Garretts Arts

In this installment of film making tips, I want to discuss hiring of actors.Let’s face it, when you’re first starting out, you don’t have the kind of money you need to hire somebody like Johnny Depp. You’re going to be dealing with unknowns who may or may not be very good. So what you want to do when hiring an actor is look for somebody with two things…looks and personality.Let’s start with looks first.Like it or not, when people go to watch a movie, they like looking at people who look the part. Notice I didn’t say, look good. There are plenty of character actors out there who are less than handsome to say the least. However, they look the part. So, you want to look for people who, right off the bat, look the part. This will actually make up a lot for any lack of acting ability.Then we have personality.There are a lot of people out there who really can’t act all that great, but they have tons of personality. Maybe it’s in the way they smile, or the way they laugh or tell a joke. Maybe they’re great with one liners. Maybe they’re just naturally great talkers and interesting to listen to even when they’re just being themselves.Ever watch some actors on talk shows? They’re not acting and yet they are so interesting to listen to speak. And then there are some who bore you to tears. You want to look for somebody with that personality where you can listen to them talk for hours.You’ll know it as soon as you spot them.When first starting out, you’re not going to have your pick of the best. However, by concentrating on finding somebody who looks the part and somebody who has a great personality, you can make up for a lot of acting flaws.See you soon with more.

Many people don’t really understand what this means. I’m not talking about not writing over your head, such as using fancy dialogue that only a Harvard graduate can understand. I’m talking about writing within your means such as what you can realistically do within the budget you have available.For example, this following line in a script is very simple.”The Firemen arrived on the scene.”Right, nothing complicated about it. But hold the phone. What exactly does this mean?It means a fire truck for starters. Do you have the budget to get one? If not, what are the firemen going to be arriving in…a Good Humor truck? Oh wait, that costs money too.And what about the firemen? If this is a big fire (I won’t even touch on the expense of creating a fire) you’re going to need a lot of firemen. Can you afford them all? Can you afford all the uniforms and equipment that you’re going to need?Imagine if the line read this instead.”The army arrived on the scene.”Can you picture it?Tanks, jeeps, halftracks, armored cars, soldiers, weapons, uniforms and on and on.Okay, write within the means of your budget. Don’t have things popping up in your movie that are going to take you into Avatar land. And yes, that means anything to do with spectacular special effects as well.Otherwise, you are going to have a movie that you can’t possibly make.

Here is a tip that will save you a lot of grief in the long run.Unless you are an absolute expert in post production editing or know somebody who is, fixing things in post production is MUCH harder than just re-shooting the scene. In some cases, you will find that either the problem can’t be fixed in post production OR after fixing it, you find that the quality isn’t as good as you wanted it.

In this installment of film making tips, I want to go over the story.I can’t stress this enough. You MUST have a story worth telling.Let me ask you a question. Let’s say you went to a person’s house and he started telling you about his trip to the supermarket. He started it something like this.”I went to my local ShopRite to buy some food. First, I went down the produce lane and got some bananas and oranges. Then I went to the bread aisle and picked up a loaf of whole wheat.”And this went on and on and on through his entire shopping experience. Wouldn’t you be bored to tears? Would you even want to hear about his whole shopping experience? If you went to a movie and the movie itself was JUST like this, wouldn’t you get up and walk out?Okay, let’s take the same premise, going shopping, but add a little twist to it that makes the story worth telling. What if the person started his story like this.”Did I ever tell you about the time when I went to the supermarket to buy a loaf a bread and came home a multi millionaire?”Do you not think that you’d be intrigued enough to at least want to find out how this person goes to the store to by bread and comes home a multi millionaire? I know I’d want to hear every last detail, especially if they are nice and juicy.Okay, so right there, we have a story worth telling. That doesn’t mean we can’t screw up the telling of the story itself, but at least we have something to start with that has a lot of potential.You MUST have something to tell that is going to get people interested or there is no point in telling it.