Making Better Movies

Now I’m not condoning that I make great movies. My projects still have a lot of mistakes that I need to fix. But over the years I’ve gotten better because I’ve focused on the small things.

In order to make a movie, or anything in general, you should never leave out the small things. When you think about it, all the small things will eventually build up to become one big conglomeration. You may not think it’s such a big deal, but it can become a big deal.

For instance, in my last post, I talked about editing audio. Today, on a second viewing at a higher volume, I realized that my “editing job” left a pretty noticeable artifact in between dialogue. You can’t tell when the volume is low enough, but when boosted, you know it’s there. I opted to go back and re-edit all of the audio clips I did yesterday. I finished half of them yesterday.

To go back and re-edit these clips, PLUS edit the rest of the movie audio, took the entire day (excluding going out to the mall). Some may not have opted to take on such a task, but I did because I knew that I’d be sorely unhappy with the results in the future. This artifact, while not so imposing, would have been present throughout the entire video and would have ruined the parts where silence was key to the mood. Taking it out of all the audio fixed a small problem that encased the entire video.

What I’m trying to say here is that the smallest details are sometimes the most crucial. There should be no shortcuts to making a good movie.