How do you make sure the cast and crew are fully committed to a film project? And make sure they're available on the filming days?
pre-pro Cast and crew committed to the film project
- Thread starter JKierskicine1207
- Start date
This isn't a rant day, but I'll give you a quick and honest answer. If you have money, and you're making a bad film, everyone shows up. If you don't have money and you make a good film, you'll be fighting tooth and nail to keep your lead actor from wandering off while the camera is rolling. The problematic issue is that only people who aren't artists make money, and artists have to wait around for people from more lucrative professions to fund them. As soon as it's possible to make a movie, you have a landlord, dentist, construction worker, or whatever passing down ideas from above. If the financiers favorite team is the NY jets, and you don't want to put a sports team in your sci fi movie, they get offended and cut your marketing budget, which causes it to fail, which they then perceive as evidence that you should have taken their advice.
From a discussion of the film launch for Mike Judges film "Idiocracy"
"well yeah, fox did everything they could within the confines of the distribution contract to sabotage it because of very, very negative test screening reactions. if i recall, the test audiences felt insulted by the movie, and fox was worried about insulting their audience and advertisers they work with, so they delayed the release for two years then only put it in like 100 theaters after zero promotion."
Flipside, he probably shouldn't have taken a project making fun of stupid people to fox. It's a company that's famous for hiring people based on blondeness.
From a discussion of the film launch for Mike Judges film "Idiocracy"
"well yeah, fox did everything they could within the confines of the distribution contract to sabotage it because of very, very negative test screening reactions. if i recall, the test audiences felt insulted by the movie, and fox was worried about insulting their audience and advertisers they work with, so they delayed the release for two years then only put it in like 100 theaters after zero promotion."
Flipside, he probably shouldn't have taken a project making fun of stupid people to fox. It's a company that's famous for hiring people based on blondeness.
Pay them more than they can get at another job.
My answer is to LIMIT the number of days you are asking your team to work for free or deferred pay. Try to group 4-5 shoot days together as one chunk. Then ask them to commit to that, and do your best to jam your most important scenes into those 4-5 shooting days. It's not realistic to expect people to work for free over a longer timeframe (I couldn't do it if someone asked me). It's important to design your project so it can get done: 4-5 major shoot days, 2-3 pickup days with skeletal crew and 1 castmember. Plus scenics and insert shots that you might be able to shoot yourself. Design your project within these limits. I also recommend paying the actors something, even if for gas to be there, the rest being deferred. Professional actors will save your ass. A good performance doesn't need a lot of fancy camera tricks -- it just works. If you can edit and handle sound design -- even better. This is filmmaking -- be open to learning all of its facets. You'll be a stronger creator in the long run.
