This is the basics of filmmaking when making a film is tempting to rush into shooting without a script without organizing anything so when it’s time to start filming everything’s a bit of a mess and time is wasted picking up the pieces if we had spent some time carefully planning every aspect of the film especially the creative side then when it comes to production everything happens a lot more smoothly and quickly although something’s still bound to go wrong and that’s what makes it interesting.
So let’s go back to the beginning when you come out with a concept it’s tempting to try and include all of your ideas for cool scenes shots and themes but if you include every idea you have it’s likely there won’t be anything that makes much sense in the end things are more clear when you pick one or two major ideas and let those influence the kind of shots you use the way you get your act is to perform and every other creative decision in this case it’s a film where everyone is trying to con each other no one can be trusted so we’re going to pick and choose the filmmaking techniques based on the mood that we want to build what kind of characters would be part of this film.
Where would they live how are they going to change as the film goes on we’re looking for things that help communicate the major themes that the film tackles and we can save the rest of ideas for other projects how you present these ideas is up to you whether you go for something grounded in reality and conventional or if you mix things up and go something more abstract by the way you probably won’t shoot the film in the order is going to be watched for logistical reasons so when we move into editing we’re reconstructing our ideas from a big pool of footage this usually takes longer than filming and it’s all about the order in the length of the shots when do we reveal that important piece of information to the audience how long do we let the audience stay with the character.
Before jumping into the next scene for every scene we have to decide whether to use lots of short fast shots or slow things down and use longer shots without cutting just like in every stage of filmmaking we don’t have to follow our original plans if we’ve had some new ideas so a good editor can rearrange the shots to completely change the way an audience experiences the film we might change the order of the scenes but while it might have seemed fine in the script that plot twist that happens in the second half of the film was actually more predictable than we thought it would be and while it could be adding new things that weren’t originally planned in the script.
The editor usually spends most of their time taking things away in order to change the mood and let the audience fill in the blanks but of course the people watching a film won’t notice the editing or the camerawork or which equipment you used for them it’s all about their characters how the story made them feel on the surface it might seem to be a film about love but we can add layers of meaning through subtle performance metaphors and symbolism someone who looks at it in a different way might see that actually tackles other themes and finally no matter how good your film is it’s not going to get out into the world without some form of marketing and distribution whether this is taking around to lots of film festivals or just spending some time working on the thumbnail for YouTube so that has the best chance of being watched your film will not distribute itself and then it’s a case of clearing the slate now armed with more experience from working on the last project and ready to see what you can do with the next one.
