As you have learned, at its core, filmmaking is about getting your message and story across to your audience. It is not about the equipment you are using, such as cameras and microphones; it is about your approach to your work, regardless of the tools. As technology advances, equipment changes, yet the approach to filmmaking has remained remarkably constant in its 120-year history.

For this reason, we do not overly emphasize specific makes and models of gear. That information is readily available from your instructor, across the web, and from the various industry resources we are recommending you investigate. The reality is that as you begin your filmmaking career, you will use whatever equipment you can get your hands on. As previously suggested, the greatest technological breakthrough of the digital era is the simple fact that it is, by its nature, democratizing—there is no reason not to attempt to make a movie as a student based on lack of access to technology. Consumer, “prosumer,” quasi-professional, and high-end gear all exist in the same universe now, and from the phone in your pocket to the finest digital cameras on the market today, there are tools you will be able to procure for your early efforts.

Therefore, it makes sense for you to first focus on foundational principles: collaboration, emphasis on story and character, and problem solving.

Collaboration Every film is a team effort. British director Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips) calls filmmaking “a group activity” that requires “a common purpose” from everyone participating in its creation.² No movie of any length or consequence is made entirely by just one person. Even if it were possible for one individual to write the script, hold the camera, record the sound, act the roles, edit the images, and output the movie, there would still be the interaction between the filmmaker and his or her audience. A movie, in a sense, isn’t fully a movie until it has been viewed and an emotional connection to the audience has been established. Therefore, there is no such thing as a solitary filmmaking experience—you have to involve, rely on, and consider other people’s talents and viewpoints throughout the process.

Even in their construction, films comprise the greatest collaborative art form the world has ever known, involving layers of multiple elements, woven together at different times and in different ways to create a greater whole, much like a puzzle. Movies can’t be thought of in the same way as books (author and paper) or paintings (artist, paint, and canvas). Filmmaking is a more layered art form. Actors and set painters, costumers and writers, drivers and choreographers, stuntmen and technicians, photographers and electricians, carpenters and fact checkers, musicians and editors, directors and producers, and many others—these folks in endless configurations are required to produce movies.

You, of course, are students, with little in the way of resources, and huge demands on you to take on more roles than would be the case on a professional production, both out of necessity and as part of your learning process. Still, even in your situation, you will need to find help when you can. In this class, even with fewer overall collaborators, you will rapidly come to understand and appreciate the benefits of teamwork to realize your film.

Because so many people and skills are involved, good filmmaking requires excellent communication skills and sensitivity to the talents and requirements of every craft involved. In this course, you will learn about the many collaborators who make a movie, explore their skill sets, and develop a useful vocabulary to use when working with them.

Emphasis on Story and Character Movies are, by their basic nature, about something. As you will learn in Chapter 2, most films can be summarized with a log line that starts, “It’s about . . .” Therefore, as we will emphasize more than once, every choice you make as a filmmaker must be in service to the main characters and their story. This principle will allow you to make wise decisions when you are under the pressured realities of production.

For example: If you have time to capture only one shot, should it be of a beautiful sunset or of your main character’s face at an emotional moment? Correct choice: The character’s emotional reaction.

If you have a choice between making the story absolutely clear and leaving it to chance whether the audience will understand what’s going on, what should you do? Correct answer: Make the story clear.

If you can afford either to shoot for one extra day or to rent a fancy camera with lots of special features, what should you pay for? Correct decision: The extra shooting day.

Your primary obligation to your audience is to communicate the story well, so they will be able to understand and empathize with your characters. If you do that, the audience will forgive technical imperfections. Plus, you’ll be doing better than many first-time filmmakers! In this book, we frequently return to the importance of story and character to make sure your movie meets your audience’s needs.

Problem Solving Two things are certain on every movie project: there will be uncertainty, and things will periodically change from your original plan. Even if you only have a few hours to shoot your class project, something will eventually go wrong, and it will not always be what you expect. The level of uncertainty and unexpected problems increase with the scale of your film, and bigger films always face bigger problems.

In this book, we focus heavily on ingenuity and problem solving. We cannot teach you how to solve every problem, because problems, by their nature, are unpredictable. However, we can teach you how to deploy a mental attitude, generosity of spirit, and certain flexibility that will make the problems you encounter solvable, or at least allow you to formulate alternatives when circumstances require you to move in a different direction from where you were expecting to go.

A special feature of this book—How Do I . . .?—is devoted to teaching you how to develop the tools you will need to solve problems. Found in every chapter and online at LaunchPad for Filmmaking in Action, these video interviews reveal how filmmaking professionals solved common problems on real-world projects, and challenge you to think about what you might do when confronted by the unexpected yourself (see How Do I... Get My First Movie Made?).