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To greenscreen a 5min cafe conversation?

S

SunnyDuc

Hi All,

Great forum, stumbled upon it last night!

I have nearly finished a script for a short film and am now looking at locations etc and doing mockups of certain scenes to make sure they flow well.

One of the scenes is a 5min conversation between a financial planner and his mentor in a cafe. My questions is whether it will be straightforward from a practical sense to get the footage from the intended cafe (assuming cameras in correct position and stationary in relation to where the talent is sitting) and then just green screen their performances in once it has been cast.

I would like the director/actors to be able to do as many takes as needed to get that scene right.

Will that be straightforward? Is there anything I should look out for in terms of searching for the right cafe? (am going to be listening to the cafe too as Alcove says:))

Am a complete newbie to all this but its fun so I want to learn..

Cheers,

David Collett
 
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Dont do it. Shooting in the real world is such a blast. I did a commercial interview in a cafe and it was so much fun. Its a joy to have all that REAL WORLD stuff around. Noises and all. Its only one camera angle, I wish I had got a few reverses just for looks... but missed...

http://www.poptent.net/media/23475

EDIT: Im not clear, are you the director?

Lots of rehearsals to get the dialogue right, to play with timing etc..
 
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Yeah, I'd agree with lots of rehearsal until you have it down pretty well, then shoot the real deal on location.

Grab at least a minute (or more, if you can) of walla/ambience to mix in later for the illusion of seamless cuts.
 
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I don't understand your reasoning for wanting to green-screen it. What are the benefits?

Only thing I can imagine is that you plan to record live footage of a diner, on a normal day, when they're open for business. But that would mean that everyone who is in that shot is not an actor, and has not agreed to be in your movie. Besides the possible liability issue, that would also just be shady.
 
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Oh, and if you've got an experienced cast, I don't think a 5-minute conversation needs to be rehearsed, in advance. They should be able to get their lines down while the DP is setting up lights, and it should only take you a small handful of run-throughs (which would be nice to be able to do in the actual space).
 
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Thanks for the replies. Sounds like shooting it live will be fine. Since I don't know what actors can do (assumed there are often many takes) I thought it would be better to not hold up the extras time in the cafe (or the cafe itself) until they get it right. But I guess the role of the actor is know the lines and be expressive with it all so it shouldn't be hard like you say.

Right now role is screenwriter/producer and will approach directors once I have done everything I can do. Have been mocking the conversation scenes with a handycam as it is really helpful in improving the script (me playing both sides...i can't act but it still helps improve the wording). But also building a mock of the whole thing on Final Cut Express 4.0 to help get the timing right.

Thanks for the help!

Cheers David
 
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Oh, wait a minute. Just thought of something else.

You're a first-time filmmaker, and your first short is a 5-minute conversation, inside a diner? Have you considered the extreme likelihood that your movie is going to be incredibly boring?
 
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5 mins of chit chat.. whew.. thats something I wont even try.

Your job right now it to Just write a great story! You had BEST NOT be writing anything in your script like "we see" or "the camera pans" or "zoom into" NO CAMERA DIRECTION IN THE SCRIPT. Even if you will make this movie your self, if you plan on "approaching" directors they will RIP OUT ALL THAT, or simply refuse to read your script. Any timing you set in this will not really make it into a final film. Its the final editing that will decide "timing". Write (not film) the best dialogue you can, if you need to hear it spoken then just have friends read the lines out loud. If this really is a 5 min conversation, and you get GOOD actors that can feed off each other, there will be some improve, and if its good, it will be magic. Use your script to capture the IDEAS and CONCEPTS of what they are talking about, but the actors will bring it to life.

That said, I like your idea of previz (thats what its called when you pre visualize a film by making little videos, story boards etc) but you should not be doing it yet, story first.
 
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You make too many assumptions Cracker Funk. It's up to maybe 45 mins in total and cutting it apart while still keeping the story line together to have a 15min version for youtube. Australia has some of the most unaffordable housing in the world...so the issue is "close to home" for millions of us...:)

Cheers for the thoughts Wheatgrinder. there are no camera direction pointers in the script...just dialogue and location changes.

Story is done, script is 95% done. writing is fun, mocking it is fun. I am more than happy for a director to rip it to shreds or anyone else for that matter because it will make it stronger, but making the mock up is fun so am still doing that..feel better approaching others with a mock up than just a script. I am not bringing in others until I have done the best I can do...then will try and get others that are really good at their area.

Cheers David
 
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Forgive me for assuming? I mean, you did say that you're a "complete noob", and you're asking a question that only a complete noob would ask. So, I took that to mean that you're a first-time filmmaker. It tends to be true of almost all first-time filmmakers that their first project is short, not a feature film. So, yeah, I assumed you were making a short. Sorry, I guess.

There are some things I don't understand, however.

I don't understand what benefit you thought would come of green-screening it, because you never responded to that. But hey, you decided not to do it, so I guess it's a moot point.

I don't understand how something being "close to home" is going make a 5-minute conversation more interesting. No matter the subject-matter, 5-minutes is a looooooong time to watch 2 people sitting in a diner, talking. There really needs to be something going on, and unless you're name is Tarantino, 5-minutes of dialogue is probably going to rather trying on your audience's patience.

Finally, I don't understand how a movie that is either 15-minutes or 45-minutes is going to be any good. At least one of those versions is going to be really bad. Writing a feature is a completely different beast from writing a short, and they both require very different structures. What works for one probably won't work for another, and you really can't just cut out a bunch of scenes from a feature, to make a short that works on an equal level.

How many shooting days are you planning for this movie that may or may not be 45-minutes long?
 
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Forgiven..:)

The only benefit with green screening i could think of was not wasting the extra's/cafe time..but the assumption there was the actors will need to do many takes. But I guess that was just silly anyway because even if they do 10 takes thats still only an hour..:)

The 5 minute convo will be different in the final edit, it will expand out showing footage of what they are talking about...it ain't no fluffy conversation...Australian's have a very finely tuned bullshit/fluff radar so am not worried about that being a problem..but on the other end it can't be too heavy too..that's where the spacing and timing is important.

As to cutting it up for a 15min version...its a creative story..and due to how I have structured it I am confident the shorter version will be just as punchy as the longer version...but am cutting out a whole section of the juicy arguments with the short version in a way where the viewer realises that and hence has an information gap that can't be filled until they buy the full version on DVD..

Won't be too much longer till getting real feedback here in Melbourne though so will find out soon enough whether I am just polishing a turd..or if its something that could be salvaged...:):):)

D
 
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SunnyDuc said:
The only benefit with green screening i could think of was not wasting the extra's/cafe time..but the assumption there was the actors will need to do many takes. But I guess that was just silly anyway because even if they do 10 takes thats still only an hour..:)
Click to expand...

:no:

Well, at least I'm glad you and I are on good term again. :)

Anyway, a five-minute scene is not going to take an hour to shoot. Expect it to take closer to 8-hours.

Just to give you some context. I once shot an 8-page script, in 1.5 hours. But that movie was intentionally made to be crappy, and it was. It's a horrible movie, but funny because it is so crappy.

Most films for the 48 Hour Film Project are between 5-7 minutes long, and most teams shoot ALL DAY Saturday. And most teams find that shooting-schedule to be extremely tight, and hectic.

For my feature film, we averaged six pages per 10-hour day. Most filmmakers would consider that to be a very fast pace, and I can confirm that our production was very fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, run-and-gun.

Anyway, no matter how simple you think this scene is, there is no way you will shoot it in an hour. Not even close.
 
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Cheers for the context Cracker...will keep that in mind.

Have thought of and written a much shorter version in the past few days (different story so it won't double up) that will now focus on...need to learn to walk before I try to run..:)
 
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