You didn't.
I disagree. Even if you're not using film stock, it sounds like a lot of time was wasted on shots that are doing nothing but wasting HD space and production time--and wasted money if you were paying people by the hour, which I will be.
It is, especially if the subject was a short film.
Here is where you might be misunderstanding: I didn't shoot 40 hours of footage. I'm saying 40 hours of footage for a short is terribly unproductive and that kind of waste is not how I shoot.
To put this in perspective, Robert Rodriguez shot his first feature, El Marachi, on a ratio of no more than 5:1 (many shots were done in a single take). And that was with inexperienced actors.
Atypical? I wouldn't know, I'm not on every film set in the world. But I know that I'm never going to waste time shooting footage that will never see the light of day because we didn't really need take 18 because take 2 or 3 was great.
Even if you're not shooting film, it's a massive waste of editing time to go through tens of hours of footage you will never use.
Pre-planning your shoot is important to avoid that. I do my own editing, so I know exactly how everything is going to end up looking. The episodes are storyboarded extensively, so we already have a pretty solid idea what angles we're using to begin with.
Based on my experience working under others, I'm going to guess your shoot had a lot of long takes. That's not how I shoot. I don't do long takes of an entire scene even though I'm only going to use several seconds from that angle; I only shoot the shots I'm actually going to use in post.
If it wasn't long takes that ate up the time, I really don't know what else it might be, other than perhaps difficult dialogue or bad blocking or something.
The short of it is I believe 40 hours for even a feature film is way, way too many hours of footage unless almost every shot in your film is insanely complicated, like Avatar or the insane stuff Michael Gondry likes to do. Then it might make more sense because of the laundry list of things that can go wrong and ruin a shot.
$10 a day per person is rather excessive in my honest opinion. I don't know what food you had but it was probably more expensive than it needed to be. There are ways to cut costs and still provide decent food.
For example, I have secured 208 1 oz. Doritos bags for my craft table, which is more than enough chips to last a couple shooting days. The boxes are actually sitting behind me right now. I did not pay for them. They were not stolen either. I acquired them from a friend who got in good with someone who works for Pepsi's local marketing team: good old fashioned networking.
Is this all we're going to have for our crew to eat? No. We'll have other food as well, this is just for snacking and keeping people happy. But if I bought these chips it would cost a couple hundred dollars; I've instead saved a couple hundred dollars.
I realize that probably sounds like I'm gloating but I'm only raising this point because you're trying to convince me not to do something I've been planning and re-planning for years because of factors which do not exist on my shoots.
I'm also kind of offended that your first instincts are to convince me not to do the film and lectured me on how I don't know how to make stories or whatever.
Last I knew I did not show you the script.
Last I knew I did not release the production bible.
Last I knew you had no idea what the people on my crew have done or are capable of.
The only thing you know is that it is a re-boot of the story I did several years ago (www.deathfistninjagkaiser.com) and that several years ago I made some test footage using some of the incomplete costumes, which I did release hoping people could see the potential; and some have.
The only other thing you know is I make lots of no-budget game reviews.....but these are videos I make entirely by myself and with the full knowledge that they aren't going to make back whatever money is invested into them. I don't want to say I purposely make them crappy but I certainly don't spend anymore time or money than I need to. I'm not the only one who operates like that in the incredibly niche market of web-reviews, and I'm certainly not asking for you to fund something I do in my spare time with no real intent to profit from (to my own surprise some fans of those reviews have done so on their own, so I must be doing something right).
As I said before, each film has different needs. My niche market game reviews don't have the same needs as a tokusatsu inspired action comedy web series intended for the masses.
I realize it is my job to convince you of my skill. I accept that and I'm not asking you to just take my word for it that the show will be awesome. I have repeatedly said I'm making a promotional video to address the concerns that have been raised.
Continuing to insist I should do something else is incredibly silly because you don't have any basis to make that judgment call. Insisting that I need to learn to tell stories when you have very little to go on concerning my story-telling ability is also silly because you have no basis to make that judgment call.
If you positively cannot wait two weeks to tell me how stupid and untalented I am, please do so after having something to actually go on
http://www.authonomy.com/books/11451/twilight-chronicles-dawn/read-book/#chapter
There. A more current (as of maybe half a year ago) example of my ability as a story-teller. I realize it's not a script but I don't intend to release my scripts publicly.
In two weeks I will have a promotional video completed. I ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt until then; by all means you can tell me how ignorant and foolish I am after you see that video.
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