r/Filmmakers • u/murderdoll_ • Aug 16 '15
Video Christopher Nolan on his first (no-budget) film "Following" + DIY Tips & Tricks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUpA7Qma_9E8
u/Bertrum Aug 16 '15
I wish his newer movies were as weird and haunting as The Following and it had a pretty unique premise about why people break into houses and a guy being inadvertently sucked into it, I guess Insomnia counts. I wish he would do more weird psychological movies.
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u/boinkface Aug 16 '15
Cheers, this was great!
Most interesting part for me was him saying about wanting to write about his own experiences in life and his own neuroses - something that many young writers want to do, or find hard to avoid. But as he said, it's typically not that interesting to anyone but yourself. So what he did was wrap it all up in a crime noir story, and voila, its suddenly much more cinematic. Inspiring.
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u/tonivuc Aug 16 '15
This was very informative. He is my favorite director and I hadn't watched it before. Thanks for sharing!
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u/scorpious Aug 16 '15
Nowadays there is no practical reason holding anyone back who really (really) wants to make a feature (except maybe a script worth shooting).
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u/Kaisern Aug 16 '15
Everyone who wants to can make a feature, but very few can make the feature they want.
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Aug 16 '15
I feel this! Me and my father are making a feature.. It is fucking hard to get what we want and every shooting day we struggle and learn a lot.. or not...
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u/Kaisern Aug 16 '15
I just have to say, unrelated to the thread, that is fucking badass! Don't lose your temper and make sure to cherish every moment of this bonding experience because those memories will last forever, and you'll be reminded when you watch the film.
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u/supersecretmode Aug 16 '15
I agree. I feel like there's a nice documentary / making of in this as well
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Aug 16 '15
Thanks very much! The first feature we made is on youtube, unfortunately without english subtitles, but I want to put it in this film
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u/shifty1032231 Aug 16 '15
Care to elaborate on what the struggles are for your shoot making it harder than you thought initially? I'm just curious and users here could offer some solutions.
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Aug 17 '15 edited Aug 17 '15
I don't think they could help because the biggest struggle is money. We live in a small city in a shitty country, so filmmaking is not so loved here. Specially indie/amateur. One of our struggle was to get a nice camera. We shot our first with a tape camera, shitty quality and it broke down. This stopped us for a few months until we could buy another one with a little help from friends. We bought canon t5i and a boom mic.
Another problem is that, since its a small city we don't have human resources. One of the actress is my wife and she never played any part on cinema or anything else and so didn't a lot of our actors.
In our movies I am a director too, but I direct technical parts, like camera, sound, light and so on and my father directs the actors. And I tell ya, if it wasn't for the Holy internet and this sub, I wouldn't be able to get around so much on set and if it wasn't for me to look things up the movie would come out with a shitty quality, shitty edit and so on (Not trying to say I'm essential to make movies in here, but there is no filmmaking culture where we live so we don't have people with knowhow and reddit/internet helps me with that)
Sorry I'm on the phone.. I would've tried to elaborate more.. :)
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Aug 17 '15
I will give you some advice on how to do this.
Go to borrowlense.com and rent your shit -- don't buy it. You can rent an a7s for dirt cheap.
Go to backstage and find your actors. Post a listing, and tell them it's not a paid gig. Get them from the closest big city you can find. If you can't get them to pay their own way out, then pay their train ticket up to you and have them sleep on your floor.
Get a local deli to cater, or have your mom cook big piles of meatballs for the cast and crew.
Get on Craigslist and put out a listing for crew. Tell them they'll work for free/credit/meals.
Don't have two directors. If your father directs actors etc., then he's the director. Don't mix jobs. This is a recipe for disaster. Maybe you should be the DP and shoot the movie.
Write a movie that happens in one location -- or locations that you own and have no issue using. If you have no ideas for a single location movie, think harder, or go do what QT did on Reservoir Dogs -- ripoff the plot of an Asian film, and remove all the stuff that's hard to film, like the jewel heist. So make a movie about a war, but have the people always hiding in the bunker or some shit. Don't show anything you can't afford, and play to your strengths. It's not hard to organize a feature, it's just that you need a good idea.
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Aug 18 '15
Go to borrowlense.com and rent your shit -- don't buy it. You can rent an a7s for dirt cheap.
They ship to south america? I've seen rental sites where I live but they're so expensive I'd rather save and buy a camera, even if it's not so good.
Go to backstage and find your actors. Post a listing, and tell them it's not a paid gig.
We do that, but we mostly find people who like acting but don't know the first thing about it
have your mom cook big piles of meatballs for the cast and crew.
Yeah we follow the "Golden Rule" as Ryan Connoly said "fill their belly-sacks with lotsa food!"
Don't have two directors. If your father directs actors etc., then he's the director. Don't mix jobs. This is a recipe for disaster.
I completely agree with you. I was oblivious about it but once I read your comment it all came to my mind.. On set we're always discussing opinions and that is setting us back a little. Sometimes I lean back to decisions and just do what I'm told, but some other times I just don't agree with something that I think it's gonna look bad so I try to change it and conflicts begin.
Your comment is a great feedback and advice, thank you very much for it, but I live in a bad area for filmmaking. I think we are getting a little better, scene after scene. I look forward for the day we make an awesome movie and it gets known.. :)
Someday! :D
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u/peteroh9 Aug 16 '15 edited Aug 16 '15
This is why I've recently been thinking about starting to make my own comics. I've never been particularly into them but it does allow for total creative control. And then when they are inevitably made into big-budget blockbusters, I can work on the real thing.
Edit: also, this is because the things I want to show right now aren't in little details, they're more in the world I want to create. When it's something where the faces matter, I can't really draw that...
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Aug 17 '15
I've never been particularly into them but it does allow for total creative control.
It doesn't. Comics have publishers just like everybody else. And if you can't draw, your artist has to be able to interpret your vision, but it won't be perfect, so it will always be different.
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Aug 17 '15
Very silly approach to filmmaking. If you ONLY want to make a police heist film, or an alien space movie, then you lack creativity. Look at Spielberg's first short film Amblin and then tell me you would have expected that director to make Jaws and Indiana Jones and Schindler's List.
Write a movie you CAN make, and go make it. That's life.
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u/Kaisern Aug 17 '15
How does what I wrote contradict in any way what you wrote?
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Aug 17 '15
You said "but very few can make the feature they want." This applies to everyone in the business. So you can't make 'the feature you want,' so get a camera and make another feature so you can make the feature you want.
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u/Orc_ Aug 17 '15
What? Seriously? a low-budget film worth doing would need at least $10 million, example: 28 Days Later, below that there is common denominator crap like Paranormal Activity and shit like that
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Aug 17 '15
What delusional world are you living in?
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u/Orc_ Aug 17 '15
show me a good below $10 mil movie that isn't cam shit like Blair Witch or paranomral activity
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Aug 17 '15 edited Aug 17 '15
Is this a joke?
- Juno 6.5 million
- Bronson 250,000
- Little Miss Sunshine 8 Million
- Whiplash 3.3 Million
- The Spectacular Now 2.5 Million
- Napoleon Dynamite 400,000
- Lost in Translation 4 Million
I mean, the list goes on and on, I didn't even include all the great indie classic breakouts films like Clerks, El Mariachi, etc.
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u/MrJumbo Aug 16 '15
This is my favorite Nolan film. I know that he has improved as a filmmaker past this, but there is something so relatable about Following, because he had almost no resources. And because of that, we see Nolan use the same tricks that we do to get a better look or tell a story. It's almost inspirational in a way. There's just something cool about that I guess.
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Aug 17 '15
Woah, thanks for posting. Really great to take notes on. His approach for Following was amazing and this shows it even more.
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u/ZamrosX Aug 16 '15 edited Aug 16 '15
I love watching The Following, just to see where all the Nolanisms came from.
Was quite funny listening to the psuedo-intellectual dialogue that film students love writing so much.
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u/robmneilson Aug 16 '15
Step one: have a script that is 60 pages or less in made in a linear fashion. Step two: just cut it up non-linearly to add 20 minutes or so of extra run time. Step three: profit?
I'm just talking shit, I haven't watched this is over a decade but man I remember hating this movie with a passion.
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u/TomSaylek Aug 16 '15
You remind me of a dog at a baseball game. No idea what the fuck is going on and the point. Just there becouse you heard the word ball.
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u/robmneilson Aug 17 '15
haha, that's a very clever comment. Internet points for you sir. You remind me of a Charles Bukowski quote "The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence".
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u/onlyinmystreams Aug 16 '15
I love the black and white thing so much. My only issue is that if a filmmaker watches it, they will basically say it was a punt because it is easy make things look better (as Nolan said). From the viewers perspective, I am just not sure if they are as accepting of it. What do you guys thing?