How do you get actors to do the 30 shoot schedule?

[harmonica44]

For a feature most filmmakers seem to get actors to go 30 days straight. That way of course, there hair is the same, they are all still available, etc. But most actors on a microbudget will not want to leave their day jobs for 30 days straight. My friends are making a feature and it's tough because seasons change. How do you get it to all take place in fall or summer for example, when actors are only available mostly on weekends?

If you devided 30 days to 1-2 days a week, summer can become winter. You can save all the outdoor shots for the first half of the shoot for example, but there is no guarantee you will be able to shoot in that order. So what's the trick?

 

[Sweetie]

El Director is right. The script does affect your ability to shoot quick.

If you have 200 different sets ups, things are going to take a lot longer than if you have 3 or 4 set ups. The more locations you need to shoot, the longer you'll need to shoot. If you can write/find a script that requires 1 or 2 locations while keeping the quality high you can shoot it in no time.

Another thought. Is there stuff you can push to post production or to push to a second unit (which would be you, just doing the work later when others aren't around anymore), perhaps through the use of compositing? That way you can sometimes decrease the sets where you need your main actors but pushes a lot more work into post and doesn't always work.

 

[knightly]

For reference, it takes me an hour or two to light a scene, but then we can use that lighting setup to shoot everything that is in that one location before we move... this saves on setup time over all. If your action moves you from one place to another and doesn't revisit them ever, you'll need to adjust your schedule to account for the setup time.

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. For this one we constantly moved light around, then back again. I wanted to shoot the fight in order cause I thought it might help continuity, such as the actor's hair being messed up, and blood, and sweat growing more.

 

[knightly]

In that case, I would try to arrange for enough lights to light the whole set at once, then just switch on the specific area when you start shooting in it... kind of rough in the lights before you get there to save time. Or at least have enough lights for 2 of the areas, then have a small crew of grips setting up the next area as you're working on the previous to keep you clicking forward.

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. The reason why we kept moving the lights back and forth, is because, the fight scene, had shots from different angles, and the lights would appear in a lot of the shots, go from one to the next, if we did not move them. Not sure if this is the best way to go.