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?

The only film making advice you really need

Yesterday, I told you how Listening to ’so called’ experts could destroy your film career before it even starts.  Today I’m going to share with you the few principles you really need to know.  If you’ve ever dreamed about being a director, then this post is a must read for you.

The 9 things you need to do if you really want to be a film maker.

1. Shoot the damn thing - Stop obsessing over what gear you need, stop worrying about raising money, stop obsessing over every little detail.  If you can’t raise the money you need, then figure out how to do it with less money.  If you can’t find the location you need, rewrite the script for a new location.  Rewrite until you have a movie you can actually do right now then do it right now!
2. Three takes and go - Ok, so its digital video.  You can have as many takes as you want right?  No!  Shoot three takes and move on just like you were shooting 35mm film.  Only on the really really important scenes, or really short shots are you allowed to go up to five takes, but after that move on.  The actors aren’t going to do it any better. Deal with it.
3. Get coverage first, then do the fancy stuff - Do a wide establishing shot, do a medium close up of each character, then do some inserts.  If you are positive the scene will edit together, then you can start doing some more fancy stuff.   But even then…if that “fancy stuff” you want to do doesn’t add to the film, maybe you should just move on to the next scene.
4. Get good sound or learn to ADR - It’s imperative you get excellent sound.  If you can’t do it while shooting, then you will have to ADR.  This can be very expensive, if you don’t have access to a post production audio suite.  Try to capture the best sound you can during production, but be sure to budget and plan to do a little ADR as well.  It’s probably a good idea for you to start trying to figure out how to ADR dialog right now.  It is a skill you will definitely use later.
5. Learn to edit - Regardless of whether or not you intend to edit your film yourself, you need to learn how to edit.  If you don’t know how to edit, then you’ll never know if your movie will cut together at all.  Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ll shoot way more coverage than you could possible use and your editor will have to sift through hours of pointless footage.  This is also a bad thing because if the editor gets bored while sifting through useless footage, he is more likely to half ass his way through the edit.  If you’ve directed the thing right, the edit should naturally evolve from the footage itself.
6. Finish the film - Above all finish the film.  If its your first film, it will probably suck.  Deal with it.  But you have to realize that no matter how bad, a a finished film has value but an unfinished film is worthless. Go to best buy and search for some of the action or horror four packs and watch them.  It will likely be the best $7.99 you ever spend.  Many of these movies aren’t just bad…they are laughably horrendous.  Everything is out of focus, the story makes no sense, and fifteen year olds pretend to be mob bosses.  It’s utterly ridiculous…but they have one thing going for them:  They were finished.  Not only that…they were sold.  There are distributors who make it their business to pick up extremely terrible movies and sell them in retail stores like best buy.   Typically, a producer of these types of movies can make between $5000 to $10,000 selling 100% rights on one of these masterpieces.  Not going to put you sipping Champagne in Beverly Hills…but at the very least you can say you’ve sold a movie.  The reality is very few people can actually finish a film.  It’s a difficult, if not nearly impossible task to do even when you have millions to spend.  But if you’ve finished a film, you can approach real investors and pitch yourself as a real producer.  Let the entire movie fall to pieces, frame every shot poorly, stay out of focus the entire time…but finish it.  Your career has to start somewhere.  It starts here…with one crappy (yet finished) film.
7. Nail one aspect - Hopefully I’ve convinced you by now that you are not going to make the next big hit movie shooting DV with your friends and editing on your iMac.  And also, I hope that I’ve convinced you that its still worth doing regardless of the fact that you aren’t hitting theatres anytime soon.  How do you go about making sure you build the most momentum towards achieving your real goals in your filmmaking career?  Well, as I’ve said, the persuit of a perfect film is a fools errand…but that doesn’t mean you can’t be perfect in one regard.  Make at least one aspect of your film really stand out.  Ok, so maybe it doesn’t have the best acting…but maybe you have the skills to make the cinematography really wow the audience.  Maybe you know someone with an epically beautiful location that you can use to make your little movie seem larger than life.  Maybe you and your friends are black belts in karate and you can put together a killer fight scene.  The idea is that you want at least some aspect of your film to really stand out.  Lets say you do put together that killer fight scene.  Maybe you will never make another film again, but you and your friends are noticed at your film festival premiere  by a producer looking for a stunt team for his next action flick.  Two years down the road you are now a professional stunt and action choreography team.  Maybe not the goal you were chasing in the beginning, but certainly not a bad result.
8. Nail one scene - Make at least one scene in your film really highlight the one aspect that you want to show off.  Maybe you need to expand the fight scene and make it more epic.  Maybe you can do one scene as a single continuous take to show off the skill of your actors and your direction.  Above all you need one really solid scene that you can use to show off your talent in the future.
9. Make a badass trailer -Without a great trailer no one will want to see your film.  The secret to a great trailer is to build curiosity…and on that note, stay tuned for my upcoming article:  Thirty seconds to a successful film: How to make a good movie trailer.

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.

Ten steps to raising $1 million dollars for your film

I’ve recently uncovered a really cool forum at FilmmakerIQ.  One of the posters there has an excellent forum post about how to raise money for a film.  You can check out the original post here.

I agree with nearly everything on the list with one exception.  Setting up your LLC in Nevada has some benefits, but it may not be worth it.  You have to have someone in Nevada you acts as an agent on your behalf whereas if you incorporate in your own state you can be your companies agent.  Also, you may miss out on some incentives that different states offer.  For example, where I live in Louisiana you can recieve a 25% tax credit on all spending over $300,000.    You can then actually sell that credit for cash.  But you can only get that credit if you are a Louisiana based corporation.

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 genres that make for profitable internet series

The internet is an unusual place, so its best not to automatically assume that what works in the movie world will work well on the internet, or vice versa. However, there are several time tested genres that work great for fictional web series:

Comedy - The Internet video world is built on comedy. It doesn’t matter if you are a single guy standing in front of a poorly lit white table cloth, if your writing is funny you will probably do just fine.

Nerds - I’d call it a sub genre of comedy since most nerd shows are comedies, but shows based around people being nerdy tend to do quite well on the internet. Case in point the series, Pure Pwnage, which is about hardcore video game players. The fact is, the majority of 16 to 34 year olds on the internet (you’re target audience) consider themselves to be nerdy. Either they are gamers, played dungeons and dragons as a kid, or are expert programmers…they all consider themselves nerds. And as such, they can identify with a protagonist who is a bit geeky, who doesn’t quite fit in.

Teen Drama - Most people would assume drama doesn’t do well on the net, but it does when targeted specifically for young teen girls ages 15 to 23. This is the sort of show where Shelly cheats on Ben with Kellie, then Kelli finds out, and so on. The greatest benefit of this type of show is the social nature of your target audience. Girls in that age group are much more likely to forward your clips, discuss it on forums, or link you all over myspace than your average male audience. Make a good show and your audience will be very loyal. The only downside is its probably much harder to make good merchandise for this sort of show.

Action - Action is probably the genre that requires the most skill, and thus hasn’t been utilized very well on the web just yet. Action is a cinematography heavy genre, so I’d recommend brushing up on your skills, and buying a good HD camera before jumping into an action series. However, if you can really get an intense action series going (think 24 type of intense), then there is a good chance you’ll enjoy pretty rapid and viral success.

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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