Essential DIY Filmmaking Tools 2011

Hey everyone - times change rapidly in the digital world - every day it gets easier and easier and cheaper and cheaper to make your indie movie! Here is a quick survey of products to help you get up and running without breaking the bank!

1) Cameras - As recently as a couple of years ago, the Flip was all the rage. A palm-sized camera that shoots in HD for under $200, it seemed like everybody was snapping them up. (I shot part of my movie The Great Intervention on a Kodak Zi8 - a similar camera. In this short span of time, both cameras are now discontinued. Why? Because, chances are you've already got an HD camera... in your smart phone! If you have an iPhone 4 (and why DON'T you?) you've got one right there. Same goes for most Androids. If you do have an iPhone, pick up the groovy 8mm app which will let you emulate a bunch of different film stocks, for fun and effect. Don't have/want a smart phone? Find a used Flip or Zi8 on eBay. Don't think the iPhone is good enough? Here are a few awesome films shot on it.

2) Tripod. If you go the iPhone route, you're going to need a special tripod adaptor, if you want to really frame your shots. The Thought Out Company makes several $25 models, which will attach to any standard tripod. If you want to be truly DIY - do a YouTube search for "make your own iPhone tripod mount" - like this one:



Sound: This is often the most neglected part of the DIY setup, but also the most critical. (It's called an AUDI-ence, right?) Crappy sound on your finished product is the dead giveaway of an amateur filmmaker. DAK audio makes several wireless packages at very reasonable prices. Add to that a special adaptor cables from KV microphone (make sure you get the right one for your setup) and now you can add high quality audio to your video quite easily. (Also available for Android)


Don't take my word for it - take the Gadget Guy

Editing Software. Mac users - YOU ARE IN LUCK!! Apple just announced Final Cut Pro X - a totally revamped version of their flagship professional editing software... and -- GET THIS -- it's now just $299! Final Cut Studio used to retail for THREE TIMES that amount. Now the barrier to professional-looking filmmaking is even lower!!!!! Advice to PC users: get a Mac!!! (Discounts galore on used-but-still-in-warranty Macs from Gainsaver.com!!!)

Well, that's about it for the latest gadgets on my radar. I'm sure, soon enough, we'll have chipsets embedded in our brains where we can just "think" our movies, but until then, this is probably as close as you can get!!

The Hollywood Collapse is Coming!!

Are you ready for The Reckoning?

No it's not yet ANOTHER Superhero franchise foisted upon us - just the opposite. It's the bursting of the Hollywood Bubble - and it's coming this summer to a theater near YOU!

For years, Hollywood has been courting the so-called "Fanboys" who seem to populate the San Diego Comic Convention and drool over anything in spandex.

Case in Point

This small-but-extremely-vocal subset has been guiding the Tent Pole machine for years, producing films loosely based on comic books from half-a-century ago, to bigger and bigger profits, and, of course, bigger and bigger budgets.

As in the Dot-Com, the Real Estate, and even the Dutch Tulip era, this is what's known as a Bubble.

And we all know what happens to Bubbles, don't we?

Wait - what DID happen to Bubbles?!

I'm not a mathemetician (but I once sang a song about it) but we can see the bell curve in effect this past weekend, when X-Men First Class opened to $56 Million dollars. Sounds like a good number to you and me, but note that this was the lowest opening of the series, which has been dragging on for years now.

On the horizon is The Green Lantern, Harry Potter, Captain America, Cowboys and Aliens, and even The Smurfs in 3D, no less.

Speaking of 3D, much to James Cameron's chagrin, that Bubble has already burst, as sub-par 3D movies like Green Hornet and Gulliver's Travels and extra ticket fees have turned off moviegoers in droves. Because of Kung Fu Panda 2's underwhelming 3D opening, stock in 3D production companies took a huge hit.

Uh-oh, aren't most of these upcoming Superhero movies in 3D?

And, aside from a different color of spandex and a random super power here and there, aren't all these movies the SAME?!

My prediction is that this summer is going to be a big "Wake Up Call" to Hollywood producers.

3D projection, the shiny "new" toy of 2009, will die a painful death. Half of these "Tent Pole" movies will underperform if not flat-out fail.

This Tent Pole Cost Us $300 Million Dollars!!

Studios will take a long, hard look at their bottom line and put the comic books back in a box in the attic where they belong.

This is good news for the Indie Filmmaker!

They will realize that they can create interesting, compelling films for a fraction of the budget and will fire up their low budget divisions. Just recently, Lionsgate announced their own microbudget division.

Movie theaters, reeling from being burned by Hollywood (yet again) with crappy 3D projection systems and the ever-diminishing theater-to-DVD window, will look elsewhere for content.

Already, they are screening operas, Broadway shows, and concerts, with great success.

In addition, indie arthouses are sprouting up in major cities and elsewhere, such as L.A.'s The Downtown Independent, and budding franchise Alamo Drafthouse, which cater to moviegoers that enjoy more brain than brawn.

Add into the mix, the continuous proliferation of smartphones, video sharing websites and video-on-demand services that cater exclusive to indie filmmakers, and you have the makings of a revolution in entertainment.

No spandex necessary!

Get Over It - It Ain't Gonna Happen

So you've made your first movie - congratulations! You have spent long, hard hours (days, months, years?) creating and realizing your vision. It's only a matter of time before you are accepted to Tribeca, Sundance, or one of the other big festivals, and a fierce bidding war begins. only to secure you and your film millions of dollars and instant fame.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it ain't gonna happen.

I subscribe to several "DIY" newsletters and blogs, many of which feverishly cover all the exciting deals being made at Cannes, and offer negotiating tips about how to handle distributors and other high-end buyers.

This is like getting tips on your Academy Awards acceptance speech after your first High School play.

Sure, it's okay to dream, but, then again it's also important to wake up.

While there are a lot of success stories that you read about, of first-time filmmakers making the leap from obscurity to celebrity, the reality is there simply is a glut of product out there. Making a movie, once the achievement of a large group of people and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars, can now be done by one person with an iPhone. My first film, The Great Intervention, was shot for $5000.

This is not terrible news, people! Every day, there are more and more places to sell, stream or share your movie online. And, every day, it is getting cheaper and cheaper to make them. This means - a) you can do it yourself, and b) you don't need to go to the poorhouse spending all your money on marketing seminars, publicists, and Facebook Ads to recoup your costs. (If you're smart like me, you raise the money for your film on Kickstarter, so you are not in the hole at all. Every dollar that comes in is, technically, a profit.)

I'm not going to lie to you - I have hopes just like you that my film will be seen by Harvey Weinstein. I'm just starting with smaller goals and expectations, and I suggest you do too.

• Enter film festivals with no or low entrance fees. Sometimes, you can email them and beg for a waiver. Not saying that happens much, but it could be worth a try.
• Focus on the community around the film. Actors, investors and friends all want to see your film and have it succeed. Start with screenings that involve them and roll out from there.
• Always have a copy of your film on you - you never know who you are going to meet!

See you at Cannes.

Sneak Preview of The Great Intervention June 1

I am very pleased to announce a special ONLINE sneak preview of The Great Intervention. Indie Film Night, an film-fan website based in Delaware, will be doing a live stream of the movie on June 1, 8PM E.S.T. (5PM Pacific).

Host Bill Page with show the film in 30-minute segments, interspersed with interviews with myself and Karen Zumsteg. So be sure and set your "alerts" - tune in by clicking the Indie Film Night page and click the Live Broadcast button!

Welcome to DIY U.

Film school is too damn expensive. All that money you spend on tuition could be spent on a kickass digital camera and Final Cut Pro. But there still are a few things you can learn from a good film school... Introducing DIY University, aka DIYU. Take our film course, outlined below and you will be on your way to cinematic greatness.

Hey, it's the guy from "The Beaver"!

1. Read Lethal Weapon screenplay. Fellow UCLA (and Comedy Club) alum Shane Black changed the rules of screenwriting with this script. Notice how it reads more like a comic book. He even uses the "action" (the descriptive bits between the dialogue) to add a bit of self-aware humor. It's tight, it's funny, and it launched a franchise that made the guy a lot of dough. WHAT YOU SHOULD TAKE AWAY: If you are writing a script, especially a spec script, make sure your "action" is tight and propels the story forward. Break the film down into "acts" and notice how it fits the classic structure. Let it inspire your writing.

Don't fuggedaboudit

2. Read The 5 C's of Cinematography. Fellow Proud Italian Joseph V Mascelli outlines many of the classic techniques of filmmaking. Some of the references are dated of course, but  overall it will give a filmmaker an "eye" for what separates "cinema" from "home movie."

Make sure your face is always very red

3. Read Michael Caine's Acting in Film: An Actor's Take on Movie Making. Let's face the facts: Film and theater are COMPLETELY different. This book leaves out all the touchy-feely stuff and focuses on the business at hand: learning to hit your mark, open your face to the lens, and do the same thing over and over again. Oh, and how to keep it subtle. 

4. Watch Star Wars Begins. Finally, it's movie time! Even if you've seen Star Wars a hundred times and even if you HATE Science Fiction, watch this amazing documentary. This guy was so obsessed, he has created a parallel movie to all three ("good") SW films. He collected all the behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes, and all sorts of video-and-audio ephemera to give you an insight into the incredible creation of one of history's most famous film franchises. You literally watch Lucas build this dream world, only to destroy it later. After it's done, watch Building Empire and finally Returning to Jedi. 


And that's it! Follow these steps and you will have almost everything you need to know about filmmaking. Contact me for your diploma.

Create a Great Movie in 5 Simple* Steps

Recently, I talked about an easy way to "greenlight" your own movie, but I left you hanging when it comes to the actual movie concept itself. There are dozens, if not hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of books, courses, podcasts, webinars etc. on the "art" of screenwriting. Many of these are quite valuable (Robert McKee's Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting 
is often bandied about as the best) and/or very expensive (Screenwritingu.com's intensive Pro Series will set you back a few Benjamins or more).

So I am introducing my own Instant* Screenplay formula - a way to create a structure for a feature film that you could make yourself.

(*Results may vary)



Step One: What are you an EXPERT on? Everybody has some kind of hobby or occupation that they know a lot about. Doctors have gone to medical school of course, but even a lazy slob has a lot of knowledge that the average person doesn't about lounging around. People watch movies to enter an unfamiliar world, in which the filmmaker is the guide; when we watch, we also LEARN a little bit about something we didn't know before.  This will be your overall CONCEPT. (I.e. "I am an expert knitter, so this movie will be about the world of knitting."

This is what came up when I Googled "lazy slob"

Step Two: YOU are the main character. Let's leave the fantasy world imagining to M. Night Shamalamadingdong.  Who are you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Try and be honest with yourself. Our favorite characters are usually flawed human beings, maybe with a bitter secret - not these perfect "supermen". Remember that word: honesty.

Who ARE You?

Step Three: Ask yourself "What IF". That is what every movie boils down to. "What if..?" "What if a poor Italian immigrant came to America and got involved in a life of crime?" (The Godfather) "What if a giant shark terrorized a small tourist town?" (Jaws) "What if I had a $150 million dollar budget and I wanted to throw it in the garbage?" (Inception) You get the idea.

I Hate When That Happens!

Step Four: What does your character (you) WANT or NEED? Most of the time, your character must be involved in some kind of quest or action. This part of the idea may be generated by the "What if?" "What if the world were ending tomorrow? I would want/need to see my mother one last time."

Now the idea should start taking shape in your head. Keep thinking about it, toss it around in your mind as you lay in bed. Keep a notebook or use a voice memo to record any ideas you generate. Repeat steps one through three until it is crystal clear.

Step Five: Put in a surprise twist. Nobody likes a movie that they can see the ending coming a mile away. Rarely is a movie interesting in which everybody gets what they wants and everything is sunny and beautiful. At some point - usually near the film's climax - something goes awry that both the main character and the audience should not see coming. Part of the success of Rocky was that [SPOILER ALERT] he DIDN'T win the fight (I'm talking Rocky I here, people.) People like being caught off guard - it will affect them emotionally.

Step Six: The main character must CHANGE. A screenplay is a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. If nothing happens to the hero, then what's the point? We are watching this movie because it is a defining moment in this character's life that forever affects them. A simple way to do this is have the character start out one way (say "greedy") and end up the opposite ("a philanthropist.") That is the story of A Christmas Carol, in a nutshell.

Step Seven: RAISE the stakes. So now you have your concept, character, story, etc. Now bump it up to the next level. If something is not a LIFE OR DEATH situation (literally or figuratively,) again, what's the point? We watch movies to get our heart racing, to live out the story being played in front of our eyes. If it doesn't matter whether the character succeeds or fails in their goal, then something is wrong. PUMP IT UP!!

So there you have it! Seven simple* steps. That's how I came up with the idea for The Great Intervention. But yours doesn't have to be a comedy. It could be drama, romance, even action.

And if you are indeed successful, you owe me 10% of the film's gross.

Advertising Budget - $1 Million Dollars or $0

When a new movie comes out, whether it is the Mega Tent Pole "Thor" or the low budget indie "Insiduous" - one thing that they have in common is advertising budgets in the millions of dollars. Billboards, bus stops, TV commercials, radio, print, talk shows, web advertising, magazine articles, etc., all magically coordinated so that the weeks leading up to the release, awareness is pretty damn high.

That's what millions of dollars, and a coordination of publicists, media buyers, and advertising companies looks like.

You're supposed to put garbage on the streets!

How can you compete with that with your indie film? You can't.

In the perspective of the global film industry, your film's budget and advertising is a proverbial drop in the bucket.

Naturally, the more money you spend on your film, the less your chances are for a recoup.

For every $10,000 you spend in advertising - a formidable sum for you and I - you now have to generate 1,000 more sales/profits at $10 per VOD, disc, or download sold, each of which has its own commission structure.

Now, I am not much of a math (or advertising) guy, but spending $10,000 to get 1,000 people to buy something, seems like a drop in the bucket for such a task. (Recently, as an experiment, I spent $100 on Facebook advertising to get something like 9 "Likes" and zero sales. At that rate, to get 1,000 would be, well, YOU do the math!) And we're not even counting the budget of your film, which was probably in the tens-of-thousands of dollars as well. So we are already talking about a serious chunk of change.

So what do you do? Give up? Of course not!

No Money? No Problem!

Spend $0.

That's right. $0. In the the advertising world, your $10,000 is so close to zero anyways, you might as well keep in your bank account.

Here are a few ideas that cost nothing.

1) Become your own publicist. Publicists, especially good ones, can charge thousands of dollars a month. And if they're REALLY good - with an excellent Rolodex (do those even exist anymore?) - you probably can't get them or afford them. There are loads of so-called publicists on the 'Net pining for your indie dollars. Why pay them for what you can - and already have been - doing all along? If you don't know how to write a press release, there are plenty of websites to walk you through it.

One important tip: Take your middle name and the street you grew up on and - voila - instant publicist. My publicist for The Great Intervention is Fred Rainey. He has his own email address and I list my phone number. If someone calls asking for Fred, I know it's related to the movie.

I'm not saying there is not an art to finding your film's niche, writing an engaging press release, and shepherding it out to the media, I'm just saying you might as well do it yourself. Most likely, you came up with the idea for your film in the first place, right? Who knows more about it than you? Focus not only on the film, but perhaps the making of the film like I did (surely there are some interesting obstacles you encountered that others can benefit or enjoy learning from).

Need contacts and places to send your press release? The Internet will help you. Set up your Google alerts for key words related to your film, as well as "indie film" "DIY filmmaker" "film festival" "micro budget" etc. In your inbox every day will be a list of websites/articles that deal with these things.

2) Make the talk show rounds. Sure, you're probably not going to get on Jay Leno, or even Conan. But in your network I'm sure there are DOZENS of people that are making blogs and or podcasts. Just look at your Facebook page. Sure, they may not have huge ratings, but it is a good start. Not only can you get some video and-or audio soundbites for your EPK, but it's good practice in case one of the big shows do indeed come a-knockin'.

3) Exploit your actors. Actors are hungry - they are all trying to become famous. And you gave them a part in your movie! Most likely, because of this very fact, you won't need to "exploit" them - just give them the opportunity to promote the film. Work with them to set up screenings and make sure they are available for interviews. They may have friends that have podcasts/blogs too, so make sure they get a copy of the press release or EPK for their own use. Find out if their backstory can be of use in the publicity of the movie.

4) Return to your hometown. Everybody has a group of people they grew up with, and in this age of Facebook, the odds are good that you are in contact with them. Make an event and show your movie! The local paper likes nothing better than a story like "Local Filmmaker Returns Home to Screen Indie Movie." Perhaps you can coordinate with an alumni group or others to donate a portion of the proceeds to a local charity.

5) Pray for virility. Nobody knows how or why things go viral - that's the wonder of the Internet. Rebecca Black hoped she would become famous, but no reasonable amount of marketing could have generated A HUNDRED AND TWENTY ONE MILLION VIEWS on YouTube.

This is where the playing field is "leveled" between you and the blockbuster. Create short clips of your movies - not just a preview, perhaps, but maybe a controversial/hilarious scene. Keep throwing them out there and see what works. You don't have access to Neilson Ratings or expensive marketing analysts, but you DO have access to your YouTube view count as well as some other interesting insights, including users' attention span across your video! Find other video sites to post it to, and use keywords related to your topic.

And then pray something hits Numa Numa land.

***

So there you go. I'm not saying doing this is better than hiring a publicist or spending a gazillion dollars on billboards. But these are some things you can do own your own without maxing the credit cards that may give you some satisfactory results. At least you tried.