How Much Footage Does Your Film Need?

Video Transcript

"Ok. You're shooting a feature. It's going to be an hour and a half long. How much footage are you going to end up shooting? Just to give you an approximation, it's usually anywhere from thirty to forty hours of footage, which may seem like a lot. But when you're doing a scene, you may do it two, three, four or five times, just depending, because, you know, tape is cheap. It doesn't cost a lot, unlike film. So, you can do these scenes over and over again. And usually, when you've got the right one, that's your last take of that particular scene. So, I would just kind of have anywhere from like thirty to forty hours of footage for an hour and a half movie. And the thing is, is just make sure that you label all of your tapes. Make sure, as soon as you're done shooting the tape, you put it somewhere safe because you don't want to lose these things, or have anybody-somebody step on it, especially mini DV tapes are really tiny. And even just putting that in your pocket and sitting on it could crush the tape, and then you're out that whole scene and a day or whatever. So, just kind of handle those recorded tapes like gold because that's what they are."