A QUIET SET. In England, I am told, a general silence is kept on film sets. People speak in hushed whispers, if at all, and it is understood that the creative process is best served by an atmosphere that is calm and focused.

I highly recommend keeping a quiet set, even though on The Prankster we didn’t have one. My experience was with a relatively rowdy set, so I can speak to the challenges of that.

Now with a movie like The Prankster, which is about spirited youth up to various shenanigans, it wouldn’t have been appropriate to enforce library-like quiet. However, the noise level of a fraternity beer bash is not the ticket either.

To be fair, our noise level was somewhere in the middle, but too often a distraction.  No matter what the nature of the movie, a few general rules should be observed.  First, only people involved in the scene being shot, namely actors and crew, should even be on set.  Visitors should be kept to a minimum, and when present, should always speak in an inaudible whisper.  As for the actors and crew, all conversation should pertain only to the work at hand – no social chit chat.

Human beings are amazingly social and feel an almost compulsive need to talk.  If left unchecked, the talk quickly reaches a cacophonous level, and the AD has to yell to restore order.  On our set, when it got really noisy, Mike Kitchens would have to scream for quiet, often several times in succession.  Once quiet was restored, it seemed like the noise level went back up five minutes later.  So frustrating!

It is important to set firm limits right from the start.  Early in the shoot, Kurt Fuller, who played Dean Pecarino, threw a relatively minor hissy fit when grips talking outside the set disturbed his performance.  This got everyone’s attention.  Thereafter, there was always a respectful quiet when Kurt was acting.  Later, Kurt confided to me that he often made a bit of a scene early in a shoot, saying it worked wonders.  He recommended I consider doing the same.

In retrospect, I wish I had.  Once the precendent of a social set had been established, it was really hard to back it off.  One day it got to be too much.  We were shooting the basketball scene with a lot of young actors and extras playing ball outdoors in the hot sun.  Basketballs were flying everywhere.  The guys were engrossed in their games.  We didn’t have much time to get the scene.  Things were out of control.  For the first and only time during the shoot, I screamed: WE ARE WORKING HERE!  THIS IS NOT A PARTY!

Everyone stopped.  Quiet was restored.  We moved on.  I felt pretty terrible.  I don’t like yelling and don’t like hearing about sets where Directors scream at people.  Later I apologized but no one seemed too upset.  In fact, I think the actors and crew appreciated some limits being set.

In keeping with what I have said before about guiding principles, it is important to remember why you are making a movie.  If it’s just to have a good time, make some friends, get a paycheck, find a date – then it is understandable that a lot of noisy conversation is taking place.  If, on the other hand, you keep in mind that you are present to do a job to the best of your abilities, then the inclination to lose focus, and idle conversation, will diminish.  It will help if the production team makes the need for a quiet set clear from the outset.  People tend to follow enlightened leadership.

And if that doesn’t work, consider throwing a hissy fit.