You've got a killer idea, a camera and a microphone. Somehow you've managed to sucker a few saps into helping shoot your film. You've figured out locations, props, a midget and a cool dream sequence - maybe you've even gone the distance and worked out a car chase or two. You and your motley crew of guerrilla filmmakers pile into the car and head out to your first location of the day. The shot list is ready, everyone's set. This is the scene where Phoenix Cain - the hitman with a heart of gold - walks into the bar and discovers that the suitcase he's been hired to deliver doesn't have money in it. He's been set up. This drug deal has done gone bad. This is the moment when a table full of Irish Boondock Saints looking dudes pull their Glocks and get ready to off our man. It's two-thousand percent awesome. Just then, in the distance behind your main actor, some J-hole across the street has noticed your film crew and is miming what can only be described as a gigantic 'stroking of his imaginary 3 foot penis.' Or maybe there's a boom mic in frame. If not that, then perhaps you notice a smudge on the lens that's blurring the bottom corner of the frame. Everyone else keeps working. You're the only one who's aware. For a nanosecond, you think about yelling cut but you don't. You roll on. These actors only have another 20 minutes before they start their shift at Starbucks. You can fix this in post.
Stop.
Take your right hand, curl it into a fist and PUNCH yourself in the face as HARD as you can.
You can't fix your way out of a paper bag. You f*cking DOLT.
What I have just described is a scenario that plays itself out every time a filmmaker picks up a camera to shoot anything. It's as sure as death and taxes - whatever can go wrong will go wrong. They call it Murphy's Law for a reason.
The question you must ask yourself is, what do you deal with now and what can you deal with later? Allow me to explain. The 'quality' of your film is is directly proportionate to how many distractions take the viewer out of the 'moment.' Extraneous sounds that don't make sense in the scene, bad lighting, bad audio quality, jerky camera moves that aren't intentional. There are literally ten thousand things that can increase the suckitude of a scene. These things, when allowed to stack up, can ruin the execution of your masterpiece. As a director, it is your job mitigate and minimize all of the unintended bullsh*t that will otherwise muck up your movie.
Give Your Crew the Tools for Success.
On my shoots, I always try to maximize my focus on story and the scene. I'm here to direct, not to nitpick. So I seek out the most nit-picky assistants I can find and assign them the task of looking for problems while I'm directing. Usually I will have one person just watching the monitor, looking for anomalies. Is anyone's fly down? Does the leading lady have toilet paper on her shoe? Is the mic in frame? Another person isn't looking at the monitor, they're looking at the set for the same kinds of things. If either of those people spot something weird, they are to tell me immediately. With frick and frack on the case, I instruct my audio guy that he has full authority to cut the scene at any time. I can't hear what he or she can hear. What goes into the mic and what goes into the human ear are two completely different things. Trust your sound person. There is a right and a wrong way to do this, however. On my shoots, only the sound engineer or myself is allowed to yell cut (unless there's an obvious safety problem and someone's about to get electrocuted or something.) If the audio issue isn't too bad, I'll ask my sound engineer walk over, tap me on the shoulder, giving me the option of making the call to cut or not - if he's certain the audio is unusable and I trust his judgment, I'll give him permission to yell cut. Occasionally you actually can fix something in post but you should at least be aware of everything going on so you can make the call. This method has saved me more times than I can count. You should always make sure that someone on your team aside from you is keeping an eye on the store. Your job is to direct the movie. You can't be everywhere at once. Mistakes that look small in the moment can suddenly seem oh so much larger on the big screen...
Remember, your crew looks to you for leadership. They're are with you because of your drive, your motivation and your idea. Lead them. Give them your expectations up front and be clear. If they don't know how to do something, show them the proper way and then hold them to that standard. Remember, it's everyone's job to minimize mistakes.
- Clint
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