You’d be surprised at just how often this happens. If you’ve done any filmmaking at all, chances are this has probably happened to you at some point. In film school they go over a lot of things that should be handled during filming. While lighting and stuff like that are specifically for production, there are important things necessary during shooting, to make your post-production process easier. In order to help out, I’ve compiled the things you need to do/remember during production for your post-production step.
RECORD ROOM TONE
Outside of poor lighting...what’s the number one way to tell a video is ‘amateurish’? Bad audio. It’s easily one of the hardest things in the world to fix when it comes to post-production, but it’s very important.
One of the main problems you’ll see occur when working on your film is that everything sounds just fine when your shooting. Then when you get to editing, you quickly discover that your audio didn’t pick up cleanly on everyone. Not necessarily that it’s bad or noisy, but just that when you lay them down in editing on your picture, not all the dialogue sounds the same. One actor may have a little more hiss or noise in the background (nothing horrendous). One of the most common things though is laying a voice over on top of your footage. Every time you hear the voice come in, there is an audible change in the tone of the background.
This comes because the environments in which you shoot one scene may be different from where you shot the dialogue for your actors. So the easy way to fix this? Record room tone on the set.
Recording room tone, means you call for everyone on the set to be quiet and simply let your sound record for about 30 seconds in every scene your location is taking place in. That’s all. It doesn’t take much time, can be done in between takes if necessary, but it’s important. Then in editing you can lay down that base room tone underneath all of your other audio and it will go a long way towards smoothing out those conversations and voice overs. You’ll still have to do some adjusting, but room tone will save you hours of frustration.
GET PLENTY OF COVERAGE/CUTAWAYS
All filmmakers are pressed by time constraints. The idea of getting a movie done and out there is prevalent no matter what scale of movie you’re doing (even fun high school projects with friends). So what ends up happening all too often for young filmmakers during shooting is, they’ll do one angle on a scene do a few takes, call it good, do one more angle, and then move on.
While this isn’t always a bad thing (sometimes it works out better if you’ve done really good storyboarding and it’s a short scene), it’s not a good habit to get into. The problem you then run into in editing are those moments where you think, “Oh man, a close up would have been great right there to highlight his point,” or “I wish I could be a little further back and then come in for this shot”.
I understand the mentality. Once you have the whole scene and all the dialogue on the camera without any mess ups...it’s time to move on. While you will still be able to tell your story, it just won’t be nearly as interesting. So take you time, slow down, and ensure you get as much coverage as possible.
Also be sure to get in your cutaways; those quick shots that focus on objects in the scene other than the main people (stuff in their hands, things they’re looking at, etc). They can help mask the edits you want to make, or cover up a bad/short mistake in an otherwise great take. Not planning for these things will make your life miserable in editing and can even call for costly and time consuming re-shoots. So instead of saving time by skipping out on them, you’ll be losing plenty of it.
LET THE CAMERAS ROLL/HANDLES
This is a fairly easy concept but unless you’ve had experience with editing, it’s not one that you’ll think about. When it comes to editing you need handles. Handles are the extra footage that comes before and after a scene. They only have to be a few seconds long, but are very necessary. You need handles, because without them, you don’t have enough footage to handle your transitions or dissolves. You’d have to cut into your scene in order to do them, and it’d just look awkward.
Young filmmakers just starting out are normally inclined to hit the record button on the camera and call out “action” at the same time. They are also just as likely to hit the stop button as soon as they yell “cut”. But doing so will cut off your much needed handles.
The easiest thing to do, is have your actors get ready, hit the record button and call out “Rolling”. This is the indicator for all your actors to essentially get going (i.e. if it’s a restaurant scene, maybe start eating/have extras look like they’re talking in the background) without actually getting into the scene itself. Then when you call “action” they start the dialogue and blocked out motions you told them to.
This gives you a good handle to start with. To get the ending handles just let the scene continue (even after everything has been said and done) before calling for a halt. That’s all there is too it!
DO YOUR PAPERWORK!
I don’t think I can stress this one enough. When I’ve helped produce other people’s projects (filmmakers with less experience) this was the number one thing I always brought up to them, and had to remind them daily: Do you paperwork!
Accurate shot sheets, logs, and notes make life incredibly easier in the editing room. With good record keeping, the editor can know what footage he has (which angles, how many takes) before even having to capture them. He’ll also know which takes the director thought was better. And if you’re editing and directing, it’s good to keep those notes since time will have passed since you shot, and you’ll need reminders.
While it’s not always easy to get the paperwork done (an entire position is dedicated to it, the Script Supervisor normally handles all this), especially with smaller budgets and only a handful of crew members, it can save a lot of time on the back end. It’s just a good habit to get into.
This also extends to keeping the appropriate records on your footage. You need to label your tapes (or whatever storage your using) with the date it was used to shoot on, the project itself, and if possible which scenes were shot on it. If you need to use a separate piece of paper to log all of that info, do it! Then just keep it stored with you footage. This will help you sort through stuff in editing and get to the footage you need quicker.
BLACK OUT TAPES
This is of course assuming that you ever using tapes anymore. With the digital age upon us, many filmmakers are abandoning the tape format. However, as a filmmaker, you’ll be tasked to deal with a wide variety of formats, and you won’t always get a choice in the matter.
So if you find yourself working with tapes (High-8, Mini-DV, etc) ‘blacking them out’ is a very important step. If you actually have the time to do so. Sometimes you’ll end up on a set and you won’t be given your tapes until the last moment. In that case do what you can, but if you have the option; black them out.
What exactly is it? Simple, it’s pretty much hitting the record button and letting the tape roll, with the lens cap on, all the way through. You’ll want to do this in a quiet area so as not to pick up any sound, which could possibly bleed over into the footage you’ll record later.
What’s the purpose of this? To establish one solid timeline on the tape. See tapes are very funny things. When you shut off the camera it tells the tape to stop. However, rather than picking right back up where it left off, when you turn it back on, it resets the timecode back to zero. So on just one tape you have the possibility of having multiple scenes which all share the same timecode.
When you capture that footage in the computer for editing, you tell the computer the in and out points of the timecode you want captured. But if you have 5 scenes that all go from 0 seconds to 10 seconds because of multiple timelines, then the computer isn’t sure which scene to get. This causes all sorts of errors, and in the end, will result in hours of time wasted. It’ll save you more time and energy to just black out the tape the night before shooting.
All right, I’ll cease my rambling on this matter for now. Shooting is incredibly fun, and one of the aspects many filmmakers enjoy the most. However, it is important to keep in mind every single step in the filmmaking process while you’re working. While skipping something may save time in one phase, you’ll be adding hours of stress to the next. So the next time you shoot, save yourself some hassle and keep these steps in mind.
-Jordan
