The Micro Budget Film Making Collection

The Micro Budget Film Making Collection

rodney cannon

Published by cannon books and media, 2014.

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

THE MICRO BUDGET FILM MAKING Collection

First edition. December 6, 2014.

Copyright © 2014 rodney cannon.

Written by rodney cannon.

This book is dedicated to all of the film makers who helped out by offering advice and agreeing to interviews along the way. Thanks guys.

The Micro Budget Film Making  Collection

Volume One:

On Low Budget Film Making (Rodney Cannon)

Volume Two

On Writing A Low Budget Screenplay (Rodney Cannon)

Volume Three

On Making A Found Footage Film (Rodney Cannon)

The Micro Budget Film Making  Collection

Published by Rodney Cannon at Smashwords

Copyright © 2014 Rodney Cannon

All Rights Reserved

License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

VOLUME ONE

On Low Budget Film Making

(Digital Film Making Interviews)

Rodney Cannon

Table of Contents

Chapter I  Digital Filmmaking

Chapter II  You Need A Screenplay

Chapter III  The Sci-Fi Film Production

Chapter IV  Getting Started

Chapter V  Lighting

Chapter VI  The Fan Film

Chapter VII  Being A Producer

Chapter VIII  About Cameras

Chapter IX  Throwback, Shooting With A Camcorder

Chapter X  The FX Debate

Chapter XI  The Practical FX Interview

Chapter XII  Raising Money

Chapter XIII  The You + Me Interview

Chapter XIV  The Horror Movie

Chapter XV  A Stray Interview

Chapter XVI  Your Interview

Chapter I

Digital Filmmaking

If you want to be a low budget filmmaker in this day and age then you are most likely going to be a digital filmmaker. Yes, film does still exist and people still shoot with it, but with the exception of super 8 most low budget film makers have abandoned the use of film.

Why have they left film behind.

Film cost a great deal of movie as compared to digital media. It cost more money to process. It cost still more money to have a final print done for theatrical releases. At each stage we are talking about thousands of dollars. A final 35mm print of a feature length motion picture could cost more them more than three thousand dollars and that is one print for each movie theater if movie theaters still used film prints. The truth is that most of them have gone fully digital. They now have digital projects that can have the final print of a major studio release downloaded directly to the projector itself as a file rather than having it shipped to the theater.

The economics of digital and the availability of the cameras have made all of us who wish to make low to micro budget films digital filmmakers.

Let us begin at the beginning.

What is a low budget film?

Years ago anything that was produced for less than three million dollars was considered low budget. Now that mark had come down to anything less than half a million dollars is considered low budget.

What is a micro budget film?

A micro budget film and this will apply to most if not all of you is a film that is shot for less than fifty thousand dollars. The truth is that many filmmakers are shooting quality films for less than ten thousand dollars.

In this book we will go over the basics of what you will need to craft such a film and there will be interviews that I have done with other low budget indie filmmakers.

Chapter II

You Need A Screenplay

Before you do anything else you will need to either write a screenplay or purchase the rights to one that has been written by someone else.

There is no getting around this if you want to make a quality film. Even if you had decided to make a Found Footage film you will need some kind of a screenplay.

How do you write a format a screenplay?

Since we are going to be working with a micro budget we are going to look at the free formatting options for your screenplay.

I believe that we should use software when writing a screenplay if at all possible. The formatting rules are not too complex, but the software makes the writing process almost automatic.

All of this software can be found online for free.

The first piece of free software is titled Celtx. The free version of this software has a great little screenplay formatter and for about ten dollars you can buy the complete software that includes all the basic forms that you will need for the production of your feature film.

Next you can use the amazing site named Scripped. At this site you can write and save your work. This protects you against computer crashes and you can assess your screenplay from any computer at any time to edit it or download it.

There is also a very simple and great stand alone bit of software named Rough Draft. You can download it by googling Rough Draft screenwriting software. It bare bones basic and of all the free software options I like it the best because it does not have too many bells and whistles. You can write without any pop up prompts.

The next question is how do you write your screenplay.

I would suggest five pages day over the space of three weeks will give you a script slightly longer than one hundred pages. The golden rule is to think of a page of a basic screenplay as being equal to one minute of film time.

Here are some basic rules as to how to write your script.

We will begin with Character.

Your story will have a lead character and a main character. The lead is the person who has the most screen time. The main character is the one who drives the story. Think in terms of The Terminator. The lead character is Sarah Connor. The main character is the Terminator. The story does not work without the Terminator being a compelling character.

The antagonist.

This has to be the opposite of the lead character if possible. It can be a person and/or thing. Secondly the goal of the antagonist is usually totally opposite to that of the lead unless they want the same thing for different reasons.

The Plot never changes.

All characters want to come full circle. They want to go home again. They want to return their world to its state before everything went wrong.

Think of it this way. Everyone wants to go home again. Maybe not the home that they left, but their idea of home. Look at the movie Die Hard. This is a classic home plot. The lead who happens also to be the main character as well has traveled to L.A. to see his wife in homes of putting his family back together so that his idea of home can be reestablished. Terrorists get in the way. He must overcome them to get home again. If he loses his life or his wife then home can never be reestablished. These are the stakes in most screenplays from action to horror to drama.

On the subject of horror and thrillers. There is one hard and fast rule that you should always keep in mind. This rule will make or break your film.

The audience will give you one gift.

This gift is their willingness to believe.

They will give you this gift only once.

It is a contract that you are going to enter into with them and if you break it they will not forget or forgive.

They will believe anything once. Tell them that the house is haunted.

Tell them that the world is being invaded by aliens.

Tell them that there are killer sharks out there. Tell them anything and the cool part is that as long as logic is maintained they will follow you anywhere that you wish to take them, but do not under any circumstances introduce a second thing. The moment that you do is the moment that you will look back on and know that was the moment that you lost them.

It is a killer shark and it is a ghost. Ghostshark is a scifi channel movie and it is terrible. There is a tornado coming that will destroy much of the city and oh yeah it happens to be filled with sharks, Sharknado. It is an accidental comedy.

I understand the urge to back yourself up with a second idea. You do not have full faith in the main idea, but I am begging you to not give into this urge. No matter how clever the second idea is, (ask M. Night Shyamalan) the audience will not forgive you for introducing it. The Village is a great little film if it was a straight story without the twist ending. He lost credibility with the audience and almost half a dozen films later he has not gotten it back.

One last word of this subject. It does not apply to comedy. You can and should add as many extras as possible to your comedy screenplay. Comedy is an effort to achieve something that borders upon the insane. Keep piling on new and more ridiculous twists and turns.

This is enough basic information to write a quality screenplay. If you need more detailed tutorials please read my book on the subject.

Chapter III

The Sci Fi Film Production

To better understand the film making process this book will include many interviews with low budget filmmakers who are chasing and achieving their dreams.

The following interview is with an Australian film maker who has spent more than three years crafting his micro budget sci fi film.

The Film is titled MK Outlier and the story is something amazing.

Canon hv40 Feature, Mk Outlier- The Interview Part 1

I would like to introduce you to Chris Jacobs the filmmaker behind the Canon hv40 sci-fi film MK Outlier. He has produced a feature length sci-fi film on a micro budget. Many film makers, even those in the digital filmmaking world, believe that this cannot be done. That it requires millions of dollars to even attempt one. Guys it does not. All that it does require is time and effort and the willingness to do most of it yourself.

Since this interview the film has been renamed Lone Wolves.

MK. Outlier, The Interview

The film that you are planning to produce is your dream. It will always be more important to you that to anyone else. You can see the finished product every day in your imagination. You know how it will turn out in the end, but those around you only hear about what you want to do or are planning to do. You can show them a script and storyboards and a budget and the equipment that you will use to make the film, but until they see the film in some form then you are the only champion that your film will have.

Q) I understand that you used the Canon HV40. I am a big fan of the Hv series of cameras. They were on their way to become a standard in micro budget filmmaking world until the Dslr revolution hit. Did you use the bare camcorder or did you add lenses or a depth of field adapter?

A) We started making MK OUTLIER right as DSLRs were becoming big in late 2009, however we were making a hand-held action movie and the rolling shutter issues meant a DSLR was not an option. Also I just didn't love the sharpness of the DSLR footage, which at the time was quite harsh and 'video like' in a bad way to my eyes. I looked at a lot of test footage from a lot of camera set ups and settled on an HV40 with lens adapter. We used a basic Jag35 lens adapter (Vibrating Ground Glass) and Canon FD Lenses. Most of the film was shot on a 50mm lens, which was the fastest lens we had (the slower ones vignetted horribly). The other main lenses used are a 24mm and a 110mm. The 50mm was great for a wide variety of hand-held work, and kept the frame on the action, rather than our lack of 'production values'. We also used a large on camera LCD, which really was too heavy, and was exhausting when shooting long days. We found out too late that this monitor didn't show the full frame being recorded so often we would have bad vignetting or shadow from the lens adapter motor that would end up in frame. For the most part it's easily fixed in post with a little digital push in, but of course at the cost of precious resolution. Eventually I got better at checking for this, and adjusting accordingly. I made a handheld rig out of bits and pieces from the hardware, and the camera was mounted upside down on an Indie Rails Pro, to counter the lens adapter flipping the image.-

Q) After your experience with the camera would you shoot with it again?

A) I would not do anything the same way again haha! With enough light the HV40 and adapter gets amazing footage that to my eye (and many others comments) looks far closer to 16mm film than any DSLR I've seen. I couldn't be happier with the look of the film. There are only a few scenes where a different camera would have been advantageous, and that was really just due to low light. The only other niggle is that it's incredibly easy to bump the zoom rocker and throw out focus in the lens adapter, which is already hard to find on a LCD in the sun, so if I was to shoot anything serious on one again I'd look at locking the zoom somehow. I did upgrade to a smaller, sharper LCD which really helped with this, but it's still an issue. I'd also use an external recorder like the one from Blackmagic Design, rather than tapes. Tapes are just awful, and there is slightly more colour info when you record from the HDMI out, apparently. Recently I showed the MK OUTLIER trailer to a very critical friend of mine who didn't yet know much about how I'd made the film, who turned to me half way through and said You obviously had a professional DOP I was extremely proud of my work and my little HV set up at that point. If I could get Canon EF glass to work with my HV40 I would seriously look at it as an option, but it also really depends on the distribution format. -

Q) The most overlooked part of film making is quality sound. The look of a film can be corrected in post, but bad audio is a nightmare to deal with. The audience will forgive low light and scenes that are hard to see, but millions of Batman fans went nuts because they had a problem understanding what the villain was saying. What did you use to record sound?

A) Can you hear me weeping? haha. We made MK OUTLIER 'guerrilla' style, running around grabbing shots here there and everywhere. I think our record was 67 'setups' in a day. By set up I mean shots that involved moving the camera from one place to another. All our sound was recorded using either the on camera mic, or later an external mic bolted to the camera news style. Knowing how the movie would be shot, we decided early on to ADR all the dialogue, and just suck it up. We didn't have time to wait until the planes had gone past, and many locations had so much background noise that wouldn't suit the movie, that we knew we'd probably have to ADR much of it anyway. I had a lot of ideas for sound early on in production, as the world of MK OUTLIER doesn't sound like the world we're used to, so it made sense at the time. Having said that, doing ADR for an entire movie is a LOT of work, and it's depressing because it feels like covering the same ground you've already gone over. However on a low budget movie it's also an amazing opportunity to fix bad on-set sound, tweak performance, and add/remove lines as needed. In future I'd just grab a few takes of 'dry' sound, without the camera running, and I'd just hire a sound guy. The external mic produces pretty good results though. We are about to do ADR, so we'll see how that goes! I'm excited.- What is MK Outlier? What is the premise of the film? -A: MK OUTLIER is a (fictional) secret CIA program setup to predict statistical outliers before they happen. Statistical Outliers like stock exchanges crashes, rises of religions and ideas, and terrorist attacks. Private James Conroy, a soldier with some personal issues, finds himself fighting to survive after a mysterious apocalypse wipes away civilization. On the brink of madness, he finally gets in touch with Gary Freeman, a forgotten astronaut orbiting the earth in an old space station. They have to work together to reach others and try to work out what caused the apocalypse, and maybe even save the world. -

Q) From what I have read I understand that you built your space station set? That you built it in the garage? How long did it take to construct it?

A) Yes, I built a Space Station set in the back shed of the house I'm renting. It took a few weeks to do the initial framing, that I had help with from a builder I know, then several months of weekends fitting out the interior. The set was the single most expensive thing we did for the movie, and I spent many a day cursing it, but it looks amazing on screen. I knew that the movie would be dead in the water if the audience didn't buy the Space Station Set, so I went all out. Given that we are renting the house, it was a big risk, but every low budget movie is all risk, so whatever. The set has got us a lot of press, so looking back it was a great decision haha! I'm sure we would not have got the mainstream press interest we've had without it. The lesson here is to look at your script and ask yourself if there is a hook. I never did this at the time, but I'd seriously consider it in future. Sadly, marketing is a big part of the 'craft' but it too can be fun and creative.-

Q) How many hats did you wear on this project and did it ever become overwhelming?

A) I wore ALL the hats. Seriously, what was I thinking hahaha? I think I'd read Rebel Without a Crew too many times and decided I was invincible. Oh well. I had plenty of help, but I was the only person who was ever responsible for any of it. There was no one to turn to and ask where something was. I only forgot important stuff twice, and it wasn't the end of the world, but I recommend at least having one