I’m in the midst of rewriting a short drama that is to be shot in about two months. I’m having trouble injecting character depth into it and I don’t know how to fix it. Everytime I try to make it more about the character it gets longer and longer, and it must be around 10 minutes (for university assessment).

--Eva

Character depth may be a false goal. With only ten minutes, you’re not going to be able to make Chinatown. Nor should you try.

Rather than cramming in extraneous character information, strive for economy. Is your protagonist a one-armed professional accordion player nervous about meeting his birth father? Fine. Show us that information in the very first scene. If you can’t work in all those details, ask yourself what’s really important: that he plays accordion, that he has one arm, or that he’s nervous about meeting his biological dad.

You may find you have to omit or alter some aspects of the character for sake of getting the plot started. So be it. Think of it like writing poetry: you may have really wanted line two to end with “orange,” but if you’re setting up for a rhyme, that’s just not going to work.

Good short films tend to be about a Character facing a Situation who takes an Action and has an Outcome. Yes, that’s sort of a generic template, but my point is that most successful shorts don’t spend much of their time filling in the details about their characters. What you see is what you get. So make sure those first details we see about the characters are enough to sustain our interest for ten minutes.

I am sixteen years old, and am about to make my first film with a DV camera and $10,000. Is there any chance of getting it seen in theatres?

--Rickey

The great thing about this here film business is that at the end of the day, it really is about the talent of the filmmaker and the quality of the movie. You sound like a very ambitious and enterprising sixteen year old and I don’t know where you got the $10,000 from, but I hope you’ll use it wisely. Bottom line is, if you make a film from beginning to end and learn ever step along the way, that ten grand is a cheap education. But you must really do your homework; you must be very thorough and understand each and every technical aspect of the process.

Either, you worked really hard for that money or some kind and generous person gave it to you. In any case you really owe it to all involved to make good use of it. That good use can be your education, an end-product which is a great movie, or in the best of all worlds… both. Now, whether or not you can have it seen in theaters is a very big question. There are many extremely low budget productions that have found their way in the film world via the festival circuit I would suggest that you have your sights set on sending your film to festivals for starters. Somehow in my mind, you must be making a short film for that budget, but it not inconceivable that you might be making a full length feature. There are legendary films costing that much that started out in the festivals and ended up in the theaters. May yours be one of them!

I was wondering if cinematographers ever use different film formats frequently within the same project, like using footage shot on Super 35 or in anamporphic for a film being distributed in a matted format.

If so, what sort of difficulties does that type of operation entail?

--Sam

I’m not sure what a “matted” format is, but it is possible to originate films in many different formats now as long as the result is via a DI (Digital Interneg), as the various formats can be “welded” into one in the computer. What is not possible is to change projection format during the film.. so you still have to decide on one “frame” (either 1:1.235 or 1:185) for the movie.

Robert Richardson (winner of the Oscar this year for The Aviator) is fond of using different cameras and film formats for the different looks within his films.

John August's screenwriting credits include Go, Big Fish, Titan A.E. and both Charlie's Angels movies. His current projects include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tarzan, and Corpse Bride. He also maintains a screenwriting-oriented website at johnaugust.com.

Born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, John earned a degree in journalism from Drake University in Iowa, and an MFA in film production from the Peter Stark program at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.

Got a question about screenwriting? Send it to Ask a Writer.

Got a question about directing? Send it to Ask a Director.

If you are considering working in the movie industry, Oliver Stapleton has written a brief guide available at www.cineman.co.uk.

Got a question about cinematography? Send it to Ask a Cinematographer.