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The six minute film is now over. We have completed our 7 week Thursday-Sunday rotation through all 7 positions:

1. Director
2. Boom Operator
3. Assistant Director
4. 1st Assistant Camera
5. Gaffer
6. Director of Photography
7. Sound Mixer

All seven people in my group (6 directors and 1 DP) went through this rotation starting in a specific position. I started out as boom operator and directed last. Some interesting combinations that come out of this:

1. You AD for your DP
2. You AC for your DP
3. You DP for your AD

I shot my film, A Son Like You, last weekend and telecined last night. It was an expensive but rewarding experience and I am excited to go into editing in the spring. Here are ten important things I learned on these shoots:

1. Block it. Light it. Shoot it. As a professor said, “if you’re not doing one of these three things at all times on set, you’re not making a movie.” Set the blocking with the actors, show it to the crew, let them light it, then shoot it. We got better at this as the shoot went along, but it’s a surprisingly difficult thing to remember when things get hard.
2. The director sets the tone on set. If the director is calm and focused, so is the crew. If the director is frantic and emotional, so is the crew. There are many things you can’t control as a director, but your tone and mood is a big one to watch out for. The crew sees everything the director does on set.
3. Respect your crew. The crew works very hard at all times to make your movie as amazing as possible, knowing that an audience member is probably not aware of how difficult it can be to get proper focus and exposure. Feed them well, have good craft services, don’t make them go over unless it’s absolutely necessary. Spend the little extra money to make sure you have a proper vehicle to transport equipment and proper beds for the crew to sleep in on location. They will pay you back by making your movie happen. On a side note, the crew should not only be physically taken care of, but emotionally as well. Outbursts and infighting should be kept to a minimum, and criticisms should never be public.
4. Trust your collaborators. A distrustful director is a burden on everyone, and generally makes them do their jobs worse. If you have hired a number of people to fulfill certain position, trust them as much as possible to fulfill those positions. This is difficult for us, because the films we made before coming to UCLA were usually self-produced, designed, managed, etc. A crew exists so the director can focus on their specific task: getting the performances they need on camera. There was a quote I read about Cassavetes the other day: “He thought of you as a hero, and you became one in response … believed someone into doing more than they thought they were capable of.” A big problem for directors is that there are certain moments where they feel they have nothing to do. These moments are often filled with helpful suggestions to the crew. It’s probably better to be thinking about the next shot at that moment. Let the crew do their jobs.
5. How to take light meter readings. You point it at the camera, not at the light.
6. How a DP prepares. A director of photography is a creative artist who works with light and framing to create images that convey your story. On a practical level this means creating detailed lighting plots and being very involved in scheduling with the AD in order to make sure that your shared vision is realizable on set. I believe that after extensive preparation with a DP, including storyboarding, you leave them to express your vision photographically on the set. Other directors have different approaches.
7. Check the frame constantly. This is more as a DP than as a director, but on a larger set the damndest things will wander into the frame: water bottles, PAs, the script supervisor. Check the beginning frame, the end frame, and 45 times in between, especially when working on small spaces.
8. How to work with a script supervisor. I had the benefit of a wonderful script supervisor on my set. By the last day we would have a brief meeting in the morning to discuss the day’s shots. A script supervisor can save you countless headaches in the editing room. They make sure wardrobe and props match from take to take, as well as keeping an eye on eyeline, entrances and exits, gestures, and anything else that can give you a major headache in the editing room.
9. How to incorporate improvisation into a shoot. This is very specific to me, and came out of a lot of practice, study, mistakes and frustration. I ended up getting some wonderful, spontaneous performances on set. The way I worked was I did extensive improvisation of backstory in rehearsal, then slowly allowed actors to change non-key lines of dialogue to make them more natural for themselves. When they came up with something I felt worked, I would “set” the new line, and that became what they said every take. On occasion I would rewrite the line myself, seeing what I finally needed. It was a wonderful, exhilarating process, one that I began a year ago in Berlin.
10. Patience and forgiveness. Both of myself and others. These are student films. We all worked our hardest, but we are all learning. Each of us will improve in different ways with every film, but much of these shoots were learning about ourselves and how we collaborate (and conflict) with people. Most of us coming into the director’s program made small films ourselves and our friends. It’s much different directing a set with 20 people on it; it requires an amazing amount of people skills. Some things came out brilliant on the shoots, others didn’t. In the end we will learn more from our failures than our triumphs. I know I did.

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