Not quite a newby question, but I posted this list on another forum and thought it might be useful to newbies here too:

Just a few things I was thinking of last night that I've learnt from years of working on low-budget movies, and which many people starting out don't seem to get: hopefully others may find some of them useful.

1. Don't overlap dialogue.

If you're shooting a single shot on one of your actors, don't let them overlap the start of their dialog with the dialog from the other actor. In the edit you're likely to cut from a shot of one actor (or at least the sound of their dialog) to a shot of the other actor, and now you have to make a magic sound cut which will seamlessly go from one shot to the other when you don't have complete dialog from either shot. Often you can get away with a carefully timed audio dissolve, but it's always a pain.

You can overlap dialogue on the audio tracks in the edit: don't do it on the shoot unless it's a shot where you know you're not going to cut.

In fact, if the actor can manage it, get them to do all their lines without the other lines even being read. That way if they're doing something while listening (e.g. flipping through pages of a book, eating with cutlery noises, etc), you can actually use that sound if you want to show their reaction over the other actor's line. Otherwise it's time for foley work.

2. Sound is more important than picture.

Good sound with an OK picture is far more likely to get you somewhere than bad sound with a good picture. Unless you're Guy Maddin and deliberately adding crackles and sound glitches to make your movie sound like it was shot in the 1920s. More movies I've worked on have been ruined by bad sound than any other single cause.

Even if you can't take your sound recordist to locations before the shoot, at least take a camcorder and shoot some footage. The background noises will be very obvious when played back on a TV, even if they aren't in real life.

And don't forget the intermittent noise problems: I once worked on a fantasy feature where we were shooting a swordfight in a London park. Which just happened to be near Wembley Stadium. Which just happened to have a big match on that day.

Needless to say, some ADR was required Smile.

3. Beware of Steadicams.

Ok, you got your steadicam, you shot your five minute scene in one shot, getting five takes in thirty minutes. You're well ahead of schedule, isn't it great?

Well, no, because you shot them all the same and therefore you can't cut from one take to another: a single mistake and you can't use that entire take.

Even if you shot each take differently, cutting between steadicam shots tends to look odd unless you're deliberately going for that look... and may not even work. I once spent the best part of ten days editing one five minute scene which was shot with ten steadicam takes because they only had an hour and change to finish the shoot and get out of the location.

4. Make big changes between shots.

If you're planning to cut between two shots, try to make them very different. If you cut from a mid-shot of an actor doing something to a mid-shot of the same actor doing the same thing from a slightly different angle, any difference in action will be obvious enough to make the cut jar. If you cut from a closeup of them doing something to a wide shot where they're somewhere else on the screen, the audience will take a few frames to catch up and miss the fact that they have one arm on their head in the closeup and both by their sides in the wide (or whatever).

Better yet, where possible don't have continuity of action between shots at all: then you can cut whenever and wherever you like and know the cut will always work (e.g. one shot of the dinosaur opening its mouth to eat your actor and the next a shot of the actor screaming). This seems to be common in Hollywood movies.

5. Dialog sucks.

In the past, I've often cut out half the dialog from shorts I've edited because it looked OK on paper, but once it's on the screen it's slow, it's repetitive and it's boring. If it doesn't move the story, cut it before you waste money shooting it or the audience start yawning.

Unless you're Alex Cox or Tarantino, anyway.

6. Glasses

Actors love glasses (the kind you wear, though some love the kind you drink from too Smile). They'll put them on, take them off, fold them up, open them up, put them down, pick them up, twirl them around their fingers, and all kinds of other things that help them express their emotions visually. Which is good.

The bad thing is, they'll have the glasses on their face in the wide shot and twirling around their finger in the closeup. Some things you can get away with in a cut, but going from a shot of an actor with glasses on their face in one shot to another shot of them two seconds later picking the glasses up from the table is a bit tricky Smile. So be careful.

7. Rushes always suck.

I don't think I've ever seen a set of rushes which didn't make me wonder why I was editing this movie, or wish I'd never bothered to shoot it if I was directing. But they've always cut together eventually: after all, in the edit you're cutting together the good parts of the rushes, so if 90% of them suck it doesn't matter, the audience will never see them.

But I think the reason why a number of shorts I've worked on were never finished was precisely because the first-time director saw the rushes and couldn't raise the enthusiasm to get it done. Not only does the director not learn much from an unfinished movie, but all the people who gave their time and energy to get it shot are pissed off that they never even get to see the end result.

8. Move the camera first.

First thing the director should say after 'next shot' is 'the camera goes here' (or, at least, 'this is the shot I want'). Get the camera crew setting up the next shot and everyone else can work with them while you can go off for ten minutes with the actors (on video) or three hours with the actors (on film), and you won't get behind schedule. Go off for three hours rehearsing with the actors and then come back and tell them where the camera needs to be, and you've just wasted three hours.

9. Don't waste people's time.

Continuing from the above, the main things that bug me about low-budget shoots are being asked to do something blatantly dangerous or illegal, not being fed, never seeing a copy of the finished movie, and having my time wasted... you may not be paying me, but there are other things I could be doing than waiting around a film set for six hours while you work out what you're doing. One feature I worked on we figured out pretty quickly that an 8am call time meant don't bother turning up before noon because they wouldn't be ready.

10. Nothing matters unless it's on screen.

One shoot a couple of years back in a supermarket we spent over an hour dressing the aisle we used before we shot.

And you know what?

None of it appeared in the final cut, other than a couple of tiny labels in the background which you can't read because it was shot on DV. That was all time wasted.

There's no point setting something up that you won't see on the screen. But, at the same time, just because a location is real, that doesn't mean it will look real on screen. It's difficult to have too many props in your location, unless it's a desert... one giveaway of low-budget shoots is empty walls and desks with a paper cup and a phone on them. It looks fine to the eye, but looks bare to the camera.

But equally, it doesn't matter how stupid your scene looks on the set provided it looks good on the monitor. Who cares if your lead actor is 5'3" and his love interest is 5'8"? Stick him on a box for the big kiss scene... no-one will ever notice because they won't see it.

Another short I worked on we were shooting in part of a bank, but weren't allowed to close it. This was a pivotal romantic scene and the cast were supposed to have the bank to themselves, so we couldn't see anyone else on screen. Fortunately there wasnt much dialogue so we just used whatever crazy angles we could find that wouldn't show the other customers, and the director said that everyone who saw the movie commented afterwards on his imaginative camera angles Smile.

And I was impressed by the professionalism of the two actors who managed a passionate snog in front of a dozen bank customers...

Finally, if you can afford a set designer, have them talk to the DoP. One short I worked on the director kept them up all night wallpapering the walls and painting them only to have the DoP arrive at 8am while they were sleeping on the floor, and announce that they couldn't shoot there without getting horrible light reflections from the gloss-painted walls. So the director had wasted hours of everyone's time and then blew the catering budget on new wallpaper and paint, so we had to live off out-of-date sandwiches from Pret-a-Manger for the entire week (not good for cast and crew morale, and I'll never be able to eat one again, even if not out of date).

11. Wear dark clothes on set and stand still during takes.

In my second short, I have parts of two crew members in the movie. We didn't spot either of them until the finished cut, because they're standing still in black clothes and nothing makes them stand out in the shadows. Once you see them it's obvious, but no-one has ever seen them until I've pointed them out.

Alternatively, wear bright reflective clothing with flashing lights so the camera operator can't miss you in the first place Smile.

12. Marketing is (almost) everything.

When I used to go to Florida on holiday in the 90s I'd meet up with a girl I knew who was an aspiring actor and whose boyfriend wanted to make movies and was struggling to raise a couple of million dollars to make a sci-fi feature. A few years later he went on to produce a $30,000 video which made $200,000,000 at the box office. Not because it was much good, but because they had a great marketing plan.

I've worked on a number of movies I thought were good, and certainly better than most I see at festivals. But they still haven't got anywhere, because they're hard to market. A good movie that's hard to sell is, uh, a hard sell Smile. That doesn't mean you need explosions, shootouts and bare breasts in every movie you make, but there's little point in shooting a feature that no-one wants to distribute... maybe it will get somewhere eventually if you keep pushing it, but it's more likely to end up on sitting on your shelf next to all those other good movies that have no hook to sell with.

13. Avoid timecode breaks.

A good way to waste editing time when shooting on video is to have timecode breaks which screw up the capturing process. Sometimes you're in a rush and can't avoid it, but more than one or two in a single shoot is taking the pee.

14. Shoot from the previous action to the next action.

If your actor is going to walk into a cafe, sit down and talk to another actor, then stand up and leave, when it gets to the closeup, don't just shoot them sitting at the table. Have them sit down into the shot, do the lines, and then stand up and walk off.

It's a pain to shoot (focus issues, etc), but it's hard to cut from a wide shot to a closeup for their first line if they're still moving in the wide shot and stationary in the closeup. If that's the cut you want, the easiest way is to cut on the movement as they sit down.