internet filmmaker's faq

A tough question to answer, as there are so many factors which can affect this, from the size of your crew, to number of cast and/or locations, down to your own experience.

Some film books and schools will try to tell you that you should be shooting x number of pages per day. To be 100% honest, this is generally rubbish. Think about it. How the is one page of dialogue between two characters in a single location going to take the same amount of time to shoot as one battle scene involving dialogue between seven main characters, 100,000 choreographed extras, special effects, moving set pieces and so on? It's not. Simplify it even more: if a director decided to shoot a lot of coverage for a scene, then this is going to increase the time required. Obviously budget is going to have a large effect on how quickly you can shoot your script, but even then, it is ultimately up to the production team to pace the shoot based on the individual requirements of that particular project.

In most cases, you should be aiming to shoot as quickly as you possibly can, but without adversely affecting the quality of what you're doing. The more you can get in the can on your shooting days, the better, but it will ultimately depend on the logistics required for your shoot.

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