Okay, the next thing I needed to figure out was exactly how I was going to shoot everything.
I've got 3 characters, each in his/her own room. Each room is supposedly in a different house -- in reality, of course, all three rooms were in my house.
Now this could have been done in a couple of ways. I could have dressed "Shannon's" room, setup my camera and lights, and shot every scene that takes place in that room. Then I would move to the next room -- "Taylor's" room. Setup the camera and lights, shot every scene that takes place in that room, then moved to the third room. You get the idea, right?
Now a lot of what happens in the movies is conversations between the characters, each in his/her own room and talking via Internet video chat. I could have had each actor pretend he was talking to the other character, while someone fed him the other character's lines, and then just intercut the footage to make it look like they were having an actual live conversation. That would have worked.
But I didn't want to do it that way, for two reasons. For one thing, I...
Now it's time to start putting the pieces together to make this unique suspense/drama feature, Tangled Web.
The first thing you have to do with any project is make lists. That's because your job is to produce every single person, place and thing needed to make this movie. So you make lists.
First list is the list of Characters. Every person who is seen or heard in the movie gets put on this list. The 'principal' characters are those with dialogue who are important to the conflict resolution of the story. For Tangled Web they are:
Shannon Hunter
Alex Hunter
Taylor Williams
Kelly
Bobby the Tech Guy
Jordan Hunter
Olivia Hunter
In addition to those characters, there are several minor speaking roles. These people have tiny, incidental scenes in the beginning of the movie -- they are other people who are secretly being watched via their webcams by the 'lurker'. They are:
Carolyn
Trevor
Kim
Roni
Roni's Mom
So I put all those character names on a list, along with a brief description of each. When I get ready to start casting, these are the roles that I...
'Tangled Web' - how I made the 3-day, $1000 movie!
April 3, 2008
Good evening boys and girls, and welcome to Cheapskate Moviemaking 101.
Tonight we begin our series on making movies on the cheap cheap cheap with an in-depth study of one of the cheapest and fastest feature-length movie projects ever -- the unique suspense/drama 'Tangled Web'.
Now as we learned previously, there are a few standard things you do if you want to keep the costs of making your movie low.
Don't have too many people in it. The more people you have to feed, the more it will cost.
Don't have too many locations. The more you have to move from place to place, the longer it will take.
Set your story in the present day, so you don't need special wardrobe, props and sets.
No big special effects. Car chases, explosions, heads being chopped off -- all this costs money.
It goes without saying that we want to shoot on digital video (DV) -- film costs money, tape is cheap.
One of the big ways you can save money is by keeping your shooting schedule as short as possible. Why? Because you have to feed your cast and crew. The more shooting days you have, the more meals you...
Okay, sorry for the looooong delay in continuing this blog. Sometimes life just gets in the way, you know? But I'll try to do better.
Now let's talk about the REALLY important stuff -- feature-length films. REAL movies! After all, that's where the money is. You can learn a lot from making short films, and people might even get a kick out of watching them, but there's no real money to be made in shorts. So let's talk about feature films,- and specifically, my first feature -- the romantic ghost story 'Afterlife'.
First of all, let's define what a feature film is. Technically, it's any film whose running time is longer than about 70-75 minutes. Anything shorter than that is pretty much considered a 'short'. In more vague terms, a feature film could basically be considered to be any movie sufficiently long enough that the audience doesn't feel gypped out of the money spent to buy/rent the DVD or gain admission to the movie theater. Most people think in terms of a feature film running around 90 minutes -- many are shorter, some are much MUCH longer.
Now, when you're considering your first feature film project, the chances are you...
Technically, my second short film was "Night Watch". This was a 5-minute vampire movie. Two actors, one location, no dialogue. We shot the whole thing in a single evening. I was director, with my wife and one other person for the crew. I shot it on a consumer-level camcorder, using shop lights from Wal-Mart. All things considered, it's not a bad little film. I plan to re-shoot it with better equipment in the near future, though. Cost? Maybe 20 bucks.
But that's not the film I want to talk about -- not the one I consider my true second film. I only mention "Night Watch" here to show that you can make a short film using just about anything and anybody. I could easily have entered "Night Watch" in film festivals, and it probably would've done fairly well. But I only made it for fun.
My true second film was a 30-minute drama called "A Matter of Life". This is a film I wrote and produced for the local Crisis Pregnancy Center -- a non-profit Christian organization that provides free counseling and services to pregnant women who are considering an abortion. "A Matter of Life" is the dramatized story of...
I'm always asked, "What is a Producer? What does a Producer do?"
It's quite simple, really. A Producer "produces". Literally. Every single thing that is needed to make a movie -- from the original idea, to the script, to the money, the talent, the locations, props, wardrobe, food, publicity, everything -- it all has to come from somewhere. It's the job of the Producer to find everything needed and secure it for the production. In short, the Producer is the Big Boss -- the Head Honcho.
The Producer is the person who has the ultimate vision of the finished movie. It's his/her vision that everyone else is working as a team to try and bring to life. Many people think the movie is the Director's vision, but that's not true. This is why you sometimes see a 'director's cut' of a movie released some time after the original movie is released -- because the Director's vision was different than the Producer's, and it was the Producer's version that got put out there.
So that's what Producer does -- he literally produces every single thing needed to make, promote and sell the movie.
As soon as I completed Dov Simens' Hollywood Film Institute seminar, I was itching to make a movie! But I knew it needed to be a short film, something I could do quick and cheap to see if I truly had what it takes to make movies.
So I wrote a script for a short drama called "Three Wishes". In an earlier post I described the basic storyline, so I won't do it again here. The story had just six characters -- all women -- and one location. No special effects. Very few special props, and those were easy to come by -- things like wineglasses, bottles of wine, wrapped wedding presents, and a banner that read "Congratulations Mary and Bill". The location was also simple -- just a 2-story house. Actually, I wrote the script based around the house of a friend of mine, who was all too willing to have us shoot the film there.
Once I had the script written, I started looking around for cast and crew. I looked online for discussion boards related to filmmaking that were centered near Charlotte, NC. I posted a cast and crew notice on a couple of these boards, and...
I'm sure you're wondering "How much will it cost me to make a movie?"
The answer is......"It depends."
First, let's define what we're talking about. What we want to make are real movies. We want our movies to look like real movies, not like a bunch of morons in the back yard with a camcorder. That means we want good, compelling stories. And we want decent production values. For the newbies, 'production values' basically refers to the quality of your final product -- from the image quality to the lighting, from acting to sound, from music to editing. We want our movies to look and sound like they cost big bucks.
But we don't want to spend big bucks, and that's where it gets interesting.
Now, are we making short films? Or feature-length films? Obviously, shorts can cost less to make than features -- but sometimes not a lot less. The deciding factor is what you want to accomplish with your film. If you want something you can send to film festivals to get some buzz and build a name for yourself, then short films are a good option. But if you want something you can try to sell...
Okay, we all love movies, right? I think just about everyone in America watches at least one movie a week, either in a theater, on HBO/Showtime, pay-per-view, pay cable, broadcast TV, DVD rental, or even on the Internet. We love a good story! Some of us want to laugh, some want to cry. Some want to be wowed by special effects, some want to be scared to death. But we all love a really great movie!
A few years ago I decided I'd like to make movies, not just watch them. Do I live in Hollywood? No -- not even in California. Not even west of the mighty Mississippi. In fact, I live just about as far from that scene as you can get -- I live in North Carolina. But hey, why let that stop me? I can make movies here just as easily as anywhere else, believe it or not.
My introduction into moviemaking came when I attended a 2-day filmmaking 'crash course' in movie producing taught by Dov S-S Simens of the Hollywood Film Institute. This is a traveling seminar that crisscrosses the country teaching people the basics of how to produce their own independent movie projects....
