John Sayles and his producer (and wife, and actress) Maggie Renzie decided that the Conversation With them at the IFP Conference would be called "So, You've Got Four Weeks." They got a whole five weeks to shoot their new film Honeydripper (clips of which have been appearing on this blog for months). Starting with a lesson on scheduling, the pair laid out how they've been able to keep going for almost thirty years making movies on the cheap; "carving sculptures out of gravel," as Renzie put it. They remember showing up at the IFP Market twenty-seven years ago with The Return of the Secaucus 7 and hoping someone would tell them what to do next.

Some hard-earned pearls of wisdom:

- Don't derail the whole day's work for the sake of one sexy spontaneous idea.
- Maintain endless, excessive, outrageous amounts of communication with your creative team, so they know everything you know. Sayles distributes extensive bios of every single character .
- Don't waste time on master shots.
- Know when it's good enough and move on.
- Know when it's not good enough; don't keep shooting if a scene isn't working. Come back another day, even at the cost of a lesser scene.
- Never let an actor know you're frustrated. Take the pressure off by having the DP pretend to change a lens or something, so they don't think everyone's waiting on them.
- Add an interruption in a long static scene to change everyone's eyeline.
- Watch good movies with the sound off to see how they were put together.

Hearing Sayles and Renzie tell their production stories was like watching someone solve very complicated math problems without a calculator.

You can watch video lessons from Sayles by clicking "Interviews" here at johnsaylesretro.com.

# posted by Alicia Van Couvering @ 9/16/2007 10:04:00 PM

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