Steven Soderbergh’s Process to Make a Low-Budget Feature in 18 days with Non-Professional Actors

Steven Soderbergh has been part and often unintentional leader of several revolutions in filmmaking. He re-energized the American Indie Filmmaking with his first feature giving Sundance the street cred it had been chasing for years, (hard to believe Sundance was not always Sundance), he proved that the art of juggling between big budgets and low indie was an exciting and valid option in one’s career, he moved to digital when it was nothing but an uncool act of treason, he gave the middle-finger to feature films to have an affair with “TV”, he went back to film because come on, and in the middle of all that, he wrote a book on twitter, posts filmmaking tips on his blog, gave advice to fellow filmmakers (or at least to Christopher Nolan) and probably did a multitude of other things we don’t know about.

Not bad.

In 2006, Soderbergh released what was then considered a low-budget film shot on HD (a first) with non-professional actors. The film, Bubble, was released simultaneously in Theaters and on DVD for the low price of $29.98 (Yep, people paid $30 for an indie film on DVD 10 years ago… Also, Blockbuster existed.)

In a discussion with fellow filmmaker Mark Romanek, Soderbergh talks about his process from casting to directing to get the right performances but also the right light and produce a cohesive piece, all under 3 weeks.

A little caveat here before you go through the steps: the film budget was $1,6 million but when you listen to Soderbergh in the audio file, you get the sense that it’s more like a $200k film. Because ten years ago, this amount of money was a no-pressure game. If you haven’t watched Bubble, which I recommend you do, the film doesn’t scream $3 million budget made for half. So I can only guess that everybody got a very decent salary. Good for them! Not happening today.

Onward.

THE WHY

“There’s gotta be things I can take from the smaller movies that would benefit the process of making a bigger film. Even on a film like ‘The Good German’, trying to really analyze everything and determine ‘how many people do we need really?’. I’ve never felt inhibited by the scale of anything I’ve made but when you’re working on Ocean’s and you’ve got 110 people tide to your belt, your ability to make a radical left turn creatively is definitely… you know. The fallout if you’re wrong is going to be worse than if you do it on a movie like Bubble. So you have to think things through a little more, which on a movie like Bubble you can just follow any creative tributary you feel like following, the consequences are minimal if you are wrong and have gone down the wrong path.”

THE PROCESS

“18 days of shooting but it was designed to be shot in one big chunk (13 days), then a couple of days for me to edit, then a couple more days of shooting, then a couple more days to edit, then a couple more days of shooting.”

Soderbergh would assemble and edit at night after shooting. The same day they wrapped the last day of shooting, the crew, made of 20 people from the shooting crew and the office, watched the whole film at night.

The film was shot on HD using only available light and no monitor. Soderbergh shot through one camera and Gregory Jacobs was behind the second camera.

1 – BE SPECIFIC AND GIVE TIME TO YOUR CASTING DIRECTOR

“After Coleman (Hough) and I finished the outline, we sent our casting director Carmen Cuba to Parkersburg with a pretty specific description of what we are looking for and she spent a few weeks there, walking around, talking to people and when she spotted somebody that she felt fit the description, she would say “would you come down and be interviewed on camera for this movie?” And so that’s how we cast the film, based on these half-hour interviews that she did. And she would talked to them about their lives, not the movie. She would ask them some questions about who they were, what their background was.”

2 – DON’T REHEARSE BUT BUILD RELATIONSHIPS

“I met with each person individually and just talked about how this was gonna work. How we liked to work and how the environment was going to be like. And then, just before we started shooting we had a little like startup party with all the cast and all the crew at the hotel where we were staying. And I’m a big believer in that stuff, I just think there’s nothing better than throwing a little shenanigan and giving people several hours to get to know each other in a non-pressurised environment. Then you come onto the set and you’re like ‘Hey John, how you are doing?’ ”

3 – SHOOT IN SEQUENCE

“I tried as much as possible to shoot in sequence and not give them more information than they needed. They needed the basic information about the movie and they had this little outline that we were working from, but they were really great about not wanting to know what was coming.”

4 – USE NATURAL LIGHT

It’s easier with HD (and now Digital) to capture plausible moment and have continuity by simply shooting the scenes at the time of day that corresponds to the time of day in the film. (Sound obvious today, 11 years ago, when shooting on film always implied additional lighting, this wasn’t a given. As Romanek said, Magic Hour on film lasts 15 minutes and 40 with digital cameras. Maybe more now.)

5- DON’T MAKE NON-PROFESSIONAL ACTORS LEARN LINES

“What we were trying to do here was give them the premise of the scene and what we would like them to talk about but let them do it in their own way. ”

6 – SHOOT WITH MULTIPLE CAMERAS

“We were shooting with two cameras and in some instance three cameras. I never wanted them to be in a situation where they had to hit marks, move one way or another, because I thought that was another way that would make them feel uncomfortable. We rarely did more than two takes, only if there was a technical problem.”

7 – BEND THE MOVIE FOR THE ACTORS, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND

“I was always willing to bend the movie to fit them. I never wanted to be in a situation where I would tell them ‘I need you to act this way.’ ”

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I really enjoy that so many strategies Soderbergh used are still valid and that the technological progression we’ve seen in the last decade only make them more relevant.

Thanks to No Film School for pointing out to the audio commentary that you can listen there.