What Else?

Hey, hey, hey new blog for the day.

So let's just check where we are now. I wrote a script, got a job where I make sort of make money, formed a game plan, and barely dodged a scam deal on a camera.

So after all that I was still working as a substitute I was finally able to get the money to buy my camera for Christmas. Well, my my grandparents threw in an extra $1000 to help me out for my Christmas gift. But a lot of people get money from family members to make a movie so I don't feel bad about it. The Duplass bros. got $10, 000 from their parents to make their movie.

Anyway, I had the camera now. And some tape. So I was experimenting with the camera, filming things, learning how to white balance and the iris and all that crap.

Now I mentioned earlier that I had all the actors committed. Now let me tell you a little story about that.

I told you I was going to cast my friends in it. But how easy was it to that. Well, pretty easy actually. Once you let anyone know you going to make a movie and it's actually happening instead of just some pipe dream coming out of your mouth. EVERYONE wants in on it. Especially the people you don't want anything to do with.

The toughest part of the casting, besides making sure they don't suck is making sure you can schedule them and they show up. Now the business model for this is to always pay anyone that's going to be on your cast and crew, that way they'll show up and not come up with excuses. I actually didn't follow that model but I've got better friends than you so it worked out.

So Winter Break would be the perfect time to get everyone together to shoot the movie. My friends wouldn't have school and all that mess. So there it is.

Got a script, camera, actors, crew(mostly), got a schedule, ugh....what else?

Audio!

I need a mic, but what kind?! I heard the biggest problem with low budget movies is the audio. So many people with bad audio in movies. It's one of those things that you only notice when it's bad.

So I get all kinds of message boards, buy a $90 DVD on audio, and then more research. Be careful with the people giving you advice. If you ask an audio guy for advice on audio, he'll know what he's talking about, but he'll take his job too serious and try to act like it's the most important part of the movie. He'll tell you all this shit about hiring about four people to do sound, getting a mixer, blah, blah, blah. Fuck that. We're taking about a no budget movie. So I rented a no budget movie off of Netflix and looked up his crew and even emailed him. I didn't notice any problems with his sound and he told me he only used a DP and a Boom guy for his crew.

I will advise you to research your stuff, but don't go overboard. Know your mics, keep you mic as close to the person as possible without getting in the shot, and avoid echo and static as all costs. You can't fix that in post.

So after buying over $500 worth of audio equipment, and making my own boompole. I think again. What else?

I heard I needed an Anamorphic lens because all movies needed to be 16x9. My camera was 4x3. So I went through an ordeal on eBay to buy an Anamorphic lens for my camera. After a long ordeal where I didn't get the bid I just said fuck it, I need this camera before Winter Break is over so I chose Buy It Now and got it for $500. But I kept thinking....what else.

I need to make sure my footage doesn't look like crap! I've studied lighting through different websites and I wasn't taking to it at all. I decided to ditch my original realism idea with natural lighting and get some good lighting in the movie. Because nobody wants to watch your movie if it doesn't look like a movie.

So made the difficult decision to postpone the shooting of the movie and hire a cinematographer to give the movie a great look and run my crew. For if hire a talented guy with experience he can make me look like I know what I'm doing.

Pretty smart huh? Yeah. I'll go ahead and answer that one for you.

But when you postpone a movie, people's schedules come into play. So was it a good decision?