Making a successful film is more about planning and research than pressing buttons and waving cameras about.

So here are five ways to make your film-making more professional.

1. Ask the question. Who is your target audience?

The answer to this question makes you decide how detailed your film is to be. If you are making a film about brain surgery for surgeons then its going to be very detailed. If it’s a holiday film then its going to be seen by a more general audience, but that isn’t an excuse to wave and zoom your camera at everything that moves.

2. Running Time.

If you can’t tell your story in 8 to 10 minutes, forget it. People today are used to watching television at home with its constant interuptions, commercials, phone calls, family coming and going, tea making, etc. Which is why going to the cinema is always a more enjoyable experience.

Let’s say your running time is 9 minutes. Allocate the first three minutes or one third to the intro, titles, setting the scene and leading up to the main story. Three quarters of the remaining 6 minutes is for the main storey building up tension or excitement as the story unfolds. The last quarter of the six minutes, approx one and a half minutes is to re iterate the main points of the film and a modest list of credits.

It might be worth pointing out here that films made for the cinema have directors who are responsible for the artistic content of the film. Producers are usually the money men, the fixers, and are usually on the directors back to do everything as cheaply as possible.

In television it is usually the producer who is responsible for the artistic side of the film, the director, if there is one, acts more the role of a technical manager.

3. Research.

Absolutely vital even for a holiday film. If your film is a local documentary visit the site. Speak to the boss, minions usually don’t have any authority, ask for history and access to archives get permission to go where public are not usually allowed (I don’t recommend actually getting inside the tiger’s cage, well not at the same time as the tiger anyway).

For holidays get books from the library, write your commentary before you go to help get the interesting shots that you want. Don’t include naff things like folk dancing night at the hotel, they all probably live in London anyway and everybody does that. Don’t take shots of your travel companions walking away from you, rear ends are not very interesting, faces are.

4. Shooting

Don’t Pan or Zoom (your eyes can’t do either) unless there is a really good reason. Shoot plenty of cutaways, always very useful at editing stage. Shoot action and reaction shots. If you’re shooting an action lets have some shots of people looking at the action, make sure they are all looking the right way, don’t cross the eyeline.

Don’t linger on shots where nothing is moving, capture a single frame during the edit then it doesn’t wobble about.

5. Editing

Start with a rough cut, get all our shots on the timeline in the right order now edit each cut, try to make a matching change to the next shot, don’t use cheesy transitions, be Ruthless (with a capital R). Try to match what is happening on screen to the commentary. When you are happy with that, look at each shot and ask yourself. Does it add to the story? Will it convey information to the viewer, bearing in mind you were there and the viewer wasn’t.

Put it away for a couple of days and then go through the film and be Ruthless again (with a capital R).

- By Ray Puleston
- Source: North Thames Region Newsletter May-June 2005

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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