not to be pedantic or anything, but Fight Club isn't told from the POV of Tyler Durden. It's the POV of 'Narrator', who is an alternate personality living in the same body.

Agreed, but I was working from the point of view that we've all seen it and we all know they are in fact the same person to all intents and purposes. You'll notice I refer exclusively to Tyler until I made the timeline, at which point I noticed that the 'narrator' - who I tent to still refer to as Jack (yeah, I know he's not actually Jack) - is the focal point, so I used 'Narrator' in the timeline, not Tyler. I see your point, but for the purpose of illustration, I took a few things as read.

[beckmen]

Yeah, understandable.

[Hudson]

Hudson's 2 Cents - Part 2:

Cast - Use local drama groups if possible.  There are a lot of actors around willing to work for nothing* in short independent films.  It can be tempting to use family and friends - but only do this if they have some acting ability.

That is one of the truest things I've ever read.  You go into a movie thinking, "yeah I can just put my friends in it, should be a good time."  Except, it isn't.  Turns out, you're the only one who is interested in filmmaking and your friends just want to hang out in front of the camera.  This has happened to me too many times and I've vowed to only use them in small parts from now on.  It turns into a big time waster on set and the acting ends up terrible, unless their rolls are over-the-top and require overacting for the sake of comedy.

You will be surprised how many young actors will do anything for you just to get their name on something.  I know a guy who worked as an extra for no apparent reason on a short called Near Miss (on youtube) back in May to simply get his name out there.  I later worked with him on a shitty feature that summer where he played the main villain.  He's now going to act in my next movie.  These people just want to get their names on the market and they need you (yes you!) to make a movie with their name on it.  If they are pleased with how the experience and the product turns out, they are an immensely helpful resource in getting the word out about it, and they will no doubt let their other actor friends know about it and in turn get you more interested future cast members as a resource.

[SM]

Following from what Hank said about structure and plot.

(Name drop alert) Years ago before LOTR Peter Jackson used to frequent the message boards of TBHL, and there was an area called Q & A With Peter J.  I asked him how he, Fran, Steven Sinclair et al, wrote such fantastically endearing characters in Heavenly Creatures and Braindead.  He said they generally just sat down and worked out the story as a sequence of events for the first draft with very little characterisation.  On subsequent drafts they filled the characters and dialogue out, and one of the best ways of doing this is to give the characters something they're passionate about.  It helps get you into a mindset, given the characters values, what would they say and do in this situation, and dialogue and action can often end up almost writing itself (you hear it quite often in the extras of DVDs where an actor will say "My character wouldn't say/ do this").

Also what was said about revealing stuff to the audience.  I've been researching a doco about a VC winner for the last 4 or 5 years.  All this time I've known that he got the VC posthumously - however I only just finished the first draft script and threw his death in there quite casually because I've had it my head for so long.  However, the audience isn't going to know that, so I had to rewrite it to put it practically on the last page, so hopefully it will have much more impact when it's been built up by the preceeding events.

So I guess the point is - you may think your first draft is good enough to shoot.  It isn't.  Take some time away from it, then go back and re-write it.

[Hudson]

Hudson's 2 Cents - Part 3:

Two minds are better than one.     Someone get me a fortune cookie contract.

[beckmen]

Hudson's 2 Cents - Part 3:

Two minds are better than one.   

Yeah, I need to get this concept down for my long-term slasher project. I've been emailing the script to the other people involved in it, but they rarely ever even reply, let alone contribute actual ideas. Or you get people giving you 'The Hot Dog Concept', a joke that spun out from my friend (who is a writer) where the ONLY thing he contributed to the whole script we were all working on (3 other people) was that during a scene where they are talking over a campfire, that they should be eating hot dogs. That's it. Not the camp fire idea, just that they should be eating hot dogs.

I am afraid to use real actors. I am just not professional enough, I know they'd be thinking "Man, this guy has no idea what he is doing, why am I even here?" the whole time...

EDIT: A question for the gurus...I have heard that DV tape doesn't degrade like analog tapes do, that you can reuse them over and over again, and they only start to lose quality after being over-written several hundred times. Myth, or fact? I am asking because I do it...I tape over my old stuff just to save money.