OAA CYOC

---

Filmmaking for Actors: Creating Your Own Content

---

---

Filmmaking for Actors: Creating Your Own Content

---

Filmmaking for Actors: Creating Your Own Content Course.

Content creation is a key to building momentum when you are starting out. Everyone has a camera, right?

Cell phones are amazing devices. You have a camera and a mic built into the library and personal office you carry around with you.

If your goal is the latter, here is a basic rundown of the workflow and skills you either want to develop or build a team that can help you create and work together to help each other.

---

Content Creation Workflow and Principals Taught in the Online Actors Academy Course

• IDEA – it all starts here. Have a target type. Write a short scene (2 pages or less) Write a 10 minute short with a festival run and networking possibilities in mind. So many possibilities.

• WRITE IT – You can create a free account on Studio Binder or Writer Duet to use their free screenwriting software. If you are a little more ambitious there are a number of decent screenwriting softwares on the Market. Final Draft is the industry standard and a good investment. (If you have other recommendations, please share)

• BREAK IT DOWN – This is more important if and when you get into producing longer pieces. Every element that needs to be on set has a category – cast, wardrobe, stunts, sfx, vehicles, props, etc. Even for a 2 page scene it is good practice. You might want to create short films with festival runs as a target and if you are shooting over multiple days or weeks, having a breakdown with scheduled elements helps keep you organized and can avoid delays on set. Plan Plan Plan.

• PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE – One day shoot? 5 day shoot? Create a preliminary schedule and be ready to modify it as needed based on the logistics of availability of locations, cast, and crew.

• CREW IT – Your crew may be you or you and a friend, or you may bring on a small crew to cover your specific needs. Having done the breakdown, you can anticipate crew needs much easier. Basic needs are camera operator, sound and depending on the size of your team you may also have wardrobe, makeup, AD, PAs, etc. Crew based on your needs and budget (favors should also be assigned a budgetary value because in-kind work now can be budgeted and paid work later so calculate the value of any volunteer work and add it into your total budget).

• LOCATION SCOUT – This can be an ongoing part of the process during production workflow. Also with locations comes a location agreement which spells out the specifics of use of property, signage, time on property and usually requires a minimum of a one million dollar general liability policy.

• CAST IT – Whether it is a one person story or multiple characters, you need your actors to commit to your schedule. As your casting needs grow, you may evolve from doing it all yourself to budgeting for and hiring a CD to cast your project or expand your reach.

• SCHEDULE IT – At this point you will likely be juggling schedules and having a few shifts in people if your cast and crew are mored than just a few people. Even with a small handful conflicts can arise so be prepared to make changes as needed until you can lock it (even once locked you may have to do some shifting due to weather or location issues…. Now you are in problem solving mode.

• SHOOT IT – You are finally on set. You have your camera, lighting gear, sound gear, etc. and your crew of few or many, and you are ready to get to work. This part has so much to it, camera position, coverage, lighting, audio, wardrobe, makeup, production design, etc – which can be simple to complex, but needs to support the story. If you are new to content and shooting yourself, you have some great apps and inexpensive gear that will capitalize on your cell phone’s camera and deliver rich visuals.

Observe a couple of simple rules you can easily research on google, the Rule of Thirds and the 180 degree rule.

• AUDIO should be recorded on a secondary device with consistent mic placement. If you are shooting with a cell phone there are some pretty decent wireless lav mics and receivers that plug into your phone and you can record well mic’d audio right to your device.
At a certain point, you may invest in shotgun mics (RODE makes excellent and fairly affordable products). You want your audio to be as clean as possible and recorded in such a way you can minimize any background noise. Also turn off any compressors, air handlers etc that can change the tone of the room. That one minute of room tone you always get quiet for is there to help in the post process while doing your sound design work.

• LIGHTING can be natural if shooting outside. Interior lighting can be a combination of natural and artificial. (So can exterior under certain circumstances). Start by using 3 point lighting (key, fill, back). This simple lighting along with obeying the Rule of Thirds and proper exposure can make the difference between an image looking amateurish and professional. Much more can be happening in this phase depending on how simple or complex your project is.

• EDITING – Start by importing all of your footage and secondary audio to an external editing drive and then copying that drive 2 more times. Use one as an editing drive (eventually you could move to a more expensive redundant backup system – but we will save that for another day) and store the other drives off-site as backups should there be any issue with the editing drive. Back up your work often in you need to restore. This is where I take secondary audio and do some basic work on it to prepare it for synchronization with footage. I will do a normalization, convert to dual channel mono, and run basic noise reduction on the audio clips prior to import into my editor. Now I have audio that I do some basic blending in the edit prior to picture lock and starting the sound design. If you are new to editing, start with basic cuts (straight cut, L cut, J cut <- Google these) This will help create fluidity in your scene and give you more control over pacing. Here’s where your left and right brain have a great party together. The perfect blend of technical and artistic assembling of your story in picture form (Walter Murch’s book ‘In the Blink of an Eye’ is a wonderful piece on how the brain processes the edit. Fascinating).

** Edit is done and you declare Picture Lock. YOU WILL NOT ALTER THE IMAGE SEQUENCE after a Picture Lock.

• SOUND DESIGN – The is so much fun! You get to build the audio world of the film. Search for the perfect sound in song libraries, create sounds like the foley artists do, add effects, atmosphere, silence, room tone, story enhancers, this can help create a stronger emotional connection with the audience. This is an area often overlooked by filmmakers in the early stages. Make it as important as the picture and the performance because they all rely on each other.

• COLOR GRADING – Give your film a tone, a feel, a look. Day for night. Desert Heat. Increasing or decreasing richness. Bring shots into the same color space. Fix exposure issues, color issues, consistence of color and skin tone in scenes. Color grading is both simple and very complex. There is a lot to learn in this arena. When starting out, focus on exposure and color temperature going into the camera and your color grading needs will be more from artistic choice that the need to rescue poorly exposed footage. And don’t be afraid to make a copy of your scene and play with the color grading elements of your editor.

• REMARRY – You have finished the sound design and color grading and are ready to put the film back together. Before you do, export the film at full quality. This will give you a picture with a single unmastered audio track. Make a new sequence or project (different software calls the timeline different things). Import the full video you just exported, mute the audio track (you can mute the individual audio tracks in some softwares and skip this step), and then import your new single audio track and align it. As long as you exported the audio from your picture lock, you should align to zero perfectly and be good to go.

• EXPORT & DELIVER – Now you are ready to export your content in a number of ways. Start with the standard .mp4 file. It is the most common and efficient. You can also export as a .mov encoded for streaming. Either works great. Export at full resolution and depending on where you are going to upload it you may want to export at a lower resolution as well. For instance, you shoot 4K and the file is huge after edit and you want to upload to your Actors Access, you may need to export your content at 1280×720 or 960×540 to meet the file size requirements of AA.

If your project is longer and perhaps narrative short you are submitting to festivals, your film can be uploaded to Vimeo and password protected and made available for festival submission screening through FilmFreeway. Always export the highest quality you can and still adhere to file size restraints of whoever you are delivering your content to.

This is a very basic rundown of a filmmaking workflow. There are variables and circumstances and additional workflows others may also employ.

---

Syllabus

Pre assignment: Watch ‘Back to the Future’ to prepare for week 1 discussion

Week 1 – Discussion of story structure and screenplay formatting – formatting to be broken down for scheduling. – Students are introduced to Studio Binder and Movie Magic Scheduling to understand the screenplay to production process.
Assignment for week 1. Make a :30 film about anything. Just pick up the camera/phone and capture something. – Write a 2-4 page screenplay in Studio Binder (or any screenwriting software). Film Watching Assignment – 12 Angry Men – study how well a story can be told with limited resources in a small space.

Week 2 – Watch the films – Read through the screenplays (depending on the size of the class, it may be a select number) and give feedback on formatting and structure of the scenes. discussion on cinematography – rule of thirds, 180 degree rule, focal length and 7 basic shots of coverage
Assignment for week 2 – Set up and shoot stills of 7 basic shots of coverage – Character A and B 2-shot, Character A MS, MCU, CU – Character B MS, MCU, CU.

Week 3 – Feedback on Week 2 assignments. Discussion of sound – mics, pick up patterns, secondary audio and cheap ways to get god secondary sound. Discussion on 3 point lighting.
Assignment for week 3 – Paying attention to sound, and 3 point lighting, shoot a 2 person scene using the 7 shots of coverage – audio exercise on mic proximity and how it effects quality

Week 4 – watch week 3 assignments and give feedback. Discussion of audio preparation before importing sound into your project, – Discussion on organizing your project and starting the edit. Discussion on basic editing – Straight Cuts, L Cuts and J Cuts and why we use them.
Assignment for Week 4 – Import everything you shot in Week 3 assignment, organize your workflow and synchronize your sound. Edit the scene utilizing the cutting techniques discussed in class.

Week 5 – watch week 4 assignments and give feedback. Discussion of principals and addressing of specific issues that surfaced during the week 4 assignment. Discussion of Sound design – foley artists/digital sfx libraries – Available music through Creative Commons licensing. We explore multi-track sound design and editing and discuss the importance of track separation for future deliverables.
Assignment for week 5 – catch up week 4 assignment and finalize the dialogue track in your editing software before moving it to your multi-track sound design software. Search for any sound effects you need using resources discussed in class. Explore where to research copyright and intellectual property law.

Week 6 – Watch the balance of week 4 assignments and give feedback. Discussion of final filmmaking assignment – Shoot new scene or 2 minute short utilizing all of the principals we have been discussing in class. Discussion on Color grading and how color can enhance story. Demonstration of color grading using several tools now available in most editors. Addressing additional workflow questions students may have.
Assignment for week 6 – Shoot the footage for your final assignment and edit to declare picture lock for week 7.

Week 7 – Watch picture lock of final assignments and give feedback. Continue discussion of questions regarding final assignment. Demonstrate some basic final color grading techniques. Demonstrate final sound design output and remarrying with original picture locked. Discussion of the Film Festival process and how to utilize sites like Film Freeway to target festival submissions. A brief introduction to digital effects.
Assignment for week 7 – Finalize sound design and color grading for your final assignment. Complete the film.

Week 8 – Watch final films and give feedback. Address any additional questions Students have. Highlight Level 2 for anyone interested in continuing to build skills as a filmmaker.

---

Registration Request (limited class size)

---

Registration Fee Options

250.00

Venmo (no added fee)
https://venmo.com/JimSide8

CashApp (no added fee)
https://cash.app/$JimSide8

PayPal (10.00 additional PayPal fee)
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/JimDougherty/260.00