Organization

Organization is easily one of the best ways to quickly get anything done in the film world. In most cases it can be almost impossible to get things done in a  timely manner if you don't have organization. It's one of the major reasons there are so many different positions on a film set. There is too much to be done by one person. When everybody is organized and does their job well is when a film comes out its best.

Every area of a film needs to be organized. I've taken part in many different positions on a  film set. To be honest when it comes to my daily life I tend to be very disorganized. Yet, when it comes to anything film related i become a complete neat freak. All of my camera gear is organized in a very specific way. In certain cases it has been extremely beneficial. In the world we live in inspiration can come from anywhere and the ability to quickly take out your camera and be ready to shoot is imperative.

My AC station on the film Before Your Eyes

Just the other day I was in my kitchen making dinner when I saw a hot air balloon flying just over the lake. I knew I had to get a picture of it. So in a boot I ran upstairs assembled my camera and ran outside and snapped some photos. I was able to do this all before my dinner started burning. Without my camera being organized in its bag there is no way I would have been able to get the shot in such a timely manner. I could have missed or worse, ruined my dinner.

The Picture I took while making dinner

my camera bag

Organization is most important to me when it comes to post production. You can have so many hundreds of files for a small project that if you lose the ability to stay organized then the project as a whole can suffer. Every project that I do has the same organizational process. The only thing that differs is the project itself. The folders stay the same. So if you want to succeed in the film industry start by cleaning up your act.

The five folders that make up every film I edit

What is Field Production, Really?

Some people may not know what field production actually means, well field production means you're anywhere but a studio. Field production is always dependent upon the characteristics of your location. Your location might be a doctor's office, the bottom of a canyon or a barn.

Each situation calls for unique methods but you can always find similarities. Field production usually requires a lot of setting up and tearing down the equipment.

The Super Bowl, the mother of all field productions, uses at least seventy cameras along with two huge trucks full of tape decks, lights, microphones, cables, switchers, signal controllers, graphics generators, you name it that extravaganza uses it.

(These are just the cameras!)

Hollywood movies evolved using one-camera technique. Most field productions, especially low-budget, are done with one-camera technique.

One-camera technique means the action is repeated over and over with the one camera in a new location every time.

For fancy field production, all the lights are moved and re-set up in between every camera location.

Then, all that footage is editing together to simulate the effect you would have gotten had the action been captured simultaneously by multiple cameras.

Field productions are edited using a computer after they are shot. Good editing can make even a boring subject exciting but quality editing is time consuming. An editor who knows his stuff will plan on taking a minimum of one-hour to finish one-minute of edited story. Quick, down and dirty editing might go faster, but not much. An extremely intricate :30 commercial that gets bickered over a lot might be in editing two weeks. No wonder the budgets for video can quickly soar out of sight! Don't let that happen to you.

The higher the level of the production, the longer editing can take. Quality editing can save an otherwise poor production. Good editing is usually planned, and not just a reaction to fixing stuff that went wrong when shooting. Good editing is one of your most powerful story-telling techniques.