Research before Finance II

In my last blog I talked about the fact that it's not the money that matters, it's what you got. Think in terms of what you need before money. And we got to the part where I had chosen a camera, the Panasonic DVX100. I looked it up and found that the best price would be a little over $2200. That's not that bad, especially considering the fact the camera will be most of my budget.

Camera most of my budget? Huh? What? Who? Yeah!

Stay with me a minute. Now I'm making a movie about true life experiences and real life people I know. So who do I want to play these people?

1)Do I want cheap SAG actors who don't live anywhere near me and judging from the latest low budget horror movie they were in, they're not exactly the thespians I'm looking for.

2)Another option could be hiring actors from a local community theatre or universtiy. As you know from the earlier blogs there is no community theatre within two hours of where I live. And the closest university that has a theatre program is only thirty minutes closer. And it's the same university I graduated from, and believe me I don't want anything to do with that. Trust me, if any of you have ever seen a university play you know what I'm talking about.

Some of you may be thinking "Steven, how could you? Weren't you once a hopeful young theatre actor from Southern Arkansas University at one time?" Well, actually none of you are thinking that but I'll answer it anyway. Yes I was, and that's exactly why I don't want to deal with theatre actors. The theatre program teaches you to be a worse actor in my opinion. Too much reading and getting inside your head. It forces you to think over act. But the main thing is...COLLEGE THEATRE ACTORS SUCK!

3) But no worries inter-pals, I never wanted to go that route in the first place. You see, I had a plan all along. Who better to play my friends, than...MY FRIENDS.

Uh, oh. Typical indie filmmaker mistake alert! Or is it?

Me thinks not. I've always been a fan of non-professional actors (big word for people who have never acted before) in movies. They're is something more natural about them. Of course they're not going to be great at acting in something like Transformers or American Beauty, but for the style I'm going for it will be perfect. Directors like Gus Van Sant use non-professionals a lot, as well as those crazy mumblecore people I mentioned in my last post. While the story and overall dynamic may have been very slow and boring, the acting was completely believable. In fact so believable, normal acting seems so blown up and performance like it's hard to watch sometimes.

With a cast of relaxed non-pro's directed well with suitable material, you're actors will seem so believable people will think they're watching a really good reality show. That's what I always tell people, act like you're on a reality show. That's more real than reality?

Which I was estatic to find out, because I wanted to cast my friends the whole time! Now I found that many people had done this and it worked out well!

So what does this have to do with research and finance? Well I researched some experimental (not to mention award winning) filmmaking and found an easy practical way to cast my movie for free!

Research and Finance. They're both there.

So the camera and actors are accounted for...kind of. Still gotta cast them and all that, but for now will stay with what we got.

But what about all this other shit? Sound, Lighting, Make Up, etc.

Well, you don't actually really need that. You can make your movie right now if you want. Script, camera, and actors are those are the most important ingredients. And if you're making mumblecore you can just skip the script part.

"Wow, Steve, so you've basically taught us to write about our boring lives, buy a $2000 camera, and shoot my stupid friends while they stammer and look into the camera." Say's some imaginary sarcastic reader of this blog I haven't even posted yet.

No, I'm just saying you can do that if you're talented enough. Think a great script and acting are the two most important parts of a movie, everything else is just an add on. But you probably won't be talented enough to pull that off, and even if you could why skimp on the other things when they're so easily obtainable.

If you want your movie to get seen...it should look like a movie. There's no better feeling than when you're watching your first movie and it looks like a real fucking movie you could rent from Blockbuster!

And I imagine it would feel pretty bad to spend all this time on your movie and it looks like some crappy youtube video about a kid falling off a trampoline. Even if it was good people would probably just lose interest because it doesn't look like a movie.

So why did my movie look like the former rather than the later? You'll learn that soon enough, first I'm gonna tell you how I made money and the story behind my camera...in my next blog that is.