Try to keep it tidy and simple. If you're able to, utilize SagIndie for talent. I know that it's not always practical, but if you can, do it. It's just a hundred dollars a day and you will get quality performances. You can learn a lot working with specialists too. Perhaps you won't need to do numerous takes. And typically you will improve results than if you use your Auntie Mimi as the leading girl.
Carnival and circus sideshows run by advertising visionaries get the attention of people with colorful artwork and one hell of a terrific pitch to the crowd. Their function is to earn money customers to see the show. It is a subtle seduction that plays out in a very short time period. Film financing and pitch conferences take longer, however in my opinion share the exact same attitude. If motion picture financiers are not visually and verbally excited by a film project they will hand down it. When you are pitching for funding you are on phase as the star of your own creative film-making sideshow.
Another film that I watched was "Chico & Rita." Clearly this was not a French movie nor a derivative of the film stylings of Tati. What it did offer was a retro animated feature that made use of music and the visual arts to inform a story of love, betrayal, adultery and distress.
Film financiers are not flexible and will cut you off from future movie funds. They can write off the loss, however your credibility will take a hit and you'll lose out on them purchasing your motion pictures in the future. Finding cash to make motion pictures is more difficult than making the film. Without movie financing you just have a screenplay and a film making dream keeping you company.
A student film must be approached like any other movie, with a great deal of idea and careful preparation. Pre-production is the most important thing you'll ever learn because a motion picture is actually made in pre-production and post, the recording is simply secondary. Post production can shape the movie and alter it into something else based upon the video footage caught. Pre-production however makes the mold for what the film will be and makes sure whatever will actually work out. Frequently student rush through or skip over pre-production and wind up in a mess trying to determine the details of their film or find themselves missing out on essential aspects. That is what all the preparation is for, to make sure you don't miss anything.
I can only speak from my own personal indie filmmaker and manufacturer point of view. There are talent supervisors, and agents that do like a script film studios enough to have a star sign an actor letter of intent to draw in executive manufacturers. The actor can call the shots when they check out a script that encourages them to do a film. Indie jobs are a harder sell, but if the movie script and function are hot it makes marketing sense for an actor to star in a separately driven production. One essential star or celebrity can get a movie moneyed by connecting their name.
Now back to the sheet film which is all but obsolete today. It is thick and flat so that it can slide into light proof holders. This ended up being the favorite of specialists and major art professional photographers in early 1900's and on to the 1950's when film and lens technology began to make these cumbersome formats, some as large as 11x14 inches and even larger, somewhat obsolete and now they are practically gone except for a few crazed fanatics.