Making the Most of Your Film and Video Production Schedule
by D.J. Smithee

One obstacle that no-budget digital movie makers encounter during production is coordinating and scheduling the borrowed time of their actors. Being that your DVX100 project is most likely not a paid film production (at the moment anyway) and that you’re planning your production schedule according to the days off and availability of your non-acting actors, it’s crucial to maximize the time that you have with them during a shoot.

A good way to do that is to shoot your scenes out of sequence. What I mean is, if your lead actor is only available to shoot for one day out of the whole week, you can maximize the footage that you get from him by shooting numerous scenes that involve him. “But how do I do that? That scene requires my main actor’s co-star to be there, too!”. Well there are ways to work around that movie production problem.

For example, to create the illusion that your actors are in the same space at the same time and interacting together, you can use stand-ins or the ‘in & out of frame’ technique. For instance, for over-the-shoulder dialogue shots that show just your actor’s face and the back of his co-star’s head and shoulders consider adjusting your framing for that scene to show just the shoulders of the co-star with a stand-in wear the correct wardrobe. It’ll be like a giant jigsaw puzzle that you’ll have to piece together, but with a lot of creativity and patience, it can be done.