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Series of bad 1st ADs (I hired them, so this is 100% my fault) is largely what drove me out of filmmaking for the past two years. My last two projects were such nightmarish descents into hell I had to step away for a while. Most of the issues were related to me having NOBODY I could delegate to...

Good point. I was operating on the assumption he probably didn't want to spend $1000 plus on a lens, but he might.

There isn't a perfect solution (in your price range). I'm a huge fan of primes and don't shoot zoom very often, EXCEPT when I'm on vacation or other situation where I don't want to lug around a bag full of lenses and have to stop and swap them out.

It's a pretty critical crew position. I have directed several times without a good 1st AD. I would never do it again. Without a 1st AD, the director is so busy sweating a million details of logistics that he doesn't have any time to think about the bigger picture of the film.

As others said, "it depends". That being said, I can't imagine any screenplay that wasn't re-written at least 3 times. That's usually my minimum. Like any kind of art you also have to know when to put the brush down and call it 'finished".

and for a vacation lens, you'd sacrifice some performance, but I'd probably want a zoom for convenience.

I actually just bought a Nex 7 for the smaller more pocketable camera.

"We often cheat actor's eyelines so they look more natural on camera, even though they're totally unrealistic in the real life situation." ^^ This. It's another of the million things the director, DP and script supervisor have to be aware of and account for. Sometimes I'll have to quickly go...

Young is the time to do it for sure. I'm largely on hold at the moment because of "real job" demands. Nothing this side of becoming wildly successful beyond what 98% of people in the industry EVER achieve could pay my bills on the same level as my straight job right now. I may have to give...

In my experience: "God I wish we had a..." Happens WAY more often then "Geez, why did we bring all this gear".

I think every first film is over long. My first was 35 minutes and would have been much better at about 20 minutes.

Another thing where style choices come into play also. Anything being "natural" might be the exact opposite of the intent. I became less hard headed about it over time. I used to refuse to even listen to the idea that we shoot a scene with multiple cameras. Now, if there's a good reason to do...

Lots of reasons, but as others noted lighting and sound are the big ones. Your best dialogue tracks tend to come from the closeups because the boom is much closer to the talent (unless you're shooting a master at the same time and it can't be). It's VERY hard unless you have a huge grip budget...

Script is first (for me), but I write the script with a general idea of the budget usually. If I know there isn't any money then I'll tend to not put in things I know will be expensive (locations, props, etc...).

Most likely related to their post workflow where they move all the films to a single hard drive (or some other media) for screening. They don't want to have to do the down rez, they want the filmmaker to do it.

A lot of this is stylistic choice, but I'd get a quality tripod (probably $300 to $400 minimum for something usable) before I got anything else. However, this is coming from a person who in probably 300 minutes of running film time (for all my shorts) has 20 minutes where the camera isn't on a...

CF is right. They are Horrible (withoutabox), most fests are HORRIBLE. They'll notify late, they'll never notify at all. I got IN a festival and didn't know until I saw my film on their website. The festival circuit is not for the weak. It's a tough business.

How exponentially more difficult it has gotten to make money on them is the reason I have never shot one.

From what I have heard it will never be released. Well, maybe on the web (if they can beat a cease and desist), but no distributor will touch it.

I guess I'm too much of a low brow, Beasts of the Southern Wild bordered on unwatchable. I needed a couple of stiff drinks and people watching it with me. Alone I would have turned it off.