Warning: Listening to ’so called’ experts could destroy your film career before it even starts.

Are you constantly searching the internet for advice on how to make your own movie?  Do you find tons and tons of “expert” advice that doesn’t seem to lead you anywhere?

Does you movie career seem to be stuck in neutral?Regardless of where you want your film career to go, sometimes it can seem impossible to break into the business.  How do I get noticed by the studios?  How do I get Scarlett Johansson to return my calls?

I think that is when most of us arrive at the following conclusion:  I have to just make my own movie to showcase my talents.  After all, what better way to demonstrate your talents at moving making than in a real movie?

But I think this is also where most movie makers get bogged down, and your average internet filmmaking guru is absolutely zero help.

Lets take a look at the typical kind of advice that you seem to find floating around on the internet.

Good Advice that is actually bad for you

Here is the type of advice that sounds good on the surface, but ultimately has a very negative effect.  In particular, this is the type of advice I see coming out of a certain village of so called “experts”.

1. Hire a good DP/Assistant director/Gaffer/Editor/Composer
2. Pay the actors and crew.  Offer deferrals if you can’t pay
3. The camera is the most important piece of equipment.
4. Use storyboards to play your shoot
5. Continuity errors will destroy your film

What’s wrong with all of this advice?

The above advice isn’t wrong.  In fact, it’s almost all good advice on its own.  The problem is how seriously you take the advice.  Will you worry so much about these things that you ultimately won’t finish the film?  Lets go through these things one by one.

• Hire a good (insert crew member): Not bad advice, but chances are you might not know any good crew people, unless you’ve followed my advice to find top quality crew.  Furthermore, you probably can’t “hire” anyone, because the word hire involves paying…which involves the money you don’t have.  If you can hire professional crew, then more power to you, but don’t let the fact that you can’t hire someone prevent you from starting.  If worst comes to worst take six friends and assign them positions.  Teach them how to use the equipment if necessary.  Ultimately, a camera that is in focus and not over exposed is all it takes to finish a movie.  The only exception I would make, is that you should always find someone who knows something about sound.  I also recommend that even if you do hire a crew, make sure to keep the crew small.
• Pay the actors and crew.  Offer deferrals if you can’t pay - Absolutely pay if you can.  But I emphasize if you can.  Don’t let the fact that you can’t pay stop you from shooting your movie.  There is someone out there that will work for free, for whatever reason.  People need stuff for their reel, resume builders, or sometimes you might find someone like me who will shoot for you in exchange for using the footage in tutorials to teach film making.  Secondly, NEVER offer deferrals.  Deferrals have a way of ruining your life.  You will probably never pay them, but everyone will expect you to pay them.  Think about it…if a deferral actually entices someone to work for you, then obviously they must expect it at some point.  There are three things that end up happening:
  • You never pay - You never make any money on the film, so you never pay.  This only pisses off those people who expected to get paid.  More than likely they won’t work for you again.
  • You make just enough to pay - You manage to sell the film off, but the deferral costs have gotten so high that once you pay everyone you owe, you’ve made zero…or worse you might still owe a little to some vendor.  People will probably work for you again.  However,  they’ll probably expect you to pay upfront this time, and since you still don’t have any money you can’t.
  • You hit film making lottery and cash out big time - You premiere at Sundance or go to AFM and sell the film for 3 million dollars, pay back the investors, and pay back the deferrals.   Everything is great right?  Probably not.  More than likely its taken you a few years to accomplish this, in which time, all of the people you owe have written you off.  Now they suddenly hear about the huge sale you made.  They think about the big paycheck coming in the mail.  Only then do they see that compared to your $3 million, their deferral (which was probably scale or less) feels pretty small.  They feel like they were just as much invested in the film as you were….why do you get to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, while they only make a few thousand?  Believe it or not…this is more likely to happen when you offer deferral than if you just ask for free work.  The reason being is that if you offer a deferral the person feels like they haven’t been paid yet.  If they work for free, the work is done and they’ve moved on.  More than likely if they see the film they’ve worked on sell for $3 million dollars, they get excited and feel their work was worth something.  Now they might be famous…now you might call them and offer them a paid gig on their next movie.
• The camera is the most important piece of equipment - WRONG, WRONG WRONG.  That’s sort of like saying “The steering wheel is the most important part of the car”.  That’s not really true.  Yes, you have to at least have a steering wheel, but you certainly don’t need to spend $15,000 on the best steering wheel you can find.  It is extremely easy to get bogged down in trying to find the best camera.  You find someone willing to let you borrow a DVX100, and it seems like just the next day you see footage from an HD camera…and you think “The DVX is nice and all…but I want to shoot HD”.  So you spend six months that you could have been shooting with a borrowed DVX, raising the money to shoot HD with a Sony PMW-EX3.  Then by some miracle you find that money, but the same day you see some footage from a RED…and now the movie just won’t be right unless its shot on RED.  Gear mania is an ever escalating addiction.  There is always something a little better, and if you keep pushing for the best you’ll never actually start your movie.  The real truth:
  • Shoot with the best thing you can find - Just shoot with whatever you can find.  Whatever you can afford to rent or borrow right now is good enough to finish your film.  The simple truth is that an audience can accept bad looking video if the story is good.   If the story is interesting, even a web cam is good enough quality to keep people watching.  But no matter what camera you end up using the reality is….
  • Sound gear is the most important equipment - An audience will watch a web cam video if its good enough, but won’t watch an IMAX movie for ten seconds if the sound is terrible.  Bad sound is just too terribly distracting to ignore.  The the camera is the steering wheel of a car, the sound gear is the engine.
• Use storyboards to play your shoot - I’m sure you’ve watched tons of DVD extras where they show you all the storyboards from your favorite movies.  In the real world, story boards are next to useless for shooting the majority of scenes.  The reason - storyboards are static and linear.  You’ve movie is dynamic and will be shot non-linear.  If you are shooting a chase scene…then yes, story boarding is a great idea because the scene will probably be best shot in order.  However, if you are shooting a dialog scene you will probably shoot one characters part, then another character, and then a third character, and so on.  What will be 35 different storyboard frames might actually be done in only 3 separate shots.  Also,  unless you have meticulously measured every location and you are using a previs software like FrameForge3d, more than likely you’re storyboards will be extremely different than the real location.  More than likely only 3 out of every 100 storyboard frames will look anything like your finished product.  The only thing I would ever storyboard is linear action like a chase, or a special fx shot.
• Continuity errors will destroy your film -  They won’t.  Please stop worrying so much about them.  I can’t tell you how many sets I’ve worked on where the entire crew freaked out because no one was sure if they accidentally moved a cup on the dresser.  I’ve even been on one shoot where the director was worried that the pattern of a blood stain was different from one day to the next.  If you waste too much time on things like this, you’ll end up not getting all the shots you need, and may never finish the film.  The truth is most audiences don’t notice half of the stuff that is going on.  A movie audience wants to suspend its disbelief.  People want to believe everything you are telling them.  Check out Movie Mistakes.com to see just how many big Hollywood movies have mistakes in them.  So what should you be worried about?
  • The actor - The audience is looking at the actor.  If they are wearing a blue shirt in one shot, and suddenly wearing a pink shirt when you cut back to them, obviously people will notice.  Avoid things that are glaringly obvious.  Fortunately, this sort of thing will only happen if you have a long break between shooting, such as a scene that ends up being shot over several days.  Simply take some snapshots with a digital camera each time you go on a break, finish a scene, or wrap at the end of the day.
  • The unexplainable -  The audience will ignore, forgive, and forget just about anything that is even remotely explainable.  Does the actor jump from one side of the room to the other, with not enough travel time in between?  No problem, cut to a long take of a cat on the window sill and then cut back.  Most audiences will probably accept this without a second thought.   So the trick is if you find two shots that clearly don’t edit together, then you put some random insert such as something in the room, or a different actor doing something, and the audience will assume that the change happened during that time in between.  If it is reasonable that something could have happened (even if its a bit far fetched), while you the camera wasn’t looking…then I wouldn’t worry about it.

Now that I’ve gotten you thinking critically, tommorrow we are going to talk about The only film making advice you really need.

How to get Good Locations like a Hollywood Pro

You don’t have to settle for your best friend’s basement to shoot your next film.  Believe it or not, getting good locations is sometimes as simple as just making a few phone calls.

In some places, like New York or Los Angelos, its very unlikely you’ll get a popular location for free, but in other parts of the U.S. and in rural or small metropolitan areas around the world, its often easy to get unbelievable looking locations, just by finding the owner and sweet talking them.  You might have to put their daughter in the film, or fill some other unusual request, but if your entire film takes place in a bowling alley, and you can get a free bowling alley by adding in a bit character you better believe you’ll do it in a heartbeat.

Location Scouting

It’s usually best to start with your local film commission.   Almost every city has it, or at least has some sort of film leison that you can contact.  Don’t be shy just because you are producing something that is low or no budget.  It’s their job to help you regardless of your budget.  In fact, many film commissioners bend over backwards to help the little guy, so long as you are professional and curteous when dealing with them.

You’re film comissioner will have tons of files with pictures and addresses of all sorts of locations as well as contacts to the property owners.  From there, its more or less a matter of picking up the phone and negotiating.

However, its not always best to take any location that comes along.  Here are some things to keep in mind when picking a location:

1. Appearance - Does it look good?  There really is no reason to use a location that doesn’t fit the look of your film regardless of if it is the right “type” of location.  Don’t use a bright shiney dentists office as the office of your crazed sadistic serial killer dentist.  It’s probably better to find a run down room, and rent or build a dentists chair.
2. Economy - Can the location be used as more than one location in the film?  Does it have multiple rooms that can serve different purposes in the script?
3. Cost - Will you have to pay for this location, and if so…how much per day?
4. Power - You will have to have power to shoot.  Make sure there is a ton of access to power, and that the wiring is modern enough to handle an extra 1000 watts of load.
5. Parking - You’ll probably have to park at least 8 cars near this place.  Two will have to be right outside the door (the van with your equipment, and a car for your PA who will be running back and forth all day).
6. Permits - Will you need permits to shoot in this location?  In some places, no permits are necessary.  Make sure to discuss this with the film commissioner.
7. Size - The size of a room is very important.  You’ll almost always want a room to be 12 feet by 12 feet or larger.  The larger the better.  Remember its not just the action of the scene that needs to be in the room, but also three lights, the camera rig, dolly rigs, and about 6 crew members.
8. Ceiling Height - If the ceiling is very low it can cause your DP and lighting crew all sorts of fits  Low angle lighting with small lights causes harsh shadows on the walls.  Usuaully, the higher up your able to get your lighting the better.
9. Staging areas - If it all possible you’ll want at least one  ‘Staging area’.  What I mean by that is you want a room that you can place all of your equipment and cases that are not in use.  You may also want to put all of your craft services, as well as a room for your make up artists to do their thing.  This can be one large room, or several small rooms.  The last thing you want is to have to put everything in the hallway of an active workplace such as an office area.

With these tips in mind you are well on your way to finding locations that will add production value to your film, while at the same time saving you tons of headaches during production.

Indie Pro Tip: Keep the team small

When you are building a crew for your first, second, or even 100th movie, it’s always good to ask yourself just how much crew is necessary to complete the film. Do you really need all those people loafing around the set? Trust me, you won’t have to worry about left over donuts…the actors will take care of that.

Unfortunately, there is something of a Hollywood stigma that it takes a ton of people to make a movie. There is a Los Angeles based company that has just moved to my little town that operates this way. They try and hire 30 people at $100/day, and everyone runs around with their heads cut off for 5 days, until half the crew quits and the other half finishes the movie 10 days behind schedule. The fact is in my town there aren’t even 30 people who can make a movie…there are 10, and I know them all. None of them will work for $100/day for a big production company (but they’ll work for free for friends, or students).

Is this logical? In this particular production companies case….yes…well sorta. The problem is that these sort of companies produce B movies with has-been and never-was Hollywood actors from the 80s, and dump them off on the DVD and foreign markets for a couple hundred thousand bucks. Unfortunately, these minor league Hollywood actors are still Hollywood actors, so if they showed up on set and saw only a dozen people, they’d call their agent, curse them out, and leave. These people –with few exceptions– have that stigma built in that it takes some ungodly amount of people to make a film. These companies have their core crew, and the rest are just ‘props’ to convince the big name that a real movie is being made. Now, every now and then, one of the low paid people steps up to the plate and makes a difference. Then they get pulled into the real crew.

But more importantly, is any of this logical for you? Absolutely not! Even when you aren’t paying people, every extra person on set costs you something. Whether they are sucking down the craft services, standing in the way of the people actually working, or maybe just bothering you with the suggestions of “you know what would be cool”, any unnecessary person is a burden. In the world of computer engineering, it’s a well known fact that 3 good programmers will finish a project on time, while 20 will never finish. The same is true for film.

This is why I stress that every beginning filmmaker should work for free (but not for those big companies –for students and other indies). The reason I say this, is you aren’t really working for free…you are auditioning your crew. As you work for free on someone else’s project, you can see who is good to work with, and who is more trouble than they are worth. I’ve done this for the last two years. In the process I’ve found ten extremely skilled people, who are great to work with…and who can shoot an unheard of 10 pages per day.

How to determine what you need
What you need will depend alot on the complexity of your project. A five minute short might not need a script supervisor, but a feature definitely will. That said, the best way to determine what you need is a priority system. You need crew in this priority:

1. DP/Camera - Someone to run the camera
2. Sound/Boom Operator - Someone to hold the boom
3. Gaffer / Lights - Someone to move the lights
4. Script Supervisor - Someone to take notes and Slate
5. Make up - Someone to make the actresses look pretty and embarrass the guys
6. Production Assistant / Runner - Someone with a car to go get all the stuff you forgot.

And that’s it. Yes…that’s it! You can shoot a movie with only 6 crew members. And for that matter, if you are even more crazy you can have less than this. In fact, ultimately you only need two people : One to work the camera, one to work the sound. The reason is that for 99% of scenes, those are the only two people with an active roll while the camera is running. In other words, when the camera stops, there is no reason the sound person can’t apply make up and write script notes while the camera person moves lights. But ideally, I like shooting with these 6 people because it keeps everyone active constantly. Your worst enemy in keeping a set running properly is people sitting idle too long.

I’m sure I’m getting nods from some people out there, but others probably think I’m nuts. Only 6 people???!!! Yes…and it is my preferred method of shooting. In fact, I can say that even on sets with as few as 3 people, I’ve never said “Damn I wish we had more people here to help out”. On the other hand, I have been on sets with 9 people and said “I wish all these $*&#*#@* would get out of my way.”

When you have 50 million dollars and 4 months to throw around, go ahead and go crazy with a 100 person crew. But as an indie, you’ll never regret keeping the crew small.

Don’t make this indie movie mistake.

There is a conventional wisdom when it comes to making movies, that is often expressed as “Show, don’t tell”. But that can mean alot of things to different people. I really think its one of those things that, essentially is good advice, but can be so easily misinterpreted, that it actually does more harm than good. Ultimately, it results in a huge mistake that first time directors always seem to make.

This weekend I saw the movie No Country For Old Men. First off, I must say the movie is amazing. But more importantly, it got me thinking about the above mentioned ‘conventional wisdom’. Is it really necessary to show everything? Is it possibly better to leave the audience guessing a little? After watching No Country For Old Men, I certainly think so.

At the very beginning of the movie, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon what appears to be the aftermath of a horrific shootout. The movie approaches this scene very slowly, as he examines each detail…the parked cars, the bodies lying everywhere, the shells casings scattered around, and the truck bed full of drugs. It is very clear to the audience just what has happened, despite the fact that up to this point hardly even a word has been spoken.

The movie continues very much in this same vein. Rather than showing someone get shot, it will instead show a hitman walking out of there home, then checking his shoes (making you assume he’s checking for blood). You don’t actually see the killing…and in some ways you aren’t even sure if it really happened.

Are they violating the rule? Did the fail to “show”, and instead “tell” you what happened? No…not exactly…and its that misunderstanding that is a huge mistake for indie directors.

What is the mistake?

The mistake is believing that because you have to “show not tell”, that that means that you have to show something beyond your means or budget. In No Country for Old Men, the first scene is essentially a common scene for most mobster or cop movies. A drug deal goes bad. However, you never see the actual gun fight, but you can still tell just how serious it is from the aftermath. For the budget conscious indie filmmaker, there is an enormous savings in simply showing the aftermath of a gun battle, rather than showing the shootout itself.

And doing so doesn’t really violate our “rule”. You are still showing the audience what happened, you’re just doing it from a different point of view. Telling would be if you did something like have a scene at a bar where two cops say, “Did you hear about that shoot out?”. That is certainly not as good as showing the aftermath, but is still far better than a poorly executed shoot out.

In the realm of indie filmmakers, we need a new rule. That rule is:

Show what you can, tell what you can’t.

You have to know your limitations. If something is dangerous, expensive, or difficult then you really have to ask how important it is to your story that it actually be shown. If you do it poorly, then its far worse than if you didn’t do it at all. For example, lets say the bad guy blows up the good guys car. You don’t have the budget for insurance, a licensed blaster, fire marshals, etc. Now, you could do a really cheesy after effects explosion and cut away really fast. I’ve seen it done in some DV movies before…and it looks stupid.

Perhaps you could do it differently. Instead, it would be far better to spend your time looking through the junk yards for a duplicate of the car. Have the actors talking inside of a bar, when they hear a sudden explosion (offscreen) outside. They rush outside to see the junk car on fire. Such a scene might cost you only $200 more than your after effects version. But it costs you $15,000 less than actually blowing the car up….and as far as the audience is concerned the effect is much closer to really blowing up the car. The audience will never think, “Oh..they were too cheap to blow up the car”…because they see a burning car. The audience is far more willing to suspend its belief based on the sound of an explosion, than it is based on actually seeing a really fake looking explosion.

Ultimately, you are trying to show concepts, not absolute realism. The blood circling down the drain in Psycho tells you everything you need to know, while allowing your own imagination to make up the rest of the scene. That is the beauty of movie magic.

Keeping your crew happy

Maintaining a good crew
So now that you’ve found the right people, and said all right magic words (for those who don’t know the magic words are “Sundance” “Van Sant” and “Japanese”). You have a crew. How do you keep that crew?

• Food - Number one on the list is food. Have plenty of snacks and drinks available for the cast and crew. I cannot stress this enough.
• Vary the tasks- More than likely everyone on your crew wants to be a director or a cinematographer. Almost no one likes holding the clapper. Know what types of tasks every person enjoys, as well as what they are best at. Use the best person as cinematographer, but be sure to let the wannabe and beginner cinematographers get in a few shots as well.
• Listen to their ideas - It’s your movie, and when it comes down to it you make the call…but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to your crew. Nothing makes people happier than knowing that at the very least their ideas are being considered. And if the idea is simple enough, and won’t cost too much time you can use the ultimate production magic words, “Lets try it both ways”.
• Get rid of the dead weight - Don’t tolerate slackers, arguers, or gossips. Tell them to leave the set. Perhaps just tell them to leave temporarily if you think they’ll learn their lesson, but don’t be afraid to kick someone out permanently. Chances are if you aren’t having a good experience working with that person…then everyone else on the crew is contemplating severe bodily harm upon that person.

Loyalty
One last important thing to remember is loyalty. If someone works for you, work for them. If someone does good work for you for free, make sure they are the first person you call when you have a budget to pay them.

How to find top quality crew.

It’s your first film, you’re under the gun and have to get things done. Money is disappearing by the second. The actors are getting antsy (or possibly drunk). You look up into the sky and scream…”Where the hell is everybody?”. Sound familiar? You need to learn how to find a good crew.

Finding a good crew isn’t impossible, in fact its probably not nearly as hard as you might believe. Paying for crew members certainly helps, but it doesn’t solve the problem completely. And some of you can’t afford to pay the crew so you’ll have to just live with what you got, right? Well, maybe but probably not. There are, in fact, ways to find great crew members, who are often willing to work for free. And the most beautiful thing is, once you’ve found a good crew your troubles are practically over since you can stick with them over and over.

Where to find film crew members
Well…first things first…where not to find crew: your non film making friends . If you’re friends are filmmakers like you, its fine, but absolutely do not beg friends who are not filmmakers unless they are you’re absolute best friend who would take a bullet for you (in some cases they might have to). If your shoot is less than 10 hours, you may get lucky and have a successful shoot…but more than one day is impossible. Film shoots can ruin friendships. In addition to the generally high stress factor, there is a great amount of knowledge, skill, and perseverance needed to complete a film. Your non-filmmaker friends will have none of those.

Don’t get me wrong, your friends will want to help…at first. They’ll show up ready, eager, and willing. Then they’ll quickly realize they don’t know what the hell is going on…and so will you. So your friends end up holding the clapper, or getting you a coke, and generally feel useless. By the second day, they feel more useless. By the third day they don’t show up. By the end of the third day, you suddenly realize you need six more crew members than you have for one particular shot…but everyone’s already left. Take my advice…use only people genuinely interested in making films on your crew.

So where do we start our search? Craigslist and myspace are a great place to start. Regions where film productions are popular often have meet up groups, trade organizations, or other community oriented events where filmmakers can go to network. One of our local groups in Louisiana is H.U.R.D Meetup Group.

The absolute best way to find crew
The absolute best way to find crew, is to volunteer for someone else’s production. It’s alot of hard work, and your doing it for free. But wait…isn’t that exactly what you want other people to do for you? Maybe its a good idea to get a feel for just what you are asking out of people, before you go on thinking that your brilliant film is so great that everyone is dying to join you. Once you’ve done this a few times, you’ll have a good idea of the kind of directors you like to work with, and the kind who you absolutely despise. So now when it comes time for you to direct, you what your crew will expect out of you.

But, most importantly, joining another production helps you to meet people and see how they work, before you are actually dependent upon them. You can see who disappears, who is always late, and sometimes you might even catch someone stealing (they are less afraid to steal in front of a PA than you might think). More importantly, you’ll see the AD that does everything in her power to keep 100 extras under control…you’ll see the production assistant who runs to the aid of the grips, regardless of whether or not its his job or not. You’ll see the people you want to work for you.

Third, those people will see that you work. If you work, it means you’re serious. There are alot of wannabes in this field, and working for a week only to have a production fall apart is every crew member’s worst nightmare. I may not be getting paid…but I at least want to see the movie I worked on. People who show up and work their ass off for someone else, will only work that much harder when its for themselves.

So now that we’ve found a crew, my next article will cover how to keep them working hard for you.

Four ways supply your film with wardrobe for next to nothing.

As they say, the clothes make the man. Never is that more true than in the realm of film. Pay attention the next time your watching any Hollywood, or even well produced indie movie. They aren’t running around in jeans and a t-shirt. Wardrobe counts for alot…but unfortunately when you are buying clothes for a full cast it gets quite expensive, but not if you know these tips…

In this article, I’ll tell you some great ways to get free clothes for your indie production. However, let me first start by pointing out the type of clothes you can’t get for free…clothing to be used in blood effects scenes. The majority of the ways I’m going to list here are going to open up access for you to get one unique copy of each article of clothing. Unfortunately, when you are doing effects shots that involve your character getting covered in fake blood, you need multiple copies of anything that could get bloody. After all, what if you don’t get it in the first take…are you going to wait for someone to dry clean everything before doing the shot again. Even if you get the shot on the first take, what if the next scene you shoot occurs earlier in the story when the character should still be clean? My only advice here is to buy cheap clothes in bulk, usually in quantities of at least six.

Wardrobe for cheap
But on to the point of this article. How can you get excellent wardrobe on the cheap?

• Goodwill, thrift stores
  Stores such as goodwill sell lots of old clothing for extremely cheap. If you are in a city of any decent size, there are probably a ton of these that you can visit.
• Garage Sales
  Most people have clothing on sale during garage sales. There are basically two approaches to getting what you want: Show up ridiculously early, or ridiculously late. Most people show up very early to garage sales in hopes of being the first to peruse the merchandise and find some hidden treasure. You can join the crowd and fight for the deals. I find though, its far better to show up very late, just before the sale is closing. People putting on garage sales, for the most part, aren’t as concerned with the money as they are getting rid of their crap. If its getting late and there is still stuff, then people putting on the sale aren’t happy. Show up late and offer a big bulk deal, such as $10 for all their remaining clothing. You may also want search around for any random props you may want and get that tossed into the deal. You’d be surprised just how cheap you can get things at garage sales when it looks like no one else wants it.

Clothing for free

If getting a bulk of clothing for $10 is still to pricey, here are some ways you can get wardrobe for free:

• Old People
  Grandma and Grandma probably have tons of old crap…excuse me…vintage clothing just lying around. This is especially great for picking up men’s jackets, hats, purses, and jewelery. One warning though…if it doesn’t fit, don’t use it. Nothing looks stupider than a mobster in a suit that’s way too big.
• Buy it and return it.
  You might have to put a little money up front, but pretty much every clothing store in America will let you return any item so long as its in good condition and still has the tag on it. Make sure to check the refund policy though, before you end up with $600 in store credit to a place you never normally shop.

Shoot your movies in style, but don’t pay the high cost of trendy fashions. Except of course when it comes to sunglasses. Every action hero needs badass sunglasses.

How to shoot a music video

Somehow I managed to find myself working on the set of two music videos over the last couple of weeks. Making a music video is usually a bit easier than most other types of productions, but it has some of its own unique challenges. But after reading this article you should be well equipped to face those challenges.

When shooting a music video, usually you can leave out some equipment, such as field microphones, mini disc recorders, and mixers. However, there is one piece of equipment that you wouldn’t normally need, that is invaluable in a music video shoot, a PA System. You’ll need something for playback so your band/artist can hear to lip sync. Especially in the case of a rock band, a simple stereo won’t cut it. Drums are loud, as well as the most important instrument to synchronize with the video. You need to be loud enough for the drummer to hear while he’s playing.

Another invaluable tool is a megaphone, especially if a crowd is involved.

You’ll also need to connect at least one cable from your PA system to your camera’s microphone input. This is simply to provide a reference for synchronizing the song later in post. But please, do not connect your camera to any powered output from your PA. There is a really good chance you’ll destroy your camera’s microphone preamps. Be very careful that you do not send a high power signal into your camera’s XLR inputs. If worse comes to worse, avoid this step, and synchronize using the cameras onboard microphone.

I highly recommend you shoot with at least two cameras, and this guide will center around using two cameras. So, using two cameras, the first thing you’ll want to do is synchronize their time codes. Fortunately, most higher end cameras allow you to synchronize their time codes via a firewire connection, and the really expensive cameras have even better options. Set each camera to a free running time code, and then jam sync them. Check your manual on how to do this. Now when you go into post, you should be able to sync them up perfectly in editing even if your camera people are starting and stopping at different times.

Essentially, all music videos can be broken down into two parts, a synchronized performance part, and an unsynchronized story part. The story part couldn’t be easier…simply point and shoot. The story part is only as elaborate as the special effects you are trying to achieve. You don’t even have to worry about setting up the PA system, or capturing field sound.

The performance part is a bit different. So what follows will be the procedure I prefer to use to shoot a music video.

Procedure
As stated above, first set up your PA system, and synchronize the time code of your cameras. If you intend to have a whole crowd in the performance, don’t bring them in just yet. You want only the most dedicated fans that are going to be on the front row, in the initial shots. Anyone who isn’t in the shot, should not be on set at this point.

Master Shot The most important thing you can do is knock out the master shot right away. This is essentially a wide shot covering the entire band or group of performers, lip syncing to the entire song. For a band, with your ‘B’ camera focus on a medium shot of the main singer. If necessary, you may want to cut this into a few shots, in case your band gets sweaty or tired towards the end of the song. However, what you ultimately want to achieve here is a wide shot of the band performing the entire song all the way through. If you get this shot, no matter what happens, you can still finish the video.

Musicians are notoriously moody, and unreliable. You are going to be working all day at this….most musicians have never heard of such a thing. So, by knocking out that master shot, you have enough coverage to fill in all the gaps of your story section.

After your master shot is through, you have a wide shot and a shot of the singer all the way through the song. Repeat this again for your guitar player, bass players, drummers, extra singers, or that random guy in rap videos that throws money around. With two cameras, you should be able to get coverage of the entire group with just three set ups. While you are doing the last members, have other members of your crew set up jib arms or cranes if you intend to do those sorts of shots. Once you finish your last shot of group members, you should be able to let the band take a short break while you put the cameras on the jibs.

Do a few cool sweeping shots. Pop the cameras off the jibs, and have the crew start taking them apart. At the same time, go hand held and go nuts. Get in close up on each member of the group, but try to avoid too many shots of the hands of any of the musicians. Your goal here is to get shots that could essentially be put anywhere, so avoid shooting anything that will be obviously out of sync. You don’t have to go through the whole song at this point if people are getting antsy.

Finally, if you have a crowd in the performance, bring them in. The reason you don’t bring the whole crowd in until this part, is if you had them on set the whole time by now they would be bored. Get the crowd in, and have someone enthusiastic pump them up with the megaphone. Get a bunch of cool shots of the crowd going nuts from the angle of the stage.

You now have the entire performance part of your music video.

Some exceptions
If you plan on having a ton of shots that include both a large part of the crowd, and the performers in the same shot, then its probably best to do the crowd shots first. If plan on doing a bunch of sweeping shots of the crowd with a jib, get that completely set up before anyone shows up, and do that first. Essentially, you need to gauge who is most likely to get bored, leave, or cause any form of problem and get their portions finished as fast as possible. Except in rare cases, none of these people your working with are actors. They don’t know what its like…not used to the “ok stop….that’s great…oh…crap….wait…do it again from the beginning”.

If you have dancers you don’t have to shoot dancers first, but you do want to get dancers in as few shots as possible. Each time the dancers perform there is the possibility, however remote, that someone will get injured. It happened on one of the shoots I just did. Just doing some basic swing dancing moves, a girl’s arm was pulled out of socket. Fortunately, it was a big enough shoot that there were some medial professionals on hand, but obviously that’s not always the case.

With these tips, you should be able to handle almost every popular style of music video shoot. Happy shooting.

Should you rent or own your equipment?

In the indie film world there has always been a debate over whether its better to rent or buy equipment for your production. Given the same amount of money, you can usually get much better equipment (and theoretically better production value). On the other hand, if you buy your equipment, at the end of the day you still have that equipment left over. You could use that equipment on your next production, and spread the costs out over two, three, or however many productions you make. Its an interesting quandary, which in this article I’ll show you how to solve…

In economics, there is a classical problem called the view point problem. Imagine you manage the technology department in some random large company. Inside your same company is the copy department. They charge you 25 cents for every copy you make. But the copy place down the road charges you 15 cents. You make a million copies a month. Being the brilliant manager you are, you start sending your people down the road to make copies, saving your department $100,000 a month.

The problem is that your view point is centered from inside your department only. When you look at the whole company, those copies only cost the company 10 cents itself. The rest of that 15 cents is staying inside the company…its just changing hands. By switching to the place down the road, you aren’t saving $100,000 your losing $150,000.

When it comes to film equipment, the problem sorta works in reverse. If you buy film equipment you see yourself as spending X amount of dollars on your company as a whole, but in return you make the mental leap that it isn’t costing the production anything…after all, you still have the equipment after your done right?

Returning to our copy department example above, you’ve essentially ignored the fact that the copy department still costs 10 cents a copy. You’ve said, “Well, I’m keeping it inside the company so its essentially free”. If we change the numbers a bit…lets pretend that copy machine really does cost the company 25 cents per copy. Meaning when you make a million copies there the total cost to the company is $250,000. At this point you’d be crazy not to go down the street where it costs 15 cents a copy.

So in order to make any real judgment as to whether buying is better than renting, what we need is an accurate estimate of how much using a piece of equipment really costs the production. But how do you do that?

How much does rental equipment cost?
Well, this is easy. Just find a quote and use it. Rental equipment is usually listed by the day, but remember many companies will work on a 2 day, 3 day week. This means you pay for X days, but you get it the whole week. Zacuto is a good resource for pricing, and it lists prices by week and even by month rather than doing the sometimes confusing 3 day week deal. Simply figure out how long your production will take, and estimate your costs.

How much does my own equipment REALLY cost?
The much harder thing to figure out is how much the equipment you own really costs. Remember, regardless of whether or not you’re producing anything, your equipment is still costing you money. So, we need some sort of device to figure out what equipment really costs. Fortunately, our friends in accounting have come up with a perfectly useful device - depreciation.

Depreciation is the accountant’s way of showing that over time things wear down, and become less valuable. There are several different ways depreciation can be done, but for our purposes we’re going to use the simplest method - straight line depreciation.

Straight line depreciation explained
It’s very easy to figure out straight line depreciation. Just estimate how long something will last (or how long it takes before its obsolete), then divide its price by that length of time. Here’s an example:

One 3-chip digital camera: $5000
All the bells and whistles, extra batteries, etc: $2500
Life expetency: 60 months

Cost: $125 / month.

Easy right? Well not quite. There may be additional costs you have to figure in, such as interest. But for simplicities sake, lets just pretend you bought it cash (economists forgive me if I don’t feel like doing some insanely long ROI benefit vs. risk analysis). Even without interest we still have to factor in the fact that the camera is costing us money even when we aren’t using it. A side note: If you did finance your equipment, rather than figuring out the depreciation of your equipment, you could simply take your monthly note as your cost.

So we have to make some way to figure out how the additional down time costs factor in, so that we can reach our ultimate goal of comparing renting to buying. The easiest way I can think of to do this is to include all time from the beginning to one production, until the beginning of the next. Let me give an example to clear it up:

RENT
One 3-chip camera: 100/day
Number of days: 6
total cost: 600

Very straight forward. But now lets say we do that same exact project

BUY
Straight line depreciation or monthly note: 125/month

If from the start of one production to the next is 3 months apart, then renting costs you $600, while buying costs you $375. Buying is cheaper using this example. If you take 5 months between productions, buying cost you $635…it would be cheaper to rent.

In fact, this example leads to a pretty simple formula.

Cost to rent / Cost to buy per month = # Months between productions.

Meaning that if the real number of months between productions is greater than the number from this formula, you should be renting. If you shoot more often than this number, then you should buy equipment.

Special Considerations

When you rent equipment, you usually rent just what you need for the production you intend to do. When you buy equipment, you tend to buy everything you can afford that you intend to use. When doing this calculation, you cannot factor out the equipment you buy, but do not use. For example, just because you do a music video where you don’t capture field sound, you still have to count your field sound equipment in your ‘cost per month’ of buying.

Practical situations
The above example is far from the real world situation. In the real world, you may be looking at buying more than $30,000 in equipment, versus paying $1800/day for equipment worth $120,000 plus. In addition, your needs may change long before the useful life of your equipment runs out. This year you may buy and HVX, and by next year you’ll need a Varicam, or even be shooting on 35mm film.

In the practical sense, my honest opinion is that unless you are shooting every month, doing commercials or other paid ventures, buying is probably not in your best interest. But everyone is different. Perhaps you are planning on shooting a web series, and even though you aren’t making money with your camera directly, you will be shooting two days out of every week. But using the formula I’ve presented, and adapting it to your own situation, you should now know whether renting or buying is better for you.

Should you go to film school?

Many aspiring filmmakers don’t know if film school is right for them. Some people are dead set against the idea of going to film school, while others say you aren’t actually serious about being a director if you don’t go to film school. So, I’m sure that those of you who are confused about what you should do have gotten some advice that has been pretty across the map by now.

The important thing to realize is that everyone has different goals when they get into the film business. Some people want to be famous, others want to express their art, still others just want to make a big paycheck working with movie stars. Some, like me, decided to try it once and got addicted to the fact paced problem solving creativity aspect of it.

I think its best to make an analogy to music. Many famous musicians, in fact, most of the best of them, did not go to school to study music. They simply learned from a family member, or taught themselves, and then just joined a band and went for it. Some of them eventually lucked out and got a record deal. This is similar to a director who makes short films and enters them into festivals hoping to get discovered. The idea here is that this type of person requires absolute artistic freedom, and is willing to sacrifice the big (and small) pay checks for the love of their art…whether that be music or film. This sort of person could go to film school, or could not. At best it will give them access to equipment to make a really killer short film. At worst it will give them time to sit around and procrastinate while wasting their (or their parent’s) money.

Conversely, a person who goes to school for music tends to move on to being a studio musician, classical concert musician, or studio engineer. You work for hire. On average, these types of people tend to be significantly more technically astute than their self taught counter parts. However, this type of person is hardly ever the one with artistic control…because they’ve essentially based their livelihood around their chosen career. If you have a masters in Piano and Music theory…then you pretty much have to play Piano to put food on the table. So either you work as a bartender the rest of your life, or you start accepting paid gigs in which you may not be 100% in love with the music. The same is true for the film student. They come out of school with much more technical knowledge, but won’t have the trust of major studios to direct the next big budget extravaganza. You’ll be doing working as a PA, an AD, or at best directing some small studio films, and sci-fi originals…because you have to make a living. That being said though, it is a good living. As a director you’ll make at least $13,000 a week under DGA minimum.

The third stream sort of finds itself in the middle…the film entrepreneur. If I had to make an analogy to music, this is a person like Ani Defranco. They make the music, then start the record label to distribute it. This is the person that just enjoys the process of making films, but doesn’t like the restrictions on how it should be done. You like the run and gun atmosphere of doing it yourself, and hope to make a small living self distributing. For this type of person, film school is a terrible idea. All you will end up doing is fighting with your professor the first time they say film is “organic” (*this is me holding back from ranting*). If you are this type of person, go out and help someone else make a movie who is like the first type of person listed above. This website is mostly for you (and a little bit for the first kind of guy). If you are this type of person you are probably the micromanagement type. You really don’t care much about what the overall plot is…but then next shot won’t be right unless we crane downwards while dollying forward just as the bear jumps out and attacks the alien, and the pick up truck flies off the cliff and explodes. If this sounds like you, then save your money (and prevent stress) by not going to film school and just start filming things.

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