Before the first day of shooting commences, it is vital to gather all of your talent and crew together and rehearse through the scenes to be shot. This is called blocking the scene. Have each actor stand at his or her marks and read out their parts and get sound levels on them. Also, test your lighting and see how it appears to the monitor. It would be wise to make this a full dress rehearsal if wardrobe and make-up are important.

This is the appropriate time to determine what works and what doesn’t, rather than when cameras are about to roll. Make any modifications that are required and verify that all of your settings and locations are settled on. These are to be your settings during production. It is crucial to have everything well established, so that the continuity of the film and, in turn, its believability are sustained.

Later, when you have a few credits behind you, you can get experimental in placing your lights, volume control etc. But, when you are still new at this, it is best to aim for consistency in your locations, lighting, sound, and so on in your film.

For the most part in film production, the Script Supervisor is the person who is responsible for maintaining continuity from shot to shot and scene to scene in your film. The responsibilities associated with this position involve ensuring that the lighting is the same, all the furniture or other props in a room are in the same spot, the actors have the same wardrobe and make-up, and say the same lines at the any given time.

It is crucial that you arrange all your shot sheets so that you can shoot economically. For example, you normally don’t shoot each scene in sequence; that would be highly costly and inefficient, traveling back and forth all over town, lugging equipment! So, it makes more sense to shoot all scenes location according to location rather than page by page.If you are going to be shooting a scene in a farmhouse on a given day, then you should try to shoot all the scenes in the script that take place at that location on that day.

If you are making your film yourself without the good fortune of financial backing then you will likely have to do your own continuity supervision. Maintenance of continuity is critical if you want your film to look professional.

Once shoot time commences, it becomes, for the most part, about the actors and the director. They are all committed to telling the story. Any given film depends on the the director and the actors as much as the substance of the script.

There has to be an effective chemistry between the director and the actors. A director needs to play all roles for the performers, friend, mother/father, counselor, priest/rabbi, nurse maid. Whatever role you can think of, you’ve likely got to be it. The talent needs to be able to have faith in the director.

It has been stated that one can ascertain the quality of a movie by looking at it without the sound. If you can get the meaning of the film easily by observing it, lacking sound, then the director has done his or her job. This clearly illustrates that film isn’t just driven by the dialog itself, but that action and images convey the story and drive the film as well. At the same time, if one can also understand just be listening to it, then it has been well-executed indeed.

A director must be big-picture oriented, while still having an eye for details. Crafting and balancing all of the elements of a film resembles conducting an orchestra — everything needs to work in harmony to make the film (but, it is like an orchestra that sometimes has to improvise, with jazz as well as classical, so to speak). Solving problems on a daily basis and making fast innovations is the norm for a director; so, problem-solving skills are very necessary in this position.