Don’t let lack of experience stop you from achieving your goals

Just like everything else in life worth doing, there is a steep learning curve to becoming a great film maker.  This is true whether or not you are trying to break in using the traditional route or the entrepreneurial route.

The traditional route is to start out as a production assistant, work you way up to line producer, then to production manager, and so on until you reach your goals.  The problem is you no matter how many films you work as a PA no one is ever willing to put their faith in you to do the next job up.  You just don’t have the experience.

The same is true for the entrepreneurial filmmaker.  If you are going this route, then you are out hustling for investors or for a studio to back your project.  “What have you done before?  Can you show me something?” will be one of their very first questions.

If either of these sounds like a situation you are currently facing, let me share with you the advice of a friend of mine named Donny.  This advice came up during a conversation with a friend of ours, a young actress, who was looking for a day job, but couldn’t find anyone who would hire her because she lacked some skill  for each of the jobs she had applied.

The advice he gave to her was golden advice that I will remember forever.  He said:

If you let not knowing how to do something stop you from getting what you want, then you’ll never get anywhere in life.

Donny has a great story of how he had got his first job working for a video production company.  He wanted to work the camera, but the company wasn’t hiring for the camera position.  Instead, they were looking for someone to do DVD menus and animations using the Lingo programming language in Macromedia Director.  Donny is a good friend of mine, and for all of his skills in art, film, animation, and business, if there is one thing he is not its a programmer.  So when they asked, “Can you program Lingo, because that is what we really need?“  His response was “Absolutely…but I want to give my old job two weeks notice…can I start in two weeks?”

He didn’t need to give his former employer two weeks notice…he didn’t have a former employer.  He was broke and jobless.  Instead he went out and bought three books on programming lingo, and proceeded to teach himself for those two weeks.  He got the job, and worked his way into a camera operator position in no time.

Now, I’m not saying lie about your abilities…and please please don’t lie to an investor about what you’ve done before.  There are severe legal consequences for lying to an investor.  But what I am saying is that you can’t let your own lack of experience dictate what you can or can’t accomplish.  People always tell you to think outside the box.  I’m here to tell you there is no box.

Let me give you a real life example.  I have an a friend who is an actor who wants to start producing some feature films.  However, he has absolutely nothing produced.  He has all the contacts to make a film.  He knows crew and talent both here in the south and Los Angelos.

He called me asking me to do some random projects for him to use as a reel that he could use to approach investors.  The thing is, what he is basically trying to do is do a bunch of projects for the sole purpose of building a reel, because he thinks investors won’t give him money without one.  The fact is, he hasn’t tried to raise money yet, so he doesn’t even know if they will ask for that sort of proof.  Ultimately he might spend the better part of a year doing purposeless projects, just to make a good reel.

Capitalize on other peoples experience

If you aren’t trying to get a ‘job’  but are instead trying to get a movie funded you have another great option available to you.  You can capitalize on the experience of your team.  Think of the above example.  My friend wants to raise money for a film.  He thinks he has the investors, but is afraid to approach them without some proof of experience.  However, he pretty much knows who his core crew is.  They all have experience and extensive reels.  Do you think that if he had a good possibility of getting funding that that crew wouldn’t let him use their reels to get the money?  After all, as a crew person it means you will get work and get paid.  Try this experiment: Call any professional camera operator in the world…preferably a steadicam operator because they usually have killer reels.  Tell him you have a feature script, you want to hire him as Director of Photography, but you are still raising funding  If he is interested, ask him if its ok to use his reel  to convince an investor to fund the movie.  He won’t say no.

Take the group of experience crew who have agreed to work with you. Form a Production Company, and edit together an extremely awesome reel from all of them.  Then say the following words: “This is an example of various projects my crew has worked on in the past”.  You haven’t lied, and you aren’t really even being deceitful.  After all, the people responsible for this reel will be working on your film, so the investor can probably expect close to the same quality of work.

Does it really matter if you personally don’t have the experience?  It shouldn’t because obviously you are good enough to surround yourself with smart enough people to get the job done.  Are you smart enough to get the job done?

72 Essential Filmmaker Resources

Here are a ton of links to help you on your next movie.

The Simple 10 Step guide to Post Production

So now you’ve got your film “in the can” as they say in Hollywood.  What do you do next?  Going into post production is often quite fun in the beginning but quickly becomes overwhelming.  It seems like there is always something that cant be fixed that needs desperately to be fixed.

One of the old jokes in film making is “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it in post!”.  I have some good news and some bad news.  The good news is nearly everything actually can be fixed in post.   The bad news is fixing things in post is expensive.  The even worse news is that with an inefficient workflow you can waste a ton of money fixing things  that don’t even need to be fixed, only to find you’ve wasted your entire post production budget on a set of shots you ultimately end up cutting out of the film anyways.

I can’t save you from having to spend time and money fixing things that truly need to be fixed.  It’s going to happen.  You are going to have a key scene where you don’t have a single take where the dialog came out clear.  More than likely you’ll find some edit that just doesn’t make sense.  There are probably at least a few shots that are way over or under exposed.  There is no getting around it…you have to fix it.

However, you absolutely must avoid doing work on footage that you don’t need.  You could spend a month color correcting a scene, adding ADR and foley, only to find that you don’t need the scene in the first place.  That is a waste of time and money.  To avoid this, you’re post production schedule needs to follow a logical work flow.

1. Sync Sound - The fist step in any post production workflow is to syncronize the sound if you didn’t capture the audio directly into the camera.
2. Assembly Edit - Put together a rough edit of the film.  This edit should actually be reasonably close to how the actual film will play out.  However, do not add any fades or transitions!  The reason you don’t want any fades or transitions is that inevitably the two clips you fade into one another will ultimately need two different color correction treatments.  It will be nearly impossible to adjust the color correction over the portion where one scene fades into the next.
3. Color Correction - Export the various clips and color correct each as necessary.
4. FX - Any visual effects that are necessary should be done at this stage.  After this you should have film that is entirely complete except for the sound.
5. ADR - Do the dialog replacement on any scene that needs it.  It’s best to have a professional do this, even if its just a guy with a home studio.
6. Foley and Sound Design - Your film should now have a complete dialog track, and  fit together as an almost complete film.    It’s now time to add atmosphere and feeling by putting in some sound design elements.  These are things like footsteps, dogs barking in the distance, crickets chirping, etc.
7. Score - Add music where necessary to highlight and enchance the mood of each scene.
8. Mixing - Have a professional mix all of the audio tracks.  I only recommend you do this yourself if you have a very in depth knowledge of EQ and audio compression.  Adjusting the volume on tracks is not enough.
9. The Final Edit - Go back and refine your edit adding transitions, fades, and more intricate cuts.  You should not be making large editorial decisions at this point, but rather just refining the pacing of the film.
10. Titles and Credits - Add the above the line credits at the beginning of the film, and build the rear title credits.

You are now beyond post production and into the marketing phase.  What comes next after this various quite a bit on your planned distribution medium.  You may want to have a 35mm blow up for festivals, or create a digital master.  You may want to begin designing the DVD menus.   Regardless of where you go next, congratulations, you now have a finished film.

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.

The Ultimate 12 Step Guide to Preproduction

For most people preproduction of a low budget film can be pretty overwhelming.  Lets face it…for the most part it just isn’t very much fun.  Very few people really enjoy doing paperwork, writing shotlists, making phone calls, and scheduling meetings.  Well tough.

The fact is anything you fail to do in preproduction will cost you five to ten times more time, money, and headache later on.  It’s even possible that something you fail to do in preproduction could make your movie completely unsellable, or even make you lose your house and car in a law suit.  Yes, it’s that serious.

So its pretty clear that dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s is an important part of completing your movie.  But how do we go about making the most of the limited time we have to do peproduction on our film?

As with all things worth doing, the first step is a plan.   So here is a step by step guide for what you need to do before you expose a single frame of film.

1. Get the script - You have three options.  Option a script that is already written, pay someone to write the script, or write it yourself.  Regardless of which way you choose make sure the script is registered with both your U.S. copyright office, and the Writer’s Guild of America (or your appropriate equivolent agencies for your own country).
2. Breakdown the script - Now comes the painstaking task of pulling the script apart to its barebones.  You need to find every single thing that shooting this movie entails.  If in the last scene of the film involves a little girl giving your hero a black rose…you don’t want to arrive on set and realize you need to send someone to the store for a black rose.  That will put you three hours behind if you are lucky - it will probably be much worse.  Here are some things to concentrate on when breaking down a script:
   

   • Locations - How many and what type.  This will be important for the next two steps
   • Characters - List out every single character, and take note of how many scenes they appear in, how many pages their role covers, and how many lines of dialogue they have.  Don’t forget any featured extras either!
   • Wardrobe - You will need at least one outfit for each character.  Determine if the story is such that the character will need one or more additional wardrobe options.  If your story has a flashback of “Ten years ago” your hero better not be wearing the same suit he’s wearing today.
   • Props - Don’t forget to get all of your props before hand.  Remember even simple things are props such as cell phones, pens, or glasses.
   • Stunts and FX - Note any stunts or effects that you might have to perform.  Remember anything even remotely dangerous is a stunt.  This includes things like throwing the coffee mug against the wall or tripping over something on the floor.

3. Do a rough schedule - Now, I don’t mean schedule it specifically to the dates.  The actual shoot date is probably still subject to change at this point.  Instead, just figure out how many days it will take to do this shoot, and roughly how many days you’ll need for each scene.  A way to figure this is to estimate that you can shoot 5 pages per day.  However, make sure to account for any difficult effects or complex actions scenes as these will surely take more time.  You should also try not to make sure you won’t have a day where you move locations more than once.  Location moves eat up at least two and half hours of time, and if you move locations twice you’ve nearly lost half of your day just in travel
4. Scout locations - Get some preliminary verbal agreements from some location owners as to what they will want in return for you shooting there.  I don’t recommend getting anything in writing at this point unless they offer their location for free.  At this point you don’t know what your shooting dates are, and you probably don’t know how much money you have to spend on locations.  So at best you are just building up a bank of possible locations for when it comes time to getting things nailed down.
5. Budget your shoot - Determine how much you’ll need to actually make this thing work.  There are entire books written on budgeting since its such a complex subject.  For your budget it will probably need to be done in reverse.  That means you take the amount of money you have and figure out how you can make that work.  At this point you may realize you need to refine the script because some parts of it aren’t feasible.
6. Raise some money - If you insist on not working within the budget you already have, then you better get out there and raise some money.
7. Legal work - Get all the necessary forms: Actor releases, location releases, rental agreements etc.  Incorporate your film as its own entitity for legal protection (such as an LLC or S corp).  Make sure to work with a good attorney who understands the entertainment industry.  Money spent on legal work is pretty much always worth it in the end.
8. Hire crew - Get an experienced DP, and have him help you find the rest of your crew.
9. Audition actors - Keep auditioning until you find the right people for the right parts.  Make sure to tape the auditions as well.
10. Confirm locations - Go back to all of those locations you’ve scouted and get everything in writing.  Try to get each one to give you as much time at their location as possible, but if at all possible avoid any nonconsecutive time.  In other words, don’t fall for the “You can shoot here every Sunday if you want”.  If you need the place for more than one day, then you’ll more than likely find that after your first shooting day there the owner is fed up with you and has no intention of letting you back next Sunday.  You may even have it in your contract that you can shoot on these nonconsecutive days…but what are you going to do when the owner refuses?  Sue?  I bet you don’t have the money for that, nor would it give you much financial reward for doing so.  Remember owners are very unlikely to kick you out, but its very easy for them to not let you back in.
11. Build the shot lists and storyboards -  Now that you have locations its a good idea to start planning how you will shoot each scene.  Storyboards are great, but may times a storyboard by an artist is worth little more than pretty artwork.  They often don’t have any bearing on the reality of the location, and thus are pretty useless.  Instead, I recommend storyboarding with 3d software, such as Frame Forge.
12. Lock the schedule - With your location agreements, actor commitments, and shot lists in hand you should have a rough idea of exactly where you need to be and when.  Write the schedule down and give it to everyone on the cast and crew.

And the next step is….get out there and shoot.  If you follow this guide you will be much happier, and much safer when you get on the set.  More importantly when you step into the editing bay you’ll be confident that you have a finished film hidden somewhere in those boxes of tape or reels of film lying on the floor.

Four web series you should NOT create.

I’ve been talking quite a bit about how to create a successful web series, and the types of content that work well on the internet. The honest truth is, there are probably a ton of great ideas I’ve never considered. Even more likely, there are a bunch of things which I would say are outright stupid ideas, which if done right would end up being huge successes. However, here are a few things I absolutely know won’t work, so don’t make the mistake of creating these types of web series:

• Kiddie Mobsters - You and your friends are between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five and you just love Tarintino. We’ll that’s fantastic, but no one is going to believe you are all wise cracking gangsters. If you can’t find actors that actually fit the part, then don’t do it. Unless you are doing it as a comedy, it simply won’t work.
• Zombies - It might just work, but good lord is it difficult. If you are working on a low budget its best to stay away from special effects ridden genres such as zombie flicks. Another downside to zombie films is that they require characters to die off to maintain a sense of high stress. As I mentioned before, killing off your main characters is bad for business. Maybe after you get a successful series under your belt you can go for zombies, but for your first series stay far away.
• Non-comedy musicals - It’s simply not part of the typical web audience. Something that is funny might work, or even something very dark and unusual like Sweeny Todd might work. But don’t expect Fiddler on the Roof to hit it big on the internet.
• Children’s programs - Its nice if you want to create wholesome children’s entertainment, but it probably won’t work on the web. Both at school and at home, many young kids have sites like youtube blocked by filtering software. Most teens know how to hack these programs, but kids under 10 don’t and don’t particularly care to. They are too busy playing webkinz, or whatever it is little kids do these days on the internet. Also, don’t forget that internet media is a one on one experience. I certainly don’t know many eight year olds with a whole lot of buying power. That means very few advertisers interested in using you as an advertising channel. As far as I know sugar coated cereals don’t advertise much on the net, so unless you get a ton of toy sponsors you probably won’t make much money off of your series even if it does become popular.

Want to be a filmmaker? Maybe you should start a web series…

Everyone knows that breaking into the film world is tough, if not nearly impossible. The cost of creating a film is enormous, and the likelihood of making a profit on your first feature is extremely small. But over the past few months, I’ve realized there is a better way. That way is to create a web series…

Think about it. No trying to convince a big studio to finance you, only to subsequently destroy your vision. No shifty distributors to deal with. Just grab a DV camera, find some actors, buy lots of pizza, and start filming.

But what about the fame, the money, and the admiration? Well, I don’t know about the fame (unless you consider the numa numa guy to be famous), but lets talk about the money.

Four ways to make money with a web series
Is it possible to make money with a web series? For the longest time it was my intuition that it wasn’t. Boy was I wrong. In fact, I wonder if its possible not to make money with a web series. Think of these various streams of income:

• CPM Advertising - Video sites like Revver and Metacafe offer you money based on the number of views you recieve. And just recently, YouTube even announced it would expand its Partner Program to include even more users, and thus you could even make money on YouTube. Each site has its own policies, but fortunately most of them are non-exclusive. So you can actually upload your video to all of them.
• DVDs - Just like a film, you can easily sell DVDs of the whole series. In fact, if you provide enough content you can probably charge even more than a standard film.
• Merchandising - Develop interesting characters, catch phrases, or plot elements and you can turn that into all sorts of merchandise including T-shirts. The beauty of a web series is that it provides a unique “in the know” feel to your fans, and thus having T-shirts with your characters on it is more appealing than a very small indie film. It wouldn’t even surprise me if you’d sell more T-shirts than DVDs
• Website Advertising - In addition to the advertising embedded directly in your videos, you could also put advertising on your website. This could be CPC advertising (you get paid for each click, like google Adsense), CPM (you get paid for every 1000 views), or affiliates (you get paid when someone buys something through your link). If you put advertising on a website for an indie film, most people would be turned off by it. For a series where they are viewing content for free, people pretty much expect advertising to be present.

So you can certainly make money, but how much? Well, from my research I’ve found that $5/CPM is pretty much the low side of video advertising, in fact Metacafe pays that rate. That means for every 1000 views, you get $5. They may not seem like much, but consider the fact that many web videos get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views.

I have a ton of new posts coming up that could help you create you own web series, so make sure to subscribe below either through email or RSS…(if your into that sort of thing.)

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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.

The Cloverfield method of film marketing

The movie Cloverfield did astoundingly well this weekend. On my other site, ourCloverfield Review has been receiving tons of hits over the past few weeks, so it wasn’t a bit surprise for me to see it at Number 1 this weekend. But what can we, as filmmakers learn from the way Cloverfield built its marketing campaign, in order to better market our own movies?

Cloverfield was by no means a low budget movie. However, it contained most of the negative traits that distributors tend to say hurts the sales of low budget movies. It had no major stars, shaky poor camera work (intentional of course), a TV director making his feature film debut, and all of it shot on HD video. In terms of the way ‘the industry’ values things, the only thing it had going for it was the backing of J.J. Abrams.

But at the end of the day the industry experts opinions don’t mean a thing when the box office numbers come rolling in. In that regards, Cloverfield, delivered big time with over 41 million. Considering January is typically a slow time at the box office, that figure is pretty impressive for an opening weekend.

So what made it so popular? Clearly, it’s intricate viral marketing campaign is what built the buzz to get people to the theaters. I think that most filmmakers have already got that one figured out. But what I want to discuss here is not so much how Cloverfield’s viral marketing campaign works, but rather why it works.

The answer to that question is simple: Curiosity. Human curiosity is one of the largest motivating factors that cause people to act. In fact, some researchers put curiosity on par with hunger or thirst, as a driving factor. You could say that curiosity is quite literally the hunger or thirst for knowledge.

Those of you who were very interested in Cloverfield can probably attest to the fact that you quiet literally feel the need to know. What does the monster look like? Where did it come from? You feel an overwhelming need to have these issues settled, and sometimes even translates into a physical sensation of emptiness in the pit of your stomach. Curiosity is that powerful.

Upon seeing the success of Cloverfield, it reminded me of another movie: The Matrix. I know for most of you film geeks (like me) the subsequent sequels to The Matrix have left a pretty bad taste in your mouth. Ignore that for a second, and try to think back to the very first trailer you saw for The Matrix. Keanu Reeves leaping high into the air, dodging bullets, a very unusual cybergoth looking atmosphere, and then everything goes black with just a website name: www.whatisthematrix.com and the words “What is the Matrix?”

That one statement piqued enough curiosity to propel the movie to the number one spot on its opening weekend and to this day it has made $171 million dollars, not counting its sequels and merchandising.

Fortunately, for horror and science fiction curiosity are easy to build, because people are naturally curious about these subjects. So how do we generate curiosity for our own movies?

Making people curious

• Show less - In the trailer or on the website, never show the killer, the monster, or whatever we are supposed to fear, hate or fight. Just make sure people know its really scary.
• Less talking in the trailer - Dialog spoken in your trailer should be very esoteric, and give very little of the plot away.
  

  Good: I never imagined something like this could happen.
  Bad:I can’t believe you killed him!

• Create curiosity invoking websites - Rather than build a website that ‘explains’ your movie, build a website in the “universe” of your movie. For example, instead of a website that tells about your zombie movie, write a daily blog from the point of view of a character constantly running away from zombies. Reveal very little about the movie itself, but reveal new aspects of the world in which your movie takes place. This keeps the curiosity alive for the movie, while getting people deeper involved in the mystery of just what is happening.
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Don’t make this indie movie mistake.

by Matt · Leave a Comment 

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.

Filed Under: Directing, Filmmaking
Tagged: filmmaking for dummies, filmmaking tips

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