Another Weekend, Another Tale of Woe for Tentpoles.....

[Satsuki Murashige]

7 set ups a day? Whaaaa? I am averaging 50 set ups a day on my shoots.

R,

Yeah, but Richard you've seen a lot of Spielberg films right? Those 7 setups are probably a lot of highly choreographed long-take oners. I'll bet they are still shooting 7+ pages a day at that pace.

[Tyler Purcell]

7 set ups a day? Whaaaa? I am averaging 50 set ups a day on my shoots

Which is insane! I'm on break from my 2nd feature in two months! And we average around 15 setups a day, pushing 12 - 14hr days.

 

The first show, the crew was a bit slow, but all of the setup's at each location were within feet of each other AND most were outdoors, so no lighting necessary. The show I'm on right now, we're doing a 90 page script in 9 days! Good pay, fantastic/fast crew and we're only doing 15 setups a day. Both films have a lot of long scenes with dialog, so you can get away with fewer setups. Just do a minor tweak to the camera position for coverage and you've got the scene.

 

It's unfortunate this current project is a corporate feature, made for educational purposes because it looks and sounds great, but of course isn't content the general public would be interested in.

[Tyler Purcell]

I agree. I have a large Bluray and DVD collection - moving to Bluray as much as possible. However, I'm pointing more to the younger generation - the generation under me who are just now coming into their late teen years. They are used to getting fed unlimited everything whenever they want it. Can't find it? Pirate it. The mere idea of paying $30 for one movies, when you can watch 3,000 for $9 a month is torture in the minds of the younger generation.

It's not just youth, most of my adult friends think the same way. People don't want to own physical things anymore, they take up space, they require work to use and since most media consuming people have their noses in computer screens all day long, why should they get up to watch something? :shrug:

 

I on the other hand, rather enjoy having a "library" of things to reference. I also like giving back to the filmmakers who make great product. Purchasing a DVD or BluRay is pretty much the best thing one can do. Now that BluRay's are $5-$12 dollars at most stores I visit, it's a no-brainer to buy instead of pirate. The BluRay's look better then ANY streaming media service and you don't need to pay a monthly fee, which is awesome.

 

Few years ago before BluRay really took off, I was still buying laserdisc's of movies used from Amoeba in Hollywood. Even though I sold MOST of my laser disk collection when I moved to Los Angeles, I still have around 800 laser disc's, around 1700 (movies/TV/Documentary) on DVD and only a hand-full of BluRay's. I had been downloading BluRay versions of my DVD's, but the quality isn't there on many of them, so I've just been buying the movies I really want in HD.

 

Streaming services are absolutely the future, no question in my mind. I do think BluRay will die at some point because nobody wants consumers to own content anymore. They feel piracy comes from ownership (which it doesn't), so they are working long and hard to figure out how to limit it. Once the theaters sign on to internet distribution (which will eventually happen) it's all down hill from there. The big problem in my mind with internet-only distribution is down to the money, right now there is no sustainable business model when it comes to internet distribution. Everyone is throwing millions at out doing one another with their internal content production and they've forgotten the non-internal products. Right now, Netflix pays $20k to distribute a feature film for 2 years. Amazon and Hulu are even less. So where is the money GOING to come from to put everything online? That's the next big challenge because people aren't willing to pay much more then $20/mo for access to everything, which is crazy cheap when you think about it. That all could change if someone broke up the cable companies and allowed each network to do their own thing meaning, stream online as well. Imagine if everyone was streaming online and there was no need for satellite or cable connections for your daily content? Now that would be a game changer and I do think it's coming.

[Guest]

Yeah, but Richard you've seen a lot of Spielberg films right? Those 7 setups are probably a lot of highly choreographed long-take oners. I'll bet they are still shooting 7+ pages a day at that pace.

 

I've seen every Spielberg film, 7 pages a day? I highly doubt that to be honest. More like half a page average.

 

R,

[Tyler Purcell]

I've seen every Spielberg film, 7 pages a day? I highly doubt that to be honest. More like half a page average.

Spielberg shoots very fast. I've been told the average shoot for him is 45 days. So they'd have to be shooting more then 2 pages a day, which is still inefficient.

[David Mullen ASC]

Bigger budgets mean bigger scenes, more extras, more elaborate camera set-ups. I've done a couple of 37-ish day features and I worked just as hard and fast as the 20-day features. It's like closet space, the work fills the schedule. You generally have a longer schedule because you need a longer schedule.

 

A film with a very short schedule often does a rewrite so that time-consuming scenes are reduced, night exterior work is reduced, crowd scenes are reduced, anything that makes it impossible to shoot 6 or 7 pages a day is minimized, and even then, it's usually a tough shoot.

 

Spielberg works very fast; I worked with some of his crew people and the general comment is that what Spielberg wants is often very ambitious and he wants it to happen quickly.

 

I remember some behind-the-scenes video from "War of the Worlds" where they had an alien cage full of extras + Tom Cruise suspended from a stage ceiling and Spielberg is on a tall ladder with a lens finder, basically moving this lens around a tiny space hovering in midair full of extras in a jumble, arms and legs everywhere, and he designs this complex 180 degree camera move inside this case that moves from a close-up to an insert to another close-up, etc. I watched the video and was thinking "boy, this is going to be tough to rig for the camera move in a set hovering twenty feet off of the ground... and then figure out how to light in that tiny space without getting a camera shadow with all of that movement, assuming the camera even fit" -- Spielberg finishes lining up the shot and hands the lens finder to Kaminski and asks "how long?" -- I figured he'd say an hour and a half, maybe two, but he said "40 minutes" or something like that.

 

And for scenes with more action, these shows are doing a lot of set-ups -- I recall on the commentary for "Armageddon" that John Schwartzman saying that Michael Bay shoots 40 or 50 set-ups a day no matter how complex the set or action is.

 

Spielberg has done a number of features in 45 days to 60 days, which is almost half of what some A pictures get -- "Fight Club" in comparison took 138 days to shoot.

 

One of my longer shoots was "Astronaut Farmer", we looked at the script, which had a lot of montage sequences and a number of location moves and we calculated it would take 37 days to shoot as scripted. The studio said we had to do it in 34 days, so that's what we did, but some small bits and pieces were dropped in terms of the montage of the world reacting to the flight of the spacecraft, and some of the training and building montages. In post we got some more money to pick-up these shots and it took us 3 days, which brought the total to 37 days, which is what we said it was going to take in the first place.

 

It's basic scheduling, you've got a scene with 500 extras to dress in period costumes and then choreograph an action scene around, or a scene where the actor needs an extra 3 hours of prosthetic make-up done or you've got to rig a car for a dangerous stunt safely and you can't rush it, etc. and from experience you know how long these things take. It doesn't help to just be optimistic, you have to be honest about the time things take.

[Guest]

I've sat in on some days at the Toronto film studios where they are filming a so called, "big movie." Good bloody grief a snail, moving uphill in January can move faster than these guys. I have never seen so much time wasting.

 

R,

[David Mullen ASC]

Moviemaking always looks slow to an outsider, even to me when I visit sets and I know better! It's because you can't see everything that is going on behind the scenes and you don't know what was planned, or what set-up was ordered, you don't know how many lights are being hung, you don't know the estimates for the hair and make-up to be done on the star. On a small shoot with a small crew, it's a little easier to judge how long things should be taking because you can see most of the production in front of your eyes and the nature of the set-ups are more understandable. You walk onto a big set and perhaps they are building a Technocrane or maybe they have to bring in a scissor lift to hang several lights, or remove a set wall before they begin to set-up a camera move, or the shot involves a complex lighting board gag that has to be programed in, or perhaps the lead actress is being glamorized for a big prom night date after spending the first half of the day doing a fight scene with fake blood all over her.

 

Like I said, longer schedules are designed for more complicated things to be done. At first glance, a cinematographer might hear that they only have to shoot 3 pages that day and think it's going to be an easy day, and then when they hear what the director wants to do with multiple cameras, one on a crane, another on a Steadicam, or the size of the set that has to be lit, or that there will be an effects rig added, etc. and very quickly the cinematographer realizes that it's going to be a challenge just to get those 3 pages done in 12 hours! But visit that set and most of the time you'd be wondering why they weren't shooting.

 

Think of it this way, even on a day shooting 7 pages, which is 7 minutes of finished screen time, if you shoot a 20:1 ratio, that means the camera was rolling for 140 minutes out of the day, which is basically just a little over 2 hours out of a 12 hour day, so you're only shooting 1/6 of the time even on a schedule where you have to get 7 pages shot per day, so there is always a lot of time spent not shooting, just setting up. To a visitor, the odds that you'll hang around long enough to see the camera roll are low.

[Guest]

Visit one of my sets, and even the layman can see things really move. :)

 

R,

[Tyler Purcell]

There is a lot of waste, but there is also a lot of beauty. I can't imagine shooting some of these big movies with all the complex moving parts in the time it takes to make a low budget movie. On last month's feature, we had big horse scenes with all the cast on horseback, what a mess. We had dialog on horseback, we had stationary and mounting/unmounting scenes, it was very slow work.

 

Over the last two shows I've been on, I've learned about how NOT to do things. The big thing I see wrong on the shows I'm on is the lack of prep work. Storyboards and pre-vis is so important, spending some time with an artist to get down the scenes and understand what they entail, is so important. Then on set, I felt the director sitting behind video village was also too separated. He was so far away, like the great OZ calling in a performance from a distance, it just doesn't work.

 

I like prepping, I like going to set with a piece of paper that shows what every shot needs to be. I like having discussions with the crew about those shots weeks, sometimes months in advance, so when we get there, the list of surprises are low. That's how you get excellent lighting setups and appropriate coverage to make your end product look top notch. I also like to be right next to or running the camera. Being there I feel really helps to speed things up. You can do a 2nd take right away with notes without even moving.

 

Hindsight is always 20/20.

[Manu Delpech]

So much condescension and bitterness in this thread, I feel like I'm going to throw up. Richard, all due respect, before defecating all over Spielberg, his movies, or the industry in general, should we take a pause and acknowledge that the scale you work on (and I'm really being respectful here) is obviously nothing like theirs?!

 

And mocking the BFG's box office result, what? See the movie and understand why it cost 140 million. Not only is the movie very good, but it's practically a full VFX, performance capture driven movie, the first 10 min are live action, 3 or 4 min in the middle of the movie, the location plates in Scotland, the scenes in the third act at the Queen's residence, about 15 min and that's it. The rest is blue screen, more blue screen, Mark Rylance in full mocap getup, same for the other actors portraying the giants, plus they had to solve a ton of scale issues to make sure that the eyelines between Sophie and the BFG were right. The money is on the screen, simple as that.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Manu Delpech

[Jay Young]

Tarzan was interesting, if not a little overdramatic at the end.

I have not seen BFG, but may wait as I can't stand to visit my local cinemas.

 

I did see Independance Day, which was not better than Guardians of the Galaxy in CG, but was better in perhaps acting? Different films tho - anyhow - "Giant spaceship crashing into ground".

 

What happened to character development?

[Guest]

Manu, the scale of my projects may be smaller, but, I squeeze 10X more out of every dollar than a Hollywood studio ever could. The comment I get from top industry people all the time is....how did you do all this with such a small budget? They really can't fathom it. Distributors read my scripts and say, well you can't do all this with this budget, then.....I do.

 

The studios and their budgets are fair game. When you are spending such ridiculous sums of money, you do open yourself up to public ridicule. And HOW that money is spent is even more ridiculous. I know from first hand sources the kind of money spent on stars to keep them happy on set, the crazy demands they make, and the incredible sums of money that are spent to fly in their families and entourages. I can give so many examples.

 

When producers agree to such ridiculous spending, quite frankly, they deserve to be made fun of. The BFG would still be in a massive budget deficit from the weekend and not even have directed one penny toward the production budget. Once you subtract out the theatre splits and the P&A.

 

Also Manu, here's a little producer problem for you to solve.

 

Question, which is the more successful producer?

 

Producer A: Spends 180 million on a movie, earns back 150 million.

 

Producer B: Spends 1 million on a movie, earns back 1.5 million.

 

R,

 

PS: Manu, they say, "never work with kids and animals." I do BOTH in every movie. Not a single CG animal in any of my films, all 100% real and in camera. :)

 

PSS: You say, "The rest is blue screen, more blue screen," I never use it. I shoot on location. Looks way better, and is far cheaper.

[Landon D. Parks]

Want to shoot really fast? Previz and greenscreen. Nothing can beat it. Location shooting, and even studio set shooting is a time drag. The biggest time killer through the day? Setups.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Landon D. Parks

[Landon D. Parks]

PS: Manu, they say, "never work with kids and animals." I do BOTH in every movie. Not a single CG animal in any of my films, all 100% real and in camera. :)

 

PSS: You say, "The rest is blue screen, more blue screen," I never use it. I shoot on location. Looks way better, and is far cheaper.

 

I worked with kids all the time in theatre. Not sure where, exactly, the whole 'don't work with them' mentality hails from. It seems rampant, yet I have never once experienced any hiccups that I wouldn't have working with adults on the same schedule. In fact, schedule-wise, kids have been much more open and available than adults. They are also eager to please, unlike many adults - who feel you are working for them...

 

Greenscreen CAN be cheaper than live action, it just depends on how you do it. Most of the time though, unless the filmmaker is a master at compositing and understands VFX very well, shooting greenscreen will increase the budget because VFX is expensive to source. If you don't know VFX in and out, you can't possible write your script or plan your shooting around ways to 'cut invisible corners' in VFX. Unless you hire a VFX supervisor - which will add a lot of money.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Landon D. Parks

[Guest]

I shoot in the toughest places, the great outdoors, which means crew on location and lot's of support vehicles. I still do it faster and cheaper than anyone else. :)

 

R,

[Tyler Purcell]

Manu, the scale of my projects may be smaller, but, I squeeze 10X more out of every dollar than a Hollywood studio ever could.

Well yea, but at the same time you're probably destroying your cast and crew. The 50 setup's per day quote from earlier is crazy in my mind and all I do is work on low budget stuff.

 

I know from first hand sources the kind of money spent on stars to keep them happy on set, the crazy demands they make, and the incredible sums of money that are spent to fly in their families and entourages. I can give so many examples.

Right, but you don't need to make a $140M to have top actors. In fact, I've worked with some pretty top actors before on smaller projects because they loved the script. You DO need to have certain provisions for top actors, like a private vehicle on set, special food and a wrangler just for them. None of that really costs a lot of money, far less then their rate, which a lot of times on these smaller films is $64k, which is sag schedule F. On a feature film, I'd rather find another $100k to have a top actor, then only have B- or C+ actors.

 

Once you subtract out the theatre splits and the P&A.

Yep, the $140 does not include P&A, so you're looking at 10's of millions right there.

 

Question, which is the more successful producer?

 

Producer A: Spends 180 million on a movie, earns back 150 million.

 

Producer B: Spends 1 million on a movie, earns back 1.5 million.

Producer C: Spends 40M and gets back $65M. The risk on a $140M movie is quite high and in my opinion, too risky. A big hollywood movie with star's can generally get back $30M - $50M without a problem. Much over that starts to get into grey territory, especially if there is a huge P&A campaign.

[David Mullen ASC]

For whatever reason, Hollywood isn't interested in making mostly lower-risk smaller movies that return a decent profit. Maybe it's not exciting enough for big-time investors and shareholders, maybe it doesn't put enough money into the pockets of agencies and whoever is collecting overhead, I don't know. For now, it seems to work because Hollywood still makes enough movies yearly (with stuff in the pipeline as well) for a few hits to bankroll all of the failures. In other words, it would take multiple years of failure for the engine to stop working -- currently, the pain of one bad summer is often forgotten the next summer.

 

Truth is, the trades always write a gloomy article about a weak box office as if it's the end of the world, but usually the reason that season is weak is that the movies that got released were not that good, even on an elementary level, and surprise, when the next season has some decent blockbusters, the box office receipts are good. How did that happen?

 

So far, this summer hasn't been that exciting, but usually that means better blockbusters will be coming out at Christmas or next summer.

[Max Field]

The way you worded it makes it sound like Hollywood has a gambling addiction haha.

[Guest]

Well yea, but at the same time you're probably destroying your cast and crew. The 50 setup's per day quote from earlier is crazy in my mind and all I do is work on low budget stuff.

 

I use kids in a unionized environment Tyler, under strict working hours, so how do you see me, "destroying the cast and crew?" I never go over 12 hours, can't anyway. Plus the kids are doing 2 hours of school a day on set.

 

Maybe I just know how to work quickly and efficiently?

 

I deliver high production value movies that succeed in the market place for 1/50th the cost of a Hollywood movie. NONE of the blockbuster directors working today could of made Against The Wild 2 and achieved the same production values with the same budget. Not even remotely close. They would of burned up the entire budget during the first three days of prep.

 

R,

[Guest]

The way you worded it makes it sound like Hollywood has a gambling addiction haha.

 

100% correct. It's all gambling in the tent pole business. You have no way of predicting the future, and therefore no way of even remotely being able to guess if your 150 million dollar movie will succeed or not.

 

I don't care how many years the studio exec has been in the business.

 

R,

[David Mullen ASC]

The way you worded it makes it sound like Hollywood has a gambling addiction haha.

 

 

It's no different than Wall St. in general...

[Bruce Greene]

For whatever reason, Hollywood isn't interested in making mostly lower-risk smaller movies that return a decent profit. Maybe it's not exciting enough for big-time investors and shareholders, maybe it doesn't put enough money into the pockets of agencies and whoever is collecting overhead, I don't know. For now, it seems to work because Hollywood still makes enough movies yearly (with stuff in the pipeline as well) for a few hits to bankroll all of the failures. In other words, it would take multiple years of failure for the engine to stop working -- currently, the pain of one bad summer is often forgotten the next summer.

 

Truth is, the trades always write a gloomy article about a weak box office as if it's the end of the world, but usually the reason that season is weak is that the movies that got released were not that good, even on an elementary level, and surprise, when the next season has some decent blockbusters, the box office receipts are good. How did that happen?

 

So far, this summer hasn't been that exciting, but usually that means better blockbusters will be coming out at Christmas or next summer.

I've thought about this subject when I've been walking along a big studio lot. There seem to be something like 1000 people employed who don't seem to be directly making product. I assume that most of these people are well paid, working on development, marketing, accounting, distribution. I think with such an overhead, and high paid talent level, the studio can not afford to put these people to work on a project that doesn't stand some chance of bringing in 50 million or even 100 million + of profit. So for the big studio, 100 million dollar + budgets make sense. For the most part, these may have the best chance of making enough money to keep the studio going. A small feature, with only a few million dollar budget (or less) will still require 10's of millions to market and distribute. And the market is world wide, where big action comic book films to quite well, even if not in the US. Small pictures just don't often sell well world wide and a 5 million dollar profit doesn't mean much to their bottom line.

 

Richard has a business model that works well for him, but I think the upside is limited. For the Studios, it makes more sense to do big films until they hit it big. That means, big stars, big sets, big FX and the whole circus that goes with it. I don't think they're stupid, they really know how to do what they do and economize as best that they can :)

[Guest]

Well Bruce, a lot of studios have gone down the tubes using this business model :) I can make a list.

 

The more you spend, the more you have to get back, doesn't matter if you're a studio or an independent.

 

Also, once you factor in P&A costs and the theatre splits, you start to realize, the studios are losing a lot more on these tent poles, and they are also not making near as much as they claim on the tent poles that "succeed."

 

I don't see how the "upside" on the studio model is that great either.

 

R,

[David Mullen ASC]

A lot of these studios are owned by even bigger corporations, who didn't acquire them in order to make 3 million back on a 1 million dollar movie, not even if they made 100 of them a year and made 300 million back on them (and the odds are low that 100 movies made for 1 million each will earn back 3 million each). They want tentpole movies with cross-marketing into other product lines, they want to make theme parks and toys connected with the movie, etc. They spend big to earn big. Maybe it's not sustainable but that's just the nature of most big corporations today, the shareholders aren't interested in a modest return every year, if they wanted that, they'd invest in Procter and Gamble, not Time-Warner or Sony.