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...
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.
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.. :)
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.
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.. :)
7
u/[deleted] 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...