07/23/2001

Q: My husband and I would love to make a movie of a screenplay I wrote. We have access to cable TV equipment for free, but know very little about other aspects of movie production. How do people like us, with full-time jobs on weekdays, realistically pull together a cast and crew and make a movie? We hear about amateurs doing this, but it all seems so complicated!

A: Joan Gleckler, writer and colleague, answered this question by writing to me about how she collaborated with friends to shoot an entire film in one weekend. Here's how they did it.

How to Make a Movie in a Weekend
By Joan Gleckler

Feature-length movies seem to take forever to make. From what we hear, shooting regularly takes weeks, even months - and just as regularly falls behind schedule. The conclusion we might draw from this: Professional filmmakers have way too much time on their hands.

Those of us, however, who put 40 or more hours a week into our day jobs don't have that kind of luxury if we ever want to see our projects "in the can." Our equivalent of just one full-time week of movie making translates to probably eight or 10 weekends -- if we're lucky. Unless you're crazy enough to try what my screenwriter friend Larry and I did with his 75-page script, a troupe of professional actors, and several friends. In a single weekend, we shot the whole movie.

If you dare to tread these waters, if you are somehow convinced -- as I was -- that this is the only way to make your movie, then have a seat, front and center, and get ready to learn what to do - and maybe more importantly, what not to do - to make a movie in no time.

Setting the Stage

Ignorance can indeed be bliss. Had Larry and I known what making a movie involves, we might have been too overwhelmed to embark on this project. However, we both work in information systems and certainly have each seen a whole bunch of movies. How hard could it be to shoot a 75-minute comedy/drama about a workplace romance?

About two months before the big weekend, we cast our production with actors from New York. Larry lives in New Jersey and I'm in Connecticut, so we have proximity to this Mecca of talent and hunger. Even though we advertised "no pay," we got about 400 responses to our ad for five characters.

Appoint an Audition Coordinator

Our friend Sally was invaluable in this role at auditions, which we held about six weeks prior to the shoot. Clipboard in hand, she checked in the actors, provided them with copies of the "sides," or scenes to be read, and herded them in and out of the room where Larry and I sat looking like we knew what we were doing. We videotaped all the auditions, which helped us remember each of the 70+ people we invited in.

By the way, we naturally tended toward being courteous during the auditions, including promising the actors that we'd notify them either way. Our cast later told us it was the nicest audition they'd ever been to, and we even got thank you letters from our "rejects" for such a pleasant audition experience.

Find the Location

This was one of the most problematic pieces to our production puzzle and, in my mind, dictated the one-weekend shooting schedule. Since I'm in Connecticut and the rest of them are in New York and New Jersey, it would have been ideal for me to travel to the actors, but we couldn't find a location anywhere near New York. We needed an office setting and we needed it bad. And we had no budget.

Friend Don to the rescue. He obtained permission from his boss, the owner of a high-tech company near Hartford, to offer the use of their small, beautifully-appointed offices and we gratefully checked the place out. Perfect. And we could shoot on both Saturday and Sunday and even run the air conditioning!

Drawback: Our non-existent budget was stretched putting the actors up in decent motel rooms for the weekend.

Lesson learned: If the one-weekend schedule is unavoidable, take more time finding a location closer to your players. Or ask friends to provide overnight accommodations. Or stick with local actors.

Organizing the Shoot

• Line up technical help

  I don't know other filmmakers in or out of my area and foolishly thought I could find some willing teenagers to work cheap. Two days before the shoot, when I desperately called my local cable access connection for their list of volunteer producers, the two staff members simply said they'd be glad to do it. Wow: boom operator and script supervisor obtained - not to mention the technical expertise they brought to the weekend!

  • Lesson learned: Find your technical help early. Don't rely on luck or assume you can find eager -- or even available -- teenagers.

   

• Use a Production Assistant

  I didn't do this, and boy, I wish I had. I couldn't imagine anyone would be available or interested in helping me in this thankless chore, so I did it myself. Bad decision. Although the shoot was a success overall, Larry and I were busy enough directing the actors, operating the equipment, and monitoring the shooting schedule. It would have helped enormously to have a person there to corral and direct the extras, replenish the refreshments in the "green room," order lunch, take cast members to the bus when their scenes were completed, and handle a hundred other thankless tasks.

   

• Plan the Shoot

  This is critical and I think I did this one well. I planned the shooting sequence around these elements: three costume changes, each for a different day in the storyline; the tight schedule of shooting everything that Saturday and Sunday; and the likelihood that we could let half the cast go after Saturday's shooting, thereby saving on motel expenses for a second night.

  I created a grid in my word processing program of the scenes in shooting order, with scene number and a brief description. I noted who was in each scene, where the scene was located within the action, and the day designation within the storyline. I have a color printer so I color-coded the scene numbers by which storyline day they occurred on (colored highlighting markers would have worked just as well).

  I also estimated how much time to allot to the shooting of each scene and marked my copy of the grid with the start and stop times. I provided copies of the grid for all cast members and volunteers - minus the start and stop times. I didn't need anybody else monitoring the shoot for me. I knew well enough on my own when we fell behind schedule. We also moved ahead a couple of times, I'm happy to say.

  I gave my script supervisor a copy of the grid to keep with the script and she marked each scene with the number of the tape we used to shoot it. Later, when I created my log of shots (and I do this with the highly sophisticated paper and pen method), everything was well organized for me to begin editing.

• Provide Refreshments

  Essential. A couple of days before the shoot, I observed a photography crew on the roof of the building next door to my workplace in Hartford, shooting a commercial. In addition to all their equipment, they had a food table set up on one end of the roof laden with bagels, doughnuts, a coffee urn, fruit, and other sustenance. I admit I hadn't previously given a thought to providing refreshments to cast and crew. I went out the next day and bought a bunch of nutritional goodies to feed everyone. And then some.

• Shoot it

  And we did, and it ultimately went quite well. We finished up each day in time to vacate the office building by the required hour, and this in spite of someone (me!) giving the wrong directions to one carload of actors and - me again - forgetting my tripod on the second day of shooting (my saintly husband to the rescue from 30 miles away). I also learned some technical troubleshooting tips I hope I never forget. For example, test out exactly the same equipment setup I'll use during the shoot; turn that air conditioning off while shooting; and get tons of room noise down on tape!

The thought of shooting a movie in a weekend can be overwhelming. But we did it, and so can you. Be prepared for some tradeoffs:

• Fewer takes of each scene in exchange for tying up your cast and crew for a minimal amount of time.

• Limited number of action scenes (if any) in favor of a contained location such as our corporate office setting.

• Insanity for a short period of time in exchange for knowing there's an end in sight for your project.

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Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.