Multiflex Cinema: Four Seasoned Producers Explain How to Flex Each Moviemaking Muscle in Film’s Most Elastic Position

The Production

The most important thing to know about physical production is that no matter what’s been planned, actual events will always deviate from imagined events. You must expect the unexpected and your ability to be agile and find solutions on the fly is critical to maintaining a smooth shoot. On A Crooked Somebody, we were set to shoot a critical location in a desert in Santa Clarita on a Monday. On the Saturday afternoon that followed, a wildfire swept through our location. While we expected to spend our Sunday resting as we prepped for the following day’s shoot, we instead spent the afternoon running around the surrounding area of Los Angeles trying to find a desert location that allowed us to bring in a trailer house, build a shack, and use weapons.

This may sound easy, but finding a location within the “zone” of Los Angeles—so that we didn’t have to put up crew for the night and could stay within our set budget—proved to be a significant challenge. Ultimately, our solution was to change the look of the scene we needed to shoot from the dry, cracked earth of the desert to tall grass fields. We shot on a movie ranch in Simi Valley often used for big productions. This meant they were helpful but not incredibly amenable to our “scrappy independent film status.” We had to double the location budget for the day.

On most movies, these kinds of hits are expected and built into the contingency protection of the budget, but on a smaller budget film, it could be catastrophic. Every penny matters, and you have to find a way to make up for unexpected hits elsewhere. Our night shoot in the “hills” (but really L.A.) ran into a surprise when Dodgers Stadium had a rock concert. The noise could be heard for miles. Small items like that matter in checking a location.

We used some tricks to sell Los Angeles as New Mexico, which in turn created a lot of production value for our film. We avoided familiar landmarks around the city and our exteriors were shot just outside of the city. We used a splinter unit to head north to capture establishing shots. We were looking for one nice transitional shot from high above a car driving down the road at sunset; we didn’t want to spend the money on a drone, and sending a crew out to the desert was not possible. Instead, we found a nice, relatively inexpensive piece of stock footage that added a ton of production value. This proved to be significantly cheaper, and though the cars don’t exactly match, we were able to get the colors very close. Using background vehicles and extras made the projection seem bigger without having to spend bigger.

One budget consideration that’s always a struggle is visual effects. A Crooked Somebody is a dramatic thriller, so we weren’t too worried about spending money on VFX shots. Still, even if you’re making a film like ours, they are needed more often than you’d think. These elements might not be as obvious as “green screen”—which may or may not be written into your script—but in our case, we found ourselves with over 20 VFX shots, including TV burn-ins, detective’s office graphics, and reflection paint outs, all of which needed to be incorporated into the budget. Even if it’s not anticipated, be prepared for continuity split screens, boom paint outs, and other gaffes that may arise during editing and need correction. Reserve for VFX no matter what.

Post-Production

As a producer, once post-production starts, you might sense a slight respite. Prior to the wrap of principal photography, you most likely have laid the groundwork for all of the post process—setting up editorial, hiring a composer, sound and color houses, and VFX artists, etc. By the time the post-production schedule has been approved and your director is cutting, you can enjoy a short-lived breather from overseeing the film.

Your job at this stage is to jealously guard your post-production budget. In many films this comes down to, “How much do we have left?” There are many things you can do in post to make your film better, but make sure there is money to do it.

Then comes the first cut. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves once again and dig back into the creative process. First cuts are jumping-off points that are never meant to be perfect. You’ll do several versions of your first cut that address different sets of notes—some of which will make it better, some of which will not.

Next, you’ll test it for outside audiences—preferably people who don’t know the moviemakers, or the movie. These screenings are crucial in determining the areas of your film that need the most work. On Ingrid Goes West, we were able to determine early into an audience test screening that something in the first five minutes of the movie wasn’t working. One of the relationships between characters set up in the beginning needed a revision. We started to explore Ingrid’s (Aubrey Plaza) character and determined that setting her story up in a different fashion would make her more endearing. The writer-director wrote a new opening and within two weeks we shot a new sequence for the film. On larger budget films, reshoots or additional photography occur often, but on independent films it’s extremely rare given the sheer cost. Although we did not have the money to do it ourselves, we were able to convince the financiers that it would be money well spent.

Done Deal

While the length and importance of where and how you’ll distribute your finished film is usually beyond the scope of the producer’s role, your best hope is getting into a festival that, however big or small, will give your prospective distributor encouragement in taking it out for a wider release. That’s not to say that playing at the right festival will make or break distribution, but it is necessary to build the kind of buzz that can score a splashy, lucrative deal. From there, it is—fingers crossed—a real success. Now, on to your next project. MM

A Crooked Somebody opened in theaters October 5, 2018, courtesy of Vertical Entertainment. Featured image: Trailer Park Boys: A Crooked Somebody producer Jason Potash and his team are at home managing an indie film set. This article appears in MovieMaker‘s 2019 Complete Guide to Making Movies, on stands November 6, 2018.

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