How NOT to Film an Episode

Once upon a time, we were only supposed to have one New Year's Eve episode. We intended to cross-cut three or four separate stories and weave a tight, interrelated narrative to usher in the new year.

Then Dex went missing.

Not in the back-of-the-milk-carton sense, but the "oh, didn't I tell you I was going to Philadelphia for the holidays?" sense.

So, realizing there was physically no way to film the conclusion of the Dex / Liz storyline in time for Episode 15, we (and by "we" I mean "I") decided to turn the episode into a 2-parter. Looking back, there would have been no way to tell the complete story as well as possible in a mere ten minutes, so 2 episodes worked out much beter for us. But it's easy to consider yourself blessed when all you've done is survive an easily-avoidable accident.

So, for those of you considering filming things in advance, here are a few tips to help you keep your lid on tight:

5 Tips for Saving Time (and Your Sanity) While Making Web Video

1. Know Everyone's Schedule - Especially During the Holidays

Do you think you know who's going home and who's staying put? Call or email to make sure. Banking on the fact that you can pull off that pivotal shot "anytime next week" is an invitation for on-the-fly rewrites.

2. Schedule an Extra Hour Per Shoot

When Dex (really Kevin Koch) returned from his holiday vacation, he also returned to work at a local hotel restaurant with flexible scheduling policies. Considering he'd been getting cut early all week long, he reasoned that scheduling our shoot for Friday night -- when he was scheduled to be out by 10 at the latest -- would give us ample time to film.

As irony would have it, Friday was the night Kevin wound up staying until 10:36 PM, just in time to catch a bus to the shoot that dropped him off at 11:06. Considering I needed to pick someone else up at 11:30, that gave us a window of -20 minutes to get the shot. Long story short: someone wound up sitting on a bench for an hour waiting for me to pick her up while we finished the shot on the only night both actors were free.

Long story shorter: If you think it'll take an hour, give yourself two.

3. Fewer Edits Means Faster Editing

If you watch Episode 16, you'll notice the Leo and Dierdre sequences are planted firmly around one setup: a loveseat. This isn't because I didn't think multiple setups would help tell the story better -- in fact, we used multiple setups in their first scene. It's because I realized continuous shots would cut my editing time down severely, so we kept the action in the latter scenes to a minimum in order to allow as much of the story to be told in one long shot as possible.

When editing, those long shots saved me at least half an hour apiece in total cutting time. Conversely, the Todd / Rich conversation, which might seem like the easiest thing to film and edit, was actually the most time-consuming because we only have one camera on STBD so every setup -- including each side of a conversation -- must be filmed separately. Since Matt Pavlosky and Erik Schark were improvising most of their dialogue -- again, a fault of the original scene we'd planned falling through due to a scheduling hiccup -- that forced me to find the threads of dialogue that actually connected from take to take, which wound up being a plethora of possibilities.

Limited angles = limited possibilities, and while the storytelling is always my first priority, not going crazy while editing at 4 AM certainly helps.

4. Edit the Scripted Scenes First

If you're sticking to a target time -- for STBD, 10 minutes per episode -- you need to know which portions of each episode are static in time and which are flexible.

For example, I know in advance that every episode will have a "Previously on STBD" recap (30 seconds), an intro scene (30-60 seconds), a title sequence (30 seconds) and closing credits / extra footage (30-60 seconds). That leaves 7-8 minutes of new "story" per episode, on average (some have less, some have more).

If a scene has been scripted and the actors don't ad-lib or improvise too much, the finished edit will usually come in just under the estimated page time (which is expected to be 1 minute per printed page, as per Hollywood standards). Edit those scenes first, because that's screen time you can't easily add to or subtract from. Once those scenes are in place on your timeline, along with the standard elements like titles and credits, you'll know how much time you can actually allot to the improvised scenes (if you have any -- we almost always do), and that will help you make the hard decisions of what to keep and what to cut.

Or, put another way, you don't want to spend 2 hours editing a scene only to discover that it needs to be chopped in half to meet your time limit.

5. Let the Episode Tell Its Own Story

When I first drew up the plot and order of sequences for Episode 16, I devoted most of the page time to the Dex and Liz story. On paper, it seemed the most interesting, and their getting-to-know-you banter was meant to include numerous crafty insights and references to plot points past and future. I figured the Todd and Dierdre scenes would each take up another quarter of the story.

When it actually came time to film the scenes, we had to junk the 5 page script I'd written for Liz and Dex because we literally had no time to rehearse. Instead, they improvised the entire sequence from beginning to end, and I was left to use what I felt helped tell their story AND intercut well with the other sequences. This meant reducing their screentime significantly AND changing the pacing and order of the episode.

Meanwhile, the Todd and Rich scenes wound up including a lot more information than I orginally intended because of the way the actors improvised around the necessary plot points. Thus, that sequence comes in with more screen time than the scenes I felt were the "heart" of the story -- and yet, the Dex / Liz and Leo / Dierdre sections still feel like the center of the episode, despite the fact that they appear in a completely different order than they were supposed to.

Now, let's see if I can learn from my own advice for next week...

Brainstorming Follow-Up: The Realization

Too many things.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that this is the conclusion I came to during last night's brainstorming session: I'm doing too much.

It's not that I'm overworked. Lord knows I waste enough time in a day to make the dead rise in anger. It's that I'm unfocused. I have too many "must-do"s on my plate, and more "want to do"s waiting to be added. I have a billion things I SHOULD be doing, but I have no real understanding of which ones are vital.

So I'm scaling back.

The amount of time I work per week won't change, but the number of things I'm doing alone needs to decrease, so I can get them done well. Then, as I master the art of focus and dedication, I can get faster at what I do and add more tasks to the list. I can also find reliable collaborators who can help shoulder some of the responsibilities (and influence the direction) of our joint ventures. But if I try to tackle the 800 items on the various texts and stickies littering my desktop all by myself without an order of operations, I'll spin in circles until I collapse.

Which ones are the important ones? I'll let you know as I figure them out.

In the meantime, I have entire episode to film for Monday...

Scheduling: The Web Video Version of Calculus

ICal. A Web video producer's best friend.
Let's say you have a web series. And let's say you have a cast of about 20 active actors who take part in the ongoing storylines.

Some of these actors have day jobs. Some of them are in college. Some of them are in college AND have part-time jobs. And almost all of them are involved in live theatre and independent film projects.

You want to update with a new episode every week. This means you need to know when everyone is available at all times, so you can look at the group schedule and instantly know when Actors B-G are free to film a certain sequence.

You also need to know the availability of your locations. Even if you're filming in your own apartment, there are likely to be times when you'd rather not have a dozen "friends" tromping through your bedroom. Working with actual businesses or production facilities is even more stringent -- they have narrow stretches of free time that they can squeeze you in, and they usually need to know your intentions well in advance.

So: how do you juggle 20 people's schedules PLUS location schedules WHILE writing, shooting and editing 10 minutes of a weekly web series, each week, every week? Here are a few tips, culled from my years of getting it wrong (and occasionally right).

5 Tips for Scheduling Your Web Series
1. Use iCal (or somesuch similar program) to keep each individual schedule straight. Then you can toggle each person or place's schedule on or off in your viewer, enabling you to ONLY see the availability of the actors and locations in question.

(In a perfect world, the actors would be able to login and update the schedule themselves, but as we all know, very few people are accountable on a regular basis. If you're going to rely on someone to keep your schedules straight, it's either going to be you or one person you entrust the task to, not each individual.)

2. Arrange to shoot with recurring cast members in the same location every week. This way, even people with regular jobs and other commitments can set aside a certain amount of time each week, in advance, during which time they can reliably inform their employers and significant others that they are busy. This will keep your hair from greying for at least another week.

(Side note: Be sure to actually SHOOT on these days, at these times. Otherwise, your cast is setting aside valuable time for no reason, and your locations start to believe you'r enot really serious about including them. Everyone will be far less likely to take your future scheduling requests seriously if you abuse their good graces and keep them waiting.)

3. Film as much in one location as possible. If you have seven scenes scheduled for Location A, and you have access to it for 5 hours at a stretch, it stands to reason that you can squeeze in more than one scene per shoot. Doubling or tripling up on your shoots (when possible) frees up a lot of time in the future, and gives you added flexibility in case you need to do reshoots later.

(Warning: Continuity is extremely important here. You'll need to know what everyone is wearing adn what props are needed for each scene, and provide that to the cast in advance, so they can keep it straight themselves. Otherwise, you'll end up needing to reshoot certain scenes down the line when you realize hair and jewelry don't match up.)

4. Film as much in advance as possible. Just because you're updating the series weekly doesn't mean you need to film each scene in chronlogical order. Much like the location bulking mentioned above, if one of your actors has a free day, figure out how many upcoming scenes you can squeeze into that day and maximize his / her free time. Not only will you get ahead on your shot list, but the actor will thank you later for NOT calling them at the last minute to shoehorn a shoot into the week when they're really busy.

(Warning: Again, continuity is key here. So is writing ahead. You can't film what doesn't exist, and you don't want to film scenes whose bridge scenes haven't been written yet. Otherwise, you'll end up with dialogue or actions that don't match the facts and motivation of the scenes you film later, and what seems like inspired improvisation today will become an albatross around your neck a week from now.)

5. Break your shot list down by Actors, Locations, and Time of Day. This way, when you look ahead at the 20 or so scenes you need to film in the next 2 weeks, you can see at a glance how many of them require the same actor or group of actors, the same location(s) and which need to be filmed during daylight or nighttime lighting. Then, if you need to film 3 evening scenes, or 4 scenes at Location W, you can find creative ways to fit multiple shots into the same shooting day AND you'll know, by process of elimination, when OTHER scenes must be filmed.

(For example: this week, we have 5 different locations to film in, all of which are supposed to take place in the evening. Since there aren't enough evenings in the week to film AND edit everything in time for Monday, it stands to reason that some creative manipulation of time and space will need to be done on my end.)

Hopefully these suggestions can help you better manage your time, whether you have a cast of 2 or 20. We all need to be spending as much time as possible making the best shows we can, and that means more hours spent on writing, filming and editing and less time spent on the logic problems of logistics and paperwork.