one or two things about filmmaking

I am sure anyone who is familiar with filmmaking understands it well, but I guess it might be interesting to share some of the problems I have encountered before when I was making films:

1. Actor fled in the middle of filming Problem: It happened during the production of Yellow Fish, one of the main actors (sure non-professional) was probably scared by the intensive laboring process of filmmaking and simply refused to continue filming after first day.

Solution: We tried our best to persuade him, but failed. So we stopped filming for a month and rewrote the scrīpt.

Lesson:  Prepare a contract, (actor's release), especially for actors whom you don't know well.

1. Actor threatened to leave during filming Problem: Again, in Yellow Fish, one of the actors was not satisfied with our arrangement and threatened to leave the set while we only had the equipments secured for one day.

Solution: We tried our best to persuade him, and luckily it worked.

Lesson: Try to understand everyone working with you, learn about them more before you actually work with them. And certainly be considerate and try to make the best arrangement for everyone.

1. Underestimating filming schedule Problem: In Yellow Fish, we thought we had our filming schedule well planned, but it turned out that we were always running out of time, and in one of the exterior scenes, we almost failed to shoot a daytime scene when sunset came.

Solution: Since we couldn't afford another shooting day, we just had to fix it during post-production, which worked, but not very well.

Lesson: Try not to plan too tight.

1. Director and screenwriter having misunderstandings Problem: During the production of Thereafter, there was a lack of communications between the director (me) and screenwriters at some stages during pre-production. So both of us had very different perspectives on the scrīpt.

Solution: Talk, talk, talk...

Lesson: Discussion is important, plus it is also good to also keep your stuff in written form. It helps for everyone to understand what you think and keep track.

1. Editing dilemma Problem: In Thereafter, a lot of scenes we shot didn't come out as what we expected.

Solution: Cut them all out, that's why there is something called "deleted scene".

Lesson: If something really don't fit, just forget mercy, forget how hard you have tried to shoot such scenes, simply throw them away. It is always better to discard earlier than later. Don't feel like you waste everyone's effort, coz it is just the opposite, if you keep the misfit, you are actually wasting their efforts.

There are still a lot more I wanna write, but I guess that's it for now, and we'll try again some other time...