Now, when you’re shooting for editing, you can do so to various degrees. A prime example that’s often brought up when shooting for editing is mentioned, is Robert Rodriguez’ El Mariachi. Hear the director explain how he planned his shots with the final edit in mind.

This is obviously taking it to the extremes. With digital cameras, laptop workstations and powerful editing software, your options are plentiful, even on a budget. So let’s take a look at how director and co-writer of The Storyteller, Joe Crump, approached the shoot – knowing that he would also be editing the footage. Here’s our conversation.

Why did you decide to edit the film yourself? Pros and cons to this approach?

 

In filmmaking, the story is told three times, 1. by the screenwriters, 2. by the director and 3. by the editors. I wanted to be involved in all three parts of this process. I also love to edit and my co-editor was my daughter, Katie Crump – who sat by my side and helped me craft the story.

 

So the pros of doing it myself is that it’s a hell of a lot of fun and I got to spend a lot of time with Katie. I also had help syncing the dailies from Nick Andrews, Saxony Wynecoop and Emelie Flower… which made our job a lot easier since they had to be done manually.

 

The cons – I couldn’t blame anyone else for my mistakes as a director or not getting coverage. I was told by several people that I should let someone else edit it – that I was too close to it – and I suppose that may turn out to be the case, but I don’t think it has. In fact, I think being close to it might have helped.

 

Knowing you would be editing yourself, how did you plan ahead? Did you organize the footage in a certain way?

 

We had a wonderful script supervisor, Michael Blomquist. He kept amazing notes and handed us a very detailed log when all was said and done. We also had a sound log that was very helpful from our sound mixer Bud Osborne. We kept all the camera file names so it was easy to cross reference.

 

After that, we kept track of everything by the day we shot it. We then created sequences that were about 5 minutes in length – we’d break them up by shot.

 

We then nested each of these sequences into one long master sequence. Using nested sequences speeds everything up and makes it much easier to find the shots you are looking for on your timeline.

 

We used an Alexa Mini and our camera original files were ProRes 4444, which won’t play on a PC – so we ended up making proxies to edit picture. While we were editing, (we used Premiere Pro CC), Adobe upgraded Premiere and now we can play the camera original on the PC – we still can’t open those files on a PC in Quicktime without hacking the metadata – and that caused the software to crash… you gotta love Apple and their proprietary codec.

Did the fact that you knew how you would be editing the film inspire any of your choices while shooting? Shot compositions? Long takes vs short takes? Blocking and actions?

 

Yes, absolutely. I spent a lot of time creating a shot list before I started directing. This is my first narrative feature film, so I had a good deal of fear and trepidation going into it – thinking that somehow, when I got on the set, everything would go to hell and I’d forget all the important things I needed to include or watch out for in the film. My shot list was 100 pages of notes, 100 pages of location pictures and diagrams and 90 pages of script. I broke up my shotlist into binders that we broke up by location. That way I wouldn’t have to carry all 300 pages, just the pages I needed for that particular location. Yes, this was probably overkill, but it makes things a lot more relaxing when you are prepared and it made it possible for me to work with my Director of Photography, Dan Clarke to come up with some additional shots that were better than I had planned on my own. As the shoot went on, my expectations of what our shots should look like and do got higher and higher. I didn’t just want to tell the story, I wanted to do it elegantly – and sometimes, you have to be there on the set to see something, an angle, a space, a camera move, the right angle of daylight… and take advantage of it when it appears. This takes a calm set and an fully engaged crew.

 

I was expecting to have a lot more emergencies than we ended up having. I was fortunate to have a great production team keeping things moving, headed up by our Producer, Rachel Noll.

 

We have a lot of live music in the movie, but we don’t just stay on people singing, we tell the story while the music is being played – so Rachel Noll (co-writer) and I designed a lot of the montage sequences around these songs. We freely played with time, location, memory – all that stuff during the songs. We also had to estimate how long it would take for certain images and sequences to play – how much screen time they would take – and I designed the shots so that we only had to shoot the parts of the song that we would actually show. I would like to have had more time to shoot more coverage, but it all ended up working pretty well when we got into the cut.

 

How did the intended use of visual effects in certain scenes affect how they were shot – and how does this play into how you are now editing those scenes?

 

We tried to use practical effects whenever we could. Dan put an LED light on the end of a wand and we floated it into the scene for the fairy effect. Some of the shots we don’t have that effect and you can tell because the light being cast from the LED gives a wonderful look on any object or person near the fairy – when we didn’t use it (usually because of time constraints), we had to fake the glow on their faces in After Effects. That worked too, but it was time consuming in post and never looked quite as nice.

 

We also shot a lot of Day for Night. Our main actor was a 10 year old girl (Brooklyn Rae Silzer) and because we shot under SAG Ultra Low Budget rules, we had to limit the times and hours we could use her. Most of the work we did in the woods was day for night – same with the work we did outside on the Fairy Bridge. Dan Clarke, our DP, also did most of the VFX work on the film… some of the effects have 35 or 40 layers in 3D space.

35-40 layers of effects in 3D space is a far cry from the simplicity of the shots described by Robert Rodriguez in the video at the top, but both approaches share a common goal: Making the best film you can with the means available to you.

For more on shooting day-for-night, check out our article on the subject here. And if you would like to take a peek behind the scenes of The Storyteller and see how some of the VFX shots were created, here’s a video of an early visual FX test.

And while certain aspects of camera movement, dialogue, lighting, etc. can be hashed out on set, sometimes just minutes before the cameras are rolling, you don’t want to take any chances when it comes to pulling off those visual FX that are really gonna sell your story. It’ll be too time-consuming and if a certain effect is not playing on camera the way you anticipated, you might not get the shot you need – let alone the shot you want.

In the case of The Storyteller there’s a magical realism that imbues the story with a certain mood, sometimes even moving the characters forward, informing choices and plot. In certain scenes, this magical realism is manifested by fairies. But how do you successfully pull off showing fairies on camera, when you’re working on a limited budget and don’t have access to the bells and whistles of high-end CGI? Or perhaps more importantly, when you don’t want to use high-end CGI, but rather have your actors interact with practical effects on set? Well, you think, then you experiment and then you plan accordingly.

When faced with the challenge of creating organic, realistic and practical fairies for The Storyteller, the team (producers, director, writers, actors) came together for a visual FX test – and 20 Questions Film tagged along for some behind-the-scenes video:

Let’s break it down. The filmmakers wanted to create a small, moving light source, ethereal and whimsical, effectively coming off as a fairy, fluttering around – and interacting with – the actress. They wanted to add visual detail in post-production, but to have the light from the fairy play off of the actress’ face realisticially and organically. They also wanted to be able to capture the spontaneous reactions and movement by the actress, as she responds to the fairy (and in some scenes several fairies) flying around her. This is how they went about it:

#1. The Tools

Pulsating single-LED lights were to act as the fairies. Removing the outer plastic shell of the lights, leaving only the tiny LED diode and the battery, decreased the footprint enough for the camera to only pick up the light and not the hardware. String was used to hang the lights from a C-stand – and later to be controlled by the producers, moving the lights around the actress and camera. When it comes time to shoot, the string will be replaced by clear fishing line, which won’t show up on camera or will be easily edited out in post. Plastic wrap (the ordinary kitchen variety) was used to experiement with grouping together several LED diodes into a single light source, while also slightly changing the way the light breaks on camera, changing its properties like hue and brightness.

#2. Positioning

Hanging the light from a C-stand allowed them to have a controlled height of the light when moving the LED around, making it easier to frame on camera and to reset between takes.

#3. Interaction With Light

One of the most important reasons for the FX test was to see how the light would bounce off of the actress’ face while moving around. This gave the DP a chance to experiement with exposure and focus in order to achieve the effect needed.

#4. Movement

Testing the movement of the lights proved beneficial, not just because it gave the DP a chance to see how the light would bounce off of the actress’ face, but it also gave the filmmakers a chance to see how the light behaved differently when moved on the C-stand vs by hand.

#5. Several Light Sources

Some scenes call for just one fairy on camera, while some scenes call for several fairies moving around at once. The practical test showed the filmmakers how close to – or how far away from – the camera they could have the lights and still have the lights look like organic, moving creatures.

#6. Lens Whacking

Experimenting with lens whacking as a way of creating dream-like visuals with light leaks and tilt shift focus also gave the filmmakers an idea of how to move the fairy lights around in a realistic, organic way.

#7. Distance

A common theme in the FX test was experimenting with distance. Distance between lights and actress. Distance between actress and camera. Distance between lights and camera. All while keeping in mind that the end result should feel magical, but real and natural.

The take-away from a day of experimentation? Some things work and some things don’t. Some things will require additional planning and experimentation. Regardless, a day or two spent in pre-production will no doubt save the crew precious, stressful hours on set, which may again be the difference between getting the shot they need or not. It’s worth it.

We’re following the production of the feature film, The Storyteller, from idea all the way through to distribution. Learn from the process with real-world examples right here.

Chroma keying is a technique used to composite (layer) two images or video streams together based on color hues. Commonly referred to as green screen. Now, before you get excited about that fact that you can set up and implement the use of green screens on your own, adding a whole new dimension to your low-budget short film sci-fi vision, please hear our words of caution: Improper use of green screen will positively ruin your film. Use it sparingly – or get a professional involved – if this is a project you want to go places. But hey, if you’re just playing around, do just that. Play around. Have fun.

I found a helpful introductory video that explains how to get started with green screen. At about 7 minutes in it turns into a sales pitch, so go ahead and spend those last three minutes doing something else: