You’ve written your award-winning script, it’s been developed into something special and now the day of shooting it is fast approaching. What could possibly go wrong? While this line has become famous in movies, there’s good reason with it often happening in the actual gears of production. Filmmaking is essentially a series of problem-solving scenarios and as they say, your story is told three times: writing the script, shooting the film and then editing the thing.
One of the things you may not anticipate is that things change. Even just having your script adjusted into a shooting script can show a marked difference between what you put out there and what happens on the set. The director’s notes, budgetary adjustments, location constraints… there are many reasons as to how things could change in a heartbeat.
Another big one is your actors. If you’re working with die hard professionals, everything may be verbatim and go to plan. But as with more modest budgets, you can’t simply expect your actors to arrive on set knowing their stuff. Some like to work in a more natural style and you’ve got to insist they learn their lines and deliver them as on the page. While more organic delivery and lived performance can actually benefit the overall effect, it can present some issues when it comes to getting everything assembled in the editing room with continuity and such.
Then, after all’s said and done the script may be your baseline in every respect, but even that can be pushed and pulled around to get the desired effect. Perhaps scenes need to be pulled up earlier or perhaps you have a moment that would be better served having a precursor land a few scenes earlier. This doctoring process and reconfiguration can be crucial in rescuing scenes or reframing the genre or story.
So, don’t go in expecting everyone to be glued to your script and seeing it as a holy artefact. Filmmaking is a team effort and it’s about communicating your vision to your people so effectively that everyone gets on the same page, whether that’s the storyboard, the shooting script or a loose piece of paper that momentarily got caught by the wind and everyone’s trying to get a foot on to prevent it from messing up the continuity.