Myth #4: “Cameras have improved their low-light ability, so I can shoot at night with no added lighting.”
The way cameras improve their low-light ability is by increasing the digital “grain” that’s recorded. (You’ll often find your camera’s ability to do this measured by its low-Lux ability.) The concept is similar to how you get more light-sensitive film by increasing the grain size of the film. 100-speed film has very small grains, which take a lot of light to expose properly. 1600-speed film has very large grains, which take much less light to expose properly. Whether it’s film or digital, the larger the “grain” then the blockier and more full of artifacts your images will be. As such, in your camera’s low-resolution view screen, its low-light images may look really good; however when you pull up the footage to edit on your full size monitor, you’ll notice that your footage is very blocky and unattractive. Additionally, the contrast is usually awful, so it looks like everything is shades of murky gray. (This issue becomes even more of an issue if you’re shooting in HD or HDV, which is MUCH worse in low-light than SD cameras are.)
If you need to shoot outside at night, make sure you either have your actors positioned in a place with bright enough lighting to expose your shot properly, or that you bring along some additional lights. (An easy way to make sure you have enough light to record properly is to bring along an external monitor or a laptop with video monitoring software like OnLocation or Scopebox.)
Myth #5: “Shooting a greenscreen just involves painting my wall green and filming my actors in front of it. The greenscreen software takes care of the rest.”
While great greenscreen can be accomplished on a fairly low-budget, it takes a decent amount of work to do it properly. You need to separately light your greenscreen with flat, even lighting, using soft lights like soft boxes or fluorescent fixtures. You then need 6 feet between your actor and your wall. You then need 6 feet between your actor and your camera. You will need to light your actors so that the lighting you use blends with the backgrounds you will be combining them with. For more on using greenscreen well, both in production and post-production, check out our Greenscreen Issue. Additionally, to add a little plug for one of my own projects, Michele Yamazaki and I have a book that covers all the basics and a number of advanced ideas for low-budget greenscreen coming out next year called, GreenScreen Made Easy (MWP).
Myth #6: “Audio is easy to fix in post, so if things don’t sound as good as possible on location, we’ll just fix it later.”
This is one that I’m guilty of. My first film, Commissioned, was an audio train wreck because we didn’t have a decent pair of headphones to listen to the audio, our shotgun mic was nowhere near our actors, and I was certain that it could all be fixed easily enough. When I got into the editing suite and found that most of my audio was awful, I realized the truest fact: Audio is 70% of your film! People will gleefully watch badly shot films like “The Blair Witch Project” or badly lit, nausea inducing flicks like “The Bourne Ultimatum” so long as there is good audio. However, Peter Jackson could release the most amazing epic in the history of the world, shot all on RED One cameras with beautiful vistas and spectacular lighting, but if it had bad audio, not a single American would sit through it.
If you do not make sure you get the best audio while you’re on location, you will often be condemned to ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement). If you have to do any amount of ADR, you will quickly spend more time doing ADR than you did shooting the entire movie. (My first film had to have ADR performed to everything. It took us 5 weeks to shoot the film, but nearly a year to record the separate ADR parts.) If you are reading this too late, we do have an article to help you with setting up a home ADR studio, which you can read here.
For the basics of how to record things right in the first place, be sure and check out our article on this, which you can read here.
Myth #7: “When it comes to trademarks and logos in a film, the ‘Fair Use’ rules let me show posters and logos in the background of my film.”
Fair Use is designed more for documentary work, so narrative film directors can get into a whole slew of trouble if Stan Lee decides to bust them for showing a Spiderman poster with the Marvel logo clearly in the background. (The implication, by any easily read logo or trademark, is that the owner of it is endorsing the film. As such, if you don’t have the owner’s written permission, the owner can press legal action against you.) The one place where this isn’t an issue is in external locations, in front of publicly visible buildings. For example, if you’re shooting a love scene in front of a well known factory or a trademarked location, you shouldn’t get into trouble for it. (For more specifics on this, be sure and check out our article on this here.)
Myth #8: “So long as I don’t use more than 30 seconds of a song in a film, I don’t need to get permission from the copyright holders.”
This is a common misconception that comes from certain controversial rulings involving promo spots for television channels. Once you start getting into other areas, all bets are off. (For an example of this, Vanilla Ice lost a legal suit for sampling just a few bars of Queen’s “Under Pressure” for his hit, “Ice Ice Baby.”) When it comes to filmmaking, you can’t use any music you haven’t gotten master and sync rights to. Master rights are the rights to use the music as it was originally written, and sync rights are the rights to synchronize an original recording with film, video, or other visual medium. Master rights are easier and cheaper to obtain than Master & Sync rights, which is why many filmmakers have had other artists re-perform famous hits for their films. Sometimes these are more successful than the originals, like when “Mad World” by Tears for Fears was re-recorded for Donnie Darko.
If you try to submit films to festivals with soundtracks that have unsecured music on it, your submission may be refused by the festival and, even if your entry is allowed, the copyright holder can press charges against you if the film is played in public. Finally, no one will purchase a film for distribution that has unsecured music, which means you will have to either get the music secured or replace it.
