A few more things to keep in
mind…
MAKING MOVIES WITHOUT
INVESTORS…
All it takes is an idea, some planning, access to equipment,
lots of time,
and most importantly, dedication!
KEEP THE FOLLOWING IN MIND
WHEN GETTING SET UP TO MAKE A MOVIE:
Find friends to help (to
loan equipment, serve as crewmembers, play the parts, donate the use of props
or locations, etc.)
Start out modestly and build
your own collection of equipment gradually as you need it or want to improve
your quality.
CAMCORDER
If you want to buy a
camcorder, a usable new one with a few accessories can cost as low as
$250-$750.
Numerous choices are available. Start with one of the cheaper cameras until you
are confident enough to invest in a more professional level model that may cost
in the $2500-$7500 range, since by then their prices will likely be lower
and/or they will have added features for the same price. However, be sure to
get something in either the MiniDV or Digital 8 format, preferably with manual
overrides on exposure and focus and with an external microphone input. (An
external a/v input jack can also be handy, as it will let your camera digitize
analog audio and video.) The HDV format is increasingly used by television
stations and semi-professionals for a substantially sharper image, but has some
tradeoffs in performance and features unless you have a powerful computer. Do
not get stuck with buying a Hi8 or a VHS camcorder (both are analog and require
more computer hardware to be usable) or one of those pocket-sized digital
cameras that use small memory sticks to record highly compressed video files,
no matter how tempting their low prices may be. Also avoid camcorders that
record directly to DVDs if you plan to do editing (their compressed format
loses quality and requires special software to edit). Beware of consumer
camcorders that record directly to their own hard disks or small memory cards
as they may use their own special, digitally compressed format instead of the
standard DV signal, again requiring special software to edit. You may find it
useful to buy two cheap DV or Digital8 camcorders, as you can use one to make
exact digital clones of your digital master tapes, besides serving as a backup
camera, a second unit camera, or doubling as a digital audio recorder. (NOTE: if you can afford a fancy camera that
can shoot 24p instead of 30i, don’t bother to use that setting unless you plan
to transfer your video to film after it is edited! It will result in a better
image on film, but gives a degraded video image and requires special software
settings for editing. Using a 30p setting, however, may improve image sharpness
on most video monitors.)
If you plan to shoot outdoors or anywhere the camera must move
away from an electrical outlet, think about getting an extra long-life battery,
despite their hefty prices (perhaps an extra $120). It’s easier and cheaper to
shoot all day with a 12-hour battery than to keep several 2-hour batteries
charged and on hand to change out when they lose power.
COMPUTER and HARDWARE
If you need a new or better
computer, you can do reasonably acceptable video editing on a system priced
between $1000-$2000, but if you can afford it, think of a “turnkey” (everything
pre-installed) editing system in the $5000-$12,000 range. You’ll need at least
a gigabyte or two of RAM to edit video, but four or more gigabytes of RAM will
be drastically more efficient. The faster your computer’s processor is, the
better your experience will be while playing and editing video. When doing any
sort of digital effects, having dual or even quad processors will help
noticeably, especially if they are over two or three gigahertz each. Effects
done with slower computers must first be “rendered” to a separate movie file
before they can be played in real time.
Be sure to have a separate
hard drive (internal or firewire external) exclusively for your audio/video
files. (NOTE: an external USB-only drive
is not fast enough for efficient video editing. An IEEE-1394 firewire 400
connection will work fine for DV but a firewire 800 connection will work
substantially better if you want to edit HDV.) An external drive often costs less than fifty
cents per gigabyte, which comes to about an extra $100-$500 investment over and
above your basic computer, depending how much editing you need to do. It takes
about 12-13 gigabytes to hold an hour of DV or HDV movie files, and you’ll want
a capacity of at least ten to twenty times more than the running time of your
finished movie—even larger if you plan to edit outtakes and/or make more movies
later. A minimum size to think about is 300 to 500 gigabytes, and a terabyte or
two would be better for a feature-length project or multiple short movies. (Don’t forget to set your editing software’s capture
preferences to use the external drive as its scratch disk rather than your
computer’s root drive!!) If you already have an old analog camcorder you want to use, you must
get a digitizing video card for your computer that has standard RCA video and
audio inputs instead of (or in addition to) a firewire port. You will want to
have either a built-in DVD burner on your computer, and/or a separate
stand-alone DVD recorder (which works just like a VCR but with DVDs). Be sure
your stand-alone DVD recorder is equipped with a DV firewire input so you can
make DVDs directly from your camcorder and master digital tapes. If you copy
the video signal from tape using the audio and video cables, quality will be
significantly lower than if you use the IEEE-1394 “firewire” cable (which
transfers the actual digital information itself instead of converting it to
audio and video signals first).
If you can afford it, you
will appreciate the convenience of a separate DV or HDV videocassette recorder
so you won’t need to use your camera to capture footage to your computer.
These, however, range from about $2000-$6000, so will only be a useful
investment if you plan to continue video production seriously. For roughly an
extra $1500, a portable firewire hard disk recorder is available for some
cameras to use instead of or in addition to recording on tapes, and can hold
over four hours of DV or HDV video. This can allow you to edit directly from
that portable drive after shooting, with no need to capture the footage, but
use it for HDV movies only if you have a PC (with Vegas, Premiere, or Avid
editing software). As of mid-2007, HDV’s “m2t” file format on these hard disks
is unfortunately not supported by Final Cut (even though it accepts the HDV
signal from the tape), so you’ll still need to capture the footage off the tape
to Quicktime HDV movie files.
NOTE: If you have access to or decide to invest in
a camera that supports the HDV and especially the AVCHD, DVCAM HD, XDCAM,
HDCAM, or DVCPro HD formats, you will need a much more powerful computer with a
very large and fast hard disc RAID to handle the higher data rates required for
the better quality picture. Professional HD formats require massive storage and
processing capacity and the reliability of a SCSI RAID, but you can actually
edit HDV on a high-end laptop. Clever compression allows 1080x1440-pixel HDV
files to take up about the same hard disk space as a standard 480x720-pixel DV
signal, and still produce an impressively sharp image. However, the computer must
do a lot of extra processing to display it, and even more to render edited
footage back to the HDV format. The image must also be downconverted for
playback on standard-definition TV sets or for encoding as a
standard-definition DVD, which takes additional and expensive dedicated
hardware and/or a huge amount of computer processing time. Some software can
convert HDV files so they’re easier to use on slower computers, but this takes
up about four times as much hard disk space and often loses noticeable quality
in the conversion back to HDV. The increasingly popular AVCHD high definition
home camcorder format requires an even faster computer for editing and at the
present time is better suited for simple home movies that will never be edited.
High-definition DVDs, introduced to the public in 2006 in two non-compatible
formats, are not yet widely used, although the HD-DVD format was discontinued
in early 2008 in favor of the “Blu-Ray” format. If you already have a
high-definition television, a hi-def DVD player, and an HDV camcorder, you may
wish to try a hi-def movie anyway. While blank BluRay and HD-DVDs are still
extremely expensive, you can actually burn an HD-DVD format disc project to a
standard 30-cent blank DVD but are limited to about 20 minutes of content
instead of two hours and some players will not play it properly. HDV and AVCHD
movie files can be exported to a hard drive, and if small enough will fit on a
blank DVD-ROM or BluRay disc. If you export the movie back to your hi-def
camcorder, you can connect your camcorder to a high-definition TV with an HDMI
cable to watch it in hi-def. At this point in time, the most practical method
of watching home-edited hi-definition movies is on a computer. You’ll still
need to downconvert any high-definition project to a standard DVD for most
people to be able to watch it.
CLICK HERE for a chart comparing the
relative image resolution of various video formats. The standard-definition DV
format is equal to the resolution capability of standard-definition DVDs but
actually has a higher quality image because it uses less digital compression.
The HDV format is almost as sharp as the higher-definition HDTV standard but
again uses substantial digital compression to fit the information onto small
tapes and to make it practical for home computer editing. A standard Blu-Ray
disc viewed at the full HDTV standard (1920x1080 pixels) is virtually as sharp
as commercial theatrical presentations using the 2k digital projectors used in
most digital movie theatres (though once again, movie files on Blu-Ray discs
use a much higher compression rate than the digital files delivered to theatres
on hard drives).
EDITING SOFTWARE
Be aware that if you are a
student, you qualify for substantial educational discount rates (like a third
to half-off, sometimes even a quarter or less of the normal retail price) on
full versions of major name semi-professional editing software like Avid, Adobe
Premiere, and Final Cut (not to mention PhotoShop, Quark, Corel, and other
useful professional software), so don’t bother with the low-end consumer
editing programs unless you already have them and know how to use them well.
Windows Moviemaker and Apple’s iMovie can do some amazing things, but you’ll
find them extremely limiting and frustrating if you ever try Premiere or Final
Cut. If you have a PC, your best choices for a reasonable price are Adobe
Premiere or Sony Vegas. If you have a Mac, you’ll probably want Final Cut
(although Premiere is now available for the new Intel Macs). If you can’t
afford the full versions, there are modestly priced “lite” versions called
Premiere Elements and Final Cut Express that work the same way and do almost
anything you’d need, and usually allow you to import their project files if you
ever upgrade. Be sure to investigate if new upgrades are due to come out, as
you may be better off waiting a month or two so you can buy the newest version
of whatever editing software you get. The latest version will be more likely to
support newer cameras and formats, as well as adding useful features.
RECORDING MEDIA
Blank digital tapes
typically cost about $4-$6 per hour in the Digital 8 or MiniDV formats (but as
low as $2-$3 when purchased in bulk by mail-order). Sony’s premium “Digital Master”
tape recommended for HDV, however, is about $15-16 per hour. Recording to DVDs, compressed hard disks, or
small media cards is not recommended for anything other than home movies that
will never be edited.
Plan to shoot about ten times more footage than will be in
the final movie. That means a single one-hour tape should be enough for
shooting a six-minute short, but you’ll need one more tape for your final
edited copy and any trailer(s) or gag reel(s) of selected outtakes. Remember
that a DVD copy is not archival and due to its compression rate it is of
much lower video and audio quality than digital videotape. MiniDV and Digital 8
both record the identical format of digital files for computer editing, which
are also identical to the professional DVCAM and DVCPro DV video encoding
formats, but each uses different size tape and format of cassettes. ALWAYS make a digital tape copy of your final edited movie to serve as your
master, and make one or two backup digital tapes to insure against damage and
tape dropouts. External hard drives are now cheap enough that you may also want
to save your entire project with all its associated files on its own hard drive
to make later revisions easier. Tapes will wear out with repeated use, but in
the long term, rarely-played and properly stored master tapes are generally a
much more reliable as well as a more convenient storage medium than a computer
hard disk (and a film copy, though much more expensive, is the most reliable
archival medium). A ten to twenty-minute short may take three or four blank
tapes for your raw footage, plus another one for your final copy. (Just about any brand of tape should record
good image and sound, but you should always try to use the same brand of tape
with your camera. This helps avoid video head clogging and tape dropouts due to
the different types of tape lubricants and magnetic coating formulas. Get a
head-cleaning tape if you need to switch brands at some point.) With a
volunteer cast and crew, your total production budget for a short need be only
about $20-$50, and a feature-length movie perhaps ten times that, as long as
you don’t have to do extensive traveling or buy/rent/build fancy props or
settings.
KEEP THE FOLLOWING IN THE
BACK OF YOUR MIND WHILE SHOOTING,
AND ESPECIALLY WHEN PLANNING
FUTURE PRODUCTIONS:
The biggest technical flaw
in most “no-budget” movies tends to be the audio quality. It is entirely
possible to shoot entire feature-length movies using nothing but the built-in
camera microphones, but the location sound will be mediocre at best. If you
plan to do more moviemaking, consider investing in your own professional
microphone ($100-$500). This can plug directly into your camera’s mike input
(assuming it has one), most likely using an adaptor box that will convert XLR
inputs for a consumer camcorder (also at additional cost). Even with a good
microphone, the audio quality recorded directly on the tape by many cameras is
still only adequate for dialogue (especially cameras using the HDV and AVCHD
formats). It is preferable to get a separate professional digital audio
recorder with accessories ($700-$2000), using Digital Audio Tapes (DATs), hard
disks, CDs, or solid-state CompactFlash cards. The cards are immensely more
convenient than tapes and CDs, and they have no moving parts. Blank cards are
substantially more expensive than tapes or CDs, but a card recorder is usually
cheaper than a DAT or CD recorder and memory cards continue to drop in price
rapidly as they gain in popularity. A second digital camcorder can also serve
for audio-only recording (and of course you’ll need to double the number of
videotapes you buy). Double system sound will probably require an extra crew
person to record the audio. Accessories include items like extra cables, a
boom, windscreen, additional microphones of different types, etc. You can
capture the audio from a second camcorder directly from the firewire like your
video, but you’ll need to equip your computer with a CompactFlash card reader
to transfer the audio files if you record on CF cards, and will need an audio
card that has digital inputs and outputs to capture the audio if you record on
a DAT. Be sure to set your digital recorder to record at 16-bit 48 kHz, which
is the audio standard for digital video. (Do not use 44.1 kHz, which is
the CD standard but would have to be upconverted to edit with your video, or
anything lower, which is inferior and would still have to be upconverted.) If
you value audio quality, don’t even consider recording original sound in the
.mp3 format, which is a highly compressed, low-quality format designed
primarily to save space for distribution on the web and media players. With any
double-system setup, don’t forget to announce the scene and take number after
you start the sound recording, or you’ll never be able to match it with the
correct picture without tedious trial and error!
The second biggest technical
flaw in most “no-budget” movies is the lighting. Consider also investing in a
modest professional portable kit of three to ten professional lighting
instruments and accessories ($600-$3000 and up), or at least several
hardware-store worklights on stands (perhaps $100 worth to start). Practice
lighting and photographing a few scenes in different situations using different
placement of key, fill, and backlights, background lights, and “kicker” lights,
along with filters, “barndoor” shades, “gobos,” etc. Do not overlight scenes
(do not be afraid of including shadows and darkness), but aim sidelights and
backlights on your actors and key props (putting a rim of light around their
edges) to keep them from blending into the background. Bring up the overall
level of natural room lighting in low-light situations (to fill in deep shadows
enough to get some detail within the lower contrast limitations of video) by
bouncing light off ceilings, walls, or other reflective surfaces. Avoid bright
sunlight that has strong shadows. Lower the contrast in bright sunlight scenes
by directing fill light into the shadowed faces of the actors. Experiment with
various effects before starting production on a major project. Three-chip
cameras and HDV cameras typically need more light than one-chip DV camcorders.
ALSO NOTE: boosting the video gain electronically to compensate for low light
will create much more distracting and objectionable picture artifacts in the
HDV and AVCHD formats than with standard DV. Recording a good original image is
better than trying to fix it in the postproduction stage. If your camera has
adjustable image settings, experiment with things like sharpness, white
balance, gamma, knee point, and others to get a “look” that you like under
different lighting conditions. Shoot preliminary tests on your locations if
possible. Your camera may allow you to save your settings as different
“profiles” that you can recall when desired.
The third biggest technical
flaw is slow pacing and limited camera setups. The bare-bones style of
moviemaking, telling a story with a simple chronological series of scenes
filmed in long shots and long takes, was already becoming a sign of low budgets
and lesser talents by 1911 for silent films and by 1931 for sound films. Oddly
enough, it is also very common in the work of amateur and beginning filmmakers
who grew up watching ultra fast-paced editing on television. Digital videotape
is cheap, almost free compared with 35mm film, or even 16mm or Super 8 film.
It’s also instantaneous, so you can review what you’ve shot on the set, and
erasable so you can record over obviously unusable footage (though it’s cheap
enough not to bother doing that). While it is good discipline to shoot only
what you expect to use, when using video rather than film you should not
hesitate to shoot as many takes as you need for actors to get their timing
right and for the camera’s framing to be aesthetically pleasing throughout the
scene. However, do NOT waste time or tape doing a single setup over and over.
If you want the option of shifting your editing style between fast and slow,
you must shoot many different views
of each scene. Shoot plenty of “coverage” with different camera angles,
close-ups, inserts, and cutaways so you can tighten the pacing and build better
performances during the editing if necessary (not to mention covering
continuity gaps). [For example a typical two-person conversation
might be shot five or more times all the way through from different camera
positions: once in a medium or long shot showing both people, once each in a
medium close-up over the shoulder of one person, and once each in a tight
close-up on one person’s face. Depending on the mood of the scene, other
versions might also be shot, using slow zooms in or out, or a moving camera.
You might also shoot brief close-ups of feet shuffling, fingers tapping, a
clock on the wall and/or wristwatch, calendar, telephone, book(s), newspaper(s),
magazine(s), any food in the scene, other people observing, etc., to be cut in
as emphasis for key moments.] If your main audiences will be
watching your movie on TV sets rather than a large theatre screen, be sure to
shoot enough close-ups so they can see what they need to see in the scene (but
don’t neglect to include enough long shots so they can understand what’s going
on and where). If you’re shooting HDV, take advantage of the extra resolution
to use more long shots, but don’t forget close-ups, either. Be aware that it is
possible to reframe slightly in the editing process by electronically zooming
in on the picture (with a noticeable loss in image resolution) and moving it
around, but there is no way to zoom out any further or actually move the camera
somewhere else. While both shooting and editing, remember the “rule of thirds”
and the “180-degree line” principles, and consider whether you want to follow
them or ignore them or intentionally violate them for some effect. The same
goes for matching on action and other continuity editing principles. You can’t
“fix it in post” if you didn’t shoot enough material in the first place. Don’t
forget to USE A TRIPOD and/or a camera stabilizing brace such as a “Glidecam”
or its equivalent unless your intention is for the shaky Blair Witch Project
home-movie look (which is usually better reserved only for particular types of
scenes for a specific effect, and can be quite effective in certain
situations).
A good music score works with
the visuals, not independently of them, contributing to the movie’s overall
moods. It can bring a scene to life, punch up lackluster or dragging sections,
and squeeze extra emotion out of dramatic scenes. Lack of music at key moments
can be just as important in highlighting the drama or comedy. If you want to
enter your movies in festivals or shop them to potential distributors or sell
them to the public, you will also need to clear the rights for all the music
you use (which can be extremely expensive for popular songs and performers). If
you or a friend do not compose and perform completely original scores, you
should consider investing in computer music creation software and/or a
royalty-free music library, perhaps with software like “SmartSound” that will
automatically edit, re-arrange, and even re-orchestrate pieces to fit an exact
scene length and mood you specify (or can let you do it manually). The same
goes for sound effects. Either record your own (preferable) or obtain
royalty-free prerecorded sound effects to use.
There is one element in
movies (whether independent or studio-financed) that overrides all else. This
can make people overlook some pretty horrible technical flaws, or on the
contrary it can make people completely disregard the fact that a movie may have
absolute technical perfection, elaborate special effects, or spectacular
production values. This element is the
story. You need to start with an
interesting story and interesting characters, or the production process will be
a waste of time for everyone involved (unless you’re considering it merely a
test run and a learning process). To make a movie you’ll be proud to show to
others, first make a movie that you would be interested in watching. Do
your best to make it so that others can follow what’s going on and understand
it without having read the script in advance! You might want to start with
ideas selected from current events (newspaper headlines), personal experiences,
and/or favorite movie genres. Try to grab viewers’ attention right away with a
situation they will want to keep watching to find out how it is resolved. Work
in clues as the story unfolds that can help viewers figure out what might
happen without giving anything away. Try to resolve your plot in some way that
is logical and satisfying (even if it is open-ended or a reversal of
expectations). Then try for improving your technical proficiency and
polishing your cinematic style as you gradually upgrade and enlarge your collection
of equipment. Make a movie or two and see how audiences respond. As an
exercise, consider re-editing and/or remaking the same short movie to see if
you can make the story work better on the screen, possibly rearranging,
expanding, shortening, or completely rewriting the script at some point. Play
with your editing software to see what effects it can produce that might be
useful to your story without distracting from the story. Make more movies! Each
will get better as you discover yourself taking things for granted that you had
to struggle to accomplish in your first productions.
The biggest challenge in
making a no-budget movie, especially a feature-length movie, is finding
enthusiastic and dedicated cast and crew willing to rearrange their schedules
and work without pay throughout the duration of your production. Some will do
it just for the fun of it, others for the experience, a new movie credit, or a
DVD they can show to friends and family, but others may lose interest after the
novelty wears off. Be sure to express your appreciation to everyone you work
with and find ways to make their experience both enjoyable and rewarding. Don’t
waste people’s time needlessly. Prepare them for the reality that there will be
long periods of waiting on locations. Be sure everyone involved realizes the
necessary time commitment and that others may be depending upon them.
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