Easy guide to production
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) Getting good sound requires both shotgun and lavalier mics. While a shotgun mic is a preferred way of getting dialogue, you may find the need to use lavs as well. Recording with Lavaliers Lavs are generally best used for non-fiction filmmaking like news, … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) Getting good sound is difficult. The previous 4 parts in this series were all about letting you know why it’s hard to get good sound on set and how to minimize getting bad sound, even if it means not shooting in the perfect location. Now that you know what to … [Read more...]
by Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) Looking for a good resource on screenwriting? John August is a screenwriter who’s best known for working with Tim Burton on Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Frankenweenie. He was also the screenwriter for Go and directed The Nines with Ryan … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) Some of my favorite television comes out of HBO. The amount of quality work they produce is just staggering and the bar for miniseries, in my humble opinion, has always been Band of Brothers... and they’re making a third World War II miniseries. After tackling … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) A lot of low-to-no budget films record to camera which is fine if you really can't afford high end sound systems. I'd really just like to take the time to point out why this really should be your last resort for recording sound on set. What you really want is sync … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) Location, location, location. One of the biggest mistakes I see made on first time productions is location scouting, for everything from set decoration to cinematography and sound. Not that the locations are not well picked for what the film requires (if you want … [Read more...]
by Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) If the headline didn’t tip you off, a release date has been set for a brand new Jurassic Park film. Details are light about the plot for the new film but what we do know is that Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (who wrote Rise of the Planet of the Apes) will be … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) One of the key things about sound for production is choosing the right mics. There are several good brands for microphones like Audio-Technica or Sennheiser. Even better, recording technology hasn’t really changed too much over the years, so a good mic today will … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) The trailer for Pacific Rim has finally reared its (multi-eyed and monstrous) head. Click here to watch it or see it below. Personally, as a card carrying geek, I’ve been waiting for this film for what feels like an eternity and although we still have until … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) I have a habit of going off to the lesser touched aspects of film that are really really important. Most of this because I never really went to film school and learned a lot the hard way-- by massively screwing the pooch (not to be confused with screwing the … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) We’ve come to the end of our quest on how to schedule for film! Let’s pick up where we left off with the production board. For a quick refresher, a production board is made out of multicolored 1/2 inch strips. Each strip represents a particular scene in your … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) Now that you know all the pieces of how to schedule the film, some of the complications and what to avoid... we come to actually working out the schedule! The tried and true method for this is the breakdown sheet and the production board. The Breakdown … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) Back in part 7 we were talking about calculating how long it’ll take to shoot your film. The number one concern being how much capital you’ve secured for shooting (and post production!). Smaller crew sizes also help shoot faster and while a big budget production … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) Now that we’ve covered your bases on some of the restrictions you might face while shooting your film, we now need to calculate how long it will take to actually shoot it! There’s one major factor in how long a project will take to shoot and yes, it’s that … [Read more...]
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS) In part 5 we went over the call sheet and how to put one together using the Doddle App or the dead tree edition (aka paper). Now that you know how to do that we come to the big one, putting together the full schedule for the shoot! First you need to realize what … [Read more...]
By Danny Santos (doddleNEWS) In the previous parts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) we’ve gone over how to break your screenplay down. There’s still a lot to go into planning out the shoot but I’d like to go over the call sheet. Sometimes I think not enough is really said about the daily … [Read more...]
