ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

7 years, 2 months ago - Vasco de Sousa

Over the past five years, the majority of differences of opinion I've witnessed in my team have been about whether a specific animal is a rodent or not, or how Welsh something is. But, when we talk about film related things, it's usually how long something takes.

Either if I'm looking to find employment, or to plan a shoot, or bid on a project for a client, the sticking point these days isn't so much hourly/daily/weekly fees, but how many hours the job *should* take to complete. When I'm budgeting my own films, I have no problem, but when I'm working with people new to the industry (especially clients in the finance industry) I get some pretty zany expectations.

Now, I can understand that perhaps I am a slow poke, and the research I do may also be reading and hearing about other slow pokes. So, I thought I'd start a discussion.

I think that it takes a year to write an academy award winning screenplay, four months minimum something commercially viable, and six months is a good length for an enjoyable comedy. Shorts are relatively quick, because there isn't as much space for character development. I have written a short in an afternoon when pressed for time to make a student film. But, I still prefer a short written in two weeks or more. (Fawlty Towers episodes, if I understand correctly, took six weeks each, with two brilliant writers.) Writer-director scripts are also quicker, for reasons I may go into in the future.

I hear about scripts written in five days, but upon examination, they all seem to be extensively re-written prior to production. (Except for Plan Nine From Outer Space and others of that quality.)

Budgeting and scheduling a script (hopefully with a shot list or storyboard available too), I believe takes at least a couple of weeks to do properly. For a feature, I think eight weeks of pre-production is normal, excluding development type of activities like storyboarding (I like to storyboard "slowly"). Of course, I think this depends a lot on your style, and again, the complexity of the script.

However, for some very simple scripts, it could be done in a day. (This one I wrote is set in one room, hardly any props, four actors who don't change costume, almost like a play.) Again, scheduling and budgeting your own script might be quicker.

Transcribing a script, and subtitling, I think will take minimum a full day for a feature, but only if you're a trained, very fast typist. Allow two or three days. Of course, it depends on the level of accuracy (there are content mills you can hire with a 12 hour turnaround.) However, I transcribe a lot of audio, and even my own voice can take a while. If you have multiple voices, things like Dragon don't always work so well. Allow two days if it's crystal clear audio, three days if it's complex/fast talking/specialist. (Or, at least 4-6 minutes for every minute of video, but four only if it's a really simple job, which it almost never is.) There are shortcuts of course, especially if the actors generally keep to the script.

Filmming? I hear everything from 12 set ups per day to 25. This really depends on the complexity of the shot and the acting, in my experience. I don't tend to have huge crews, but I tend to make pretty accurate guesses when budgeting.

That said, I really don't like to push it to more than five minutes a day, unless you're doing something like a sketch show or TV where the audience doesn't expect the camera to move a lot. And those tend to be rehearsed for a week anyway.

Editing? This really depends upon the footage, rather than the final cut. Some clients do half my job for me. Others just have a mess that would be cheaper to reshoot than to edit.

Learning a role? If you want to act it well (and not just "soapy") my old mentor recommended one hour of study to every minute on stage. I suppose on screen is similar, although you don't need to remember the whole "play" at once, and you seldom have that kind of time in film anyway.

Okay, I provided some examples that you can counter, and you can give your own for your own job. How long should we allow, for instance, if we wanted to build a complex set, or to write a score for a 120 minute film, or to design and assemble a renaissance costume?