Thursday, February 26, 2009

Your First Time on a Film Crew

So you’ve got yourself a job on a film set. That’s great news. Even if it is unpaid, that’s still great news. In fact, most first time film gigs are unpaid production assistant work, or intern work. This is to be expected. It’s a means to get your foot in the door. After all, if you have no experience working on a film set, you have little bargaining power, frankly. That is, unless you possess a specific set of skills (like make-up design, or set design, or costumes, or special effects) that you have acquired in other work—such as the theatre—that makes you a bit of a hot commodity to a given production. Most of us, however, don’t start off that way. And that’s to be expected. So embrace that and get in there. There is a very specific flow to working on most film sets, and being able to be introduced to it without the added stress of being a head of specific department is usually a good way to go.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Audio for Short Films Part 2: ADR and Foley.

So now that you’re in postproduction, your film has all been shot, the crew sent home, what happens if you need more sound? Let me assure you that this is naturally part of the filmmaking process. In fact, as nice as it might be to gather every single extra sound effect you might need for your film during shooting, most of the time the schedule simply does not allow for this (especially on indie films). In fact, in some situations stopping everything just to grab what are called “wild tracks” of sounds during shooting may indeed be irresponsible use of the crew’s and actors’ time. Often, these sounds, referred to as Foley, are something that you or someone else can go off and record on their own once shooting has wrapped.