Should i make a feature film

Studios and production companies want to mitigate risks They may be thinking that they can, at the very least, use the footage to score more film roles later on. When I saw that, it made me feel so much more comfortable when I was filming scenes with my own actors.

And this leaves us with only one, inescapable conclusion: Whether an actor seems good or bad has at least as much to do with the director as with the actor themselves. And last, and this is one that might be controversial, I highly recommend that you cast yourself in your own film. I know, I know. He or she will be on time, know their lines, and passionately care about the project itself.

Actors are human beings, and they can suffer from exhaustion, or emotional issues stemming from events in their personal lives. It turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of fate to happen during the entire production.

I truly enjoyed acting—I loved the way it amplified my ability to control another aspect of the storytelling. There was literally no downside!

Sound design is crucial! This one is actually pretty cut and dry. If you prefer a different professional software, just find the equivalent course material and then take the course. When Jenny and I did the sound design for Dangerous to Know , all we could think about was sound.

Remember, bad sound design could bring down what otherwise would have been a great film. We had some sound-dampening foam on the walls, had the actors watch their performance, then had them match their lip movements as they slightly modified their pitch so that we could build the perfect performance.

Jenny and I rebuilt most of the sound in the movie, actually, which is an enormous amount of work. I wanted the sound design to be as incredible as possible, and I am proud to say that the 5. If you read the first article, you already know the story behind the composition of our musical score. Other than being in my school choir in the first grade, I really had no musical experience, so the fact that I could immediately play music on a keyboard is surprising to me.

I knew the music composition software had to be pretty incredible, and I was delighted by what I found when I dove into it. I composed everything in Logic Pro X, and used a number of plugins. I could achieve cinematic, orchestral music, tuning each instrument in an orchestra I could build.

One example that people will need to see it in a theater to experience, is a scene in which the music is actually the sound of a recording of a merry-go-round that is detuned until it sounds like a jet engine from hell, and then I literally span the music around the audience, so that it gives the sensation of spinning, leaving the viewer feeling exactly like the characters in the scene. That was my oversight. My wife was responsible for shooting everything in which I was on screen unless it was a tripod set up.

There were no secret professional cinematographers, and I truly take it as a huge compliment that anyone could even think so. As for my income, being a bestseller is different since the Kindle came along. And I mean way less! The only time I ever had money was, briefly, after I paid off my student loan and could save a bit from my ebooks.

It was terrifying for me, because, at the time, our book sales were really up and down. But the popularity always fades quickly, and you have to plan your next promotion fast.

You see because the movie took 3. My last credit card is almost tapped out. Just like it says in my Kickstarter pitch video and in its description, everything I had gone into the movie, and then into living during the three years of post-production.

Those numbers are usually different, depending on what you include in it, and marketing departments usually stretch the truth pretty far to find a way to grab headlines. Whether it is to show how remarkably low or high a budget is. Whatever they think will sell the movie. In my case, if I really strip it down to the fundamentals of what I needed to make the movie, and all these numbers are in Canadian dollars, which are about 75 cents compared to an American Dollar.

I did that too. They might be happier to take that if you simply do not have any money to pay them during filming. Just make sure you treat them amazingly and feed them. You can, however, also make the argument that the simple cost of living for me during the post-production should all go towards the budget. So my rent, everything I bought, including everything I ate, all of it. Of course, the latter methodology seems a little extreme, but you can decide based on your own situation, which analogy makes the most sense to you as you move forward with the plans for your own feature.

The cameras I used are no longer currently the top of the line, but they were at the time and they did the job beautifully for me. Even the new iPhone 11 Pro looks to have incredible stabilization and some insane color and white balance abilities I really believe it will be possible to build up a phone in the near future, with some nice mobile size lenses and an accessory that will allow you to record in ProRes, to be a pretty decent film camera but they need to make a great lowlight sensor I hope Apple is working on that.

The hardware and software is already so much better than it was for me in the spring of when I started this insane odyssey. If you have more questions, subscribe to my YouTube channel and hit me up. And remember! Check out the rewards, grab one if you like one!

Many of the people reading this will have been propositioned to work on something being self-produced by a producer with grand ideas and a pocket-money budget. This is a terrifically unattractive prospect for crew, often involving several weeks of long hours for poor pay in the service of a production that often won't achieve watchability.

It's increasingly rare for this sort of microbudget filmmaking to take any money back at all. All the same, these productions never seem to have trouble finding cast and crew, suggesting that the bright lights of Hollywood are commonly being confused with the rather more lambent glow of independent filmmaking.

We know why it happens: because people want to be big-time directors. It fails so often because producer-directors make the same well-known mistake as a huge proportion of start-up businesses: they start out with grossly inadequate funding. It isn't particularly difficult to make a releasable feature film; it's a matter of retaining the services of the right people.

The money people of film and TV are rarely, if ever, creatives. But if reasonably able people aren't affordable, the results suffer to the point where the effort is more of an arts project than a business engagement. One of the key questions, then, is what is a sensible minimum budget to produce something that people will pay to watch.

Let's do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Assume we have a script we can shoot in four six-day weeks; people have done less, but it tends to require a specially-designed narrative with very limited horizons.

Assume we have a crew of perhaps eight: the producer-director-writer works for free, taking the risk of the enterprise. We need a focus puller and general camera assistant, as well as one person to work with lighting.

A sound recordist plus a hair and make-up person are essential, as is someone to fulfil the roles of production manager and first assistant director.

That leaves three slots to cover things like production design, logistics and catering. The average day might require four actors and we'll assume everyone makes their own way to set.

That's a fairly realistic setup for an ultra-low-budget independent feature and it involves person-days of labour, rounded up to to allow for any specialists we might need here and there.

The next question is how much or more to the point how little is a day rate worth the name. Show me the money! Trust your crew.

Budget wisely. Do your homework. Have a great script. And hold on to blind faith. Zane Borg. Share this: Tweet. Add a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.

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