Feature Film With $15,000

Hambartsum - Read the post Nathan made. Live it. learn it. If it's a movie you want at the end of your 15K, and not a bunch of gear without a movie, you will do pretty well to follow everything he wrote, it's spot on.
 
joe 1008 said:
I love this thread though sooner or later they will kick us out here. They will have to move us to the DVX-sites :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

So if you really want to do it fast and dirty, prepare you very well, make AS MUCH REHEARSALS AS POSSIBLE, check the script again and again, search the perfect locations, and ARRANGE AT LEAST A WHOLE WEEK FOR SHOOTING. (if people are willing to sacrifice their weekends, that are 9 DAYS OF SHOOTING) Try to shoot at least 8 minutes a day and then get one or two weekends to shoot the rest.
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Yes! You should come away with about 6 to 8 minutes per shoot day. Five minutes is minimum. I walked away thursday with six scenes (about eight minutes after editing). You want to come away with as much done that day as possible. And you can tell whose on point from their performance. I shot a two minute dramatic scene in under two hours a few weeks ago on the count that the actresses had rehearsed and were very professional and did line reads even before the shoot while I was getting set up. They were as close to flawless as one could be and one lady had just gotten her script about two days in advance and she had it down. (And she had most of the dialogue). Joe's right about the locations too. I'm still hunting down a place to shoot my opening scene.

Duct Tape Films said:
Hambartsum - Read the post Nathan made. Live it. learn it. If it's a movie you want at the end of your 15K, and not a bunch of gear without a movie, you will do pretty well to follow everything he wrote, it's spot on.
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Thanks for the support. I think people should know it can be done, but it takes planning. Missteps can lead to and unfinished product. And you have to learn all you can. Right now I'm learning to do my own sound work (not as important this time because we had a boom guy and all the sound came in pretty good but there's still some things to work on) so I can keep my audio levels right. I'm also doing more CC this time too as I did very little in my last film. Ironically everyone loves my special effects compositing work which I do in FCP (I don't have AE).

-Nate
 
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I finished my first feature a few months ago (see my sig below), and the best advice I can give from experience is- plan your shots well. Draw diagrams if you have to. After you have your location down, map out everything you're going to shoot- where the actors will be, where the camera will be, where your lights will be (and mind those windows! i hate windows!!!), where your boom operator will be, and make sure there is enough room for everything.
I ended up occastionaly pissing off my actors and wasting time by trying to fine tune the blocking when it should have been done before.
It gets complicated when you've got five people in a scene and you're trying to get the best angle on everyone when they're moving around a lot.
Waste as little time as possible. Try not to leave people waiting around. Plan out everything.
 
Let me start by explaining my background. During and after college I was a successful and award winning nonlinear editor in the commercial industry and traditional trained in multimedia and broadcasting. I have had experience with 16mm and Super16mm film.

Unfortunately, most of the State of Oregon dried up for professional arts. Eugene has turned into a dust town when it comes to multimedia. Dynamix, developer of Starseige and Tribes, was forced to closed by their parent company, Sierra. Many animation and video production studio have closed, so work for me was stretch months without work. Now, I'm a Technical Support Engineer at Symantec. This has been my experience in the industry. Currently, I been working to develop my digital cinematography setup surrounded by HVX200. I am in a fortunate circumstance that some of my coworker at Symantec are former multimedia professionals.

I am basically telling you focus on small steps. Save your money and focus on an element to accomplish. Consider your career goals and move toward them.
  • If directing is your goal, work with the schools gear and get a director's viewfinder.
  • If your considering photography, get your own camera and work with ours ideas. This has been my goal now.
  • If sound is the direct. Get some recordist gear.
  • If light setup and support work, ie grip work. Consider some stagehand work. A good friend of mine, Rocky had been working as a Stagehand with IATSE for years and now does film grip work in Seattle and considering jumping the Canadian border to Vancouver

Finally, start building business relationships. Look for like minds in your area and start creating. I know couple of my classmates who ended up spend $50,000 of their money and no longer work or even do film or video productions. Those who work steady, work longer.

Thanks for hearing the devil's advocate. :dankk2:
 
escozooz said:
With 15k get a DP with his own camera and pay him like $200 a day plus something fair for his HVX. If you go adapter get a 1st AC and have a gaffer. $100 is cheap but for a guarenteed 21 day feature isn't bad.

You should rent lights or better yet find a gaffer with a 1 ton grip truck for discounted rate. I'm sure everyone is gonna kick my ass for saying this stuff though.

Spend the money on craft service, costume, props, locations, and on screen stuff. Buying a camera and shooting a feature on 15k is rough.
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I COMPLETLEY agree with you.

But honestly if you NEED a camera, get the new canon. ITs looking ot be a great machine for >4G's.

Also, that budget should not include buyinga camera. That money should go into DP, Grip etc like the above post said. If yo ure gonna buy acamera , buya camera, shoota few weddings, save up some more money, and then shoot your feature, plus you will need some experiance anyway.
 
Just finishing up my first feature as a director with a budget right @ 7,000. It can be done, but as it has already been stated you must be organized. If your not and you don't go into this project seriously, it will never get done and you will be waisting everyones time. I know too many people that try to rush into a feature and it either turns out to be total amateurish crap or it never gets finished. Plan, plan ,plan. Goodluck.
 
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