Two Tips For Film Students Who Want To Make Medical-Themed Movies
If you're a film student and you'd like to make a movie centered around medical matters, this advice could help you with this film project.
Rent a hospital bed for scenes involving close-ups of sick, bedbound characters in the hospital
As a film student, you probably have a tiny budget for your movie. However, if you plan to include any scenes in a hospital, it is worth looking for a hospital bed for rent. The reason for this is as follows; whilst for long shots of a hospital ward, you could get away with using cardboard prop beds (as it's unlikely the audience would be able to tell that they're cardboard from far away), you should rent a real hospital bed for any close-up shots of sick characters who will be lying in bed.
This will add a level of realism to these scenes that you could not achieve if you used a cardboard imitation of a hospital bed. It will also allow the person playing the role of the sick bedbound character to immerse themselves in the scene, without having to worry about moving their body in a way that might cause the prop bed to fall apart.
If you film all of the close-up scenes involving a bedbound character in hospital on the same day, you should only need to rent the bed for 24 hours or so. As such, it should not be very costly and could do wonders for your movie's hospital-based scenes.
Consult a doctor to ensure your actors know how to handle the medical equipment correctly
If your actors will be using other medical equipment (such as stethoscopes, syringes, and otoscopes) as props in their scenes, then you should consult with a doctor and have them discuss the medically-accurate way to handle this equipment.
The reason for this is as follows; if an actor who is, for example, playing a doctor in a scene does not put a stethoscope's ear tips into their ears before pressing the chest piece up to the heart of the 'patient', this mistake could give what should be a somber scene a comical and silly quality.
Likewise, if the doctor character does not put on disposable gloves before pretending to inject someone with a syringe (something which is common practice in real-life medical situations, for hygiene reasons), this scene may remind the audience that what they're watching is just a (slightly slapdash) movie, instead of drawing them in and making them feel like it's real. If, however, you consult with a doctor, they can point out these small but significant errors and in doing so, make your movie seem more polished.
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