Digital Filmmaking

Organization is Key

April 15, 2009 April 15, 2009 Production The first day of filming for my student documentary, which I’ve developed into a commercial project, was exciting and scary. All the equipment was ordered beforehand and picked up the day of the shoot. My crew of three - camera, sound and me (director/producer/interviewer) - arrived at the State House to film and interview midwives and consumer advocates who had gathered with members of the Massachusetts Coalition for Midwifery. Their plan was to lobby members of the Senate and the House to support a bill that would standardize midwifery training and licensing in Massachusetts. The Director’s Vision As a journalist, the interviewing part was comfortable for me. However, making the decision whom exactly to interview, what room to interview the midwives/consumer advocates in, and where the cameras should be placed, took a lot of my energy. How to deal with the sound I left up to the person I actually paid to deal with the sound along with a fellow student I asked to be part of the crew. Although I shared some ideas of how I wanted things to be, I wasn’t assertive enough for them to be heard. It would have helped for me to be more organized because in this case much of the shoot had to be decided on the spot. For example, I should have had a variety of shot lists since I didn’t know exactly how the State House looked outside and in. I could have researched the Statehouse on the Internet in order to learn more about the layout of the building and talked it over with the crew beforehand. My suggestion is to listen to the input of your crew, discuss possibilities and then as the director, make the final decision. Hiring a Crew As a director it is my responsibility to have enough technical expertise in order to hire the camera and sound people. My advice is before you hire a crew, even for your student projects, learn as much as possible about the technical aspects of the camera, sound, and lighting. You will be better prepared to hire your crew. As a new filmmaker it is your responsibility to oversee all facets of the film. For example, you will have less frustration in postproduction if you hire people who are competent in sound.  In order to do that, you have to know enough about sound. There is only so much one can do to fix the sound, even for a specialist in sound restoration as good as Scott Defusco—although he did perform miracles with my sound!!!! But, you’ll save the sound technician and yourself a lot of stress if you hire the right person for sound in the first place. The Checklist A checklist is an excellent way to make certain you bring all necessary equipment on your shoot. It's so easy to forget something and that can change the success of the shoot. For example, on my shoot the boom microphone was forgotten and we only had one lavaliere microphone for all the scenes. In one scene we had five people. The sound quality was hollow and also some of the people were hard to hear. If I’d had a checklist, I would have noticed that the boom microphone was missing before leaving from the location of the shoot. Organization is always key.