movie making on my own

OMG, I made front page of Desoto Appeal :SQUEE: I take back anything bad I ever said about newspapers or Desoto County—not that I ever said much bad about them.

As to the purpose of this blog post: Unless you live near NYC or LA where no one cares about your short film, it’s a good idea to contact the local branch of your newspaper. Especially if the film is being shown somewhere, anywhere. The worst that’ll happen is they’ll ignore you. The best is that you’ll have a kick ass front-page photo of yourself to frame; and also to teach you that you need to learn better posture…and sit with your good side to the photographer.

To contact your paper look them up online. The Desoto Appeal lists a fax number for reporting a news tip. Since I utterly despise the phone, I decided to fax them instead of calling. In the case that your paper doesn’t have a website, contact information is usually listed on the paper itself. It’s a pretty simple procedure getting yourself in the paper (at least the local one).

It’s also a lot easier than most people think, or at least than I ever thought. You make contact. You say “I’ve done such and such”. A reporter either calls you or makes a meeting time to speak with you. That’s about all there is to it. Oh, and make sure you sit with good posture when you speak to the reporter or else everyone in your city will see what crappy posture you have.

Desoto Appeal has an online version: Here’s the story.

scan of newspaper:

Movie Maker is free and comes on most all PCs. I think this is why it gets overlooked. For all it’s drawbacks it still gets the job done for a simple movie. Movie Maker has the basic transitions you’ll need and the ability to extract the audio from a video clip. Also, if your computer has a fire wire port you can capture direct from your camera and then place the finished product back on the Mini-DV tape. This is useful because some film festivals still won’t take a DVD as a submission format, despite it being 2009.

The Good

It’s very simple to use. This is because it lacks bells and whistles and any really sophisticated functions. However for a beginner who just needs to cut their teeth on learning out to cut and dissolve things together in a fashion that isn’t crappy—this’ll do that.

Another good point is that it extracts audio from a video clip within the program. Click on the clip with the audio you want and drag it to the audio/music track and voila, only the audio remains on the storyboard.

Oh, and it’s free.

The Bad

If you are editing AVI, or any other larger file type, and making a movie longer than 5 minutes expect the program to crash a lot. I counteract this by editing together five minute segments, saving them, and then importing them later into one file to send back to the Mini-DV tape or to DVD. However, when doing this, beware. Movie Maker can only save a copy of a movie so many times before some really ugly pixilation occurs. For example, you save copies of those five minute segments, that’s copy 1. Then you import them all together onto the timeline to save as another file, that’s copy 2. Then you import the full version back into movie maker to add some extra effect or audio and save it again, that’s copy 3. Go beyond about 3 copies and you’ll see some parts begin to pixilated. The more copies, the worse it gets. It drives me crazy.

The other major drawback is there’s only one extra audio track. Meaning if you want sound effects and music playing together you’ll need to make a copy with the music added, save it, and then re import it to add the effects. See the above paragraph, for why being forced to make extra copies is bad.

Conclusion
If the end goal for your movie is youtube, Movie Maker is good for that. If you are making something short without a lot of effects, Movie Maker is good for that. For learning to edit and some first time experimenting, Movie Maker is good for this too. About anything else and you’ll want to search for something better. You’ll probably have to bite the bullet and buy something. However this does not mean you have to spend $600 dollars for Final Cut Pro. There are plenty of good alternatives out there for less, in the $50ish range like Sony Vegas. Also search the freeware websites and see what you come up with.

Before I end, a question for all you people out there in the webshere, what’s your favoirte video editing program?

Banner photo by Saine
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I’m lazy, so instead of writing I decided to make a list of cool articles I found while scouring the internet.

Subject: Screenwriting Blog: Unknown Screenwriter
link
A friend of his is a Reader. He shares an e-mail he got from the Reader on what Readers are taught to look for when reading a screenplay—namely what traits make them pass on a screenplay immediately.

Subject: Interview with a director Blog: Fast Cheap Movie Thoughts
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An interview on Jonathan Lynn on directing “My Cousin Vinny”. At the end the interviewer asks if there’s any advice that Lynn can give to making a low-budget movie. He gives some good tips.

Subject: Screenwriting Help Message Board: Simply Scripts
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This is basically copied and pasted screenwriting checkpoints from “The Screenwriter’s Bible”. Very useful. Never actually used them, but I keep intending to.

Subject: Flashbacks Blog: Script Secrets
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Advice on how to, and how not to, use flashbacks in a movie.

The List:
100 Best Blogs for Film and Theatre Students Blog: Best University
link

Something else:
Screenplay format: link
Outlines the basics of screenplay format.

“The Legend of Milon Blocker” is a no-budget indie film made by yours truely. It’s a five minute short made for Memphis’s Li’l Film Fest and is currently in post-production. Anyway, on to what the title said this was about:

1. Never schedule a shoot for less than 3 hours

You don’t have to be shooting for 3 hours. Just plan at least 3 hours time free for set up, shooting, and take down. It took about 10-20mins to set up and we weren’t even using lighting equipment. Since I’m starting out I decided to take advantage of that big ball of fire in the sky. We did no more than 3 scenes a shoot but all of them took 3 hours, even the ones that were scheduled for 2 hours. Thus those scheduled for 2 got rushed at the end. The best thing about making a 3 hour rule: if you finish early, your actors will be happy. No one is happy when things go late.

2. Schedule a get together to look over costumes

This way you aren’t worrying to death about unknown factors. We should have set something up to meet at a home or a church and looked over what the costume possibilities were. The great thing about indie no-buget projects is the community. So use it. Ask for things from friends and have friends ask their friends. Have the actors and crew ask their friends and you have a whole network of friends.

“Milton” had several scenes that were set in the 1800s and we were able to get convincing costumes. Granted, the 1800s is good in the fact that the fashion of the time was very simple. When it came to guys you could tell them to wear Sunday church clothes and it’d pass for 1800’s garb. Even without the sepia cast over those scenes the costumes didn’t look too unconvincing for 1800s minus the brief moment you see a zipper. So ask around and get everyone together some place to see what your options are. Don’t leave things up to chance like a moron.

3. Bring an assistant

Specifically bring an assistant that can help set up and who is camera or sound learned. It helps to have another set of ears and eyes while shooting. Even if you are gung-ho about doing things Rodriguez style (meaning having a one-person crew). One of the few great things about doing something no-budget is that you get the privilege, as creator of the project, to be the one playing with the camera.

A person to supervise sound comes in real handy. It’s not as easy as you would think to screen for possible visual clutter and audio clutter at the same time. Especially when you aren’t very experienced. I was happy to have Leslie, our co-producer, around most of the time we were shooting because she would warn me of inferring noise. Noise I was oblivious to because I was busy focusing on getting the shot to look right.

4. You cannot pay enough attention to what’s happening in the background

This is something I knew and was stupid about. However, since there are cars going by in the background of Lord of the Rings I won’t beat myself up too terribly. There were about two or three shots in “Milton” where you can see these nice suburb houses in the background of what should be an 1800s setting. Thankfully I was able to use other shots, trash the ones with the houses, and still have the scene make sense.

Paying attention to the background is something you have to be anal about with yourself. Ask yourself with every shot, “What’s in the background? What all can I see in the entirety of the frame I’ve just set up?” It becomes instinct after awhile. I don’t make as many errors as I used to. Also, remember if your actor is moving in the shot, what they covered up at the beginning of the take they aren’t covering up once they start moving. I know, that’s so obvious. I still forgot.

Apparently, sometimes flyers do work.

I went to an interview once for a freelance design job. Didn’t get the job. However, in the interview the guy mentioned to me that when mailing out advertisements the return rate is about 1%. Basically, this means that for every 100 advertisements mailed, they get about one customer.

I’ve been handing out today.com flyers. Really, not “handing out”, I’m anti-social, so I’ve been putting them on people’s cars. This way I don’t have to bug them at their door. I’ve handed out about 100 flyers so far and I’ve gotten one e-mail from someone. Hence, 100 flyers given out, 1 person returning with some interest.

This is his blog btw, reviewthefacts.net. I don’t know if he’ll be joining today.com or not. However, it still counts as interest and he had to view my blog to be able to get my e-mail.

This 1% rule is why flyers for auditions don’t work. It doesn’t make much sense going around neighborhoods and putting flyers on cars. There aren’t 100 bulletin boards to post the flyers too. So when it comes to auditions, flyers are a no. Unless you know of a bulletin board that actors check frequently. Then yes, defiantly put up a flyer.

Also blogging is the best thing ever. It’s a way to make a little money on ventures you would otherwise see nothing on. This ties in well for the indie filmmaker who is still experimenting. Or the artist who hasn’t made a reputation yet, or the musician or the novelist… The list goes on and on. The idea is simple. You write a blog about whatever your art fix is. Set a blog up with a website that pays money for writing (like today.com). Or make your own blog with whoever you like and use an ad program. You won’t see a lot of money. However, you might make back some of the money spent on props or art supplies. With four posts on here about my Milton project, at a dollar a post, I’ve made back the money I spend on coffee while holding auditions at starbucks. Hoo-ha.

Now I was taught it in the classes I took but I completely ignored this tip while filming a short film with friends a few days ago. It’s very helpful to leave a couple seconds on a shot before starting the action. I ran into the problem that the dialog, which was being said off screen, sounded incredibly weird because it started right on the cut between two clips. So leaving a second of stillness or at least waiting a moment before saying the line would have helped a lot.

In class, the teacher had us wait ten seconds after pushing the record button before having the take begin. She said it had something to do with letting the video get up to speed. I think ten seconds is pretty severe and I never saw a need for that long a pause. I’m assuming the ten second rule she devised was just to cover you’re a$s in a rare event where something weird happens with the tape. However, all that aside, I’ll remember to leave a couple seconds on either end because it actually does help the clips cut together better. It would also make the cuts easier to distinguish between and find when editing later, especially if you are unlucky and don’t have a program that batch captures. Granted all this can be avoided (the waiting and the unable to edit something so that isn’t cra*) if you just plan adequately from before the get-go. So my other two cents for the day is to say that you can never plan enough when it comes to shooting a movie. If you are like me, you’ll never actually stick to your plan but it’s good to have it nonetheless.