movie making on my own

We’re doing auditions agian. I’m always happier when there’s something to work on. And I can actually use the word ‘we’ and not be meaning ‘I’ lol. Carl, from the last project (The Legend of Milton Blocker), is helping me this time. We’re doing two projects for Li’l Film Fest 10. His, entitled “Heavenly Family”, is a comedy dream sequence of a guy in Heaven taking to Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Alec Guinness.

Mine, called “Some People’s Families” is a dark fantasy in which a demon convinces a child to murder her sister. You can read a draft of the screenplay here It still needs a little tweaking.

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:

Trailer time:

Makeup for this movie, by the way, owes a good thanks to Duane P. Craig. He sent me lots of tutorials on how to do the makeup for the dead people. He’s cool and down with the zombie knowledge.

I was clever for once. I faxed a letter about “The Legend of Milton Blocker” showing at the Li’l Film Fest to the Desoto Appeal (local newspaper). A reporter called back and I have an interview Tues at 10am. I don’t expect too much out of it. I had contacted them before about an art exhibition of mine at the library. They had contacted back about that one too. What resulted was a small article on page five. It was surrounded by so many ads I would have glanced over it if I’d not been specifically looking for it. So, the same thing might result here.

Don’t get me wrong, newspaper articles about my work don’t hurt my feelings. I can always cut it out and pretend it wasn’t shoved between 8million ads in an attempt to hide it.

“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.

Pictures taken by the wonderful Leslie K. Nelson

Pictures taken by: Leslie K. Nelson

1 GB of ram makes all the difference.

I’ve been suffering through editing on my dad’s computer for the last few projects. His computer has 384 MB of ram. It makes me want to hurt small fluffy animals waiting for the computer to do…well anything. I was reading a blog the other day that said if your computer has less than 512MB of ram it has Alzheimer’s disease. I agree with this idea wholeheartedly.

My local library now has laptops you can checkout for two hours. I’m so happy I could die. The laptops have a 1GB of ram and a firewire port. What used to take me an hour to save on my dad’s computer now take 3 minutes. I could faint and die it’s so awesome. I had been very upset and worried thinking that taking the files in as AVI would make them near impossible to save in the two hour time limit. But this thing, zip zam flam. It should be possible to get all I need done within a few sessions. Milton, now called The Legend of Milton Blocker, should be pieced together by Sunday. It’s looking pretty decent.

I am also happy with the actors we got for this. They were all wonderful. Best talent I’ve worked with in my life…not that I’ve been working with loads of talent.

BTW, if you live in the Memphis area, the li’l film fest screens March 21st at 2pm at the Brook Museum of Art.

The movie is now cast. Everyone accepted their parts and it looks like we’ll be filming Monday and Sunday, unless we get rained out.

I still need to hunt down a toy riverboat that looks plausible in an 1800s setting. Other than that and some costume details, it looks like we’re good to go.

I’ve really gotten into blogging lately. Every time something exciting happens I just want to find the nearest computer and blog about it. I know, I’ve become such a nerd.

Tonight was the second set of auditions. We’ve had a total of ten people audition now. That’s counting both nights. I’m also seeing a few people monday at 4pm. So, at the very least, I know I won’t have to run around begging people to act in my movie. This is a good feeling.

I remember doing the auditions for “Logic”, a previous project of mine. Out of two days and a total of four hours, only one person auditioned. Needless to say she got the lead. Good for her, bad for me.

I think the difference is that instead of just flyers and putting an ad on craigslist, I also put up an ad on the Memphis ecallboard yahoo group. It could also be the change in location. However I find it hard to believe Olive Branch (where we are auditioning now) is a more lucrative area to find actors than Midtown Memphis (where we did the auditions for “Logic”). Midtown is filled with artists, actors, filmmakers. There’s hardly a normal person in the whole area.

Also this time, ETA, an acting agency, got wind of the auditions and have sent probably five out of the ten people my way. Go ETA. I didn’t know you existed until a few days ago but you are awesome.

There was also a person that contacted me that called themselves Memphismom. She is the one bringing a few teenagers to audition Monday. In later e-mails I learned she’s friends with the head of ETA. So I don’t know if it’s ETA that tiped her off, or she who tipped ETA off. Either way, it works out good for me. The only downside is I’ve gotten several auditions from children. They’re all cute and they’re all awesome but we only have one child part. Possibly two.

Advice
Some advice, if you are ever holding your own auditions in Memphis, TN for an indie project and you have no name.

One, put up something on craigslist. That does help.

Two, put something up on the Memphis theatre callboard

Three, get ahold of the ETA

The memphis film scene is still small. This means that its actors are starved for parts, which is good for the indie film maker trying to get their start.

Also, in Memphis you have the ability to be a nobody and wander straight into the middle of the film scene. No one cares that you don’t have a name. No one gives you funny looks. Most are even happy to see you.

—Jessie