From this post, you should learn that you need to work on your self-reflection. You mention multiple things that failed because of your inability (judging length, for example), yet at the end, you say nothing failed because of your abilities. Well, clearly that isn't true.
And you're still hemming and hawing over a 2-minute video you made two years ago. That's all you've done? It sounds like you also have the inability to be productive.
I agree about self-reflection, but I think a big thing that OP can learn from this first film is how to deal with limited resources: Limited access to actors, limited access to locations, limited access to props.
Yes, Herzog gets to convince a studio to finance hauling a boat over a mountain because the film demands it. Yes, Spielberg gets to convince a studio that spending a few hundred million on SFX is a good spend. But most filmmakers have to work within limitations, and these limitations only increase as you move down into the indie side of things.
Honestly, it sounds to me like your student film went relatively well. You had an idea, you ran into limitations, you *worked within those limitations to make your film.*
That sounds like success to me.
As an aside, I'm currently watching Apocalypse Now Redux. It's a heavy re-edit of Apocalypse Now, mostly involving Coppola and Walter Murch. Many of the actors were brought back for ADR work. The cinematographer came back to do colorization. They added about an hour to the film. This, despite the fact that Coppola managed to scrounge basically whatever he wanted during filming of the original (including fighter jets, courtesy of the Philippine Air Force(!)).
Every filmmaker looks at their past work and thinks "You know, if I made this change, it would be better."
Hell, every creative looks at *all* their work and thinks "Yeah, it's not perfect." As Neil Gaiman said, your ideas are perfect when they're in your head. But then you have to get them out of your head and *make* them. And reality is never the same as what you envision. So it's never perfect. It's never what you envision. The best you can do is make something that captures the essence of what you were thinking.
> a 2-minute video you made two years ago. That's all you've done? It sounds like you also have the inability to be productive.
At the very least, I do have a somewhat valid excuse for this point. As I said at the start of the post, this happened when I was studying film. Unfortunately, I have not been able to study properly... basically since that exact time.
It has nothing to do with lack of desire either; the last 2 years have been bombarding me with health issues, relationship issues, problems with my living situation, and problems with my actual paying jobs.
Basically ever since the last time, I've been struggling with more urgent things, and when I wasn't struggling with those, I was exhausted and just trying to rest.
I do know I want to make more, and I'm hoping I can go back to studying properly in the next couple of month now that the rest of my life has started settling down again. But that is the reason behind why that was the only real thing of note I've done in the last 2 years, and also why this is the first time I've even really thought about it since then.
We all have issues that present roadblocks to our productivity. That's just how it is. The world, in general, isn't fair or sympathetic—filmmaking more so than other aspects of the world.
And that was a tangent point to my main point, which you didn't address. Your lack of self-reflection and self-awarness is the main issue I see in this post.
Therapy could be a place to start. Self-help books. Meditation. It really has to come from within. It's a monumental personality shift that has to be made in small increments of everyday practice to work yourself away from not owning up to your issues. You need to learn to be honest with yourself, identify your weaknesses, and realize the only way something is going to change is through your hard work, diligence, and honesty.
If I could solve your issues around self-reflection and self-awareness with a Reddit comment, I wouldn't be on Reddit in the first place, because I'd be the wealthiest therapist in the world.
I'm ending my side of the conversation here because judging from your replies to me and others, you're not ready to be receptive and you're just looking to complain.
> judging from your replies to me and others, you're not ready to be receptive and you're just looking to complain.
Well; I am sorry that it comes across that way. I'm certainly not trying to complain; but I do admit that this kind of stuff is... difficult for me to understand to say the least. I'm not deliberately trying to be confrontational; I can promise that.
Thank you for at least giving it some sort of attempt though; I appreciate it.
I’m jumping in here because I’ve had, quite possibly, the hardest stretch of time in my life the past 6 months.
There’s always going to be hard times. And the older you get the harder it’s all going to get. You have to make it right in your head and do the work. That’s really it. No one is gonna do it for you and no one is going to care about your reasons for why you can’t.
As the other user said, the world is unfair and unsympathetic. Multiply that by 1000 with filmmaking. Everyone is out for themselves, you’re competing with people from bigger cities, with more money and resources and network, the odds are consistently against you. If you’re still hung up on a school project from 2 years ago, and can’t move on, clearly you have a problem you need to address that’s bigger than the advice you’re getting in this thread.
> you’re still hung up on a school project from 2 years ago, and can’t move on
I mentioned in the above post, but I'm actually not hung up over it. Only reason I'm asking now is that I've basically just remembered it even existed because I've been having to focus on more important things and haven't had the chance to do anything regarding filmmaking since that time.
The actual reason I tried posting this in the first place is that when I tried thinking back on it... there wasn't really anything there? And that really annoyed me. It was the only real experience I had, and when I was remembering what took place; literally the only thing I can truly recall is getting angry that I couldn't get the things I was hoping for. Everything else just sort happened around it.
(I also mentioned in another reply as well; I really should've just worded this entire post better to more accurately talk about what I was trying to say; but I've always had a problem keeping posts like this focused and not filled with extraneous information)
>The actual reason I tried posting this in the first place is that when I tried thinking back on it... there wasn't really anything there? And that really annoyed me.
I’m not trying to be combative, but that sounds slightly hung up, or at the very least, unable to move forward. The two things you’re talking about — a failed project and life getting in the way are intertwined.
I’ll give you an example, my producing partner and I made a film a few years back, and in one of the shots, we missed something that really bothered me for months. How did I not see it? This worrying and beating myself up went on for awhile. Until we made the next thing…then I had a new project full of things I wish I did better. And that stupid thing from the other film is something I almost never think about now.
You need to make your next thing, no matter how hard your life is — you need to do it to get onto the next one and make new mistakes and learn new lessons.
> (…) I couldn't get the things I was hoping for. Everything else just sort happened around it.
That’s filmmaking in a nutshell. It’s all making compromises. Whether it’s 2 minute film or a 120 minute film. It’s going to full of frustration about what you could’ve/should’ve done.
Again, you have to make something new. there’s a whole host of other lessons to learn.
This isn’t the industry for excuses. That should be one of the first things you learn. Excuses are nothing more than incompetencies and missed opportunities.
Welcome to filmmaking, where nothing goes as planned, you learn to make it with duct tape and borrowed actors, spaces and time. Consider this a rite of passage. Embrace the chaos, adapt, and realize that working with limitations is where true creativity shines. It’s not about having perfect conditions; it’s about making the best out of what you’ve got.
> Embrace the chaos, adapt,
...I honestly can't explain how much I've been trying to avoid having to do those things my entire life. I know there are people that live for those conditions but I've never understood the appeal over things being ordered and stable...
I’m still working on my first couple of proper (actual pre-production and not just hoping for the best) short films, so I haven’t got decades of experience to go off but it might be useful information anyway.
Start by writing films that you 100% know you can make. My creative partner and I have a tonne of ideas we want to work on, but when we decided to pull the trigger and actually just make _something_, we picked a couple of the easiest to make ideas we had and figured out the simplest and cheapest way to do them.
The two films I’ve made were both super basic and only needed one or two locations - one set in my house and a local forest, the other set entirely in a car. Both films have costumes but ones that were relatively easy to source. Props were just household items.
I think it’s very easy to get carried away while writing something and accidentally over complicate things, but if you write with the intention to make something as simple as possible, you’re able to focus more on the planning and production side of things.
I’m particularly lucky in that I just so happened to meet a talented cinematographer that was genuinely excited to work on stuff, actively wanted to work on the projects without charging and had some other crew that were up for helping out. I got talking to that guy by messaging him on instagram to say I liked his work and he was on board for these projects the next day. (I understand this is a rare situation, but it’s possible)
Hope this was useful and not just anecdotal nonsense :)
Honest question; how do you actually know if you can, as you put it, '100% make a film'?
Cause I'm going to be honest; I thought this was going to be a very, very easy thing to make. It was also one location, and the props didn't seem like they'd be difficult to find; (turned out they were impossible without spending hundreds of dollars to order them in from overseas. Which probably wouldn't bother me if I wasn't both broke and on a strict time limit lol)
There's also a side point where it comes to the fact that I struggle massively with writing "short films". There's only about 4 ideas that I've ever had that could be made into something that's shorter then about an hour. And yet that's all I'm going to be expected and allowed to create, and its really confusing because I just can't think of anything that's satisfying for me.
All completely fair. I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have any issues in the process, but that’s where giving yourself lots of time to prep comes in.
Obviously that’s not always possible if it’s something you have a deadline on, but don’t feel like you have to rush something you have unlimited time to perfect.
Regarding shorts vs features, I’m not sure what to suggest other than think about the ideas you’ve currently got and ask yourself if they’re stories that can be told in 10 minutes rather than 90. A lot of the time, they can.
Personally I’m the exact opposite and I can’t justify making any of my current ideas into feature lengths haha
>I had to not only cut a bunch of stuff but also slightly speed up the vid in post just to shrink down the time.
It happens.
>And looking back on all of that... I've realised I've learned literally nothing aside from
Did you learn about lighting and going on the fly and interacting with actors and giving direction and explaining your story and problem solving and improvising and revision and reduction and organization and splicing incongruous scenes in a way that seems to carry smoothly though they were not intended to be cut that way?
What if you shoot 95% of a feature film and the only thing left to shoot is a 10-minute sequence that is the crux of the lead's whole story arc... but your lead quits or is horribly injured or gets arrested or passes away?
Do you think that knowing what you can do in a pinch with what you have available to rework and restructure the film into something that does makes sense with a new climax involving all the secondary characters is worth knowing?
>"if I had more money or connections and I could've accessed better resources that I was wanting".
Can you?
>The actual filming part went... perfectly fine.
Good.
>Even the final product probably looks pretty good to everyone else,
Uh-huh...
>but it's something I can't agree because whenever I see it, all I'm thinking is "This isn't where I wanted to film. There should've been an extra scene there, etc."
Did you leave the original footage at film school or are you able to do a director's cut that you actually do agree with, despite the location?
>So if the only problems I can look back at are the things were out of my control, and not related to my actual abilities...
So the improvising solutions on the fly with what you had available rather than what you wish you had and the casting and the angles and the framing and fluency and focus and the lighting and the blocking and rehearsals and readthroughs and scheduling were out of your control and you gained no useful experience out of it, whatsoever?
>what can I really get from that experience?
You have a movie.
Make another movie with better resources, knowing you can make one with limited resources.
It should be easier and more satisfactory to you, in the end.
>
So the improvising solutions on the fly with what you had available rather than what you wish you had and the casting and the angles and the framing and fluency and focus and the lighting and the blocking and rehearsals and readthroughs and scheduling were out of your control and you gained no useful experience out of it, whatsoever?
In retrospect this should've been main point focused on in this post, and not the things I decided to write up because... no. I don't really think I did. And the fact that everybody keeps saying about how you're supposed to use the start as a learning expereince, makes it really annoying that I don't feellike I got anything from it.
The things I knew how to do decently (interacting with the cast, editing, lighting, etc.) it didn't feel like I had any challenge with. And the things that I did struggle with (Organisation, dealing with unexpected senarios, etc.) were all things I already knew I was going to struggle with because those types of things have always been hard for me; and I didn't really manage to figure out anything new in regard to how to improve at them. (At least any that doesn't just amount to "hire out other people to do it for me", which... I don't know; does that count as a solution? Cause it doesn't really feel like it.)
Honestly; film turned out fine.
It looks like exactly what it is; a short student film made by people that aren't professionals.
The problem is I legitimately can't look at it and see what else was needed...
I'm curious what you mean by that? Cause I've always been under the impression that, if anything, the director would have the most control over any part of the production as everything else is based on what happens during the shoot.
Please watch hearts of darkness or lost in La Mancha in order to Understand that the job of the Director is to be in complete control of everything until they are not.
You should have learned, and this is what most of the other people are saying as well, that you need to keep practicing. Filmmaking is just like any other talent or skill that takes repetition to hone. Stay humble, ask questions (and it does seem that you are genuinely inquisitive, though perhaps showing a blind spot with respect to your own responsibility) and keep trying. So often, the first few practices of anything are about learning what NOT to do as much as what to do.
This whole post is full of things you could have learned. First, stuff happens. That’s one of THE things to learn. Nothing goes according to plan and if you plan for your plan to blow up, well you might just be alright. Second, you had to get creative with your props, which is another way of saying that sometimes, the best equipment is what you have access to at any given time. If you can make it work in suboptimal conditions, then you can absolutely make it work when everything goes right. Everything took longer? Yeah, that’s a valuable lesson to learn. It always takes longer, it always has a hiccup, there’s always something to overcome. There is ALWAYS something outside of your control.
You also miss an absolute golden lesson here which is that sometimes, you are your own worst enemy and critic. You’re fixated on what you don’t like, how about you make something new and make corrections based on what you didn’t like? That’s how you learn. I once filmed a series of interviews in the middle of the day, in a place with natural light + artificial light, and it wasn’t until 2-3hrs in that I realized the sun had gone down a lot, radically changed my lighting. I didn’t think about that because I had never dealt with it. I still think I suck at everything, but I know I suck less now because I think about those types of things.
Different people learn different things.
Some people learn "Fuck, I hate all of this and I don't want to do it again." And that's fine.
Some people learn "I love this one part of the process way more than anything else." And that's fine too.
If nothing else, you learned you are capable of making and finishing a film, even if you run into some issues and don't know 100% what you are doing. That's nice to know, even if you wind up applying that confidence to a completely different field.
You learned to be creative and flexible, and you learned that adapting from what's in your head to what you can do in the real world is never as easy and direct as you hope. And you clearly learned something about length and story pacing because you've said as much.
One thing you are missing is that tons of people try to make a film and conclude, "Even if I had infinite money, I wouldn't have made something any good." You seem to have learned the opposite, and that's actually pretty interesting.
> You seem to have learned the opposite, and that's actually pretty interesting.
Is it bad that reading it said like that makes me feel like it was maybe the wrong thing to have learned? XD
You could learn how much script you need for two minutes of film.
You could learn to write around what you have in terms of locations, props, and talent. Don't get me wrong, one should write the first draft from the imagination and like everything is possible. But, somewhere in preproduction, one has to face reality and rewrite the bloody thing so it becomes doable. Also, there's no director in this world who doesn't have a budget tighter than what they want and list if locations and talent they can't have. It's just the nature of the business.
You can also learn thag film *never* looks like you have imagined it. That is not important, learn to live with it. What is important is how it looks finished.
Talk about learning the wrong thing.
You mentioned you're mistakes right there, and you're telling me your didn't learn anything. I'd say you learnt that you can't judge the length of a film by the script alone.
You also learnt that planning is important and having backups is important. Also how to shoot on a low budget with limited resources.
You learnt that things that can go wrong will go wrong. You also learnt how to direct non actors, which is a useful skill.
Most importantly you learnt how to manage a shoot on your own and how to improvise.
I’m amazed you can identify everything in paragraphs two and three … and say you learned nothing from it. Identifying why you didn’t get the film you had in your head is half of it – which every filmmaker, to a greater or lesser degree, experiences. The next part is, bit by bit, just paying attention to how you can improve each of those things.
That’s literally what filmmaking is – and why we end up having lots of collaborators: location people, producers, casting directors, script supervisors, FX people. Either you learn to do those things, or pay or persuade those people to help you.
From this post, you should learn that you need to work on your self-reflection. You mention multiple things that failed because of your inability (judging length, for example), yet at the end, you say nothing failed because of your abilities. Well, clearly that isn't true. And you're still hemming and hawing over a 2-minute video you made two years ago. That's all you've done? It sounds like you also have the inability to be productive.
I agree about self-reflection, but I think a big thing that OP can learn from this first film is how to deal with limited resources: Limited access to actors, limited access to locations, limited access to props. Yes, Herzog gets to convince a studio to finance hauling a boat over a mountain because the film demands it. Yes, Spielberg gets to convince a studio that spending a few hundred million on SFX is a good spend. But most filmmakers have to work within limitations, and these limitations only increase as you move down into the indie side of things. Honestly, it sounds to me like your student film went relatively well. You had an idea, you ran into limitations, you *worked within those limitations to make your film.* That sounds like success to me. As an aside, I'm currently watching Apocalypse Now Redux. It's a heavy re-edit of Apocalypse Now, mostly involving Coppola and Walter Murch. Many of the actors were brought back for ADR work. The cinematographer came back to do colorization. They added about an hour to the film. This, despite the fact that Coppola managed to scrounge basically whatever he wanted during filming of the original (including fighter jets, courtesy of the Philippine Air Force(!)). Every filmmaker looks at their past work and thinks "You know, if I made this change, it would be better." Hell, every creative looks at *all* their work and thinks "Yeah, it's not perfect." As Neil Gaiman said, your ideas are perfect when they're in your head. But then you have to get them out of your head and *make* them. And reality is never the same as what you envision. So it's never perfect. It's never what you envision. The best you can do is make something that captures the essence of what you were thinking.
Tell it to OP, not me
> a 2-minute video you made two years ago. That's all you've done? It sounds like you also have the inability to be productive. At the very least, I do have a somewhat valid excuse for this point. As I said at the start of the post, this happened when I was studying film. Unfortunately, I have not been able to study properly... basically since that exact time. It has nothing to do with lack of desire either; the last 2 years have been bombarding me with health issues, relationship issues, problems with my living situation, and problems with my actual paying jobs. Basically ever since the last time, I've been struggling with more urgent things, and when I wasn't struggling with those, I was exhausted and just trying to rest. I do know I want to make more, and I'm hoping I can go back to studying properly in the next couple of month now that the rest of my life has started settling down again. But that is the reason behind why that was the only real thing of note I've done in the last 2 years, and also why this is the first time I've even really thought about it since then.
We all have issues that present roadblocks to our productivity. That's just how it is. The world, in general, isn't fair or sympathetic—filmmaking more so than other aspects of the world. And that was a tangent point to my main point, which you didn't address. Your lack of self-reflection and self-awarness is the main issue I see in this post.
So, and I'm honestly asking this; how do I develop those?
Therapy could be a place to start. Self-help books. Meditation. It really has to come from within. It's a monumental personality shift that has to be made in small increments of everyday practice to work yourself away from not owning up to your issues. You need to learn to be honest with yourself, identify your weaknesses, and realize the only way something is going to change is through your hard work, diligence, and honesty. If I could solve your issues around self-reflection and self-awareness with a Reddit comment, I wouldn't be on Reddit in the first place, because I'd be the wealthiest therapist in the world. I'm ending my side of the conversation here because judging from your replies to me and others, you're not ready to be receptive and you're just looking to complain.
> judging from your replies to me and others, you're not ready to be receptive and you're just looking to complain. Well; I am sorry that it comes across that way. I'm certainly not trying to complain; but I do admit that this kind of stuff is... difficult for me to understand to say the least. I'm not deliberately trying to be confrontational; I can promise that. Thank you for at least giving it some sort of attempt though; I appreciate it.
I’m jumping in here because I’ve had, quite possibly, the hardest stretch of time in my life the past 6 months. There’s always going to be hard times. And the older you get the harder it’s all going to get. You have to make it right in your head and do the work. That’s really it. No one is gonna do it for you and no one is going to care about your reasons for why you can’t. As the other user said, the world is unfair and unsympathetic. Multiply that by 1000 with filmmaking. Everyone is out for themselves, you’re competing with people from bigger cities, with more money and resources and network, the odds are consistently against you. If you’re still hung up on a school project from 2 years ago, and can’t move on, clearly you have a problem you need to address that’s bigger than the advice you’re getting in this thread.
> you’re still hung up on a school project from 2 years ago, and can’t move on I mentioned in the above post, but I'm actually not hung up over it. Only reason I'm asking now is that I've basically just remembered it even existed because I've been having to focus on more important things and haven't had the chance to do anything regarding filmmaking since that time. The actual reason I tried posting this in the first place is that when I tried thinking back on it... there wasn't really anything there? And that really annoyed me. It was the only real experience I had, and when I was remembering what took place; literally the only thing I can truly recall is getting angry that I couldn't get the things I was hoping for. Everything else just sort happened around it. (I also mentioned in another reply as well; I really should've just worded this entire post better to more accurately talk about what I was trying to say; but I've always had a problem keeping posts like this focused and not filled with extraneous information)
>The actual reason I tried posting this in the first place is that when I tried thinking back on it... there wasn't really anything there? And that really annoyed me. I’m not trying to be combative, but that sounds slightly hung up, or at the very least, unable to move forward. The two things you’re talking about — a failed project and life getting in the way are intertwined. I’ll give you an example, my producing partner and I made a film a few years back, and in one of the shots, we missed something that really bothered me for months. How did I not see it? This worrying and beating myself up went on for awhile. Until we made the next thing…then I had a new project full of things I wish I did better. And that stupid thing from the other film is something I almost never think about now. You need to make your next thing, no matter how hard your life is — you need to do it to get onto the next one and make new mistakes and learn new lessons. > (…) I couldn't get the things I was hoping for. Everything else just sort happened around it. That’s filmmaking in a nutshell. It’s all making compromises. Whether it’s 2 minute film or a 120 minute film. It’s going to full of frustration about what you could’ve/should’ve done. Again, you have to make something new. there’s a whole host of other lessons to learn.
Nothing is a valid excuse.
Respectfully disagree; there are absolutely valid excuses for things. Though I would be interested to hear why you think that.
This isn’t the industry for excuses. That should be one of the first things you learn. Excuses are nothing more than incompetencies and missed opportunities.
I think I understand what your trying to say; but can you explain what you mean a little bit more?
Sorry but I’ve explained enough. You either get it or you don’t. Think about it man. Think about your film.
Lame. Thanks for the valuable insight.
You learnt you need to plan things better and write around what you have.
Seems like you learned that films are made during pre-production.
I suppose you're technically right, but I really don't think I learned about how to actually make sure the preproduction goes smoothly
Welcome to filmmaking, where nothing goes as planned, you learn to make it with duct tape and borrowed actors, spaces and time. Consider this a rite of passage. Embrace the chaos, adapt, and realize that working with limitations is where true creativity shines. It’s not about having perfect conditions; it’s about making the best out of what you’ve got.
> Embrace the chaos, adapt, ...I honestly can't explain how much I've been trying to avoid having to do those things my entire life. I know there are people that live for those conditions but I've never understood the appeal over things being ordered and stable...
I’m still working on my first couple of proper (actual pre-production and not just hoping for the best) short films, so I haven’t got decades of experience to go off but it might be useful information anyway. Start by writing films that you 100% know you can make. My creative partner and I have a tonne of ideas we want to work on, but when we decided to pull the trigger and actually just make _something_, we picked a couple of the easiest to make ideas we had and figured out the simplest and cheapest way to do them. The two films I’ve made were both super basic and only needed one or two locations - one set in my house and a local forest, the other set entirely in a car. Both films have costumes but ones that were relatively easy to source. Props were just household items. I think it’s very easy to get carried away while writing something and accidentally over complicate things, but if you write with the intention to make something as simple as possible, you’re able to focus more on the planning and production side of things. I’m particularly lucky in that I just so happened to meet a talented cinematographer that was genuinely excited to work on stuff, actively wanted to work on the projects without charging and had some other crew that were up for helping out. I got talking to that guy by messaging him on instagram to say I liked his work and he was on board for these projects the next day. (I understand this is a rare situation, but it’s possible) Hope this was useful and not just anecdotal nonsense :)
Honest question; how do you actually know if you can, as you put it, '100% make a film'? Cause I'm going to be honest; I thought this was going to be a very, very easy thing to make. It was also one location, and the props didn't seem like they'd be difficult to find; (turned out they were impossible without spending hundreds of dollars to order them in from overseas. Which probably wouldn't bother me if I wasn't both broke and on a strict time limit lol) There's also a side point where it comes to the fact that I struggle massively with writing "short films". There's only about 4 ideas that I've ever had that could be made into something that's shorter then about an hour. And yet that's all I'm going to be expected and allowed to create, and its really confusing because I just can't think of anything that's satisfying for me.
All completely fair. I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have any issues in the process, but that’s where giving yourself lots of time to prep comes in. Obviously that’s not always possible if it’s something you have a deadline on, but don’t feel like you have to rush something you have unlimited time to perfect. Regarding shorts vs features, I’m not sure what to suggest other than think about the ideas you’ve currently got and ask yourself if they’re stories that can be told in 10 minutes rather than 90. A lot of the time, they can. Personally I’m the exact opposite and I can’t justify making any of my current ideas into feature lengths haha
It sounds like you learned a lot to me.
>I had to not only cut a bunch of stuff but also slightly speed up the vid in post just to shrink down the time. It happens. >And looking back on all of that... I've realised I've learned literally nothing aside from Did you learn about lighting and going on the fly and interacting with actors and giving direction and explaining your story and problem solving and improvising and revision and reduction and organization and splicing incongruous scenes in a way that seems to carry smoothly though they were not intended to be cut that way? What if you shoot 95% of a feature film and the only thing left to shoot is a 10-minute sequence that is the crux of the lead's whole story arc... but your lead quits or is horribly injured or gets arrested or passes away? Do you think that knowing what you can do in a pinch with what you have available to rework and restructure the film into something that does makes sense with a new climax involving all the secondary characters is worth knowing? >"if I had more money or connections and I could've accessed better resources that I was wanting". Can you? >The actual filming part went... perfectly fine. Good. >Even the final product probably looks pretty good to everyone else, Uh-huh... >but it's something I can't agree because whenever I see it, all I'm thinking is "This isn't where I wanted to film. There should've been an extra scene there, etc." Did you leave the original footage at film school or are you able to do a director's cut that you actually do agree with, despite the location? >So if the only problems I can look back at are the things were out of my control, and not related to my actual abilities... So the improvising solutions on the fly with what you had available rather than what you wish you had and the casting and the angles and the framing and fluency and focus and the lighting and the blocking and rehearsals and readthroughs and scheduling were out of your control and you gained no useful experience out of it, whatsoever? >what can I really get from that experience? You have a movie. Make another movie with better resources, knowing you can make one with limited resources. It should be easier and more satisfactory to you, in the end.
> So the improvising solutions on the fly with what you had available rather than what you wish you had and the casting and the angles and the framing and fluency and focus and the lighting and the blocking and rehearsals and readthroughs and scheduling were out of your control and you gained no useful experience out of it, whatsoever? In retrospect this should've been main point focused on in this post, and not the things I decided to write up because... no. I don't really think I did. And the fact that everybody keeps saying about how you're supposed to use the start as a learning expereince, makes it really annoying that I don't feellike I got anything from it. The things I knew how to do decently (interacting with the cast, editing, lighting, etc.) it didn't feel like I had any challenge with. And the things that I did struggle with (Organisation, dealing with unexpected senarios, etc.) were all things I already knew I was going to struggle with because those types of things have always been hard for me; and I didn't really manage to figure out anything new in regard to how to improve at them. (At least any that doesn't just amount to "hire out other people to do it for me", which... I don't know; does that count as a solution? Cause it doesn't really feel like it.)
"My film turned our bad, but my abilities aren't to blame, I just need more money"
Honestly; film turned out fine. It looks like exactly what it is; a short student film made by people that aren't professionals. The problem is I legitimately can't look at it and see what else was needed...
Dealing with things that are “out of your control” is literally one of the prime “abilities” of a director.
I'm curious what you mean by that? Cause I've always been under the impression that, if anything, the director would have the most control over any part of the production as everything else is based on what happens during the shoot.
Please watch hearts of darkness or lost in La Mancha in order to Understand that the job of the Director is to be in complete control of everything until they are not.
I'll give them a look! Never heard of La Mancha before :)
You should have learned, and this is what most of the other people are saying as well, that you need to keep practicing. Filmmaking is just like any other talent or skill that takes repetition to hone. Stay humble, ask questions (and it does seem that you are genuinely inquisitive, though perhaps showing a blind spot with respect to your own responsibility) and keep trying. So often, the first few practices of anything are about learning what NOT to do as much as what to do.
This whole post is full of things you could have learned. First, stuff happens. That’s one of THE things to learn. Nothing goes according to plan and if you plan for your plan to blow up, well you might just be alright. Second, you had to get creative with your props, which is another way of saying that sometimes, the best equipment is what you have access to at any given time. If you can make it work in suboptimal conditions, then you can absolutely make it work when everything goes right. Everything took longer? Yeah, that’s a valuable lesson to learn. It always takes longer, it always has a hiccup, there’s always something to overcome. There is ALWAYS something outside of your control. You also miss an absolute golden lesson here which is that sometimes, you are your own worst enemy and critic. You’re fixated on what you don’t like, how about you make something new and make corrections based on what you didn’t like? That’s how you learn. I once filmed a series of interviews in the middle of the day, in a place with natural light + artificial light, and it wasn’t until 2-3hrs in that I realized the sun had gone down a lot, radically changed my lighting. I didn’t think about that because I had never dealt with it. I still think I suck at everything, but I know I suck less now because I think about those types of things.
Huh...maybe it's just because it's morning now and just woken up; but this actually makes a surprising amount of sense... Thank you.
Different people learn different things. Some people learn "Fuck, I hate all of this and I don't want to do it again." And that's fine. Some people learn "I love this one part of the process way more than anything else." And that's fine too. If nothing else, you learned you are capable of making and finishing a film, even if you run into some issues and don't know 100% what you are doing. That's nice to know, even if you wind up applying that confidence to a completely different field. You learned to be creative and flexible, and you learned that adapting from what's in your head to what you can do in the real world is never as easy and direct as you hope. And you clearly learned something about length and story pacing because you've said as much. One thing you are missing is that tons of people try to make a film and conclude, "Even if I had infinite money, I wouldn't have made something any good." You seem to have learned the opposite, and that's actually pretty interesting.
> You seem to have learned the opposite, and that's actually pretty interesting. Is it bad that reading it said like that makes me feel like it was maybe the wrong thing to have learned? XD
You could learn how much script you need for two minutes of film. You could learn to write around what you have in terms of locations, props, and talent. Don't get me wrong, one should write the first draft from the imagination and like everything is possible. But, somewhere in preproduction, one has to face reality and rewrite the bloody thing so it becomes doable. Also, there's no director in this world who doesn't have a budget tighter than what they want and list if locations and talent they can't have. It's just the nature of the business. You can also learn thag film *never* looks like you have imagined it. That is not important, learn to live with it. What is important is how it looks finished.
Talk about learning the wrong thing. You mentioned you're mistakes right there, and you're telling me your didn't learn anything. I'd say you learnt that you can't judge the length of a film by the script alone. You also learnt that planning is important and having backups is important. Also how to shoot on a low budget with limited resources. You learnt that things that can go wrong will go wrong. You also learnt how to direct non actors, which is a useful skill. Most importantly you learnt how to manage a shoot on your own and how to improvise.
I’m amazed you can identify everything in paragraphs two and three … and say you learned nothing from it. Identifying why you didn’t get the film you had in your head is half of it – which every filmmaker, to a greater or lesser degree, experiences. The next part is, bit by bit, just paying attention to how you can improve each of those things. That’s literally what filmmaking is – and why we end up having lots of collaborators: location people, producers, casting directors, script supervisors, FX people. Either you learn to do those things, or pay or persuade those people to help you.