How many rolls of 400' film should I get for a short?

[Bradley Credit]

Hey everyone,

This might be a bit of an amateurish question, but it's something I'm trying to figure out. I've shot 16mm pretty often with my Krasnogorsk-3, but obviously only using 100' rolls. The one time I've shot with an SR2 we used about 3 rolls for a 5 minute long project, however it was a shoot made up primarily of B-roll type shots and saw us frequently shooting at 48 and 60fps. I'm prepping a narrative short film which will probably run about 15 minutes and I'm trying to gauge our costs for buying and developing. We'll be shooting the entirety of this film at 24fps and with a mix of traditional coverage and a few longer takes. How many rolls of Kodak 7222 16mm film would be safe to get? Thanks!

[Brian Drysdale]

How much dialogue do you have in the film?

[Tyler Purcell]

On average, I try to go for a 7:1 - 10:1 ratio unless it's very slim on dialog. You want enough film to make mistakes and re-shoot things, but also have enough coverage so it looks professional. For the sake of easy math, I usually just say each roll is 10 minutes and if your script is 15 pages (1 minute per page on average) you're looking at 15 rolls to cover the 150 minutes. 

[Heikki Repo]

We shot this pretty much similar length, rather dialogue heavy short film back in 2008 on 9x400ft. 5 shooting days. As a director and producer (I wasn't the DP) I have the feeling we wouldn't have had enough time to shoot more, even if we had had more film. But your mileage may vary.

 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Heikki Repo

[Heikki Repo]

One important factor: We decided beforehand that we wouldn't go for full coverage of everything.

[Bradley Credit]

4 hours ago, Brian Drysdale said:

How much dialogue do you have in the film?

A lot! Every page of the script involves dialogue.

[Brian Drysdale]

In that case, I would tend to go for Tyler's shooting ratio range. With less experienced actors, going towards the higher end.

[Lance Lucero]

The last two short films I shot, average 10 minutes each, I managed to use about 6 rolls of film.  Average takes, two.  I will have the performers rehearse the shot up to ten times if need be before I roll any film.

[charles pappas]

To save film stock and costs Rick Schmidt in "Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices,"  advocates what he calls the "freeze method."  This means pre-editing each scene in your mind before filming it, discussing the edits with the actors and then saying freeze instead of cut so the actors maintain their positions and attitudes while you quickly have the camera and lights shifted as necessary for your next set-up. 

So in a 45 second two actor scene, instead of say 2 full takes of a master shot, two full takes of a two shot and two takes of each close-up you would do two takes of a ten-second master shot and two 15 second shots each of a 2-shot and the CU's (for example), slashing the shooting ratio. 

Would experienced and talented actors ever win an Oscar under that method? Never. Would they in fact storm off the set saying you were chickens..t? Probably.

However, if you were using non-actors, beginning actors and inexperienced actors (which you probably will be), would you get much better acting using the "freeze," method, instead of expecting them to execute long takes? In my limited experience, yes.

Also in regards to lowering shooting ratios and just general utility, don't forget to have a enough cut-away shots in reserve to be used as needed. 

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

On 1/27/2022 at 3:51 AM, Heikki Repo said:

We shot this pretty much similar length, rather dialogue heavy short film back in 2008 on 9x400ft. 5 shooting days. As a director and producer (I wasn't the DP) I have the feeling we wouldn't have had enough time to shoot more, even if we had had more film. But your mileage may vary.

I just watched that. It was very nice, although as you can probably guess I do not speak Finnish. Although I probably picked up on a name here and there. So, not knowing the language, I tried to figure out the story. I couldn't, as it was very dialogue heavy and there weren't many non-verbal hints as to what was going on. However, I came up with some interpretations:

1. The protagonist (the young woman) wants to go overseas but her mother's illness prevents it.

2. She wants to get married, but her mother's illness shows her that it isn't all skittles and roses.

3. She doesn't want to get married, but her mother doesn't want her to take the lazy way out of life.

As usual, film handles light sources supremely well. I found that there was obvious gate weave, perhaps more than a high end camera? I don't know. But the camera work mostly made that unnoticeable. The DP did a terrific job, too. Was this shot on 2-perf 5207? Zeiss Super Speeds? I imagine that production design took up a lot of time and effort.

BTW is the woman who played the protagonist related to Zoë Wanamaker? She looks related, anyway. A little bit.

On 1/29/2022 at 8:16 AM, charles pappas said:

To save film stock and costs Rick Schmidt in "Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices,"  advocates what he calls the "freeze method."  This means pre-editing each scene in your mind before filming it,

That is a very, very good idea. Of course we all like the idea of coverage - especially if your name is Stanley Kubrick. But at the end of the day, you have to get the damned thing made. Film production is anything but a spontaneous business.

[Heikki Repo]

5 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

I just watched that. It was very nice, although as you can probably guess I do not speak Finnish. Although I probably picked up on a name here and there. So, not knowing the language, I tried to figure out the story. I couldn't, as it was very dialogue heavy and there weren't many non-verbal hints as to what was going on. However, I came up with some interpretations:

1. The protagonist (the young woman) wants to go overseas but her mother's illness prevents it.

2. She wants to get married, but her mother's illness shows her that it isn't all skittles and roses.

3. She doesn't want to get married, but her mother doesn't want her to take the lazy way out of life.

As usual, film handles light sources supremely well. I found that there was obvious gate weave, perhaps more than a high end camera? I don't know. But the camera work mostly made that unnoticeable. The DP did a terrific job, too. Was this shot on 2-perf 5207? Zeiss Super Speeds? I imagine that production design took up a lot of time and effort.

BTW is the woman who played the protagonist related to Zoë Wanamaker? She looks related, anyway. A little bit.

That is a very, very good idea. Of course we all like the idea of coverage - especially if your name is Stanley Kubrick. But at the end of the day, you have to get the damned thing made. Film production is anything but a spontaneous business.

Thanks Karim!

Certainly your Finnish skills were extraordinary, since the first interpretation is pretty much spot on (even though it's her grandmother she has to take care of). Excellent!

The film was shot with an Aaton XTR Prod and second generation Zeiss Super Speeds. Our DP was great and has had since then a successful career. Last I checked two weeks ago, he was in Greece scouting for a feature film with a Finnish director who has made his career in Hollywood and China.

The production did take some time, fortunately me and my wife were students back then, so we had time for this kind of project. She took care of costumes and together we set up the grandmother's room (we spent quite a lot of time going around second hand stores). Other places were locations so we would just move a bit furniture.

It's funny to think that that project began because I had just met my wife, she was interested in movie making and had studied also film research but not made any films. Me, I had only made some very small things on digital and super-8. I had some super-8 film in my fridge and then we started writing a script. A couple of months forward, we had secured first parts of financing, a recently graduated DP with a team of his student fellows was on board and we were going to shoot on 16mm. I was paying rental bills for items I had never heard of and juggling to secure locations, find further financing and arrange schedules. What an experience for beginners like us!

As far as I know, our protagonist isn't related to Wanamaker, but you are correct, there is some resemblance! ?

[Phillip Mosness]

Keikki, I was convinced your film was 35mm because of the general depth of field , but IMDB says you shot on an Aaton xtr.

Did you crop super 16 for that aspect ratio?

Really nice work.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Phillip Mosness

[Uli Meyer]

You can avoid shooting too much coverage by storyboarding your film and edit your board to a scratch track of the dialogue, essentially making your film before you shoot any footage. This means making decisions upfront but knowing what you want, will save a lot of time and film stock.

[Heikki Repo]

6 hours ago, Phillip Mosness said:

Keikki, I was convinced your film was 35mm because of the general depth of field , but IMDB says you shot on an Aaton xtr.

Did you crop super 16 for that aspect ratio?

Really nice work.

Thanks Phillip! It was cropped ?

[Gautam Valluri]

5 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

You can avoid shooting too much coverage by storyboarding your film and edit your board to a scratch track of the dialogue, essentially making your film before you shoot any footage. This means making decisions upfront but knowing what you want, will save a lot of time and film stock.

To build on Uli's suggestion, if saving money on your filmstock is an absolute necessity, I would do a pre-shoot on a cheap video camera or iPhone and do a rough edit a day or two before the actual shoot. This allows you to not only make composition decisions but also to rehearse with the actors to see what works and what doesn't. This way, on the actual principal photography everyone knows what they have to do and you can get everything you need in 2-3 takes.

[Karim D. Ghantous]

On 2/1/2022 at 8:21 PM, Heikki Repo said:

Thanks Karim!

Certainly your Finnish skills were extraordinary, since the first interpretation is pretty much spot on (even though it's her grandmother she has to take care of). Excellent!

Well, it seems that I can make sense of subtle clues after all. ? I'd like to know what was the main idea that inspired the script?

49 minutes ago, Heikki Repo said:

Thanks Phillip! It was cropped ?

That was... cropped S16?? Oh my. I thought it was 35 although now that I look closely at some shots it's obviously S16. FWIW, I like extremes. In theory I'd choose either 65mm or 16mm over 35mm.

Tell your DP I really liked his work.

[Heikki Repo]

12 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

Well, it seems that I can make sense of subtle clues after all. ? I'd like to know what was the main idea that inspired the script?

Well, 2009 was the 150 years jubilee for the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Society, so writing the script in 2008 it was a great chance for synergy and also helped finding financing from different sources.

When researching for the script we found out that in 1906 - the year in which the film is ultimately set - women in Finland got the right to vote and the Missionary society also started training women that very same year. So the script became a story of strong women: the grandmother, who wants to use her authority to decide for her granddaughter, and the granddaughter, who (in fact due to the grandmother's instruction) happens to go into a missionary evening (it was a time of religious revivals) and feels then the calling to leave for Ovamboland (Namibia). Grandmother isn't too happy about that...

27 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

That was... cropped S16?? Oh my. I thought it was 35 although now that I look closely at some shots it's obviously S16. FWIW, I like extremes. In theory I'd choose either 65mm or 16mm over 35mm.

Tell your DP I really liked his work.

I'm sure to tell him! He is a real wizard, very talented.