Research before Finance

How would I go on to fund an entire movie with no funds? Well, first I needed to think in terms of what I needed before I started thinking about money. As long as you got what you need, money doesn't matter. Like that guy who just won at Cannes Film Festival with a $70 zombie movie called, Colin (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278322). If anybody needs to be writing a blog it's him. But for now you're stuck with me.

By the way the guy who directed Colin, Mark Price, was another former Student of Dov Simens. I need to stop bringing him up before I really start annoying people.

What's the most important thing in order to make a movie? The one thing that seperates theatre from film... a camera. Wow, I'm really breaking new ground here aren't I. But seriously, it's the number one thing. So I need to pick out a camera, and one that doesn't make the film look an old home movie.

Now everything else is debatable, no matter what you think. If you wanted to you could film some old G.I. Joes being chewed up by your dogs and call it a movie, you could. Burn it on a DVD you can call anything a "Movie" and say it's artistic in some manor.

So with everything else being debatable depending on type of project I wanted to make I decided to research movies that were close to type of movie I wanted to make. Clerks and Swingers were the two movies that were the closest to what I wanted. I knew I wouldn't be working with a budget like Swingers so forget about that. Clerks seemed more around my budget, so I checked their imdb page (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109445/fullcredits#cast). Financing a crew for a feature film didn't seem as intimidating. Notice how a lot of the cast and crew are listed multiple times under different titles as well.

And I'd be shooting on DV, which meant I'd have it way easier than our indie forefathers. They all had to hassle with buying expensive film, renting out expensive film cameras, loading the film, watching dailies, and having to be so frugal throughout the entire process that they had to shoot almost entirely in master shots. Clerks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94wGndbOIPk) and Stranger than Paradise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpQ3HrmjjSc) are perfect examples of this. Can you imagine paying for all that money for film and during this scene someone misses their line or something? That's a lot of expensive film wasted. That's where the ol' "Cat in the Window" shot comes in. Notice in Clerks how Kevin Smith literally put a cat in a window during that scene. That kind of coverage covers your ass. But when you're shooting DV you have plenty of tape so you can get as much coverage and as many angles and takes as you want with no worries.

Which was good for me because I wanted to get a lot of footage. Since I wanted my movie to a true slice of life movie, I wanted to tape people having mundane conversations, hanging out, improving, and you can't do that when you have to be frugal. But if you remember the previous blog I brought up a movie called Hannah Takes the Stairs (http://www.hannahtakesthestairs.com/). That movie was obviously digital and it seemed like it was similar to the movie I wanted to make that was shot in a very realistic manor almost as if it was a documentary.

So with my new Netflix account I rented lot's of low budget movies like Hannah Takes the Stairs that were part of film movement called mumblecore. Which are no budget movies shot digitally with mostly non-professional actors without a script. I watched them and learned something very valuable...IT'S BORING! I was at one time thinking of doing something akin to that so that it would show how life was truly lived, but the thing is that it's very, very, boring. Hannah was the longest 90 minutes of my life, Funny Haha(http://www.funnyhahafilm.com/) was better but still boring, but The Puffy Chair(http://www.thepuffychairmovie.com/home.html) was actually good. So if want to make a mumblecore movie, try to follow the Duplass brothers example.

Either way all these movies won at Film Festivals, such as SXSW and Sundance. Like I said earlier, even if you make a bad or boring movie it can still be considered art and win festivals. Just make the movie that you would want to see. The point is I watched a lot of low budget movies to learn before I make mine. You actually learn a lot from watching bad movies. Because when you watch good movies it's hard to see what they're doing right because they make it look so easy, but when you watch bad movies you can learn things to avoid.

I looked up The Puffy Chair to see what type of camera they used and in an interview they talked about the DVX100(http://thefilmlot.com/interviews/INTduplassbros.php). So that was it. That's what I would save my money for. Now you're probably thinking "great you got a camera, but how did you pay for actors, lighting equipment, all this other stuff". Worry not my friend because we're getting to that, it's just that this blog is so long I think it's best if we continue that in the next blog. So stay tuned for part two.