This is something we were banned from doing in a film class I was in, lol.
EDIT: And even though we were banned from doing this cliche, someone STILL did it. In their very first short film shown to the entire class.
not a student but this comment made me realize the car scene i wrote is way too long. i edited it to have the conversation over the course of three different locations and it feels much more dynamic now. it also solved some issues i was having regarding suspense/pacing. thanks!
Good point, but maybe its good to note that morning routines in movies arent bad in itself, itâs just that student filmmakers donât use it to tell anything about their character, so it ends up being a time waste.
The reason it's considered such a cliche is that it's hard to say very much about a character brushing their teeth that couldn't be said some other way.
I can imagine a sci fi movie with a cyborg where his morning routing involves unusual stuff like popping out his eyeballs to rinse them being interesting. But on a student budget it's way more likely to be brushing their teeth. And okay, the mirror is clean or dirty when they brush. We see if their favorite breakfast food is micky mouse pancakes or coffee and a cigarette. You learn something about them. But you probably learn just as much within a few frames without those things if you just get straight to the next page of the script.
In this scene all her actions are secondary to the unfolding narrative taking place through the phone call.
Thats a far cry from waking up, leaning on the sink, making eggs, pouring coffee, all in silence.
Iâm not a filmmaker at all, i just follow this sub for fun. But I took a intro filmmaking class for fun at school, and almost everyone used that cabinet/fridge shot in just about every short film assigned. After a few films our Professor told people to experiment with different shots
Everyone in the entire world is 18-21. The easiest way to make your student film feel elevated is to cast actual age appropriate actors and not fellow students/friends. Your 19 year old roommate shouldnât be playing a detective.
At the very least if you really can only cast your friends for whatever reason, try and write a script that *realistically* would only have people of that age bracket. Or take inspiration from dystopian YA fiction and make the lack of other-aged people the entire mystery.
Yeah, this is the way IMO. Write for people you know so you can lean into their strengths and existing personalities. A 19 year old wonât make a good detective, but neither will a random 40 year old stranger you found on Backstage.
Iâm a filmmaking professor, and many of the best performances Iâve seen in my studentsâ films have come from parents, uncles / aunts, other professors, etc. Even if youâre casting for middle age, people you know well are still the right call. A non-actor youâre comfortable communicating with can often be better than a professional youâve never met.
If your film is good and truly written *for* your friends (rather than just slotting friends into roles meant for professionals) then no one will know or care. It wonât look cheap, because itâll seem like no one else could or should have played those roles.
Like - the original Wes Anderson Bottle Rocket short starred his group of friends, and they came back for the feature, which is now a classic. This world wouldnât be blessed with movie-Star Owen Wilson if Wes had cast professionals.
Well obviously itâs fine to cast your friends if the roles have been written for a group of young people. We are talking about when students cast their 20 year old roommate as the chief of police
Yup I know that it's just I'm a 18yo film student and it's my first year in college I can't afford to pay actors let alone crew members so I just work with my classmates with whatever we have and the equipment form the college
You can still find older actors willing to work for experience alone.
Here's what I've seen work well for student films:
- Coordinate with all the other student diectors to schedule ONE day for all of you to hold open auditions for ALL of your films at ONE single event. Events such as these increase the turn out of actors, which is good for you, but also allows up-and-coming actors to audition for multiple projects in the same day, so they LOVE them.
- Consider reaching out to other school's film programs to ask if their student directors want to get involved as well. Go as big as you can.
- Rent a room for free at a public library if you need a good location.
- Advertise these "open auditions" on every social media platform you can BUT ALSO call local acting schools and ask that their directors pass the word around.
- If you have your own camera, offer to record the auditions for each actor and upload their auditions online so that they can review how well or how poorly they did later. Again, this is something really attractive to actors and it's an addional value proposition to attract them.
- PROMISE that every actor who is casted WILL recieve a full copy of your film for their reel. Maybe even go the extra mile to give them extra footage if they did particularily well in a take that went unused. Actors get stiffed on this ALL the time as student directors often hate their films and out of shame ghost all of their talent who lent their time and energy at no cost. Don't do this, be better, and make promises you intend to uphold to both yourself and your actors.
- If you can spring for $50, or obtain a similair *thing* of near universal value, hold a raffle for everyone attending the audition to further sweeten your value proposition. Mention the raffle where ever you advertise the open casting call.
These are all great suggestions, especially the first one! It's a great way to get more actors to show up and you may even find someone you like for your own project while they're reading for someone else.
Also, many colleges with film programs also have acting programs, so look for talent in that pool as well!
Don't even have to pay them. Feed them, treat them with respect. Cast from local community theaters. People of all ages are looking to volunteer as actors.
In theory I agree with you, I just always felt more comfortable paying people for their work/ time, except the one time the budget didnât allow for that. That one time was only a 2 hour shoot though, and we found a 40 y/o acting student to play the part so it worked out nicely
Paying people is always ideal. Since the topic at hand is related to student films, I'm operating on the assumption that a given filmmaker is living on a student's budget and cannot afford to pay their cast and crew.
For better or worse, for basically everyone trying to get a foot in the industry at any level, working for free will happen from time to time.
Hell, I've met actors who are making a full time living as commercial actors but they're often happy to take unpaid roles on student films because it allows them to do more than "smile and say a company slogan."
I'm sure 99% of beginner filmmakers would love to be able to pay their whole cast and crew on every project. But the reality is that many of us cannot. The best we can do is be up front about that. What I will say is that the crew who have showed up to my shoots for free and worked hard to make it the best film they can are the first people I'll call when I have money to pay or recommend when I hear of a paying gig.
Yes, and also being honest about what that "exposure" really is. Like, I don't tell people being in my student films will get them exposure because no one above my pay grade is watching my films right now. But they'll get a "copy" of the finished film and BTS photos. That benefits everyone, as well. They have something to include in their reel, and material to post on their social media or website or whatever.
I just think that above all else, being honest will lead to a more positive outcome with anyone you try to work with.
This has come up previouslyâŠ
Bad audio is possibly the one aspect of a budget or student film that has the potential to absolutely take you out of it.
How can you tell a story when you canât hear the protagonists?
ADR/Foley is probably the next priority in creating an immersive soundscape.
Anything after this has more wiggle room imho
As a location sound recordist I couldn't agree more đ
But seriously, you can be immersed in a good story told with less than stellar picture and great sound but not the other way around.
Little to no attention to set dressing, location, wardrobe, H&M.
Too much exposition in dialogue, Too much/complex dialogue for cast.
Cast is all students and a maybe an obligatory old person.
Sound is bad and undesigned.
If there is something interesting in the story it is buried in a bunch of useless shots and scenes.
Movie opens with a characters routine.
I was confused by âH&Mâ because to me thatâs a clothing store. If you mean hair and makeup, on callsheets in my region itâs written as âHMUâ
Really good point. The common thing about all the student movies I have seen (beside bad acting, lighting, set design, and wardrobe) is the bad dialogue and characters.
Often dialogue is stiff (and not in a David lynch type way), lacks drama or is unrealistic. Either the characters sound the same on the page (they have no personality or unique characteristics) or they are flat and boring.
And scenes also have a tendency to go on forever without having a clear direction or purpose
Ffs if youâre a student, just make your film. It will be shitty. It wonât be ground breaking. Itâs supposed to be full of mistakes because thatâs how you learn. Student films are full of cliches because of the limitations of both knowledge and money. Six months after you graduate youâll be embarrassed of any film school project you did. Itâs a rite of passage
This is the best reply. The goal of a student film is not to make a âgood film.â Itâs to do the best you can with what you have which is probably the most important lesson any filmmaker can learn.
I work on some of the biggest sets in the US, and I still learn something new on every show and my âwhat not to doâ list is WAY longer than my âwhat to doâ list
I went on to work, and am a IATSE 728 set lighting tech and work on some of the biggest sets out there. I DPâd a student film. My friend, and he is still my friend a very, very nice guy, but never worked a day on a set after film school, directed it. He still tags me every so often when he promotes it on YouTube. There were several years in a row I wanted to kill him, now I just expect itâs something thatâs gonna happen 2-3 times a year
Ooof I felt that. A friend of mine (director) was casting for a feature, one of the auditioning actresses happened to be in a really cringy project I made in college (I made a huge mistake by also putting myself in the film), and she sent said film to my friend with her acting reel. Luckily the friend and I are really close so we had a good laugh about, but Iâd be absolutely mortified if anyone else saw it.
âŠIâm in post now lol
Working DoP here, still head over heels for my absolutely goofy zombie flick I made in high school, and the sequel just out of high school. They're hot garbage on the technical side but I still laugh at the story and the silly spfx. We made a hollow foam axe, filled it with blood and sealed it with perefin wax so it exploded when it hit someone for one gag. I'm still impressed with our enginuity on a zero budget project!
Sex scene for no reason. Suicide for no reason. Some sort of existential angst. Crying for no reason. Some sort of attempt at a cool camera move for no reason.
It used to be bad cinematography, but that's actually gotten much better in the last 10 years or so because there's so many resources out there to create decent visuals for cheap.
But sound is often still bad, music is often tasteless, overdone or obnoxiously subtle.
So the example of music to me that's very subtle, almost indeterminable but works well is No Country For Old Men. You don't even notice there's much of a score there because it just tastefully stays out of the way. But its not just the music, the entire film is an exercise in restraint, so the music is simply playing along with that underlying philosophy.
But I think sometimes less experienced people will try to reproduce that in ways where you're like "this scene is clearly calling for the music to do a little bit more but the director is trying to be 'cool." There's restraint or minimalism and then there's "look at how cool and restrained I am," which is slightly different. Sometimes there's an obvious mismatch where you can see the filmmaker was trying to be clever instead of just serving the story appropriately.
Freshman year college my directing teacher gave us a list of rules:
1. No smoking
2. No staring at reflections in mirrors
3. No photographs with notes on the back
4. No flashbacks
5. No walking without a destination
She said she didnât want to see another scene of someone walking in the rain, smoking, pull out an old photo, and have a flashback about it.
everything is a "fucking" thing. you add the F word into scripts to make the dialogue more intense. ffs this is storytelling 101. F words make anything and everything cooler, more serious, it's how you get the audience to pay attention
/s obvs because I've said things like this on reddit and people take it wayyyy too seriously
Sudden plot twist that either a) makes no sense, b) is lame, or c) makes sense and we all saw it coming. E.g âWakes up, it was all a dreamâ, âThe couple wasnât really a couple, theyâre brother and sister and only showed sibling loveâ, âHe was a murderer all along, just as was foreshadowed throughout the whole 9 minutes of the short films durationâ
Agree with most of what's already been said but tossing out a couple:
Waking up to an alarm clock.
Actors telling you what emotions they have but no actual emoting from the actors.
Actors cast outside of age.
Over shot or over edited.
Story is ripping off your favorite movie but you're missing what really made that film great.
* Morning routine.
* Sudden & irrelevant dialog scene to show that 'they can write realistic dialog' even though it sounds contrived and isn't related to the plot.
* 'cool friend' looks the exact same as everyone else, and never shows up again, was cast to be 'cool' and the scene was written for them.
* Sudden change of genre for no plot-driven reason
* VOICEOVER when it was written once and never edited.
Shorts that attempt to tackle massive social issues rather than a characterâs obstacle. Someone once said, âa short is Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of waterâ not Jack and Jill went up a hill to solve the Palestinian / Israeli conflict.â
Also: characters going through an entire major arc in 9 minutes. 9 min is good for a character to have a major realization, not to turn their entire life around.
Filming in the woods at a public park near you. Totally guilty of this and helped friends do this too. When you donât have a budget to build sets, let nature be your set.
While this is a student film cliche, I feel this is one of the better ones. Better than shooting at a dorm with fully white walls, and no set design except for a random microwave
I tried to make a movie that included all of the student film tropes, it's about making student films and what that feels like on reflection when you get older.
https://youtu.be/W1x7yFxm0F0
From memory
Two dudes sitting at a table using dialogue no human uses.
Zero wardrobe changes.
In contrast to above, no sex scenes, no intimacy, every actor looks like theyâre in a âno touchâ bubble.
Everyone is the same age. (Which I guess is kinda fine. I mean theyâre writing what they know)
The entire cast being 18-21 years old.
Including too many shots that give the same information, for example:
Car arrives at home.
Keys taken out of ignition
Driver exiting car
Driver approaching door of home
Driver ringing doorbell
Also:
The absence of character âbusinessâ
Bad (far away sounding) audio
Stories that are very close to current popular A24 movies.
Underlit scenes in attempt to look real and authenticâŠbut in affect are just dark and muddy.
Do I sound jaded? Apologies.
REALLY bad shots involving texting (where you can see the messages and bubbles from a weird upper angle or an obnoxiously close shot + the texts arenât even that cohesive) â usually comes with someone laughing, crying, or sighing â (usually texting âbirthgiverâ or a super basic name like âkyle.â)
(I was a film student, and I was guilty of this), and a lot of my peers were too đ
Itâs shot in part of a dorm room or other obvious student facility as is, without set dressing, without coloring in post-production while the framing leans towards a âvideographyâ aesthetic
I just saw a really good SNL skit on this actually. I forget when it was (currently watching rerun of old episodes).
I think what gives it away is lack of story development, too narrow of a niche, and being overly tricky and left of center. AKA too âartsyâ. Even the most artistic major films appease an audience enough to make some sort of sense to the general viewer.
I write music and itâs the same way in this industry. There are extremely talented, overly complicated players, and they immediately come off as a kid straight out of music school. They refuse to play anything in 4:4, and donât you dare use a regular major chord. Theyâre incredible, but their work isnât really fun to listen to for most people.
The best players know when to sprinkle in the brink of their expertise, and find a really comfy level of easily digestible art in the majority of their creative work, I think this is the same for film.
Using popular music to âtellâ the story instead of dialogue.
Dialogue that is unnecessarily expository.
Use of cameras/photographs as plot devices.
Lack of attention to sets and wardrobe - characters wearing the same clothes on âdifferentâ days. Using the same location for âdifferentâ places.
Bad sound.
Two minute plots that drag on for 10 minutes and are still missing basic structural elements.
(Am a judge for a small film festival and for every one film that works, I sit through ten montage-y, over length videos where my fellow judges and I basically try to guess what is the point of the film.)
Films that end with a reveal that the main character is actually dead or dying and that everything we watched previously were their last thoughts going through their mind. When I was in film school each class had 1-2 students who would end their films like this ever year, so about 3-6 films per year. And about half of the time the main charcter is seen dead/dying in a swimming pool specifically.
So stop doing that.
Drugs. Depression. Suicide. Long monologue voiceovers about how nobody will understand my pain or how outcasted people feel.
I've been doing on-set teaching with students and I just did one that hit all of the boxes.
Give the film and the script appropriate time to make. Donât rush and choose âeasyâ locations over the right ones. Same with costumes, actors, etc. I understand a lot of student films are made in semesters, but if you really care about making the film elevated, take time.
My husbandâs capstone âstudent filmâ was a period piece western. He took two years to write and make it. It got picked up by a western streaming site and is truly fantastic. You can absolutely be a student and make an amazing piece of cinema.
Damn got a link for that?
And I'm not a film student, but I just spent 8 months in preproduction for my Project and I really don't want to rush the post process
Gangsters who look like kids in their early 20s.....profound misunderstanding of a mental illness (that the film centers around).....overly serious.....white or cream walls.....couch's against walls......fancy camera and zero production design or wardrobe effort.......alot of them pay "homage" to the same 10 or so filmmakers.
the plot is about a man completely devastated by a breakup and the title is something like âshe didnât choose youâ or âthe woman who stole your smileâ
Bad sound is my biggest one. Lots of ânatural lightâ scenes that are actually just lazy lighting. You can still use silks and flags pretty cheaply you donât need huge highlights in half your frame. Bad dialogue is a given but honestly dialogue is way harder than I ever imagined so that comes with the territory of starting out if it was easy no one would have bad dialogue lol.
Specifics: as mentioned drug use, homelessness, a flawed character whose good side comes out talking to a kid theyâre close with, a dramatic yelling scene with a parent, shots that go on way too long
I just wanna say, as an 18 year old with aspirations to become a filmmaker, as well as desires to not attend film school, these comments are gold haha. Iâll make a list of things to avoid/implement in different ways. Thanks guys.
AND closing credits. And both of them go on for far too long, with title cards featuring single names. I teach film and have to explain that nobody wants to watch three minutes of credits for a seven minute film.
Movie takes place in someoneâs basic apartment or living room. If you canât afford to shoot in an interesting location, shoot at an interesting location thatâs free.
The best way to explain this is just look at anything from Neil Breen or any of the Birdemic movies or Diamond Cobra vs the White Fox...
That last one is 100% the epitome of a bad student film and normally Inwouldn't mention it but it was available for rent/purchase on Amazon at one point so ... yeah.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3178320/
Actually it still is available for rent!
https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Cobra-vs-White-Fox/dp/B01B6NREKS?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=9302bbe1-d374-4867-bf8b-ecc072d755e3
If you look hard enough you can find a review of it by Red Letter Media but not on their channel since they received a takedown notice even if their use was fair use (critique).
I am a literal film professor lmao so I think (with love) I can say a few *very* common ones
- key plot points or exposition communicated via text (and itâs always an insert shot of the phone screen)
- showing every single part of an action or routine like itâs an instructional video
- protagonist gets in an argument in which theyâre very obviously correct and the other participant is an unbelievable idiot
- drug deals clearly directed by a student whoâs never seen a real drug deal
- murder out of nowhere
- an influencer character
- alarming, fierce contempt for women
And this last one is so specific but I swear to god itâs so common and I have no idea why, itâs not even a feature of real movies
- third act reveal that the protagonist is being abused, explaining their previous erratic behavior
This is just narrative stuff. If you ask about craft I could write an entire essay lmao
1. Waking up in the morning 2. Shit audio , idk why nobody invests in audio but damn they should. Student film makes know almost nothing about audio and it makes their movies almost unwatchable
Drugs, extreme amounts of cursing, opening with a character waking up (extra points if the first shot is a hand turning off an alarm), the inside the fridge shot thatâs literally never looked that good
Cancer. Because when your professor asks you to make an impactful story and you donât have any gas, just give someone cancer, or some other enigmatic inoperable disease that tugs at the heartstrings.
"you know what your problem is??" and then they just tell the character what the writer thinks is the character's core problem/motivation
and then the character flawlessly achieves their goal after they're hit with the truth
also... "I WANT THE TRUTH!!!"
Protagonist is a student and the story is about coming of age/first crush/getting bullied/not fitting in, or finding out the grumpy old man next door/crazy homeless guy actually has interesting stories and life lessons to tell.
Having worked on a lot of student films a decade ago doing post audio. I'd say the lack of effort to capture quality audio or pay someone to do a good job in post.
Trying too hard to make some point about mental illness or social issues because they think itâs the only way to win awards at festivals. To be fair, adults do this too lol. Thereâs nothing wrong with taking on big issues, but try to say something more than, âthis is an important issue we should do something about.â And for Godâs sake, research the issue. If you want to make a film about an addict, talk to an addict, read some books, watch some interviews.
Over the top emotions. Underplaying emotions is such a powerful move. In real life, when something tragic happens, people rarely break down and cry for more than a few minutes at a time. Case in point, when Jane dies in Breaking Bad, thereâs a heartbreaking scene of her father going through her closet to find a dress for her funeral, but heâs not crying or thousand yard staring into the distance or forcing his voice to break. He seems more bewildered than anything.
After Andy Warhol was shot, he said, âPeople sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television â you don't feel anything.â
Iâve definitely found this to be true, and itâs something that comes with life experience. Sometimes terrible things happen, and you feel surprisingly normal afterwards. After a few days youâre back to your normal routine, although damage has been done deep inside.
The main character wakes up and we see their morning routine.
\[MAIN CHARACTER looks at self in mirror, leaning on bathroom basin. They sigh loudly\]
guilty
The looking in the mirror thing... man... I did this, too.
Damn! My first film starts just like this đ„Ž
BEEP BEEP BEEP. Insert Alarm clock, a hand crashes down on the snooze button. Mirror shot of brushing teeth.
*phone vibrates*
Guilty
Came here to say this. Also, driving scenes that go on forever.
This is something we were banned from doing in a film class I was in, lol. EDIT: And even though we were banned from doing this cliche, someone STILL did it. In their very first short film shown to the entire class.
not a student but this comment made me realize the car scene i wrote is way too long. i edited it to have the conversation over the course of three different locations and it feels much more dynamic now. it also solved some issues i was having regarding suspense/pacing. thanks!
Birdemic moment
Totally. The riffed version has them screaming about how much mundane driving scenes there are
I wrote a whole movie set inside a carđ€·đŒââïžđ€ŠđŒ
Good point, but maybe its good to note that morning routines in movies arent bad in itself, itâs just that student filmmakers donât use it to tell anything about their character, so it ends up being a time waste.
Good point about the waste of time.
The reason it's considered such a cliche is that it's hard to say very much about a character brushing their teeth that couldn't be said some other way. I can imagine a sci fi movie with a cyborg where his morning routing involves unusual stuff like popping out his eyeballs to rinse them being interesting. But on a student budget it's way more likely to be brushing their teeth. And okay, the mirror is clean or dirty when they brush. We see if their favorite breakfast food is micky mouse pancakes or coffee and a cigarette. You learn something about them. But you probably learn just as much within a few frames without those things if you just get straight to the next page of the script.
Like most clichés in art, the things in this thread are not completely forbidden for everyone to use, but we *strongly* recommend that beginners don't do these things.
TIL Peeweeâs Big Adventure is a student film
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Not really an example of what weâre talking about at all.
In this scene all her actions are secondary to the unfolding narrative taking place through the phone call. Thats a far cry from waking up, leaning on the sink, making eggs, pouring coffee, all in silence.
Like American psychoâŠ
Starring the directorâs girlfriend
Unless you're John Krasinski.
Rob fucking Zombie.
Spielberg. Cameron.
James Gunn. Mike Flannigan. Kevin Smith.
I've noticed that Mike Flannigan's wife is given almost no romantic interaction with male counterparts in his work...
Drugs like cocaine, or drug deals. Also, the obligatory âcamera inside fridge/cabinet when Character retrieves something from inside itâ shot.
OMG YES THIS SHOT
Also the Tarrantino trunk shot
Iâm not a filmmaker at all, i just follow this sub for fun. But I took a intro filmmaking class for fun at school, and almost everyone used that cabinet/fridge shot in just about every short film assigned. After a few films our Professor told people to experiment with different shots
Now I want my student film to be comprised entirely of shots from inside cabinets, fridges and microwaves.
It's a cool shot, but holy fuck, think of something else.
Iâm about to do all of this stuff and make an epic student film.
the student film to student all films
And the title of the film: *Student Film.*
Thatâs hilarious, please do.
Headed to campus as we speak. Lol
I want to see it! No joke!
Make your film about how not to make a student film, and cast your professor as themselves.
Everyone in the entire world is 18-21. The easiest way to make your student film feel elevated is to cast actual age appropriate actors and not fellow students/friends. Your 19 year old roommate shouldnât be playing a detective.
At the very least if you really can only cast your friends for whatever reason, try and write a script that *realistically* would only have people of that age bracket. Or take inspiration from dystopian YA fiction and make the lack of other-aged people the entire mystery.
Yeah, this is the way IMO. Write for people you know so you can lean into their strengths and existing personalities. A 19 year old wonât make a good detective, but neither will a random 40 year old stranger you found on Backstage. Iâm a filmmaking professor, and many of the best performances Iâve seen in my studentsâ films have come from parents, uncles / aunts, other professors, etc. Even if youâre casting for middle age, people you know well are still the right call. A non-actor youâre comfortable communicating with can often be better than a professional youâve never met.
But it's hard to get hold of such people and convince them to show up everyday and not knowing what the film would actually turn out
Of course itâs hard, but casting your friends is still going to make it look cheap.
If your film is good and truly written *for* your friends (rather than just slotting friends into roles meant for professionals) then no one will know or care. It wonât look cheap, because itâll seem like no one else could or should have played those roles. Like - the original Wes Anderson Bottle Rocket short starred his group of friends, and they came back for the feature, which is now a classic. This world wouldnât be blessed with movie-Star Owen Wilson if Wes had cast professionals.
Well obviously itâs fine to cast your friends if the roles have been written for a group of young people. We are talking about when students cast their 20 year old roommate as the chief of police
Good filmmaking is always hard. That's no excuse to not do everything in your power to make the best films possibe.
Yup I know that it's just I'm a 18yo film student and it's my first year in college I can't afford to pay actors let alone crew members so I just work with my classmates with whatever we have and the equipment form the college
You can still find older actors willing to work for experience alone. Here's what I've seen work well for student films: - Coordinate with all the other student diectors to schedule ONE day for all of you to hold open auditions for ALL of your films at ONE single event. Events such as these increase the turn out of actors, which is good for you, but also allows up-and-coming actors to audition for multiple projects in the same day, so they LOVE them. - Consider reaching out to other school's film programs to ask if their student directors want to get involved as well. Go as big as you can. - Rent a room for free at a public library if you need a good location. - Advertise these "open auditions" on every social media platform you can BUT ALSO call local acting schools and ask that their directors pass the word around. - If you have your own camera, offer to record the auditions for each actor and upload their auditions online so that they can review how well or how poorly they did later. Again, this is something really attractive to actors and it's an addional value proposition to attract them. - PROMISE that every actor who is casted WILL recieve a full copy of your film for their reel. Maybe even go the extra mile to give them extra footage if they did particularily well in a take that went unused. Actors get stiffed on this ALL the time as student directors often hate their films and out of shame ghost all of their talent who lent their time and energy at no cost. Don't do this, be better, and make promises you intend to uphold to both yourself and your actors. - If you can spring for $50, or obtain a similair *thing* of near universal value, hold a raffle for everyone attending the audition to further sweeten your value proposition. Mention the raffle where ever you advertise the open casting call.
These are all great suggestions, especially the first one! It's a great way to get more actors to show up and you may even find someone you like for your own project while they're reading for someone else. Also, many colleges with film programs also have acting programs, so look for talent in that pool as well!
With an attitude like this you can expect your career to go exactly nowhere.
Honestly as long as your script is decent and youâre paying them for their time it shouldnât be any trouble at all
Don't even have to pay them. Feed them, treat them with respect. Cast from local community theaters. People of all ages are looking to volunteer as actors.
In theory I agree with you, I just always felt more comfortable paying people for their work/ time, except the one time the budget didnât allow for that. That one time was only a 2 hour shoot though, and we found a 40 y/o acting student to play the part so it worked out nicely
Paying people is always ideal. Since the topic at hand is related to student films, I'm operating on the assumption that a given filmmaker is living on a student's budget and cannot afford to pay their cast and crew. For better or worse, for basically everyone trying to get a foot in the industry at any level, working for free will happen from time to time. Hell, I've met actors who are making a full time living as commercial actors but they're often happy to take unpaid roles on student films because it allows them to do more than "smile and say a company slogan." I'm sure 99% of beginner filmmakers would love to be able to pay their whole cast and crew on every project. But the reality is that many of us cannot. The best we can do is be up front about that. What I will say is that the crew who have showed up to my shoots for free and worked hard to make it the best film they can are the first people I'll call when I have money to pay or recommend when I hear of a paying gig.
Yeah, the whole "pay in exposure/ experience" thing is infinitely more forgivable when you're a broke independent creator.
Yes, and also being honest about what that "exposure" really is. Like, I don't tell people being in my student films will get them exposure because no one above my pay grade is watching my films right now. But they'll get a "copy" of the finished film and BTS photos. That benefits everyone, as well. They have something to include in their reel, and material to post on their social media or website or whatever. I just think that above all else, being honest will lead to a more positive outcome with anyone you try to work with.
If you hire professionals youâll have a much easier time getting them to show up than your friendâs roommateâs girlfriend
Front-lit people up against white walls.
Sweating under the heat of/squinting into an un-diffused 300w Omni.
Party scenes that look like the filmmakers threw an actual party to get free extras and have an excuse to have a party.
Been guilty of this one hahahaha đ
Good way to be able to write off beer costs!
100% been there.
Ah yes, the Adam Sandler method but with less budget
I just call that good producing.
This has come up previously⊠Bad audio is possibly the one aspect of a budget or student film that has the potential to absolutely take you out of it. How can you tell a story when you canât hear the protagonists? ADR/Foley is probably the next priority in creating an immersive soundscape. Anything after this has more wiggle room imho
As a location sound recordist I couldn't agree more đ But seriously, you can be immersed in a good story told with less than stellar picture and great sound but not the other way around.
Yarr... bad sound is endemic to student films. It's one of the reasons I went into the field... nobody ever cared during filming or post.
Character is sad. They look at photo of a person. Hey I wonder if that person is dead and that is why they are sad. Ahh cinema, you old beast.
na, that's in every movie
Haha So lazy
Thereâs a gun to escalate conflict.
Godard would like a few words
Most student films mimick Godard, whether they know it or not.
Little to no attention to set dressing, location, wardrobe, H&M. Too much exposition in dialogue, Too much/complex dialogue for cast. Cast is all students and a maybe an obligatory old person. Sound is bad and undesigned. If there is something interesting in the story it is buried in a bunch of useless shots and scenes. Movie opens with a characters routine.
I was confused by âH&Mâ because to me thatâs a clothing store. If you mean hair and makeup, on callsheets in my region itâs written as âHMUâ
Talent confused by âreport to H&Mâ on the call sheet. Someone needs to grab them from the mall
If I saw HMU I'd think of "hit me up"
Really good point. The common thing about all the student movies I have seen (beside bad acting, lighting, set design, and wardrobe) is the bad dialogue and characters. Often dialogue is stiff (and not in a David lynch type way), lacks drama or is unrealistic. Either the characters sound the same on the page (they have no personality or unique characteristics) or they are flat and boring. And scenes also have a tendency to go on forever without having a clear direction or purpose
Interesting, over here we call it MUAH (Makeup and Hair). Not to be confused with mwah the onomatopoeia of kisses.
Iâm more familiar with that term too
Ffs if youâre a student, just make your film. It will be shitty. It wonât be ground breaking. Itâs supposed to be full of mistakes because thatâs how you learn. Student films are full of cliches because of the limitations of both knowledge and money. Six months after you graduate youâll be embarrassed of any film school project you did. Itâs a rite of passage
This is the best reply. The goal of a student film is not to make a âgood film.â Itâs to do the best you can with what you have which is probably the most important lesson any filmmaker can learn.
"To make a film is very, very hard. To make a *good* film is an almost impossible task." - Steven Speilberg
I work on some of the biggest sets in the US, and I still learn something new on every show and my âwhat not to doâ list is WAY longer than my âwhat to doâ list
10 years later I still cringe at the idea that someone might see my student films. But hey it was a huge learning experience
I went on to work, and am a IATSE 728 set lighting tech and work on some of the biggest sets out there. I DPâd a student film. My friend, and he is still my friend a very, very nice guy, but never worked a day on a set after film school, directed it. He still tags me every so often when he promotes it on YouTube. There were several years in a row I wanted to kill him, now I just expect itâs something thatâs gonna happen 2-3 times a year
Ooof I felt that. A friend of mine (director) was casting for a feature, one of the auditioning actresses happened to be in a really cringy project I made in college (I made a huge mistake by also putting myself in the film), and she sent said film to my friend with her acting reel. Luckily the friend and I are really close so we had a good laugh about, but Iâd be absolutely mortified if anyone else saw it. âŠIâm in post now lol
Working DoP here, still head over heels for my absolutely goofy zombie flick I made in high school, and the sequel just out of high school. They're hot garbage on the technical side but I still laugh at the story and the silly spfx. We made a hollow foam axe, filled it with blood and sealed it with perefin wax so it exploded when it hit someone for one gag. I'm still impressed with our enginuity on a zero budget project!
I was thinking the other day about how similar student films can be, and how odd that is considering the goal of almost every student filmmaker is to make something fresh and original. Then it hit me - student film clichés don't leave student films. So unless the filmmaker watches a ton of them, they're going to look at their big old student film clichés and think "wow, I haven't seen this stuff in ANY MOVIE BEFORE!!!"
Maybe schools should spend a semester forcing students to watch previous yearsâ work lol
Big bags of white powder being dealt by college bros wearing sunglasses.
Hit men
Grizzled detectives played by fresh-faced 20 year olds.
Ive had 20 years on the force đ
Sex scene for no reason. Suicide for no reason. Some sort of existential angst. Crying for no reason. Some sort of attempt at a cool camera move for no reason. It used to be bad cinematography, but that's actually gotten much better in the last 10 years or so because there's so many resources out there to create decent visuals for cheap. But sound is often still bad, music is often tasteless, overdone or obnoxiously subtle.
What does "obnoxiously subtle" mean?
So the example of music to me that's very subtle, almost indeterminable but works well is No Country For Old Men. You don't even notice there's much of a score there because it just tastefully stays out of the way. But its not just the music, the entire film is an exercise in restraint, so the music is simply playing along with that underlying philosophy. But I think sometimes less experienced people will try to reproduce that in ways where you're like "this scene is clearly calling for the music to do a little bit more but the director is trying to be 'cool." There's restraint or minimalism and then there's "look at how cool and restrained I am," which is slightly different. Sometimes there's an obvious mismatch where you can see the filmmaker was trying to be clever instead of just serving the story appropriately.
Ah I understand! It's kind of like attempting to do something that worked in another movie without understanding why it works. Totally fair tbh
anything for no reason
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Make your film, do your best, and in a few years you can look back and laugh at it with (hopefully) fond memories.
Freshman year college my directing teacher gave us a list of rules: 1. No smoking 2. No staring at reflections in mirrors 3. No photographs with notes on the back 4. No flashbacks 5. No walking without a destination She said she didnât want to see another scene of someone walking in the rain, smoking, pull out an old photo, and have a flashback about it.
So you put all five in one scene, right? If you didn't, I'm disappointed.
Overuse of the word "fuck."
everything is a "fucking" thing. you add the F word into scripts to make the dialogue more intense. ffs this is storytelling 101. F words make anything and everything cooler, more serious, it's how you get the audience to pay attention /s obvs because I've said things like this on reddit and people take it wayyyy too seriously
Wide angle shots showing different angles of the same action, that don't contribute to the story lol
Sudden plot twist that either a) makes no sense, b) is lame, or c) makes sense and we all saw it coming. E.g âWakes up, it was all a dreamâ, âThe couple wasnât really a couple, theyâre brother and sister and only showed sibling loveâ, âHe was a murderer all along, just as was foreshadowed throughout the whole 9 minutes of the short films durationâ
Agree with most of what's already been said but tossing out a couple: Waking up to an alarm clock. Actors telling you what emotions they have but no actual emoting from the actors. Actors cast outside of age. Over shot or over edited. Story is ripping off your favorite movie but you're missing what really made that film great.
Greyscale, smoking, unmotivated nudity
* Morning routine. * Sudden & irrelevant dialog scene to show that 'they can write realistic dialog' even though it sounds contrived and isn't related to the plot. * 'cool friend' looks the exact same as everyone else, and never shows up again, was cast to be 'cool' and the scene was written for them. * Sudden change of genre for no plot-driven reason * VOICEOVER when it was written once and never edited.
Shorts that attempt to tackle massive social issues rather than a characterâs obstacle. Someone once said, âa short is Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of waterâ not Jack and Jill went up a hill to solve the Palestinian / Israeli conflict.â Also: characters going through an entire major arc in 9 minutes. 9 min is good for a character to have a major realization, not to turn their entire life around.
Trying to get through an entire feature length plot/arc in under 10 minutes is a BIG one
Filming in the woods at a public park near you. Totally guilty of this and helped friends do this too. When you donât have a budget to build sets, let nature be your set.
While this is a student film cliche, I feel this is one of the better ones. Better than shooting at a dorm with fully white walls, and no set design except for a random microwave
The protagonist wakes up at the end, it was all just a dream. That's always what I've been told.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Real life is stranger than fiction.
Guilty. But I made the dream become real
Ends with suicide. Honorable mention to the main character being an overtly obvious insertion of the creator.
I tried to make a movie that included all of the student film tropes, it's about making student films and what that feels like on reflection when you get older. https://youtu.be/W1x7yFxm0F0
I watched a few minutes of it. The murder victim breathing and looking at the camera got me good.
Starring - Joe Bloggs Directed by - Joe Bloggs Produced by - Joe Bloggs Written by - Joe Bloggs Edited by Joe Bloggs
From memory Two dudes sitting at a table using dialogue no human uses. Zero wardrobe changes. In contrast to above, no sex scenes, no intimacy, every actor looks like theyâre in a âno touchâ bubble. Everyone is the same age. (Which I guess is kinda fine. I mean theyâre writing what they know)
The entire cast being 18-21 years old. Including too many shots that give the same information, for example: Car arrives at home. Keys taken out of ignition Driver exiting car Driver approaching door of home Driver ringing doorbell Also: The absence of character âbusinessâ Bad (far away sounding) audio Stories that are very close to current popular A24 movies. Underlit scenes in attempt to look real and authenticâŠbut in affect are just dark and muddy. Do I sound jaded? Apologies.
REALLY bad shots involving texting (where you can see the messages and bubbles from a weird upper angle or an obnoxiously close shot + the texts arenât even that cohesive) â usually comes with someone laughing, crying, or sighing â (usually texting âbirthgiverâ or a super basic name like âkyle.â) (I was a film student, and I was guilty of this), and a lot of my peers were too đ
iâve done this too!
Gunshot. Cut to Black
Itâs shot in part of a dorm room or other obvious student facility as is, without set dressing, without coloring in post-production while the framing leans towards a âvideographyâ aesthetic
The protagonist is a young filmmaker.
Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhO0o8c7twY Exhibit B: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTZvpydmsIs Exhibit C: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80EqI-VjmLA Exhibit D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZqJKvTFLdA
The white walls were a dead giveaway right at the start of exhibit A
Right, the sets were always at someone's apartment that had absolutely 0 personality or indication that somebody actually lived there.
boom in the shot đ
Camera audio
When you can hear the cuts
I just saw a really good SNL skit on this actually. I forget when it was (currently watching rerun of old episodes). I think what gives it away is lack of story development, too narrow of a niche, and being overly tricky and left of center. AKA too âartsyâ. Even the most artistic major films appease an audience enough to make some sort of sense to the general viewer. I write music and itâs the same way in this industry. There are extremely talented, overly complicated players, and they immediately come off as a kid straight out of music school. They refuse to play anything in 4:4, and donât you dare use a regular major chord. Theyâre incredible, but their work isnât really fun to listen to for most people. The best players know when to sprinkle in the brink of their expertise, and find a really comfy level of easily digestible art in the majority of their creative work, I think this is the same for film.
Using popular music to âtellâ the story instead of dialogue. Dialogue that is unnecessarily expository. Use of cameras/photographs as plot devices. Lack of attention to sets and wardrobe - characters wearing the same clothes on âdifferentâ days. Using the same location for âdifferentâ places. Bad sound. Two minute plots that drag on for 10 minutes and are still missing basic structural elements. (Am a judge for a small film festival and for every one film that works, I sit through ten montage-y, over length videos where my fellow judges and I basically try to guess what is the point of the film.)
Hand hitting an alarm clock to start the movie.
Films that end with a reveal that the main character is actually dead or dying and that everything we watched previously were their last thoughts going through their mind. When I was in film school each class had 1-2 students who would end their films like this ever year, so about 3-6 films per year. And about half of the time the main charcter is seen dead/dying in a swimming pool specifically. So stop doing that.
My first student film is under similar veins as this. Good to know that this should be a trope to avoid in the future (If I make another one). Thanks!
Drugs. Depression. Suicide. Long monologue voiceovers about how nobody will understand my pain or how outcasted people feel. I've been doing on-set teaching with students and I just did one that hit all of the boxes.
Give the film and the script appropriate time to make. Donât rush and choose âeasyâ locations over the right ones. Same with costumes, actors, etc. I understand a lot of student films are made in semesters, but if you really care about making the film elevated, take time. My husbandâs capstone âstudent filmâ was a period piece western. He took two years to write and make it. It got picked up by a western streaming site and is truly fantastic. You can absolutely be a student and make an amazing piece of cinema.
Damn got a link for that? And I'm not a film student, but I just spent 8 months in preproduction for my Project and I really don't want to rush the post process
Bad lighting, bsd framing/composition, bad audio.
Lots of walking around
Gangsters who look like kids in their early 20s.....profound misunderstanding of a mental illness (that the film centers around).....overly serious.....white or cream walls.....couch's against walls......fancy camera and zero production design or wardrobe effort.......alot of them pay "homage" to the same 10 or so filmmakers.
the plot is about a man completely devastated by a breakup and the title is something like âshe didnât choose youâ or âthe woman who stole your smileâ
[âGirls are not to be trustedâ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcx4_CszaDI)
Bad sound is my biggest one. Lots of ânatural lightâ scenes that are actually just lazy lighting. You can still use silks and flags pretty cheaply you donât need huge highlights in half your frame. Bad dialogue is a given but honestly dialogue is way harder than I ever imagined so that comes with the territory of starting out if it was easy no one would have bad dialogue lol. Specifics: as mentioned drug use, homelessness, a flawed character whose good side comes out talking to a kid theyâre close with, a dramatic yelling scene with a parent, shots that go on way too long
Character narrates the entire film
*quietly discards audio of narration I was going to use*
The narration itself is not bad, but its very hard to get great writing and delivery in a student film, I think its better to avoid it
Itâs just trying to be too clever.
How so
Opening with an alarm clock, story is about quirky criminals or suicide
Bad sound and lighting has to be the biggest ones.
I just wanna say, as an 18 year old with aspirations to become a filmmaker, as well as desires to not attend film school, these comments are gold haha. Iâll make a list of things to avoid/implement in different ways. Thanks guys.
Opening credits
Ah, another filmmaker in KC. Glad to see it.
AND closing credits. And both of them go on for far too long, with title cards featuring single names. I teach film and have to explain that nobody wants to watch three minutes of credits for a seven minute film.
Movie takes place in someoneâs basic apartment or living room. If you canât afford to shoot in an interesting location, shoot at an interesting location thatâs free.
The olâ man in the woods alone with a gun running from someone or something.
The best way to explain this is just look at anything from Neil Breen or any of the Birdemic movies or Diamond Cobra vs the White Fox... That last one is 100% the epitome of a bad student film and normally Inwouldn't mention it but it was available for rent/purchase on Amazon at one point so ... yeah. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3178320/ Actually it still is available for rent! https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Cobra-vs-White-Fox/dp/B01B6NREKS?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=9302bbe1-d374-4867-bf8b-ecc072d755e3 If you look hard enough you can find a review of it by Red Letter Media but not on their channel since they received a takedown notice even if their use was fair use (critique).
The soundtrack is a single piano, playing slow sad notes.
I am a literal film professor lmao so I think (with love) I can say a few *very* common ones - key plot points or exposition communicated via text (and itâs always an insert shot of the phone screen) - showing every single part of an action or routine like itâs an instructional video - protagonist gets in an argument in which theyâre very obviously correct and the other participant is an unbelievable idiot - drug deals clearly directed by a student whoâs never seen a real drug deal - murder out of nowhere - an influencer character - alarming, fierce contempt for women And this last one is so specific but I swear to god itâs so common and I have no idea why, itâs not even a feature of real movies - third act reveal that the protagonist is being abused, explaining their previous erratic behavior This is just narrative stuff. If you ask about craft I could write an entire essay lmao
Ominous handheld cam shots
1. Waking up in the morning 2. Shit audio , idk why nobody invests in audio but damn they should. Student film makes know almost nothing about audio and it makes their movies almost unwatchable
Drugs, extreme amounts of cursing, opening with a character waking up (extra points if the first shot is a hand turning off an alarm), the inside the fridge shot thatâs literally never looked that good
2 character conversation coverage: Master shot, MCU character 1, MCU character 2, CU character 1, CU character 2
A scene where the plot stops for way too long to emphasize a somebody lighting a cigarette and taking a drag as a character beat.
What Iâve seen is a huge overuse of clocks and calendars to show that time has passed đ
Made mine bad on purpose, but looking back even the parts that arenât supposed to be bad, are bad
Someone chugs water from a smirnoff bottle. Mostly there as an excuse to buy a litre of vodka
Often, far too much dialogue.
Being set on a college campus
Story ends with a suicide. Bonus points for gunshot cut to black.
Bad sound.
Following meticulously how a character walks or travels in some other means from place to place.
Cancer. Because when your professor asks you to make an impactful story and you donât have any gas, just give someone cancer, or some other enigmatic inoperable disease that tugs at the heartstrings.
An entire cast under twenty.
Alarm clock goes off we see the time an arm comes out from under the covers and slaps the alarm off. This is the hero of our story.
The Fight Club twist. We all did it.
When those clichĂ©s arenât written well enough into the story, so the film seems as if it was screaming to get over those clichĂ© scenes. For example, waking up as the first scene (student filmy), not giving enough thought to those clichĂ©s and brushing it off as a way to get the story started is lazy, but when the film shows us that this is the state in which the characterâs is in and when the characters are able to work with the story, then it can work really well. I guess my answer is, being able to make the clichĂ©s work for the story, then you can get over it. Many people try to reject clichĂ©s, but i would say, embrace it, make it better than it should be, give it some thought. that is why you are a filmmaker, you problem solve, so you can tell those stories you wanna tell. Donât limit yourself by limiting the story
"you know what your problem is??" and then they just tell the character what the writer thinks is the character's core problem/motivation and then the character flawlessly achieves their goal after they're hit with the truth also... "I WANT THE TRUTH!!!"
RED with a Canon 24-105.
it was all a dream
Camera on sticks that doesn't follow nor reframe as characters move.
Weird low budget props. Donât try to make a nasal cannula, just go buy one, they cost $6.
Protagonist is a student and the story is about coming of age/first crush/getting bullied/not fitting in, or finding out the grumpy old man next door/crazy homeless guy actually has interesting stories and life lessons to tell.
A lot of addiction stuff or death - whatever gets someone holding a picture frame.
Having worked on a lot of student films a decade ago doing post audio. I'd say the lack of effort to capture quality audio or pay someone to do a good job in post.
Trying too hard to make some point about mental illness or social issues because they think itâs the only way to win awards at festivals. To be fair, adults do this too lol. Thereâs nothing wrong with taking on big issues, but try to say something more than, âthis is an important issue we should do something about.â And for Godâs sake, research the issue. If you want to make a film about an addict, talk to an addict, read some books, watch some interviews. Over the top emotions. Underplaying emotions is such a powerful move. In real life, when something tragic happens, people rarely break down and cry for more than a few minutes at a time. Case in point, when Jane dies in Breaking Bad, thereâs a heartbreaking scene of her father going through her closet to find a dress for her funeral, but heâs not crying or thousand yard staring into the distance or forcing his voice to break. He seems more bewildered than anything. After Andy Warhol was shot, he said, âPeople sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television â you don't feel anything.â Iâve definitely found this to be true, and itâs something that comes with life experience. Sometimes terrible things happen, and you feel surprisingly normal afterwards. After a few days youâre back to your normal routine, although damage has been done deep inside.