I'm writing a story where the characters are exceptionally terrible filmmakers. I'd like to be authentic, but I don't know that much about filmmaking. What are some telltale signs of a truly awful crew? This includes visual effects artists, cinematographers, directors, actors, best boys, and so on — things that if you saw you'd immediately think you're surrounded by amateurs. Thank you!
Posted Jun 4, 2021, 3:04 AM UTC
so youre looking for a biographer?
I'm afraid the humor is lost on me, if there is any.
Along the same lines as the boom mic dipping into frame: the boom mic not being pointed anywhere close to the actor who is speaking dialogue. This is, bar none, the most rampant technical issue I've seen on student and amateur film sets. It seems like a really easy concept that a directional mic needs to be pointed in the direction of the source you're trying to record, but I've seen so, so many inexperienced boom operators put zero effort into this.
Speaking of which, another telltale sign is poorly recorded dialogue. Lots of loud background noise (extra points if there's a loud refrigerator or AC unit they left on while shooting) or rustling and mic noise if they were using lavs. Bad mixing, too: music that drowns out the dialogue, or inconsistent dialogue levels within a scene.
Ooh this is fun
Gear fetishism, especially over low-end consumer/prosumer gear.
Stands not set up properly, falling over
Flag set too close to a big light catching fire
Water bottles left in shot
Crew member standing in shot
Boom mic dipping hard into frame
Forgetting to roll the camera
Phone going off, especially during a take
Opening a bag of chips during a take
Camera team wearing white or bright colors
SPFX missing a door cue and actors standing at the door waiting for it to open
Thank you for the response! Could you please detail gear fetishism further? What would this look like? Also, could you please explain why it's bad if the camera team wears bright colors?
Gear fetishism is sort of what you see in this subreddit a lot and r/cinematography a lot, just a TON of going on about this DSLR lens or why shooting on Red changes your life or how Aputure lights are so fucking cool.
Just endless yammering about the specifics of tools, and why this camera is better than that one, blah blah blah. On a real set, actual professionals are generally either busy performing their actual job, or are talking about non-work related stuff, or OCCASIONALLY chatting about work. The only guy on set you'll see going on and on about cameras and lenses is the BTS guy with his brand new shoulder rig for his DSLR.
The bright color thing: camera team members, especially the camera operator, are right there near the camera in the room. Wearing white or bright clothes does three bad things:
Makes you more noticable and distracting to actors.
Makes you significantly more visible in the reflection in the back window of the set
Can actually affect the lighting of the scene, you turn into a bounce source
Thank you for the quick response.
Here's a sneak peek of r/cinematography using the top posts of the year!
#1: It helps me a lot ! | 84 comments
#2: I wanted to see if it was possible to create an entire cinematography reel from scratch. 1 month of prep, 2 months of shooting, and this is the result: | 237 comments
#3: These transitions are almost flawless. And that in 1997! | 91 comments
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^Contact ^^me ^^| ^^Info ^^| ^^Opt-out
Thank you so much, there’s a lot of footage of professionals at work but not quite nearly enough of the other end of the spectrum.