Notes on Production Design & Art Direction

Whereas this is more important for smaller, independent films than for big budget studio projects, as a foundational aspect of film it is important for any level of production.

In the simplest of terms Production Design encompasses all the design that goes into a movie as developed in pre-production. A top-tier “cabinet position” on any film set, the Production Designer oversees all aspects of wardrobe, set design, props, character concepts, etc.

The Art Director reports to the Production Designer, runs the art department and is largely responsible for on-set tucks and tweaks, variations and content for frame.

The most important aspects of production design is depth, layer, nuance and negative space.

Depth

Unless you are purposefully going for a flat, two-dimensional sitcom look, your production design must have depth. Distance is always the first victim of production design, and that is true for virtually every film of any level.  Why? It’s expensive.

If you have money you really have no excuse. If you don’t, you must find an innovative designer to address the background. The deeper the set is in reality, the deeper it will appear (and more importantly, feel) on camera, and the more options your director has.

Layering

Things on top of things. Like sedimentary rock, things accumulate, both above and before.  Even if your set is deep, it can still feel thin or sparse. Unless that is the look you are going for, it is better to go for density.   Pile as much stuff (artfully, as always) up as your crew will permit. Layers of objects create history, get weight to a scene, and if done properly, will enrich the scene with colors, varying sizes and shapes, and most importantly—texture.

Texture is always relegated to color, but it is an immediate second with regard to its ability to convey the feel of the scene.

Nuance

A step-child of layering, nuance puts small things in small places. Subtlety—the odd thing that is just hanging on the wall, or set on the table behind the candle.

Negative Space

The exception to everything above is negative space. Sometimes silence says volumes. Learn what it is, how and when to use it, and enjoy the power of absence for mood, tone and design.

Notes on Directing

Get the camera out of the way of the scene.

Lose all the amateurs gimmicks and just let the camera “observe” the action, then use camera movement to convey energy, movement, emotional motion and tension.

Dolly Shots or tracking shots (originally called Cabiria movements, which I think sounds cooler) have their place.  Crane shots have their place.   Every type of shot has its place and its purpose, and there is no faster way to prove to an audience you have no idea what you are doing than to use specific shots randomly, without justification.

I know this cuts cross-wise with the hour’s fad of jarring hand-held and seizure-inducing camera work – but trust me, it is lame and inexcusable.

The best way to direct is to hire great actors.  If you have an actor that is riveting, commanding and dramatically compelling – from wailing over the death of a loved one to a still contemplation – you will (or at least should) realize that moviemaking is not about the camerawork, it’s about the dramatic telling of a story.   Now everybody get this:  your movie is ultimately only as good as your performances.   Everything else serves the performance.

Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Bruce Lee – just turn the camera on and let it go. 

A tactical and wise use of camera movement announces a tactical and wise mind.   Be discerning.

I love complex and stylized shots, but I don’t seek to employ them randomly or constantly.  They have their place.

Even thought I can be meticulous in framing my shots, I love options so I get lots of coverage:  establishing shots, interior masters, 3-shots, 2-shots, close-ups, extreme close-ups – I try to get them all so I have an abundance of editing choices should my original storyboard not hold up in post-production.

I have also noticed that famous directors who started out as art directors in advertising and commercials have a disproportionate affection for extreme close-ups – and I am no different.   I am a staunch defender of the truth that a story happens on the macro level and the micro level.

Going back to framing your shots…

You know, quite frequently there is only one way to properly frame a shot.  I know that sounds elitist, but I cannot tell you how many times I will go to check a frame and the camera man has just set the tripod up and aimed the camera at the action.  This casual indifference to the setting of the action is a constant threat to a well composed frame.

Are you using the natural geometry present in the set?  Are lines (vertical, horizontal, diagonal) engaged in the scene?   Are present visual partitions (natural or forced) utilized?  What about dominant objects, the play of light, the play of shadows, color, texture, angle, tilt, or grain?

If you don’t know how to frame your shot then go study the great painters.  They had it down.

Lastly, and this is the most important part of being a director:  if people will not or cannot do the jobs expected of them — namely, fulfilling your vision for your film — fire them.

Life, work and romance are delicate enterprises that simply have no partnership with the active or passive-aggressive weaknesses of the inferior, the insecure, the uninspired, the insipid, the intimidated or the envious.

Surround yourself with people who want to shine together in the 49th octave of vibration.

Actually, this is my last point:  practice, practice and practice some more.  Watch movies — watch them for dramatic value, then angles, then lighting, then dialog, then sound.  Over and over and over and over.

Your visual hunger should be insatiable. All media is fair for study:  advertising, painting, cartoons, animations, films, televisions, photographs.  Then take what you know and get behind a camera and stay there for a while.

You should be a quantum sponge absorbing everything you encounter, evaluating it and discarding the trash.   

The proof of desire is pursuit.

David Jetre
Writer | Producer | Director | Designer
twitter | www.sandmerrick.com | www.jetrefilm.com

Rare Talent – Nicole Leigh Jones

When we decided to do Shroud, we were very optimistic about our ability to tell a good story with compelling dramatic elements and brave art direction.  Like any first film, it has been a long painful process, a mixed parade of brilliant successes, stunning achievements, unforseen setbacks, bewildering reversals, endless obstacles and finally — sweet, sweet victory.

We were very fortunate, given the ambitious nature of our first film: we worked with a lot of amazing people who understood this was our first major motion picture, and kindly forgave us the many missteps we made along the way.  Many, who had made films before, offered us advise and guidance on many issues and aspects of the filmmaking process we either didn’t know about, or anticipated only in part.

We broke all the rules and reached as far as we possibly could.

Make no mistake, it was arduous, at best. But the great talent we surrounded ourselves with got us through it.  We owe a great amount of thanks to the cast and crew of Shroud.

Also, like any business venture, our production was infiltrated by some persons who are best described as incompetent, while others were posers, passive aggressive, prickly, predators and some were just plain paranoid.   Despite our best efforts, we failed to weed out these people before allowing them to work along our more generous and accommodating cast and crew.   For our lack of judgment, we owe a great apology to the cast and crew of Shroud for forcing them to endure some plainly unprofessional behavior brought to both the production and post-production phase of our film by these people.

It is worth noting that some people are just deeply fractured, and in places not easily fixed.  These people corrupt the hard work of their peers with suspicion, hearsay, slander and accusations.  Despite the many extreme measures we made to promote a creative and safe environment — meeting as many demands and expectations as we were fiscally capable — some people simply preferred insults, injury and attempts at intimidation.

These people are so perversely biased toward their own interests, that no amount of diplomacy, negotiation or accommodation can or will please them.  Instead, they prefer their minor tyrannies to the more advanced human tier of partnership.   They keep their cold souls warm only through the thick blanket of arrogance in which they wrap themselves.  Their belief in their own sense of entitlement is chilling and palpable.

Fortunately, these people are incapable of subtlety, and invariably play their poor hand in front of everyone, allowing us to finally see them for what they are…and more importantly, what they are not.

Yet, there are many we had the privilege of working with that did not behave so boorishly.  Instead, a few of our cast and crew literally stand as examplars of professionalism, kindness, and cooperation.

One such person is Nicole Leigh Jones.

Possessed as she is of many flawless features and faculties, one might easily assume she is as cold-souled as many others in the entertainment business — I can assure you she is not.

Nicole, more than anyone else on the set of Shroud, demonstrated untiring dedication to our film, despite the long development, grueling hours, remote locations and demanding dialog of the project.  As impossible as it may  be to believe, her great beauty and her rare talent are exceeded only by her compassion and her sterling character.

Thank you, Nicole.

A lot.

Nicole Leigh Jones

The lovely Nicole Leigh is henceforth to be known as Nicole Leigh Jones.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

Notes from The Director

I’ve been asked by a lot of people who has seen some part of our first film Shroud: how did you pull this off?

Well, I thought I would share with you how we did what we did for how little we had. Get some hot chocolate because I brought some notes.   

Jetrefilm.com

The Internet is any independent filmmaker’s first and most favored ally. As designers, this was the perfect opportunity to re-enforce our claims as visually daring—make gorgeous websites and support sites.

Coming into 2008 we have emboldened our online presence and afforded any potential investor, partner or distributor the chance to see just who we are. We are master designers who work as comfortably in print, as we do on the Internet or in film. Our images are stylish and captivating, our design engage both the mind and the imagination.

Our ambition for our site is nothing less than the declaration that a new force in filmmaking is now on the scene. Our production values are top shelf, and our stories are even better.

We’re here to make art. We’re here to make money. We’re here to stay.

Flixster.com

A powerful social networking destination for film and television professionals, we focused on Flixster.com shortly after completely our MySpace inaugural push and our 2008 website renovation.

YouTube.com

This video publishing website has literally reshaped media distribution through its open policy to all things video. YouTube.com has even reshaped the recent political debate for the 2008 presidential campaign and has become a focal point for independent and studio film, as well as television.

Our presence on YouTube is simple: upload our work and start talking about it. We are exciting about the growing interest in our film and look forward to leveraging that interest into selling might.

Gayla Partridge

Gayla Partridge (Austin, Texas) is as good a photographer as we have been privileged to meet. Gayla has an impeccable sense of style and art, as well as a full studio wherein she crafts the most sublime of images. Gayla did some work for Shroud at the request of Nicole Leigh, and the images have been at the forefront of our promotion of Shroud.

Though specialized in her genre of photography, if what she shoots is what you want—she is well worth it. Visit our portfolio at www.jetrefilm.com to see her amazing work. Seeing is believing.

Gayla, thank you for your impressive work.

Independent Film Resources

Fortunately for independent filmmakers, several websites exist to equip the dedicated director with vast online caches of easily accessible information. Immediate resources such as (www.variety.com) and BackStage West come to mind, but there are also Filmmaker Magazine (www.filmmakermagazine.com), Indie Slate (www.indieslate.com), Indie Wire (www.indiewire.com) and Indie Talk (www.indietalk.com).

Victoria’s Apparel

As the main character, Victoria Celestine was going to require some designer apparel. We decided early on to build all her clothes from scratch. We quickly agreed she would wear a mourning dress from the opening scene until she arrived in Shroud, at which point she was switch to some less drab. In Shroud Victoria appears in no less than eight changes of costume, so the wardrobe was a necessary investment. For the level of elegance we felt was essential for the character we hired the very talented Marty van Kleeck, a local designer.

Marty immediately understood the historical framing of the film and offered expert guidance as to the style of the dresses, the appropriate fabrics and even masterfully produced matching hats and purses. In all, Marty built three amazing dresses: 1) black mourning dress with hat and purse; 2) scarlet dress bodice with jacket and hat; and 3) the off the shoulder blue dress with matching hat.

In the end, Marty delivered the movie’s most impressive wardrobe on time, on budget and with a smile. Marty, amazing work!

Johnathan’s Journal

Given the historical, archaeological, arcane, occult and spiritual content of Johnathan’s detailed journal, there was just no way around having to build the book from scratch and manually bind it.

No easy way to do this: lots of searching on the Internet, frequent evenings at Barnes & Noble and hundreds of hours lounging at the local library.

We tapped the art departments at Design & Technology Consulting Services (www.dtcs.net) and Sandmerrick (www.Sandmerrick.com) for the copywriting, layout and design of Johnathan’s journal. Once the necessary text, symbols, indicia and illustrations were accumulated, recreated and generated, the designers compiled the entire journal in spreads in Adobe InDesign CS2.

Finally approved, we submitted it to Digital Document Services (www.ddsep.com) for printing. Afterwards we submitted it to Betty Barna of Kaligrafos (www.kaligrafos.com) for manual bindery.

On film the scores of pseudo-vintage documents played beautifully.

The Lyching Oak

Central to Shroud is the legend of Cinecusa, and central to his origin is a strange thing called The Lyching Oak. Believed cursed by the hundreds of souls hung on its branches, The Lyching Oak is as much a character as Victoria or Mayor Undercroft. For this reason, we had to find a tree that was spooky and unique enough so that when the audience see it for the first time on film, they’d say “Yep, that’s it.”

After about four months of searching, we slowly surrendered to the fact we were going to have to build it as a computer generated image (CGI). After some initial concepting and photomanipulations, we set up some meetings with Element X Creative (www.elementxcreative.com) to discuss the exact number of scenes required, as well as the effect of the tree being burned at the end of the script.

The very talented design team at Element X Creative met with us, listened to our needs, and guided us through the complex process of tree design, animation and effects in a timely and expert manner.

The Ninesabers Authority

We needed some official looking documentation and folios from The Ninesabers Authority, who are mentioned in the script. We contacted Holsapples Engravers (www.holsapples.com) and had a die made and had several inexpensive soft-bound journals embossed with the Ninesabers logo. We also had some stamps made as well, so we could do the whole red and black wax seal thing. They all turned out great.

Once the dies are made, you pay per item to emboss anything that will fit in the machine.

As with the other documentation, we created the Ninesabers logo in Adobe Illustrator CS2 and submitted all die files in PDF to the respective vendors electronically (email). The turnaround time was less than a week. In all, we produced almost fifty original documents that looked great.

Replica 19th Century Documentation

We didn’t want Shroud to be enslaved to authenticity, so we painstakingly created scores of files in Adobe Illustrator CS2. These files were percussion cap & ball receipts, train tickets, ship manifests, barber shop appointment cards. We used classic fonts like Centaur, Cezanne, Trajan and other antique families to help retrofit the layouts.

As for printing the documents, we used our Dell 3100CN color laser printer which did a great job.

Photographic distressing was handled in Adobe Photoshop CS2 through any dozen filters (film, grain, noise, threshold, layer effects, etc.).

As far as the varying paper stocks, we went to several paper vendors—principally Xpedex Paper Supply and O-Kay Paper (both in Dallas) and bought several sheets of off-white linens, card stocks and parchments.

We distressed the edges with Xacto blades, fine grain sandpaper and a whole lot of folding. You know, sometimes you must to fold, spindle and mutilate.

For drying the paper we simply baked the paper very carefully in an oven at low temperatures to get that slightly burnt look. For anything more direct, we just took a lighter to some pages to show abuse.

All other things in the journal were bought at Michael’s like pressed flowers, ribbon book marks, old padlock keys, tassels, etc.

Plate Armor

In the script, Victoria discovers a suit of 16th century plate armor. We were surprised to learn that our allotted budget for armor would have gotten a full suit off the Internet. The only problem would have been the armor would not have been fitted, and it would have been for a man.

So, we approached my friend Patrick Thaden (www.thadenarmory.com) who worked with me on my 20-minute short film Knightsilver and he agreed the necessary armor could be built from scratch for the same amount that we were going to pay for an Internet suit.

Patrick was pretty busy, but explained he definitely wanted to work on the project. Further, he had been in correspondence with another superb armor-maker Ugo Serrano (www.ugoserrano.com) who had worked on Witchblade and The Chronicles of Riddick. I think they have been chatting on the Internet forum Armour Archive (www.armourarchive.org) for about four years and had never met, let alone work on a project together.

Patrick pitched the Shroud armor concept to Ugo who signed up. Patrick promptly flew him from Los Angeles to Dallas and they banged everything out in about 4.5 days.

I had provided some basic armor concepts, but really differed to Patrick on this project. What can I say? He showed me a nice picture of a nice suit of armor in a nice book. “It’s gonna look like that,” he said. “Swell,” I think was my remarkably articulate response.

We got Nicole down to Denton, Texas to get measured and they were off.

Past that I was pretty much hands-off. And therein lies wisdom: it is so cool to have talented people who know (better than you) exactly what has to happen. People like Patrick and Ugo make a director’s job so easy. These guys are fire-and-forget wonder-workers. The first time I saw the armor was when it was finished.

Sold!

It looked great. Only the top part of the armor was built as the bottom part of the costume is a black leather battle skirt which fell under the purview of our seamstress Ms. Jenny.

We brought Nicole back down for sizing and the armor was spot on. We took a few snapshots of the armor under interior and exterior lighting just to be sure it would photograph well and that was it.

Once the armor was finished, I took it to our office. The only part of the armor that needed a little art direction was the straps that hold the suit together.

Originally Patrick had just laced it together with leather strips. So I went to Michael’s (arts and crafts) and far about $40 bought all the leather straps and silver beads needed to visually enhance the armor. The black leather straps came in a single 25-foot spool and the beads are just plastic. The only problem we encountered with the armor was the straps broke during some of the high energy combat sequences. So on our next film, the Tolkienesque war film Vangelis, we’re paying for real leather, latches and buckles.

Horses & Wranglers

When doing a western you are invariably confronted with the issue of horses. Now due to our small budget, we initially didn’t have a lot of scenes with horses and we were going to explain this away very cleverly in the script.

However, we happened to be in the right state. Texas is a huge state with hundreds of miles of open range, but we didn’t even have to go that far. Fort Worth, Texas is about 30 miles west of Dallas and boasts one of the largest Civil War re-enactment communities in North America. A few phones and we quickly located hundreds of re-enactors who all had their own apparel and props.

Additionally, being Texas we found several Old West re-enactors with their own period-correct apparel, weaponry and horses.

For Shroud we needed six total horses plus a covered wagon. Once we looked, we found everything and very affordably too. They were all in Fort Worth, so instead of trying to move them to Austin to film in Willieville, we simply found another ranch near Weatherford (Wahoo Ranch) and film the horses scenes there. The two old west towns will be spliced together in editing. This solution allowed us to have all the horses, wagon and wranglers locally and avoid the punishing costs of transporting them and their horses and their property to Austin, food and lodging.

So it worked out pretty well.

19th Century Tallships

Again, our own state turned out to be our best location. Texas has a coast – a lot of it. We simply Googled 19th century ships in Texas and immediately the beautiful Elissa popped up.

Being a ship, of course, she’s in Galveston, so that was determined that shot was to be a weekend unto itself since its about 5 hours from Dallas to Galveston. Strangely, it is the shortest shot in the entire film, but it was decided that Victoria’s journey from England to American simply could not be hinted at. So, we built in two scenes that at least show her boarding the ship for America, and exiting it. We also have a few deck shots.

Since the Elissa is right in the middle of Galeston harbor, we elected to shoot it at night in order to cloak out the rest the modern setting around her. Nothing hides as well as night.

Unfortunately, to take a ship of that size out to the Gulf coasts between $5,000 – $10,000 a day and that was simply not in our budget.

Again, just showing the ship in harbor is enough to convey the exhausting journey one would have had to taken in that era to get half-way around the world.

I think continentally only in California and Texas can you drive for 7 hours and still be in the state. Wow, lots of real estate. Unfortunately, the Elissa ultimately didn’t work out for us and we hired Vladimir Eugene out of California as a Unit Director. He was able to secure some beautiful footage of the Star of India for us.

Hamilton Pool Cave

Texas is a beautiful state with a wide range of locations and terrain. Mostly notably is a beautiful formation called Hamilton Pool Cave. A recessed, semi-circular shelf cave, it was perfect for many scenes in the film. Contacting the county in which Hamilton Pool Cave is located, we learned we could film there for the minimum $8 per car park fee. However, given we were shooting a film, we went ahead and made the necessary request to close the park for the three days we were there. We retained the local park rangers for security and started shooting.

The park officials and rangers were all very cordial and professional. We deferred to them on many occasions to safeguard the natural beauty of the park. Fortunately, it never rained on us and the location proved to be one of the more striking places in our film.

Film Insurance

Does anybody like shopping around for this stuff? The first thing you are going to find is they don’t like independent film. Of course, I am a dedicated professional so this angers me, but looking at it from their perspective, I think they are tired of amateur hacks getting actors hurt, equipment lost and locations damaged because of a lack of experience, planning, common sense or minimum competence.

Shroud literally – without exaggeration – as the simplest set of action sequences a movie can have and still be called an action movie, and most of these guys wouldn’t touch me. Like everything in film, it’s a Catch-22 – you have to have something in order to get something, but you can’t something until you’ve already gotten it.

After twenty years of thought, I can only conclude this is some lowest-common denominator Darwinian test to see who has the resources and resolve to make something happen for themselves because otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense.

I have never personally met anyone who is as good a fight coordinator as I am—I am not boasting, I just haven’t. I am mechanically inclined towards the technical execution of martial arts, highly creative, and painstakingly safety-oriented.

Of course, this all doesn’t matter.

So, I had to hire a bonded stuntman for two days to be on my set in order to qualify for insurance, to manage the most mundane of stunts. Fortunately, as with everything else, it’s not as expensive as you think.

Now, if you want to know where independent film needs to drastically improve its relationship with the filmmaking business and those industries that support it – this is one of them.

I’ve watched so many independent films that were just laughable on every level, but fighting usually stands out as the most incompetent…well, fighting and sound.

So, either know what you are doing or find someone who does and cover all your bases, and then you’ll still have to hire some stunt coordinator to bless your film. Just do it, its worth it.

Once we realized the scam was bigger than we are, we just played along. We allocated $7,000 for insurance and I think we paid about half that for a year-long, multiple location policy.

It’s worth it.

Chatlien Photography

Every good film needs a good photographer to help with initial concepts, storyboarding, location scouting and portraiture.

My friend Bryan Chatlien (www.bryanchatlien.com) is a very talented Dallas photographer with a growing portfolio of great work. He worked with me on my short film Knightsilver and has extensive camera operator and DP experience. He’s a great second pair of eyes on any shot and knows the technical aspects of photography and videography as well as the creative.

On Shroud Bryan manned one of our cameras and the Steadicam routinely and constantly found great angles and even errors in continuity. We were so impressed with Bryan we cast him as Brisby, a Greyrider who attempts to rape our heroine.

An invaluable asset, Bryan is as solid as they come.

Online Film Development Services

Check these guys out (www.prodinfo.net) – we didn’t use them on Shroud only because we didn’t know they were around. But upon discovering them we immediately signed up for their monthly film management software. Vangelis has already benefited from the rich set of features on their software. You can literally track every aspect of your production (except budgets) with this amazing package.

Lifetime Fitness

I love this place. Its like the new Bally’s and a direct competitor to 24 Hour Fitness. It’s open 24/7 so I can go at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning if I want. It’s huge, clean and has every kind of equipment you can need.

Let me say this again: I love Lifetime Fitness (www.lifetimefitness.com).

They also have multiple studios of cardio, yoga, Pilates – you name it. They even let us do our special workouts in their studio rooms when empty during the day. It was great.

Let me say also that we love Nicole Leigh, but a more feminine woman you will never find. Victoria is a tomboy raised by her eccentric father Isaiah, so we needed a girl who, when push came to shove, could push and shove.

Nicole’s already as member of Lifetime Fitness (as am I) so we decided to get her a personal trainer – Sarah Pascale — to really punch up her physical fitness against the long hours of martial arts training she was taking.

All at Lifetime Fitness. Great environment and it is (and will) really pay off in the final performance.

Fight Choreography

Unless you just want one of your actors to slap somebody, or maybe even if you want a limited fist fight – yeah, you don’t need fight choreography. However, if you are putting together a complex fight, using various styles or weapons—you have to have fight choreography.

The three most important components to a good fight are these:

1) Find a Fight Choreographer or an Action Designer

A lifetime martial artist (since I was eight) I have practiced Karate, Tae Kwon Do, western boxing, JKD, Judo, simple street fighting and most recently Seven Star Praying Mantis Kung Fu in Fort Worth, Texas (www.authentickungfu.com).

I can design a fight for anybody: brawlers, technicians, European or Asian styles.

Find somebody who understands whatever it is you want to put to film: kicks, punches, grappling, trapping hands, wrestling, chases, weapon combat, weapon forms, firearms.

It will be so worth it.

2) Properly profile your actors for their AQ

There’s IQ (intelligent quotient) but there’s also AQ (action or athletic quotient). In short, some people cannot fight. They are either too timid, too weak, too uncoordinated or in the case of many women, simply too feminine. The rule: Do not cast these people in fight scenes, not matter how pretty or how good they are.

Half of a good fight scene is knowing how to convincingly hit others, and the other half is knowing how to be hit. I don’t have time to go into here, but one can be grazed, glanced, hit lightly, hit hard, hit and pissed off, hit and dazed, hit and knocked out – there are as many reactions to impacts as there are ways to create impacts. Innovate, and get people used to moving their heads. Warm up the neck with several minutes of easy roles—never grind the bone—and you will have a neck ready for all that snapping.

3) Film the fight correctly

I remember working for seven weeks with multiples teams of actors who were going to all be in a gang fight. I think I designed ten unique fights between fifteen people. Most of the fights were great, but some simply suffered from the totally lack of athleticism in some of the actors (mostly the girls) but even their fight could have worked.

When the director shot the fight scene he literally filmed it the exact opposite he should have. This goes to composition—you must frame your fight in exciting and effective ways. You don’t frame a shot in which the blow clearly misses the opponent – this is Fighting 101 people.

All blows should cross the face at a distance of no more than an inch, if not closer. True martial artists can miss their training partners by a hairs breadth—literally 1/8″ to ¼” at most (and feel the wind off it). That’s what you really want, but don’t endanger your fragile actors if they cannot perform with that degree of control and precision.

Conceal all near misses with oblique angles.

Set Decoration

Once we settled on Willie Nelson’s “Willieville” we realized we would have to populate the set (ever how sparsely) with the meager possessions of those people who survive there.

Shroud is a virtually abandoned town in the script, used only as a storehouse for plunder. For the vintage artifacts that appear in Shroud, we contacted Moody Anderson at The Grove Country Life Museum. Okay, people, this place has everything. In fact, it was so cool we actually shot there. Moody also has a huge warehouse out in the middle of nowhere—I am not kidding, out in the middle of nowhere – where he storehouses tens of thousands of western and nineteenth century props.

We drove out to his warehouse, walked every aisle picking out things we liked, made a list and got a receipt. Moody’s prices are insanely affordable. As a result we were able to really decorate Willieville with some period props and remarkable pieces that completely set the mood of the story and the setting of the town. A good art director goes a long way. Find one and pay him what he wants. Add to that a nice warehouse full of props and you have a beautiful frame.

Candle Cages

A recurring motif in Shroud is imprisonment, so we had Patrick Thaden of Thaden Armory design five candle cages that resemble miniature iron maidens—a torture device popular at the time of Cinecusa’s alleged death. A simple design with a removable bottom plate on which the candle rests, the candles added some creepiness to the bar and church. Simple and effective.

Other candles were rented from The Grove 19th century museum along with lantern and candlestick holders – lots of candles.

So that’s how you make a movie for very, very little.

Thanks for playing.

Clear Your Frame

You would think this would be obvious.

You would think it wouldn’t have to be said: clear your frame.

That is Director-speak for “whatever is not supposed to be in the frame must be framed out, or removed.”

If, after having told any member of your camera crew repeatedly to check and clear their frame, they do not, then you are dealing with

1. incompetence
2. passive-aggressive behavior
3. willful insubordination

None of these are acceptable. Remove them from set immediately.

It is essential for any filmmaker who is responsible for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (and eventually millions of investor and studio dollars) to learn the power of dismissal.

Always be fair, but be firm.

Tyranny breeds rebellion, so you can’t be a tyrant. But you should be running a benevolent dictatorship, not a democracy.

Make the call. If you don’t have the answer, get a short list of options from people with opinions you trust. Then make the call, and politely demand everyone to comply.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter how pretty your shot is, how compelling the acting is, how gorgeous the art direction is—if Camera B is reflected in the mirror behind the actors YOU CAN’T USE THE SHOT.  And forget “camera safe”—clear your frame edge to edge.

Be a professional.  Clear your frame.

The Death of Hand-Held Camera Work

There is a chance, albeit a slight one, that with the breakthroughs in modern medicine and the benefits of living a largely guilt-free life, that I will live long enough to see the end of hand-held camera work.

Having just finished a feature film, I can unequivocally inform and educate you that the best investment you can make for your first time is a [expletive] tripod.

Mount the camera. Lock down your shot.

Do not be deceived by others or yourself into thinking hand-held camera work is some instant and immediately comprehended mechanism for being “edgy” or “organic” in storytelling.

New Rule: nothing screams amateur like the inability to stabilize a shot—nothing. Would you settle for out of focus photography? Then why settle for camera work than cannot even demonstrate the basic ability to be still, or follow the action properly.

Any camera movement (zoom, dolly, pan, crane, hand-held, swing) should only be considered in service of the scene, and the mood contained therein. If as a filmmaker you are picking any shot arbitrarily you have failed in your first obligation to the audience: you are not hip, naturalistic or defying film’s many choking rules—you are being selfish and ignorant. It may take too long to get a great shot, but it takes the same amount of time (whether you have a lot or little of it) to frame a steady, good shot as it does to frame an unbalanced, compositionally flawed one.

This should be common knowledge. The bad news is that it isn’t. You must communicate your visual expectations or you will not get what you, the scene and the story need. Beyond this, you must be strict with your expectations.

Buy a tripod then use it.

The Atlanteans—big fans of hand-held camera work. Look what happened to them.

On the Twelfth Day of Filming My Producer Gave to Me…

All of us at Jetrefilm Entertainment are very excited about the scores of buyer/distributor inquiries we are receiving on our first feature film Shroud, as well as its wicked sequel Nyght. We plan to invite the many distributors who have followed our project through 2007 to our screening in January 2008. There, cast and crew will mingle with our investors, West Coast producers and distributors and wonder how the whole thing got done. Have a Merry Christmas and we hope to talk to all of you in the early days of 2008.

And thus begins my blog. What better season to start—Christmastime.

David Jetre
Writer | Producer | Director | Designer
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