A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO MAKING YOUR OWN SITCOM: PART 3
Hello and welcome to the third and final instalment of my beginner’s guide to making your own sitcom.
It started off here with how to prepare for the shoot and the second part is here, which provides tips for helping to ensure the shoot itself goes smoothly.
So, gals and boys, this final portion focuses on the complex, mysterious but perhaps most of all challenging post-production stage. When I finished shooting my pilot episode of OLD (which you can now watch here!), I felt really good – happy and peaceful. I believed the shoot had gone well, everyone seemed to have fun and we had filmed everything we needed for a 30-minute pilot in four days. Not an easy feat. However, I think I was also happy because I was blissfully ignorant of what was to come. I was a naïve first-time filmmaker, who hadn’t encountered the post-production process before. Now, this may sound a bit gory, but post-production is a place where many self-made films go to die. And after going through this process with OLD, I totally understand why. Once the high of filming is over, the passion you have for your project will be tested to the max.
So here I serve up to you EIGHT TIPS to help you through post-production:
1) Find an editor who loves the project
Video editing is a hard job. It’s lonely, it’s conducted in darkness and it’s frequently undervalued. Basically editing is pretty much like doing a piece of homework that is constantly being returned with red corrections all over the place. Thus… the moral of the story is you need to find someone who likes your script and is up for the project.
I was lucky to find my editor, Kevin Chu Thomson, through a friend and I got the impression early on that he really wanted to be involved with OLD. Kevin was also prepared to edit this project for free – around his full-time job. Now considering I had already been quoted £3,000 by one editor, to get a professional editor for free was quite a result. However, I do want to offer a word of warning with this scenario. If you find someone who is prepared to edit for free then you have to bare in mind that there’s only so much that you can push for things to be done. Paying people in the post-production process should ensure a faster final product and also puts you firmly in charge. So I guess you have to weigh up the pros and cons here. I was lucky with Kevin because he worked extremely hard on the project and was easy to work with – however, I can imagine this kind of arrangement going wrong, quite easily. (FYI – I did end up paying Kevin some money because it didn’t feel right for him to spend so much time on this project for nothing).
I suppose this is something else to consider as you start out on the post-production process. You may be happy to get people to work for free at the outset, but your attitude may change when they are still working on it three months later.
2. REALLY get to know your footage
From the beginning, Kevin said that the editing process was going to be collaboration between the two of us. I don’t have much in the way of video editing skills, but what he meant was that we would be constantly communicating and evolving the film together. It also meant I had to get back to work quickly. If, like us, you didn’t manage to make notes on each take during filming, you will have to do this afterwards. What I did was create a table in Excel (or Word) and basically went through every take noting the strongest time-codes for each – and marking takes with an X if Kevin could discount them completely.
This saved time and ultimately meant I was helping to curate the first cut. However, your relationship with the footage needs to be ongoing. It is likely that when the editor starts sending back cuts, that you will need to delve back into the footage several times to check if there are any better options. We filmed 11.5 hours of footage and I went through it all at least four times, so this gets old quite quickly. But one thing is for certain – every time I forced myself to look at the footage again, I always found something that made OLD stronger. It really is a case of no pain, no gain. Let’s repeat once more for the people at the back! No pain, no gain.
3) Make a trailer
I think one of the reasons I managed to get a colourist and sound mixer involved in my project at a decent rate is because I had a trailer which I could show them. It makes the film feel real, before it is like proper real. But there are so many other reasons to do one. To help promote the film before it goes online, to send to people who you want to invite to the screening. To get the cast and crew’s energy up again.
It is also beneficial for when you are proving your project is legitimate for websites such as IMDb, who will ask for links that support your film. (On this IMDb note, if you can get a publication to review your film at a screening this is also useful for authenticity.) I made the rough cut trailer myself in iMovie – it was the first time I had used iMovie and while I was pretty scared, I survived. (iMovie is very user friendly – so if I can do this, you can too).
4) Listen to Martin Scorsese
Heed these words from legendary director Martin Scorsese: “If you don’t get physically ill seeing your first rough cut, something’s wrong.”
When you are the creator and writer of a project, I roughly estimate that 99 times out of 100, you are going to dislike the cut you first get back from the editor. I was warned numerous times by people who had made films about this scenario and that made it a little easier to handle, but it still is quite hard to stomach. This is usually nothing to do with the editor being bad – it’s more a case that the reality of what you pictured in your mind when you wrote the script has shifted as the cast, crew, location, filming and editing moved it a little further from your vision. It isn’t going to look or feel exactly right – but as you work on it, it will start to get better.
Another thing is that the editor might have a slightly different vision for your project. For example, Kevin favoured close-up shots which sped up the dialogue and zoomed in on reactions, whereas I often favoured wide shots as I wanted to set the scene, especially as I see OLD as a studio sitcom. This was something that we needed to iron out early – and therefore I think it was a good idea to get Kevin to send over the first scene, before carrying on with the rest. However, saying that, I did start getting too bogged down in the detail, so eventually I told Kevin to do the first five scenes on his own and then send them over. I think this was a good decision as we had sorted the major creative differences out and now Kevin could edit scenes without constant interference from me. At some point, you need to let people get on with it – and trust them.
5) Patience is a virtue
If you are in a situation where your editor has lots of other things to do, you have to remember that the world doesn’t revolve around your project. It is normal to want to get your sitcom out into the world as soon as possible, but really hurrying the people involved is probably one of the worst things you can do. If you are feeling impatient, just do what I did and write this reminder on a piece of paper. Insightful stuff.
6) Be prepared to spend some money
Money, money, money – must be funny, if you are making a show for Netflix. But most of us aren’t. As I have said in other parts of this guide, the amount of money you spend will vary on the length and complexity of what you are planning to film. Even though I saved money on the editor, the post-production process was still expensive as I opted to employ a colour grader, audio mixer, composers and someone to do the special effects. It was all mates rates, but it adds up. It really does boil down to how much you have to spend. Personally, I don’t think good comedy will be overlooked because the colour or special effects aren’t perfect (although the sound does have to be good!). I have seen budget films on YouTube, and if the script, actors, camerawork and editing is strong – it will do justice to your project. I watched a number of the Comedy Crowd chorts recently and while the standard of comedy varied, I was impressed by the high levels of production on all the videos. We now have the technology available to do the post-production process ourselves and cheaply. Hurrah!
However, if you have money to spend on your project, then it makes sense to make it look as close to TV quality as possible. I think, however, out of everything that I spent money on, it was the colour grading that made the most difference. The colours just POP when it has been graded and my colourist, Tom Cairns, who graded McMafia and loads of other shows, was great to work with. A colourist can also help to fix any problems you have with light inconsistency. In terms of music, employing a composer will always capture the essence of your show better – however, there’s loads of free and cheap music available to download online. One thing I would say is that music stings between scenes make SUCH a difference and I would thoroughly recommend using them. They add a feeling of professionalism and also keep the energy up – they are an excellent way of moving on from the last scene and introducing the next scene with fresh vigour.
7) Watch it until your eyes bleed
I think I watched the ‘final’ version of OLD about 40 times. That is the completed version with all scenes in tact. If you take into consideration watching each separate scene, then it is closer to 100. Sometimes when I watched it I liked it, very rarely I loved it, and more often than I would have liked, I hated it. It is quite an exhausting experience to hate your work… but I think that watching something in isolation, again and again, is going to suck all humour out of it. There are no surprises because you know exactly what is going to happen – you even know exactly what the next joke is. The important thing to remember though is however much you dislike watching it – you have to! You have to again and again, and again, and again. I have mentioned this in the other parts of this guide, but this is why you have to go into your project absolutely loving the characters, the world and the story you are telling. Otherwise you are not going to make it out the other side. You won’t. Because any weaknesses you see in it will be amplified 1,001 times (that’s a precise measurement) in the post-production stage.
8) Get it screened
Okay so this isn’t strictly speaking post-production, but I just wanted to mention it now because this is the final part of this guide. The reason I recommend getting your sitcom – whatever length or format it may be – screened is because comedy works better when it is watched in a room full of people. It is also a nice experience to share with your nearest and dearest. I did five screenings of OLD and that included one cast and crew screening, two public screenings and two friends, family and industry screenings. I know, it’s an actual fact!, that people laughed in every single screening, sometimes more than once. (For anyone who still needs evidence, I have audio recordings of them all – so there!).
Basically OLD went down well and this is important for me to know, because there is something terribly scary and alienating about putting your work online for the world to judge. But I think this process would be even scarier if you hadn’t tried and tested the material beforehand. When I am feeling a bit insecure about the project, or fear people out there don’t like it, I can now remember how much fun people had at the screenings, and it really gives me a sense of perspective.
Comedy is extraordinarily divisive – so many people are not going to like what you make. Most people will probably not like what you make. I watch comedies all the time which are recommended by comedians I like, and I watch them thinking ‘what the heck is this?!’ I know they aren’t bad comedies or programmes, but I just don’t like them. And whilst comedy is divisive and splits the room, there is still a part of me that gets desperately sad when I remember this reality. Comedians and comedy writers want people to laugh, and they want to make people happy, all the people – all the time!, and therefore, it is the most natural thing in the world to be dispirited when you think people don’t like, or understand, your show. But there is only one piece of advice I can give about this and that is to GET THE FUCK OVER IT. Is this really the way I am going to end this guide? You better bloody well believe it is.
And comedy friends, please do watch my pilot episode of OLD below and let me know what you think, in a constructive and wholesome fashion. Lots of love, and all the best with your projects. They are all worthy. (Unless they encourage people to mutilate kittens.)