This was prepared decades ago for an illustrated talk I gave to Wanstead & Woodford (if memory serves).  Coming upon it by accident recently I was struck by how much of it is relevant still ...

Dammit - you get the picture sharp and properly exposed, the actors remember their lines, none of the lights fall over, the soundtrack is clearly audible and granny loves it. But somehow that isn't enough. Competition judges say your movie is fine but could be trimmed by about a third. It could be a 45 second joke and they'd still suggest that 30 seconds would be better!

They're asking for less - or are they? There must be something more to movies.

MAKE THE AUDIENCE WORK

Usually the fault found in amateur movies is said to be an unwillingness to cut ruthlessly - and sometimes that is true. My own theory, however, is that all too often the problem is the viewer has been given too little to do and so feels bored despite the pace of the action.

People are really quite energetic and willing to work - no matter what we all pretend. With plenty of exposure to film and television we are all quite sophisticated viewers capable of absorbing an awful lot of information from the screen and loudspeaker.

We're quite prepared to seek out information in the picture - which is why overacting needs to be curbed.

PERFORMANCE

Amateur actors often go rather over-the-top. It is extremely difficult to obtain the kind of underplaying necessary to convey real emotion on screen.  One amateur award winner tells a story of his first 16mm film with actress Frances de la Tour of Rising Damp fame. He was nervous  and during the first day of shooting got frantic about what he thought was her flat, wooden response.  He could not work out a tactful way to tell her ... and when he saw the rushes was glad he had not. Her acting was exactly right for the camera with tiny movements of the head and eyes, a twitch of the lip and a low-key style that conveyed real human emotion.

For the movie-maker it may sometimes be wise to use a trick from stage and tv: rehearse your actors till they are almost exhausted and then shoot when they are too tired to gesticulate wildly or put energy into it. Their spirit is willing but the flesh weak. (You may lose friends that way!) The trick is to get the actors believing their roles but keeping their feelings inside with true British phlegm. If they live the part "inside" it will show through to the camera no matter how restricted their performance may seem at first and the viewer will seek out that inner truth.

NARRATIVE

But first things first - we don't need actors till we've sorted out a plot. Indeed we may scarcely need actors at all for some types of film.

The essence of a good story is to have a protagonist (hero or heroine) with a clear goal: to win the match, find the crook, discover the gold, get away with murder ... and to have a force that is very likely to stop them achieving that purpose. You need a credible antagonist - where's the challenge if Superman's enemy is a child with a catapult?

The story then needs a couple of early skirmishes to set the a final confrontation in  which the audience is not completely sure in advance who will triumph. When the goal is finally achieved it  is seen as having some value.

Documentaries and mood movies also need such shaping. The carver has a dream shape but the wood is unobtainable / too hard to cut / too expensive... The barge needs to reach port but the canal locks are dodgy, the tow-path is damaged, the banks are flooded... There's a beautiful sunset but houses block the view, there's a threat of rain, traffic noise distracts... You can usually engineer such little bits of drama into the most solemn and factual reporting. They will add enormous audience appeal.

A storyboard is often a great help in planning such a narrative. All you. need is roughly drawn pictures of every scene each accompanied by a brief caption. It's easy then to study the movie's shape.

SHAPE

Most amateur movies need more shape. A film's shape should support the narrative structure. It's not hard but on the one hand people worry about seeming too pretentious and on the other they simply don't take enough time to work it all out.

At the plot level shape usually means ending with a neat reference back to the beginning to round things off such as: quest achieved, horror realised, lover won etc.

It also helps to imagine your film as having a physical shape which you construct in the editor.  One such shape is a parabola where you start with shots lasting several seconds each, get gradually shorter as you reach a dramatic climax, then get longer again in the same number of steps as you approach the end credit.

Another more useful shape is the alpine range where you build up the speed of cuts to a small peak, then get longer, then speed up again to an even greater height for the climax and go rapidly down again afterwards .. . the long walk into the sunset syndrome!   Choose a shape suited to the dramatic structure of your story

There are many other ways to shape your film . . in performance an actor might start by fiddling with rings, hair etc. move to bigger movements - all the way to punches, full-speed chases and battles - then end with a tiny movement - button down holster, tuck in handkerchief and so forth.

You should use colour tones in settings, decor and clothes - start in pastels, move to primary colours for climax and back to pastels for the end for example. Or use pale colours for weak characters, strong colours for strong characters, black and white clothes for hard-nosed types and so on.

FRAMING

If there's plenty of light to let you have deep focus shots then framing the character in some way can say a lot about them ... are they ivory tower types sheltered inside a study ... are the lovers seen through a bower of leaves or a factory gate... is the lone toddler seen through parked cars or a garden gate?

Most films are shot with the camera at normal adult eye-line. If the characters sit, the camera comes down. If your camera looks up at someone they become impressive, domineering, awesome. If the camera looks down on someone they are seen as unimportant, inferior, trivial. It's a simple trick but useful.

You might start with straight lines parallel to the frame edges fairly prominent: bed-stead, actor upright by horizontal table-top and so on, then move to diagonal lines for the climax only to return to perpendiculars at the end. Hopefully your audience will not be consciously aware of this but it will please them unconsciously and keep their minds busy.

Most people interpret a diagonal from bottom left to top right as rising, the other way is falling. If your characters move up an up line, or down a down one, that suggests compliance. If they do the opposite then that helps cue the audience that there is some tension and resistance going on.

Since most of us scan a picture from left to right - down the falling diagonal in fact - a solid / important area on the right will buffer our eyes and keep attention while a similar area on the left will not. Use that to encourage the audience to see what you intend them to notice. Similarly the old 'Golden Mean' rules indicate that our eyes concentrate most on those areas of the picture where the Means cross. (Means = imaginary lines one third of the frame in and parallel to each edge.)

You use these eye-forcing tricks to make sure the audience sees things other characters don't. Careful placing of the characters could change a scene from Hitchock's classic definition of surprise to suspense:

Surprise = two people at a table and a bomb goes off

Suspense = we see someone place a bomb under a table and watch two people sit down ...

If the bomber were in one of the 'eye-catching' positions we'd be sure to see him...

TRICKS

There are some self-consciously filmic tricks that can be effective in moderation. One is the crane shot: camera moving vertically up or down - a most unnatural and disturbing shot. Use it for disturbing moments in the story. Another is the focus pull - changing sharp focus from background character to foreground or vice-versa suggests suspicion, a rift between the people. Slow zooms out of telephoto gradually reveal a character's surroundings and lead to effects similar to framing above . .. but because we first see the action unframed we may form an interpretation different from the final one. We're forced to re-assess the character. Incidentally you can get the same effect by having a character in the foreground block much of the shot then move away to reveal more of the action.

Fade-outs, fade-ins, ripples, wipes, irises, slow motion, reverse motion, speeding up, including still shots, pixillation - all have their place but a small and very limited place.

SOUND

Getting sound right is so difficult that few amateurs try more than just getting it clear and in synch. But it can be a valuable smoothing link between scenes - helping to mask cuts. It's almost always worth shooting a dialogue scene in long-shot and using that complete recording to dub over the close-ups you use to interact.

Sound tracks are so artificial - you can rarely use only location sound - that they force you to realise that the whole task of making a film is creating an artificial reality - no matter how closely you want to reflect the actual world you see. The BBC's Natural History Unit is justly famous for its wildlife documentaries - but they hardly ever use live sound. All those birds, animals and sighing trees are dubbed from tape libraries. Take that philosophy to heart and have no qualms about imposing artificial constraints on the filming - to create the best artificial reality you can.

Music can provide a continuity missing in the images. Music is unnatural but thoroughly accepted by everyone - which lets you do unnatural visuals and have them accepted while the music lasts. We all get tired of hearing the same old soundtracks - that rumpty-tumpty stuff that is aptly described as "eminently fade-able" muzak.

It is worth trying to have special music composed for you - or at least to have a special interpretation and arrangement of old (non copyright) themes. There are an awful lot of amateur and semi-professional musicians about who would love to try scoring a film with you. If you can find all the other skills for your epic production in your local community don't give up on music. As for recording them - experiment till it sounds right. Maybe in a hall, maybe in a cupboard, maybe in the garden. It can look crazy or unorthodox or impossible - that's unimportant. Only the sound counts.

TIMING

You must catch the audience's attention in the first 30 seconds for a short film . . . with a feature you get 90 seconds! Virtually all audiences will switch off their attention twice every 40 minutes! Life is hard for film-makers.

Virtually all amateur films - including animation - hold individual shots too long. Few professionals hold a single steady camera position for more than a few seconds. Tracking and panning shots may last longer or occasionally if there is fascinating breath-holding action going on a longer shot will appear - but rarely. Of course it takes time to prepare camera set-ups but the on-screen results pay off. The audience may see exactly the same action in three shots as in twenty but the latter will seem less tedious.

Don't forget the magic of the six second delay - keep a static image on screen that long and people are seeking frantically for action - they'll spot a tiny shape in the background or pick up a tiny sound on the track.

Imagine a scene: man enters patch of shadow (we expect him to be moving at a steady pace) ... shadow (we assume he is moving through the shadow) shadow . .. (he should emerge. Where is he?!) You can worry viewers by not letting him emerge on time - but do so for a purpose.

- Dave Watterson Jan 2003

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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