Friday, July 29, 2011

The 3 Keys to Winning.

LawHag here,

Hope everyone has been doing well! I can't believe we are so far into summer already, but you've got a little more than a month before the Rio deadline, plenty of time to make something great. Anyway, after we've seen so many entries for all the competitions, we decided to sit down and really figure out which films speak to us. So here are our 3 keys to winning and catching our attention:




1. Get Creative:


Always try to find the most creative solution. This applies to your script, story, props, locations, budget limitations etc. Every aspect of the production needs to be motivated by creativity. We like watching the films that have never been done before.

2. Judge a book by its cover. Well not the cover, probably the first 5 pages. On watching the hundreds of entries for each competition, it really takes us about 5 seconds to determine whether we think a film is good or not. This doesn't mean we're amazing judges, it just means that with only 60 seconds to tell a story, you better win the audience over in the first 5 seconds. Watching hundreds of entries means that we've seen many of the same premises, concepts, stories etc. and we're itching to see something new. If you've got an intro that says "here's something cool" we will definitely keep watching. Along the same lines if those first 5 seconds are cool we want it to have an amazing last 5 seconds as well. Many movies start really well and sort of taper off, make sure the end really makes the audience leave with an impression. Try doing a twist, the audience loves that as well.

3. Production quality isn't everything, but it's important. Many people now have access to a great camera like a 5D or 7D and editing programs such as FCP so the quality of work is getting better and better. The story is always the most important, but make sure that your cinematography, production quality, editing, actors etc. all work together to serve the story. You don't have to use a dolly or a jib in every shot, just the ones that really need it (we see films that over-use dolly moves and we keep thinking, did they really need to do that?) You don't need to pour thousands of dollars into your production, but spend the money where its needed. Make sure your production quality is good enough so that your story comes through.

That's it, so go ahead and win Rio! We've given a lot of technical advice before but after seeing that people are improving across the board in cinematography and editing, it's now the story that is most important. So start writing, we can't wait to see what you come up with next!

Let us know what you guys do to get that big idea.

Your friendly neighborhood
LawHag

1 comment:

  1. In the creative brief, you mention using the "Sounds of Refreshment" library for sounds...where is this library located?

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