Myth #1: “My actors are awesome at improv, so I’m just going to let them improv the film.”
The best improv actors in the world can improv for only a few minutes at a time. Watch “Whose Line Is It Anyway.” They’re doing these sketches for short periods (usually 3 – 5 minutes) and they have someone as their ringleader to keep them on track. They’re funny, but these professionals couldn’t be left to their own devices to just improv away for the 30 minute show, much less a 90 minute film. (Think of being in a car with a fifteen year old who thinks every comment he makes is hilarious. Now think of letting him talk constantly for 90 minutes. Would you be laughing hysterically or would you want to scream? Well that’s how your audiences feel when you let your actors improv an entire film.)
The most famous film actors in Hollywood renowned for improv, people like Robin Williams and Chris Tucker, only improv after thoroughly memorizing a very detailed script. Once they completely know their character, they can throw in a few improvisational lines from time to time, but they know that if they try to improv everything, they will ruin the impact of the script and, even more importantly, make the film virtually impossible to edit together.
Myth #1: “Camera mics have improved these days, so you don’t need to use a shotgun mic to get great audio.”
No matter how good a pickup the camera mic has, or how silent the camera is, you never want to rely on a camera mic to record your dialogue. Why? Ignoring the question of how good your camera mic is or how much internal noise your on-camera mic records FROM the camera, the simple physics dictate that optimal recording distance for most microphones is 1 ½ to 2 feet from the mouth of the speaker. Unless you feel like shooting your entire film up your actor’s nose, your camera won’t be close enough. In addition to this simple physics fact, there’s the fact that a designated microphone is far more likely to record a pleasing sound to the voices, and a good mic isn’t terribly expensive. A Sennheiser ME66 capsule with power supply can be picked for $400 or less on EBay. Finally, if you have an HDV camera, all audio is compressed to a lower quality MPEG-2 audio codec. This audio is very difficult to correct or adjust in post production, so you want to get the best audio recorded into the camera as you can, which will always come from an external mic that can be moved close to your talent. (Either that, or you can record uncompressed versions of the audio with a standalone recorder, or with video recording software like OnLocation or Scopebox.)
Myth #3: “Since people hate ‘pat’ Hollywood endings, they want ‘Open-Ended’ conclusions, with lots of questions remaining.”
Wrong. People may say they hate pat Hollywood endings, but what they mean is that they hate overly predictable endings. They still crave a logical, satisfying ending that explains most, if not all, of the questions in the film. Movies that strive to have “open endings” often completely ignore serious plot holes, in a desire to be artistic or stylistic. When this occurs, what your audience will take from your movie is CONFUSION.
Churning out movies like Guy Ritchie’s Revolver, Tony Scott’s Domino, and Kenneth Brannagh’s Sleuth will not get you a large following of fans with anyone besides Rolling Stones’ Peter Travers, who apparently hasn’t met a film he didn’t think was “spectacular,” “heartwarming,” and “terrifying”. With this list of confusing, big-budget fare, it’s clear that Hollywood has enough problems grasping the reality of this situation, but they at least have millions of dollars to make their movies look really cool. For the low-budget filmmaker who has no money to try to gloss over confusing endings, an ‘open-ending’ is usually the kiss of death. At the very least, you should write and shoot a film with a pretty tight, logical ending. Once you’ve done that, if you want to make the film more open-ended, simply remove some of the pieces from the edit. It’s far easier to remove things that are too easy to understand, than it is to add things if they’re too ambiguous.
