Winning a Short Film Festival: Are You Ready?

Often I am asked "How do you make a short film?" as if there is a magic formula for it. Actually, there is. Making a short film is a combination of techniques and strategies deigned for success. Not paying attention to these techniques and strategies is why most filmmakers fail in their first attempts at filming.

What follows is a discussion of these techniques and strategies that will, if you follow them, enable you to make a short film. The quality of the short film depends entirely on you and your passion. These techniques are more about production and design over level of equipment so you can make them with your MiniDV camera, mobile phone, or HD camera.

The first thing you need for a quality short film is a script. Most scripts beginning filmmakers write are to ambitious to be filmed properly in the beginning. They can be amazing scripts, but produced poorly and you are left with a poorly produced film. One of the key rules of short films is lose the dialogue. I know, you want to write amazing lines, well, get over it, move on....the less dialogue, the more you have to make your actors act, they have to move, they have to do something, anytime two people are talking and they say more than three lines apiece, you are talking to much.

There are no excuses for the audience, they don't care if the script was great, they will never see the script and if they do, they won't care. Learning to write a shoot-able script is a skill. You have to work backwards, don't write a script based on what you want to film, write a script based on what you can film. It's called Organic Filmmaking and it can make or break you in filmmaking.

Organic filmmaking is about crafting a film from what you have around you, your resources, your people, and your locations. Organic Filmmaking is not about having to go out and get anything. This works because drama happens everywhere. Drama is independent of location and props; it is independent of vehicles and expensive gear. Drama happens because of the dynamics of the scene, between one person and God or a married couple, or a threesome or a crowd of thousands.

Drama is independent. Remember that. For optimum chances of succeeding in your short film, use one location, three people, one hour film time, three minutes screen time. That is the initial formula you should follow. I know, you are already thinking "I can't write that! That's boring!" but you are forgetting that a number of feature length indie films follow the same premise. You build on your successes, not your failures.

Once you have created your script, you are now ready to begin casting. Again, this is a simple thing, or can be incredibly difficult and fall apart. You cast on one principle, can they lie effectively and will they show up. Nothing else matters. Their desire is nothing if they can't show up, and their passion is useless if they don't show up. This is why you limit your film to three people, less for you to worry about. When you cast, pay attention to their ability to show up.

Set your filming date. Put it on a calendar. When you cast your actors, have the filming date firm in your mind. You set it; they change their life to suit it. If you let them set the date, they will cancel. Your filming date is set in stone; it doesn't change, not even by you.

Rehearsals are the week prior to filming. Two days of rehearsal, you get together and go through the film. Have food and drinks on hand. Rehearse for two hours and let them go. Seriously rehearse, have a camera set up so you can record the rehearsals, you are looking for movement and dialogue; the nuances of the characters need to come through. The key though is that you have to get them scripts the week before the rehearsals and tell them you have every expectation they are going to know their lines for rehearsals. Rehearsals are not about learning dialogue, it's about learning movement. They can learn their dialogue at home, in the car, in the shower, whatever, that's their business. Yes, you are going to be a hard ass, get used to it. It's not about being difficult, it's about being a producer that values his own time as well as the time of his people and takes responsibility for that.

Shot list/storyboarding is always fun, you have too do it, you have to know what you are going to shoot on set and commit to it. Storyboarding is what you are going to shoot; shot listing is when you are going to get the shot, sometimes out of sequence. Do it. You have to see this film on paper, commit to it, before you can go further. Want to learn to storyboard? Pick up a comic book in the store, there you go, storyboard manual 101.

Filming! WOOHOO! The fun part is finally here. Show up early, have food and drink ready, and nut it out. Three takes is plenty, go for the wide shot, go for the close ups, shoot cut-aways, and move on...do not haggle over any scene, do not argue, and do not rehearse on the set. Make sure you get excellent sound. Get that mic in there for the close-ups and get the sound then. The wide shot is not "as important" to get good sound, because you can overdub it with the sound from the close-ups. The sound in the wide shot is just a guide track, so you can place the close-up sound properly.

Everyone does exactly what they did in rehearsal, remember that. That's why you had rehearsals. Do not lose control here and let them 'improvise" as everything will fall apart. Get the shots you want, keep moving, you don't have to worry about if you are getting everything, you have your shot list, you don't have to worry about framing, you have your storyboard, you don't have too worry if they "would say it like that" because you rehearsed it. Be confident in yourself, and make your film and when you are done, screen it, show it, get it out there, give it legs and get people to watch it. Remember that THAT is why you made the film.