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Typecasting: Which Came First, Types or Casting?

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When an actor completely nails a role, and perfectly disappears into it, it’s hard to see them as people again.

Take Sir Ian McKellen. If we see him in another film, the first words out of our mouths are “HEY! That’s Gandalf!” Likewise Daniel Radcliffe (a.k.a. Harry Potter). Their massively successful characters have, in the eye of the public, overwhelmed any other roles they will ever play. And there’s the serious risk that they will continue forever. It’s a really hard thing, to escape typecasting.

You’re probably thinking: “Pfft, why do I care? That’s the risk they take.” Yes. But when you cast your next production, you’d better think beyond easy typecasts. Actors play a spectrum of roles, and you’ll get stronger performances by pushing them outside their comfort zones.

These guys both ran the risk of getting sucked into permanent “types.” But they fought back and got out.

Leo DiCaprio: The Sensitive Yet Manly Dude

 

He was every girls’ dream date back in the nineties. In a split second I blossomed from a pre-pubescent teen obsessed with Polly Pockets to a full-fledged woman with true feelings of love the moment Leo appeared with a cig perched from his lips perfectly, and when he died…well I cried myself to sleep that night. Literally. How could he possibly expand from such an epic role? He was instantly Jack to all us teens.

Well, Leo did it. He cut out heartthrob roles entirely, becoming an old-school brigand in Gangs of New York and a con man in Catch Me if You Can. He deliberately took on challenging roles to cancel out the tenderness in Titanic. He probably missed out on a bunch of fat paychecks, too. But in the long term, he established himself as an actor with range and courage, and will probably continue getting roles forever.

Harrison Ford: The Wry Yet Vulnerable Cowboy

Harrison Ford is a man who avoided two typecasts. Hans Solo? Indiana Jones? Two of the most epic series in film history… and somehow he has managed to remain an actor who can play several types of roles. Good guy, bad guy (What Lies Beneath) he can play it all. Yeah, it’s true when we think of Indiana Jones, we think of Harrison Ford…but when we hear Harrison Ford, we don’t automatically associate him with the movie. Therefore, mission accomplished. He has avoided typecasting.

It’s Easy to Give In

Unfortunately, these guys are kinda the minority. There are hundreds of actors who always play the exact same character.

Michele Rodriguez (The Badass Girl)

Jim Carrey and Wil Ferrell (The Funny Guy)

Michael Cera (The Awkward Geek)

Drew Barrymore (The Girl Next Door)

…the list goes on and on and on.

Don’t just lean on their established strengths. Their performances might be solid, but they won’t have that spark of energy. And your movie will likewise be flat and routine.

Don’t give in. Demand the best out of your actors, and they (and your audiences) will thank you.

Happy Filming!

Filming on a Tiny Budget, Part 5: Editing

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Editing is the man behind the curtain.

You may have fantastic actors and a great story. A mediocre editor can still leave you with a boring, cliched, trite piece of crap.

Editors hold the reins to the entire story:

  • They choose the pacing and the mood it creates
  • They ensure the audience can follow the story line
  • They choose stylization to reflect the narrative.

A good editor will change the way your audience digests the visual and audio information for the better. A great editor will do all of this without the audience even noticing.

Vest Power Wisely

Obviously, you want someone with a sharp eye and atnettoin to dteial who knows their way around Final Cut Pro/Adobe Premiere/whatever other programs. But you also need an editor who understands the story you want to tell.

Your editor must:

  • Know the style you’re going for
  • Know the emotional level you want
  • Subtly deliver essential subtext and nuance

Meet with them at length before you hand any footage over. If possible, have them on-set to help you shoot for the edit.

Shoot for the Edit

Give your editor the tools he needs to realize your majestic film:

1) Get all the shots you’ll need to tell the complete story, as it is written in the script.

2) Additionally, shoot alternative takes, angles, and cutaway materials for your editor to work with.

Shooting additional material beyond what is in the script lets your actors to add their own twists to their characters. (This is a good thing.) It also gives your editor a lot of flexibility as he helps the audience navigate through the plot.

Episodic Structure/Anachronic Order

Even if your script was written in a linear timeline, it may help to jump around a bit in time, to help emphasize key aspects of the story. A good editor will be able to do this subtly. This process is known as Anachronic Order, or, “jumping around a bit in time,” as I like to call it.

In creating an episodic structure, your audience is simultaneously taken through multiple story lines that are connected thematically, using juxtaposition.

A good example of this method in cinema is Crash. Each character’s story, while separate, bled into one another, bound together by a common theme. This techniques provides a cumulative effect of events and holds the audience in anticipation throughout.

A Good Editor is Hard to Come By

A great editor can make the final cut of your piece even better than the sum of its parts. Often great directors will work with the same editor(s) for decades. This is the person who finally realizes your dream. It’s worth searching far and wide for the best editor you can get.

 

It’s Oscar Weekend. Get Yo Drink On!

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Okay, I don’t mean get wasted and fall into a drunk slumber for no reason…but since it’s Oscar weekend, why not get sloshed and toast to the talented? Get yourself a crew, drown a bag of jolly ranchers in a bowl of vodka (or if you’re not comfortable with that, whiskey will always do) and celebrate those who will make more money in a second than we will earn in a whole week.

Instead of festering around the couch making small talk, pretending you know everything about all the movies up for awards, thinking about how you’re going to nurse this hangover before your alarm wakes you out of your coma tomorrow morning, take advantage of this day and get yo’ drink on. My advice? Play drinking games…specifically these ones:

*someone has a bad reaction to losing

*….or just looks like a bitch

*whenever The Artist is mentioned (this alone will most likely leave you laying face down in your living room, so maybe take half a sip on this one)

*a winner thanks God during their speech

*a winner gets speech gets cut off by music

*someone forgets who they’re wearing

*your winning prediction is wrong

*someone tears up when accepting their award

*Billy Crystal makes a joke about being Eddie Murphy’s replacement

*you see side boob

*someone gets censored,

*every time Joan Rivers makes fun of a celebrity to their face

*someone trips

*pick someone who looks ridiculous and drink every time you see them

This is just a small collection of the endless possibilities. With more rules comes more opportunity to end up running around shirtless repulsing every attendee of your party. Have fun. Be safe, and enjoy the Oscars!

Get Christian Bale-level Performances From Your Actors

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Christian Bale: The Director’s Dream Actor

Christian Bale is widely regarded as a friggin’ awesome actor. He reliably delivers incredibly varied performances (romantic lead, murderous sociopath, gravel-voiced action hero, etc.), and brings intense energy to any scene. To a director, he’s the strongest and eagerest color on your palette-just waiting to be challenged.

If the script calls for him to lose over 60 lbs, no problem! He needs to shoot back up to 190lbs? No big deal! You want him to stand on top of a 120-story building? Where’s the elevator? (Actually, there was a stunt double available for this, but Bale wanted to do it.)

But how can you get an equally powerful and believable performance out of your actors?

Aside from paying them millions (and even still, that’s no guarantee), there are ways to get amazing performances from each of your actors. It starts with talented folks. But your energy is the one thing that can bring them up from good to superb.

Invest Yourself

Spend more time and energy on their characters than they do. Don’t expect miracles. Actors can only do so much with what they’re given. If you give them a mediocre script that hasn’t undergone criticism and rewriting, prepare yourself for an unbelievable portrayal of your material.

Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse

Schedule test readings, rehearsals and screen tests. This is important for your actor and you to not only work with you, but also with the other actors involved. This interaction will allow both you and them to bounce ideas around, refine the role, and ultimately make everyone’s delivery more natural on-screen.

Be Protective

Minimize the crew needed for highly emotional scenes. Give your talent the on-set environment that they need to perform. Having hair and make-up, craft services and 3 PAs milling about is not a good move when you have heightened emotions being thrown around.

It’s Not Just Money

It’s not just money that motivates people. What matters most to your talent is usually how invested you are in them and the project. As an actor, they will need to rely on you to have the vision and support for them to do thier job well.

That being said, if you are requiring drastic weight loss, dangerous stunt work, or other above-and-beyond requests, be ready to pony up a big check too. Or just hire Christian Bale.

 

:::::::::::: Ready?! Set?! Shoot!!

Filming on a Tiny Budget, Part 4: Lighting

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Why do I need good lights?

In order to attain an image where you have the greatest capacity to stylize your video, you need start with all of the proper ingredients. One of the most malleable and controllable of these ingredients is lighting.

Besides a good camera, when it comes to producing a clear image, a good light source is essential. Having the right amount of light illuminating your subject gives your camera’s sensor a lot of information to work with. When you’re outdoors, no artificial light source can beat nature’s big ball of gas out in space. But what about all of the other times we shoot?

Always shooting outdoors is not always the most feasible option, depending on the forecast. If you need to shoot indoors, you don’t always have to go with the biggest lights you can find, especially if you’re shooting on video. The more you can control the luminescence of your subject, the more creative flexibility you will have, both on-set and in the editing room.

LED:

 

A powerful, yet affordable way to light your subject. A 500-LED light (like the one pictured) holds the lighting power of about 500 light bulbs. For each tiny LED on your light, you have about the same illumination as one light bulb.

Light enough to hang down from the ceiling with pony clips, these make for a very good option when you need a basic fill light source for your subject.

They’re also more energy efficient and last a whole lot longer! Yay for saving the planet!

The China Ball:

Common in China and Japan and usually used as a decorative light source, these paper lanterns are a great choice if you want to use practical light sources in your shot. They are available in all shapes and sizes and (paper) colors, and are actually quite bright.

These are a top choice of mine, as they give off a very friendly, warm glow of soft light on their subjects. The paper provides a built-in diffusion, which your actors will like, not only because its not such a harsh light in their face, but mainly because it will light them in an appealing way.

So if you don’t wanna pay $100-$200/day for a huge 10k professional light, you don’t have to! These two solutions alone or combined be able to resolve many if not all of your low lighting scenerios.

::::: Ready ?! Set?! Shoot!!

Music Monday: fun.’s “We Are Young”

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Now this music video that looks like a thriller to be in: More than a hundred bodies were tossed in the air, a stuffed animal was ripped apart and his fluffy insides drowned some people, and a couple got to make out with food all over their faces (Not to mention a bottle broken on someone’s head?).

The cool thing about this video? You don’t get what you would expect. It starts out a little typical. A little cliche for a band like this…Beginning with everyone dressed in crisp-looking suits performing in a small night club. It then takes off and morphs into one of the coolest videos we’ve seen in a while. Let’s be honest: Everything looks cooler slowed down. WAY cooler. Without the slow-mo it would have just looked like a medley of chaos, and we would have expected it to be paired with a head banging grunge song. This video was created the exact way it should have been. A catchy tune mixed with an avalanche of drama made the video complete.

Note to filmmakers: This is exactly where music videos should be heading. We’re past the typical telling-a-story cliche. That’s what the nineties and early 2000′s were for. Videos like this catch our attention, and get us talking… even if they are out of left field.

Pro-sumer Cameras and Camcorders: What to Consider

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vs.


 

Is Bigger Better?

When it comes to cameras, bigger is usually better. Bigger is also usually more expensive. An advantage to having a heavier camera may depend on whether you’re shooting handheld, Steadicam, tripod, etc. - a heavier camera might be easier to keep steady.

If you’re going to shoot a lot of handheld work, you may prefer larger camcorders that you can mount on your shoulder. If you’re moving around a lot and shooting with a stable tripod, you may want to use a DSLR, because its less heavy and more mobile.

Lenses

For camcorders, its best to go with a camera that has interchangable lens capability. The Sony NEX-VG10 and NEX-VG20 are a couple of good examples.

For DSLRs, you may have a bit more flexibility with the range of lenses that are available to you. The catch is that you need a follow focus to smoothly zoom with any lens you use on a DSLR. Where DSLRs fail here, camcorders with electronic zoom functioning win.
Image Resolution:
When it comes to resolution, having the most megapixels isnt necessarily the best option. Depending on the camera’s sensor, and if your image will be blown up or viewed on an iPhone. To ensure the highest quality image, a better aspect to look for in your next camera is the size of the sensor that will be digitizing the image.

 

For More on sensor sizes and other digital specifics to consider, take a gander at Cambridge in Colour’s article on camera sensors.

 

:::: Ready?! Set?! Shoot!!

Mishka is a Star!

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Ever heard of Mishka? She’s been the “it-dog” of viral videos for a few years now and has starred in videos that have millions of views. With her famous lines like “I love you” and answering “NOOOO” to the question: “Do you like Justin Bieber”, she has become quite the YouTube sensation.

Thanks to her viral fame, she’s done what so many aspiring actors and filmmakers dream of. Mishka has recently become the star of a Purina spot! Hopefully we will see this cutie featured in more upcoming commercials. Enjoy on this long weekend!

“If you’re going to San Francisco…” -

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DATES: March 1-7, 2012

VENUE: San Francisco Film Society Cinema
1746 Post Street, San Francisco, CA 94115, USA

Starting March 1st, the San Francisco Green Film Festival (SFGFF) will be returning to the Bay Area! The festival will once again showcase films from around the world, exploring progressive and sustainable ways to live. Accompanying the festival will be 50 visiting filmmaker’s and other guest speakers. So, if you’re going to San Francisco..

Click Here for the full screening schedule!

This year’s festival includes:

  • Special Events/Parties
  • Panel Discussions with Film Directors and Producers
  • Free Screenings for Schools
  • Plenty of Short Films and Features!

Click below to get your All-Access Pass!

Go get your green screen on!

Filming on a Tiny Budget, Part 3: Scheduling and Budgeting

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Scheduling and budgeting are not sexy. But they are an essential aspect of keeping your cast, crew and investors/wallet happy. Whether shooting a video for a contest or shooting a feature film for festival play, you’ll be working with people, and you’ll always be working against the clock.

Scout Locations

Though it may be exciting, you don’t want to go totally guerrilla filmmaker the day of the shoot. It’s a huge time saver if you have all of the location details in place before you start shooting.

Find out what locations will cost per hour/day to shoot at. These costs may include insurance, paying security, gas reimbursement for runners, food, etc.

Make sure to call/visit/each location you hope to be shooting at. If it’s a public space, call ahead to your city’s permit office. For shooting at a business, try to line up a flat rental rate, so if you go over time (which you WILL), you won’t be paying any extra. These precautionary steps will weed out impossibilities and may save you a lot of time and money.

Camera is Not Everything

Don’t go for the most expensive camera if another cheaper option does the same thing. For those of you who like shooting with heavier artillery (the RED camera for instance), make sure you think about other expensive aspects of your production, such as paying your cast/crew, buying props, costumes, hair and make-up and food.

Break it Down

It’s a very, very good idea to create a breakdown. An expenses breakdown is not only one of the key things you will need to keep track of everything your purchasing, but it is a great way to list and your films production needs. It’s a lot of work, yes, but it will help to make sure you stay (relatively) sane.

They look something like this:

Get a Great Assistant Director

I highly recommend designating someone for on-set organization and pre-production scheduling and budgeting. Make sure this is a very effective communicator who is not afraid to speak up when things are running behind. An Assistant Director can also be a big help if you happen to be acting in your own project as someone who can make sure all of the behind the scenes elements are in place, so you can focus on your character’s problems.

Don’t Forget Your Paperwork!

DocStoc.com has some great paperwork resources for filmmakers.

Dependent Films also has some excellent (and free!) budgeting forms that you can download!

 

::::::::: Ready?! Set?! Shoot!!