On another great ‘stack, Ami Vora recently posted “26 Film Social Hot Takes” which had terrific ideas about posting social media images and video, including behind-the-scenes (BTS) footage. I’d like to expand on that and offer my take on why shooting BTS on even the lowest budget micro NonDê film is not only essential, but actually can make you money!
I recently “co-produced” a film called MattBeth that my friends were making. I insisted they let me shoot some BTS on the first weekend of principal photography in LA. They said, “Really, why?” I said, “It’s in my book. Trust me.” Sure enough, I showed up on set with my trusty little Lumix and a cheap mic, and shot for a few hours: Footage of the crew shooting, a couple interviews with cast and crew, lots of slates slapping and directors saying “action” and “cut.” I went home, cut together a 2-minute clip, texted it to the filmmakers, and literally ten minutes later, they texted back: “Just sent BTS to our investors and raised another $10,000.” That fast.
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Raising money while shooting your film is only one reason to shoot BTS, but it’s not a bad one. The MattBeth team were even savvier. They invited investors to the set to play background roles. One investor who’s active on social media shot her own BTS, cut together a great little video and posted it herself on Instagram. It’s always a good idea to get your investors emotionally vested in your film. But truly genius when they promote the film actively to their own friends and fans.
1stAD Alan Steinman and crew on the set of 18½. photo credit: Dan Mirvish
On my own last film, our Watergate thriller/comedy 18½, I shot so much BTS, I edited it into a standalone feature documentary that’s a half-hour longer than the feature itself. We used this BTS doc as an exclusive bonus feature on our DVD (which itself became a hit in libraries especially). Along the way, we used excerpts of it in all kinds of ways from publicity to social media.
An important, and often forgotten, subset of your crew is your “electronic press kit” (EPK) team, whose job it is to shoot your behind-the-scenes (aka BTS) footage. With your EPK crew, your first priority should be to get sit-down interviews of your principal cast. Those are the interviews you’re actually going to need for your EPK (for festivals and distribution), but also for promotional clips on YouTube, Vimeo and of course your DVD extras. But you, the savvy filmmaker, will use your EPK team for much more devious purposes: To distract your producers, butter up your crew and make yourself look like a genius.
First off, make sure your EPK team is loyal to you, the director, rather than to the DP, a producer, financier or the studio. Ideally, they should be other filmmaker friends of yours— old pals from film school, film festivals or one of those hoity-toity labs you attended. It’s very hard to hire your director friends in any other capacity on your own film; most directors are generalists who may not have a specific skill set that qualifies them for a real crew posi- tion. You don’t see Steven Spielberg holding the boom on a Francis Ford Coppola film, Wes Anderson key gripping for Noah Baumbach, or Noah pulling focus for Greta Gerwig. And even if they are qualified, chances are either their egos would preclude them from working for their pals, or they’re simply too busy to commit to a full three-week shoot. But a day or two to hang out on a pal’s set, meet new actors, eat craft service and bask in the schadenfreude of their best friend’s production nightmares? Who wouldn’t want to do that?
So once you’ve got your loyal EPK team, armed with little more than a camera, a tripod and a $20 lav mic, you want to get them set up in a nicely lit corner near the set, but not on it. It’s got to be far enough away for sound purposes that they can keep working even while you’re shooting on the main set. Your EPK team needs to give your cast and crew the impression that they’re speaking confidentially and candidly without the director or other actors in earshot. Have your DP set up the lights, or better yet, your gaffer, key grip or other junior crew member—it’ll make them feel important and talented! If you’ve got some old Mole incandescent lights or broken C-stands, use them as props behind the interviewees to make it look like you’re making a real movie.
Jim Rash interviewed on the set of our film Bernard and Huey. Lots of C-stands in the background!
With the cast, make sure your EPK crew asks these standard questions: What’s your name, what’s the movie about, who are you playing, what’s it like working on an indie film, how are the other actors to work with (go through their names one at a time) and how is the director to work with? Make sure the actors repeat the questions in their own voice before answering them. It’s very important to get all this during production. Once you wrap, you might never see your actors again, and certainly not while they’re in hair, makeup and costume, and are in a place where they can be lit, mic’d and shot professionally. Even if you do catch up to them later, they may hate you, or worse, have forgotten you. So be sure you and your 1st AD know when to schedule these interviews. If you have a choice, try to do it fairly early in your shooting schedule—by the last week, it’ll be harder to find the time, and you run the risk of a bitter cast saying horrible things about you and the film.
Once your EPK crew is already lit and set up for the cast interviews, you should put them to work also interviewing your producers and other crew members. For one thing, the EPK team may have big gaps in their interviewing schedule—doing maybe two of your lead actors at 10 am and 10:30 am and then not have access to your other actors again until 4 pm. Having your EPK team interview your producers does two things: It boosts your producers’ egos and makes them feel like real filmmakers who made important creative decisions in getting this film made (and not just the boring decisions to either raise the money or spend it, depending on which sort of producer it is).
The other reason is a bit sneakier. If you’re very savvy about your EPK scheduling, you can get the producers off the set and out of your hair while you’re doing the one scene that you really did not want them to see you shoot (maybe for creative or financial reasons). They could be droning on quite happily for an hour to your EPK crew about how Ted Hope and Kathleen Kennedy were their producorial influences, while your EPK director friend is egging them on and stroking their egos. Meanwhile, you’re 100 yards away doing an elaborate Busby Berkeley crane shot with 30 mermaids and a trained sea lion you hired with the producer’s credit card. Likewise, if you need to get the person who owns or manages your location off your set while you shoot the sea lion scene in his swimming pool, then send him for an EPK interview for an hour.
Similarly, you should use your EPK crew to interview all kinds of people on your crew. Most obviously, you should get interviews with your screenwriters (if available...which also helps keep them off the set), and your key below-the-line crew like your DP, editor, production designer and costume designer. Since some of these people (especially your DP) will be on set, shooting most of the time, you may have to do the EPK piece with them either during lunch, or after you’ve wrapped. You’ll notice that all of these positions are Oscar-eligible categories. You may never have any expectation of them winning an Oscar for their contributions to your little indie, but in their minds, they do. They want to be asked the key creative questions that their respective guild magazine or fellow Academy members would ask them during an Oscar campaign. And who knows? If your film is awards-worthy, then your distributor will actually be able to use these interviews for just that purpose. If your EPK team has the time then put them to work interviewing and adulating all kinds of below-the-line members of your crew.
Director Dan Mirvish on the set of 18½. Notably, no one else is looking in the direction he’s pointing. photo credit: Greg Starr
Beyond the sit-down interviews, ideally you want your EPK crew to get behind-the- scenes footage on set. The key thing here is to get enough shots of you, the director, looking director-ish, pointing at things and saying “action” and “cut” decisively and loudly—preferably on your biggest stunt, action or extras scenes. Unfortunately, your one filmmaker pal who’s doing you a solid by shooting your EPK interviews might not also be available on exactly your big shooting days. Ideally, you want someone shooting at least some behind-the-scenes footage every day of your production. And the best person for that is your still photographer!
That’s it for now! Maybe next time I’ll post the next section in the book where I talk about the relationship between the still photographer and the BTS crew… or is it the same person??
Thanks for reading Hollytics/Pollywood by Dan Mirvish! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
This is a fabulous breakdown, Dan. Really makes me excited to shoot BTS stuff on our next shoot.
So many valuable insights here, Dan. Thanks for this!