Now that I’ve updated what went on in 2001-2002, here’s an update on what we’re doing right now in 2007.
Mullet is slaving away on the issue 2 script. This is taking a lot of his free time, naturally. But he’s way ahead of where we were for issue 1 so there’ll be more time for story editing and polishing. I’ll see the script eventually and give him some feedback as his story editor.
Writing a comic book is a unique craft compared to screenwriting or prose—you have to come up with the usual story elements (plot, character, dialogue, action), but you also work on the layout of panels and pages. Until Mullet started writing our comic book, I had no idea what the roles of the writer, artist, etc were in that format. Like with movies and TV, well-written and well-designed comics make the writing transparent, so I never really thought about it before. I have more respect for the writers now, to be sure.
Meanwhile, back at the video ranch, I’m chasing a bunch of loose ends. This blog takes some of my time, and I’ve used it to find the discipline necessary to get back to writing almost every day (with the goal for every day). I am working on several script ideas, which I hope to have ready for Mullet by December. I have 4 shorts on the go as rough drafts, plus about a dozen interstitial/blackout type ideas that I think we’ll either use on the DVD as transitions and/or as a collection of short bits that we’ll post online.
When I get tired of writing, I’ve been playing around with the Babysitters final cut, and I finally got back to working on the edit of Can that Andrew Currie did for us. I still have to put Stalled together, and I’m working on an idea for opening credits (for the shorts) that will tie into the comic a bit (I sketched out some quick storyboards and then started some tests in Motion to see how I could accomplish what I’d drawn).
I’ve also downloaded the demo for 2 elements of Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet Suite. More about that next time, once I’ve had the chance to play with it.
So that’s where we’re at, for the moment.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The 74-Minute Skeleton in Our Closet, 7: Afterwords
When we finished our feature, I asked myself 2 questions: what did I learn from Babysitters? And would I do it again?
I learned a lot, things that I wouldn’t have learned by taking a class. I also didn’t learn things I would have learned in class, but, overall, I think I came out ahead with practical experience in no-budget preproduction, production, and post-production.
I learned 3 key lessons overall. There might be more, but I can’t think of them at the moment.
First: you need a strong script before anything else. Your entire project is at the mercy of the first telling, the script, and any weaknesses in that first telling will multiply in the second telling (production) and the third telling (post-production) unless you are fortunate enough to spot those mistakes and correct them while you can. Otherwise, you run the risk of having a plot or characters that doesn’t engage your audience.
Our shooting script was an unedited first draft because we did no story editing at all. This was a mistake—the script wasn’t ready, despite having some good scenes and gags in it, and the story was overly complicated and self-indulgent. We didn’t kill our babies, those bits we loved that didn’t move the story forward. I don’t think we were alone in making this mistake—I’ve seen other rookies do the same, and even the pros crank out crap based on bad scripts (Phantom Menace is probably the best example I can think of right now. It had some interesting ideas and new characters, but a good story editor could have cleaned up a lot of the babies that should have been killed in that movie—and still pleased both the kiddie audience and the hardcore fans).
We now spend a lot of time working on scripts—most of the time, actually. In the last 12 months, we’ve had 4 shooting days, but we’ve spent 5-6 months working on story ideas and writing scripts and story editing and rewriting and all that other fun stuff.
With Mullet working on the comic books, I’ve become the principle writer on our shorts, so he comes in only when I think the script is ready for him to see. He approaches the scripts as a story editor does, looking at the story first and giving notes on his reactions to it beat by beat. Sometimes, I have something he likes and we shoot it unchanged. Sometimes, I end up rewriting several times before we shoot it. But, most of the time, he doesn’t like it and I throw the script out.
Second, every hour you spend on preproduction will save you a great deal of trouble later on. We managed to shoot 120 pages of script with 2 dozen actors, countless shots and takes, on dozens of locations, on weekends spread out over 8 months. We did this equipped only with a handful of Excel and Word documents. Every hour I spent preparing shot lists, call sheets, and all the other logistical stuff saved us hours on shooting days, and saved us hours again in post-production. On later projects, I’ve started drawing crude storyboards (complete with my stick figures) to make sure I’ve got the visual stuff worked out. I’ve even done rough animatics with scanned storyboards and dubbed audio, just to make sure it works on screen. You can leave things to chance, but the odds are usually against you. It’s not easy putting a story onto film or video, so why make it harder to do so if you’re forcing yourself to make it up as you go along?
Third: learn from your mistakes and practice what you’ve learned in the next project. I’ve made a few shorts to learn specific things that I knew I hadn’t grasped or tried in Babysitters, and I’ve read more books, taken a producing class and a directing class, and watched a lot of videos to further what I knew or didn’t know when we made Babysitters. We’ve completed two shorts and started on 3 others since that time, and the lessons we learned from Babysitters have paid off with these latter efforts. Each time I do a project now, I decide in advance what I want to learn from it, and I’d recommend that approach as I think it forces you to give yourself hands-on experience with a new skill. Why do something if you’re not learning from the experience?
With so many hours of production under our belts, Mullet and I have learned to work quite well as a team. We tend to approach comedy from a feel rather than anything mechanical, so we shoot until it feels right. We usually shoot our rehearsals as takes, but I think we’re much faster at finding the beats now. We’re much better at writing scripts and story-editing them.
Would I do it again? Yes. Without hesitation, I would do it again.
I should clarify that if I could go back to the year 2000, I would. Back then, YouTube didn’t exist and online video wasn’t the phenomenon it is now. Most video projects were more-or-less demo reels on VHS tape, with very few seen outside of filmmakers’ friends, video nights at comedy clubs or, even rarer, on a specialty cable TV channel. The means of getting video out to large numbers of people was there, but it was slow and cumbersome despite whatever format (QuickTime, Windows Media, and Real Player) you used. VHS was king! Streaming video was still in its infancy, and video files were too large even for downloads for the average user. DVD-R burners were just starting to appear on new computers (by the time we finished post in late 2002, however, the DVD-R had begun to replace the VHS tape as the preferred format).
For anyone reading this today, unless you have a time machine, forget trying to make a feature on videotape—stick to shorts until someone pays you to make a feature.
If we were starting out from scratch today, instead of a 74-minute feature, I think we’d make 15-20 shorts (5 minutes and less) instead, committing to a similar schedule. We would make mistakes early on, but the repetition of doing 15 shorts over a long schedule would help us find our feet just as Babysitters did. At the end, we’d have a selection of 15 shorts to choose to put online, on DVD, enter into festivals and competitions, or whatever future channels of opportunity emerge.
That’s the end of my look back to our “boot-camp” project. Thanks for reading, and watch for a taste of Babysitters on the Miller & Mullet DVD.
I learned a lot, things that I wouldn’t have learned by taking a class. I also didn’t learn things I would have learned in class, but, overall, I think I came out ahead with practical experience in no-budget preproduction, production, and post-production.
I learned 3 key lessons overall. There might be more, but I can’t think of them at the moment.
First: you need a strong script before anything else. Your entire project is at the mercy of the first telling, the script, and any weaknesses in that first telling will multiply in the second telling (production) and the third telling (post-production) unless you are fortunate enough to spot those mistakes and correct them while you can. Otherwise, you run the risk of having a plot or characters that doesn’t engage your audience.
Our shooting script was an unedited first draft because we did no story editing at all. This was a mistake—the script wasn’t ready, despite having some good scenes and gags in it, and the story was overly complicated and self-indulgent. We didn’t kill our babies, those bits we loved that didn’t move the story forward. I don’t think we were alone in making this mistake—I’ve seen other rookies do the same, and even the pros crank out crap based on bad scripts (Phantom Menace is probably the best example I can think of right now. It had some interesting ideas and new characters, but a good story editor could have cleaned up a lot of the babies that should have been killed in that movie—and still pleased both the kiddie audience and the hardcore fans).
We now spend a lot of time working on scripts—most of the time, actually. In the last 12 months, we’ve had 4 shooting days, but we’ve spent 5-6 months working on story ideas and writing scripts and story editing and rewriting and all that other fun stuff.
With Mullet working on the comic books, I’ve become the principle writer on our shorts, so he comes in only when I think the script is ready for him to see. He approaches the scripts as a story editor does, looking at the story first and giving notes on his reactions to it beat by beat. Sometimes, I have something he likes and we shoot it unchanged. Sometimes, I end up rewriting several times before we shoot it. But, most of the time, he doesn’t like it and I throw the script out.
Second, every hour you spend on preproduction will save you a great deal of trouble later on. We managed to shoot 120 pages of script with 2 dozen actors, countless shots and takes, on dozens of locations, on weekends spread out over 8 months. We did this equipped only with a handful of Excel and Word documents. Every hour I spent preparing shot lists, call sheets, and all the other logistical stuff saved us hours on shooting days, and saved us hours again in post-production. On later projects, I’ve started drawing crude storyboards (complete with my stick figures) to make sure I’ve got the visual stuff worked out. I’ve even done rough animatics with scanned storyboards and dubbed audio, just to make sure it works on screen. You can leave things to chance, but the odds are usually against you. It’s not easy putting a story onto film or video, so why make it harder to do so if you’re forcing yourself to make it up as you go along?
Third: learn from your mistakes and practice what you’ve learned in the next project. I’ve made a few shorts to learn specific things that I knew I hadn’t grasped or tried in Babysitters, and I’ve read more books, taken a producing class and a directing class, and watched a lot of videos to further what I knew or didn’t know when we made Babysitters. We’ve completed two shorts and started on 3 others since that time, and the lessons we learned from Babysitters have paid off with these latter efforts. Each time I do a project now, I decide in advance what I want to learn from it, and I’d recommend that approach as I think it forces you to give yourself hands-on experience with a new skill. Why do something if you’re not learning from the experience?
With so many hours of production under our belts, Mullet and I have learned to work quite well as a team. We tend to approach comedy from a feel rather than anything mechanical, so we shoot until it feels right. We usually shoot our rehearsals as takes, but I think we’re much faster at finding the beats now. We’re much better at writing scripts and story-editing them.
Would I do it again? Yes. Without hesitation, I would do it again.
I should clarify that if I could go back to the year 2000, I would. Back then, YouTube didn’t exist and online video wasn’t the phenomenon it is now. Most video projects were more-or-less demo reels on VHS tape, with very few seen outside of filmmakers’ friends, video nights at comedy clubs or, even rarer, on a specialty cable TV channel. The means of getting video out to large numbers of people was there, but it was slow and cumbersome despite whatever format (QuickTime, Windows Media, and Real Player) you used. VHS was king! Streaming video was still in its infancy, and video files were too large even for downloads for the average user. DVD-R burners were just starting to appear on new computers (by the time we finished post in late 2002, however, the DVD-R had begun to replace the VHS tape as the preferred format).
For anyone reading this today, unless you have a time machine, forget trying to make a feature on videotape—stick to shorts until someone pays you to make a feature.
If we were starting out from scratch today, instead of a 74-minute feature, I think we’d make 15-20 shorts (5 minutes and less) instead, committing to a similar schedule. We would make mistakes early on, but the repetition of doing 15 shorts over a long schedule would help us find our feet just as Babysitters did. At the end, we’d have a selection of 15 shorts to choose to put online, on DVD, enter into festivals and competitions, or whatever future channels of opportunity emerge.
That’s the end of my look back to our “boot-camp” project. Thanks for reading, and watch for a taste of Babysitters on the Miller & Mullet DVD.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The 74-Minute Skeleton in Our Closet, 6: Revisiting the Past
We sat down and watched Babysitters recently. I hadn’t watched it since some time in 2003 or 2004, so I’d forgotten a lot of things about it. Come to think of it, I’d forgotten about most of it.
I have to admit I didn’t look forward to seeing it again. I’d been grateful that we’d left it alone for so long. When you’ve advanced ahead in terms of experience and knowledge, it’s not easy to go back and see earlier efforts and not cringe at the mistakes.
So, as we started the movie, I waited for the cringing to begin.
The first part of the movie ran surprisingly well. From the beginning to the opening credits, the pacing helps to hide the flaws. So far, so good….
The first scene after the credits, featuring a well-known ACTRA and SAG performer who donated his time, is quite slow, but after the buildup to the credits, it felt right to slow down before starting to build up again.
The middle of the movie had a sequence that no longer made sense to be in the movie (Mullet had to remind me why it was there, actually: to fit one of the plot points in Gulliver’s Travels), so we decided to cut it out. The rest of the movie builds up a bit and comes to an abrupt end.
So, we’ll be recutting it again, from 74 minutes to something much shorter, likely still over the Academy’s 40-minute limit to qualify as a feature, but under an hour and with most of the leaden pacing removed. There are some things we won’t be able to take out or speed up, so there will still be some loooooong moments in there.
The audio is out of sync in a few places, so I’ll have to spend some time playing with that to fix it. Fortunately, with Final Cut Studio, you get a marvelous audio workstation program, Soundtrack Pro, which allows this type of finessing.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised to not hate it as much as I had feared before the screening. For a first project for a couple of guys who hadn’t been near film classes before, it’s not that bad. So, for once, I realized that the effort we had put into it, all the work our cast and crew had put into it, was worth it.
I think we should be able to put the opening sequence on the DVD, just to show the world what you can do with two clown, a baby, and a camcorder.
I have to admit I didn’t look forward to seeing it again. I’d been grateful that we’d left it alone for so long. When you’ve advanced ahead in terms of experience and knowledge, it’s not easy to go back and see earlier efforts and not cringe at the mistakes.
So, as we started the movie, I waited for the cringing to begin.
The first part of the movie ran surprisingly well. From the beginning to the opening credits, the pacing helps to hide the flaws. So far, so good….
The first scene after the credits, featuring a well-known ACTRA and SAG performer who donated his time, is quite slow, but after the buildup to the credits, it felt right to slow down before starting to build up again.
The middle of the movie had a sequence that no longer made sense to be in the movie (Mullet had to remind me why it was there, actually: to fit one of the plot points in Gulliver’s Travels), so we decided to cut it out. The rest of the movie builds up a bit and comes to an abrupt end.
So, we’ll be recutting it again, from 74 minutes to something much shorter, likely still over the Academy’s 40-minute limit to qualify as a feature, but under an hour and with most of the leaden pacing removed. There are some things we won’t be able to take out or speed up, so there will still be some loooooong moments in there.
The audio is out of sync in a few places, so I’ll have to spend some time playing with that to fix it. Fortunately, with Final Cut Studio, you get a marvelous audio workstation program, Soundtrack Pro, which allows this type of finessing.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised to not hate it as much as I had feared before the screening. For a first project for a couple of guys who hadn’t been near film classes before, it’s not that bad. So, for once, I realized that the effort we had put into it, all the work our cast and crew had put into it, was worth it.
I think we should be able to put the opening sequence on the DVD, just to show the world what you can do with two clown, a baby, and a camcorder.
Friday, November 9, 2007
A lesson from the Newcastle schoolteacher
Last night, I attended The Police concert here in Toronto. Sting and the boys powered through their greatest hits, most of them rearranged with jazzier melodies and a grungier guitar sound.
Why am I writing about this in a filmmaking blog? It was a great example of showmanship (not a gender-neutral term, but I’ll use it here given that the 3 performers who inspired this entry are all male; if you have a better term, please add a comment).
Webster’s defines the term as follows (bundled in with the showman entry):
showman
Main Entry: show·man
Pronunciation: \shō-mən\
Function: noun
Date: circa 1734
1 : the producer of a play or theatrical show
2 : a notably spectacular, dramatic, or effective performer
— show·man·ship \-ship\ noun
The current Wikipedia entry for “showmanship (performing)” is a lot more fleshed out and I think applicable to my argument:
Showmanship, concerning artistic performing such as in Theatre, is the skill of performing in such a manner that will either appeal to an audience or aid in conveying the performance's essential theme or message.
For instance, the Canadian stage magician Doug Henning used many classic illusions in his magic show. However, he made the old material seem new by both by rejecting the old stylistic clichés of the art such as wearing formal wear, and by presenting them with a childlike exuberance that respected the audience's intelligence.
Within the annals of rock music, The Police story is about 3 guys getting together during the punk movement in London, becoming the biggest New Wave band in the world, and then breaking up from internal pressures, primarily from Sting’s desire to do his own thing, when they reached the top and dominated rock and pop music.
With this backstory, the press coverage of this reunion tour has focussed on the possibility of the band imploding again due to clashes of ego, particularly between front man Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland.
Before the show began, I’m sure this aspect of the band was on most of the audience’s minds as I heard people talk about it as I entered the building and found my seat.
So, on top of re-jigging the hits here and there, there were also moments where the musicians played up the anticipation and expectations. Sting at one point hopped up o the edge of the drum riser (nearly falling into the drums, which cracked both him and Copeland up). With the onstage cameras beaming the closeups to the overhead video screens, Sting playfully nodded at two cymbals at the front of the kit, provoking Copeland to smash them. On the third (comic) beat, Copeland playfully lunged forward to hit Sting, but Sting jumped off the riser. Copeland’s demeanor while drumming is quite serious, so there weren’t any cues from him that he was joking (Sting, meanwhile, wore a smirk).
At the end of their set, as they headed off to await their encore (a funny tradition in rock), Copeland met Sting at the back of the stage with arms wide open. Sting playfully darted past Copeland and offstage.
So… was this a display of subdued tensions or two guys messing with the band’s public image? The trio arrived onstage and left onstage as a group (not scattering different directions like my buddy Bob had seen the Eagles the moment one of their reunion tour shows ended).
It doesn’t really matter, when it comes down to it. Regardless of whether the tensions are real or not, they brought them into the show. So, you can see it cynically, as guys faking their long-past feuds like wrestlers do, or you can see it as people being honest with how they feel about each other (and including it in their act). Or two guys playing with everyone’s head by toying with what the audience is expecting? Or elements of all 3? I don’t think anyone but the band would know for sure.
The Police could never be accused of being cynically-manufactured given that they didn’t produce crap, tripe, or filler—in my opinion, and I own the box set….
So, amidst the songs about loneliness, obsession, pain, suffering, and love, they had 20,000 ticket holders wondering whether they’d be pulling razors on each other backstage or be bundled off into separate rooms by nervous management types.
Again—what the heck does this have to do with filmmaking? I think putting yourself fully and completely into your projects creates honest, exciting, and compelling entertainment. I hope to apply to my own work the lesson that the Newcastle schoolteacher and his mates taught last night.
Rock music has a tradition of onstage feuds, ranging from The Kinks actually throwing punches at each other to Aerosmith using the position of wings in their stage logo to indicate if Stephen and Joe were fighting or getting along that night. I’m glad I witnessed another fabled chapter of that tradition!
Why am I writing about this in a filmmaking blog? It was a great example of showmanship (not a gender-neutral term, but I’ll use it here given that the 3 performers who inspired this entry are all male; if you have a better term, please add a comment).
Webster’s defines the term as follows (bundled in with the showman entry):
showman
Main Entry: show·man
Pronunciation: \shō-mən\
Function: noun
Date: circa 1734
1 : the producer of a play or theatrical show
2 : a notably spectacular, dramatic, or effective performer
— show·man·ship \-ship\ noun
The current Wikipedia entry for “showmanship (performing)” is a lot more fleshed out and I think applicable to my argument:
Showmanship, concerning artistic performing such as in Theatre, is the skill of performing in such a manner that will either appeal to an audience or aid in conveying the performance's essential theme or message.
For instance, the Canadian stage magician Doug Henning used many classic illusions in his magic show. However, he made the old material seem new by both by rejecting the old stylistic clichés of the art such as wearing formal wear, and by presenting them with a childlike exuberance that respected the audience's intelligence.
Within the annals of rock music, The Police story is about 3 guys getting together during the punk movement in London, becoming the biggest New Wave band in the world, and then breaking up from internal pressures, primarily from Sting’s desire to do his own thing, when they reached the top and dominated rock and pop music.
With this backstory, the press coverage of this reunion tour has focussed on the possibility of the band imploding again due to clashes of ego, particularly between front man Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland.
Before the show began, I’m sure this aspect of the band was on most of the audience’s minds as I heard people talk about it as I entered the building and found my seat.
So, on top of re-jigging the hits here and there, there were also moments where the musicians played up the anticipation and expectations. Sting at one point hopped up o the edge of the drum riser (nearly falling into the drums, which cracked both him and Copeland up). With the onstage cameras beaming the closeups to the overhead video screens, Sting playfully nodded at two cymbals at the front of the kit, provoking Copeland to smash them. On the third (comic) beat, Copeland playfully lunged forward to hit Sting, but Sting jumped off the riser. Copeland’s demeanor while drumming is quite serious, so there weren’t any cues from him that he was joking (Sting, meanwhile, wore a smirk).
At the end of their set, as they headed off to await their encore (a funny tradition in rock), Copeland met Sting at the back of the stage with arms wide open. Sting playfully darted past Copeland and offstage.
So… was this a display of subdued tensions or two guys messing with the band’s public image? The trio arrived onstage and left onstage as a group (not scattering different directions like my buddy Bob had seen the Eagles the moment one of their reunion tour shows ended).
It doesn’t really matter, when it comes down to it. Regardless of whether the tensions are real or not, they brought them into the show. So, you can see it cynically, as guys faking their long-past feuds like wrestlers do, or you can see it as people being honest with how they feel about each other (and including it in their act). Or two guys playing with everyone’s head by toying with what the audience is expecting? Or elements of all 3? I don’t think anyone but the band would know for sure.
The Police could never be accused of being cynically-manufactured given that they didn’t produce crap, tripe, or filler—in my opinion, and I own the box set….
So, amidst the songs about loneliness, obsession, pain, suffering, and love, they had 20,000 ticket holders wondering whether they’d be pulling razors on each other backstage or be bundled off into separate rooms by nervous management types.
Again—what the heck does this have to do with filmmaking? I think putting yourself fully and completely into your projects creates honest, exciting, and compelling entertainment. I hope to apply to my own work the lesson that the Newcastle schoolteacher and his mates taught last night.
Rock music has a tradition of onstage feuds, ranging from The Kinks actually throwing punches at each other to Aerosmith using the position of wings in their stage logo to indicate if Stephen and Joe were fighting or getting along that night. I’m glad I witnessed another fabled chapter of that tradition!
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The 74-Minute Skeleton in Our Closet, 5: No-Budget Finances
Compared to most student features, Babysitters was an inexpensive project, but for two people putting up all the money themselves, it wasn’t cheap!
With the purchase of computer software and hardware, video equipment, supplies, props, and the mandatory on-set food and drink, I put around $5500 CAD into it (equivalent of about $3600 US in 2002). Mullet put in $2000 CAD, so our budget for Babysitters for 2001-2002 was $7500 CAD, or about $4900 USD in 2002 dollars (all dollar numbers below are in Canadian funds).
So… what did $7500 buy us besides 74-minutes of hilarity?
Most of that money went into fixed assets like computers, software, extra hard drives, a tripod, shotgun microphone, etc., so the money we spent on Babysitters has saved considerable money on subsequent projects. We can now make a short for the costs of blank tapes, food, beverages, gas, parking, office supplies, and the occasional new prop.
For Babysitters, as a general strategy, we decided to buy inexpensive gear rather than rent better stuff since we had a lot of single shooting days spread out over 9 months. If we’d scheduled the shoot to take place within a single block of time or two, the rental option would have made more sense, so your schedule will dictate your finances a great deal.
We never prepared a budget beforehand, which is something we should have done, in hindsight. If we had done a budget, though, we would have revised it constantly as we came across new expenses that we hadn’t anticipated—every rookie mistake will cost you money.
We averaged about $100 each day for food, beverages, props, gas, parking, and supplies like mini-DV tapes, and that has been our typical budget ever since. We’ve always been able to borrow cameras, so we’ve never had to rent one (about $200/day for a DVX100 or similar camera in Toronto these days).
We also don’t pay our actors or crew anything. This means we don’t use people who belong to the acting guild in Canada, ACTRA, as we can’t afford the minimums that the guild has in place for its members. If we did use guild people without following procedure, we would never be able to sell the project to anyone, so it’s not worth it. ACTRA does have a low-budget program, but they’re still pretty big bucks for anyone at the no-budget level. The guilds in your area will have similar rules and policies that you should know before starting a project.
Any decent film school has an introductory producing class, so I’d recommend taking one before plunging into shooting. If I didn’t live near a dozen film schools like there are in Toronto, the internet has leveled the playing field—you can get just about any book on film and video producing, and there are a lot of good websites, lists, and blogs on the topic as well. I’ll post an entry with some links at some point.
You also want to budget your time. For longer projects, you should anticipate the demands on your time during all phases of production. A good production management book or course can give you an idea of how much time you’ll need to do things (and it will always take longer to do something than you’d think it would…).
We saved money where we could with gear. Instead of buying a microphone boom pole, I modified a $15 window-washing extension arm with a PVC collar and mini-bungee cords to create a shock mount (this guy had a similar idea). We used a $5 desktop mike stand for most of the shoots—putting the mike at the feet of our performers just out of frame with the mike aimed up. I bought 3 sets of halogen work lights for our interiors, using gels to convert them whenever needed to sunlight-balanced light. I built camera stabilizers (to make handheld shots easier) with raw materials from Canadian Tire (after seeing how much a pro stabilizer cost). All of this stuff may look cheap and crappy, but with a little work, it does the same job as the pro gear at a fraction of the cost.
We only had to pay for locations three times, when we shot scenes in rehearsal spaces. We used both our apartments, interior and exterior, for as many distinct locations as we could squeeze out of them, and we used someone’s apartment for another location. We found and used a deserted lot downtown, and we used public property elsewhere. We didn’t build sets, which is another big expense even for something small.
We were fortunate in that we avoided the debt like a lot of filmmakers get into with features, so I don’t have any advice to others on how to manage it. Just avoid it if you can. After all, no-budget means no-money….
With the purchase of computer software and hardware, video equipment, supplies, props, and the mandatory on-set food and drink, I put around $5500 CAD into it (equivalent of about $3600 US in 2002). Mullet put in $2000 CAD, so our budget for Babysitters for 2001-2002 was $7500 CAD, or about $4900 USD in 2002 dollars (all dollar numbers below are in Canadian funds).
So… what did $7500 buy us besides 74-minutes of hilarity?
Most of that money went into fixed assets like computers, software, extra hard drives, a tripod, shotgun microphone, etc., so the money we spent on Babysitters has saved considerable money on subsequent projects. We can now make a short for the costs of blank tapes, food, beverages, gas, parking, office supplies, and the occasional new prop.
For Babysitters, as a general strategy, we decided to buy inexpensive gear rather than rent better stuff since we had a lot of single shooting days spread out over 9 months. If we’d scheduled the shoot to take place within a single block of time or two, the rental option would have made more sense, so your schedule will dictate your finances a great deal.
We never prepared a budget beforehand, which is something we should have done, in hindsight. If we had done a budget, though, we would have revised it constantly as we came across new expenses that we hadn’t anticipated—every rookie mistake will cost you money.
We averaged about $100 each day for food, beverages, props, gas, parking, and supplies like mini-DV tapes, and that has been our typical budget ever since. We’ve always been able to borrow cameras, so we’ve never had to rent one (about $200/day for a DVX100 or similar camera in Toronto these days).
We also don’t pay our actors or crew anything. This means we don’t use people who belong to the acting guild in Canada, ACTRA, as we can’t afford the minimums that the guild has in place for its members. If we did use guild people without following procedure, we would never be able to sell the project to anyone, so it’s not worth it. ACTRA does have a low-budget program, but they’re still pretty big bucks for anyone at the no-budget level. The guilds in your area will have similar rules and policies that you should know before starting a project.
Any decent film school has an introductory producing class, so I’d recommend taking one before plunging into shooting. If I didn’t live near a dozen film schools like there are in Toronto, the internet has leveled the playing field—you can get just about any book on film and video producing, and there are a lot of good websites, lists, and blogs on the topic as well. I’ll post an entry with some links at some point.
You also want to budget your time. For longer projects, you should anticipate the demands on your time during all phases of production. A good production management book or course can give you an idea of how much time you’ll need to do things (and it will always take longer to do something than you’d think it would…).
We saved money where we could with gear. Instead of buying a microphone boom pole, I modified a $15 window-washing extension arm with a PVC collar and mini-bungee cords to create a shock mount (this guy had a similar idea). We used a $5 desktop mike stand for most of the shoots—putting the mike at the feet of our performers just out of frame with the mike aimed up. I bought 3 sets of halogen work lights for our interiors, using gels to convert them whenever needed to sunlight-balanced light. I built camera stabilizers (to make handheld shots easier) with raw materials from Canadian Tire (after seeing how much a pro stabilizer cost). All of this stuff may look cheap and crappy, but with a little work, it does the same job as the pro gear at a fraction of the cost.
We only had to pay for locations three times, when we shot scenes in rehearsal spaces. We used both our apartments, interior and exterior, for as many distinct locations as we could squeeze out of them, and we used someone’s apartment for another location. We found and used a deserted lot downtown, and we used public property elsewhere. We didn’t build sets, which is another big expense even for something small.
We were fortunate in that we avoided the debt like a lot of filmmakers get into with features, so I don’t have any advice to others on how to manage it. Just avoid it if you can. After all, no-budget means no-money….
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