JODIE FOSTER CHAPTER 14 MASTERCLASS

Shooting
Your Film
 JODIE FOSTER CHAPTER 14

Shooting Your Film

1
Make the most of your time.
• Don’t do multiple takes of your establishing
wide shot. Know that you will be able to get the
lines nailed down in the other shots you have
Very often, the planned; the first couple takes of the wide do
constraints that come not have to be perfect.

up—whether it’s the • The adage “get coverage, get everything” is not
sun going down or the true when you’re working on film with a smaller
budget.
crew has to break for
lunch or your actor • Be ready to improvise with your shot list if need
be. For Little Man Tate, Jodie had at least five
broke their knee—allow shots prepped for the birthday party scene.
you to open up to Unfortunately, the sun was already starting to
set, so they didn’t have time for multiple shots.
improvise and to come She made the decision to stay in a wide shot
up with something that instead. The constraint of losing sunlight al-
lowed for a richer moment than what she had
is clearer and much originally planned.
more the point of your
vision than you ever • Have a basic idea in your head of how you
might want to edit the shots together.
anticipated.

54
2
JODIE FOSTER SHOOTING YOUR FILM CHAPTER 14

Track performances with set notes.

• Jodie uses her script line-by-line to make notes
as to which take she prefers. She simply num-
bers each of the takes and puts an asterisk
A script supervisor is next to the one she likes.
there to talk through
• When there are multiple cameras as well as
story—to talk through a lot of dialogue at play, Jodie notates which
the editing and how camera angle her preferred take is on. If
there’s a line that she felt she didn’t get, she
the shots that we’re has her notes to help remind her that she
achieving in production wants to pick it up and redo it later.

will end up being cut • Jodie prefers to get full coverage of both/all
into the final film. characters saying their lines, even though she
knows she won’t be on their face the entire
time during the edit.

The script supervisor is basically the archivist

on a film. They monitor memory card changes,
camera movement, if the actors change a word
or a line, and any other continuity issues.

55