Your Very First Movie

I dont include this to sound like a tool, although I accept that I probably do. I only include it in case people are interested.

I just remembered that my second short from when I was 12 (actually 12, not pretending to be 12) was shot inside of Amblin. If anyone has been interested about what it looks like inside, I'll dig this up and digitize it. If not, no prob. I'm really not that excited for people to see it.

Just thought I'd throw it out there.

-GageFX
 
I have some really silly Super8 shorts on VHS but embarrassingly admit that my first official short film was

Pestilence

Everything else I had ever done was either Super8 from the mid 1980's or I had worked on everyone else project 'but my own'.

Luper was a collaboration with Kevin from ExFilms, the Music Video doesn't count as a short, the Undead Nation Test was really just a silly little test.

So, yeah

Pestilence

Man, that's sad.
 
this is the first thing my brother evan and I made after getting our first camera, a Sony HandiCam, for christmas 2003. parental advisory: explicit dialog.

www.elmatadorfilms.com/****you.mov
www.elmatadorfilms.com/****you.wmv
 
John_Hudson said:
So, yeah

Pestilence

Man, that's sad.
Click to expand...

Didn't Pestilence win a special award during ZombieFest? Best Cinematography or something Mod-decided that wasn't part of the voting? Maybe I'm having false memories, but that's certainly nothing to be ashamed of. Your first film winning an award in a contest of your peers (who I find to often be the toughest audience).

But at the same time I know what you mean. My first film was LifeLine for Sci-Fest. I read and see all these films shot when you guys were 12 and stuff and I look at my first film made so much later in life. I wish I'd jumped on this filmmaking thing earlier, but now that I'm here I can just push ahead. Plus LifeLine competed not only here but also on the Sci-Fi channel contest. Not bad for a first film. :)
 
So what was it actually like for people making there first film then. In the way that, you never shot a film before. How did you get older/younger generations to be interested and trust you in the project? I'm just wondering.
 
Yeah I remember Pestilence on the DVXuser ZombieFest DVD. Its one of my favorites. That and the one that came in first place.
 
Ki-Ki said:
So what was it actually like for people making there first film then. In the way that, you never shot a film before. How did you get older/younger generations to be interested and trust you in the project? I'm just wondering.
Click to expand...

For me it was a combination of three things:

1. Small crew (less people to convince).
2. Strong Script.
3. Calling in favors.

Now to expound on those points in a different order: LifeLine misses it mark in several places, but without sounding cocky I think it's a strong script with a good idea. When people read it that answered a lot of their questions and they were willing to be a part of the project.

Since it was a short film confined to three sets I didn't need a lot of people, so the crew was light and nible. Which also helped me because if I screwed up there would be fewer witnesses.

And finally calling in favors. The actors are all good friends of mine. Part of the crew I went to high school with. Stuff like that.

Knowing that it was my first film, and knowing that the people I was asking for help had involved themselves in filmmaking a lot earlier than I had I really approached it as "Let's see what we can do." As opposed to "I'm making my opus and you've been chosen to help me." :)

Since LifeLine was fairly successful it's helped me in projects I'm working on now. It has really helped justify me as a filmmaker and opened a lot of door.
 
[This is kind of a story, sorry]

My first film was pretty much a disaster. As stated above, it was for a 48 hour competition and everything that could go wrong, went wrong. (48hours meaning - you have to make a 6 min film in 48hours)


Here's a brief rundown of the weekend:

Friday Night - 7:00pm

So far so good. I'm sitting in a room, 15 (or maybe it was JUST 16) years old amongst a swarm of guys, all a lot older than me. Heck, there was even some teams of people who worked on Lord of the Rings.

We got given the genre "Disney Family Movie". Ah great.

Okay, that's workable...I guess.

The first mistake we made was having too many cast. We had like eight. It was a really dumb idea.

We're sitting working on the script, thinking "oh, so and so hasn't had a line in a while.." stuff like that. It was awful. My very first time at this.

The script was late. We were supposed to have it done by like 2-3 am, so we could go over it and then I would have some time to do some quick storyboards...We ended up writing all the way until 8am, given the fact that we didn't like any of the ideas until about 2am. The film ended up being about a group of really stereotypical kids who hear about some 'magic bones' in the forest, and want to solve the mystery about what they were...or something. It's been a while, I don't have the script or the film anymore due to a hard-drive crash I had last year.

Saturday - the things that went wrong

Saturday morning, 9am, shooting begins.

At least we knew WHERE we were going to shoot the first part.

  • Forgot to really think about Batteries. Power went out a few times and we had to stop shooting while the camera was charging. One thing on a short with deadlines this tight - don't shoot in completely remote locations unless you are fully prepared LOL.
  • One of our actors forgot to tell us that he had to go for a few hours (Right during the middle of our shoot) for a...karate competition or something. That was really, really, not helpful LOL.
  • The clapboard broke. :(
  • The worst thing about this whole experience shooting wise, was that most of the actors were not actors, and just friends I recruited. Bad idea. No-one seemed to have the same passion about finishing this as I did.
  • The biggest problem on this day was that the guy monitoring the audio and holding the boom was telling is 'it's good, it's good, no wind etc' and when we went home to edit that night...it was virtually all unusable. The shots themselves were rubbish also. This was awful.
Sunday - Final Day - Due time: 7:00pm

We edited through the night, and then decided to do it all again on the Sunday morning. We planned a bit more, went to a new location on Sunday, and shot the whole film there. It went Okay, we did it in a few hours.

Not long to go now, the film was due in like 6 hours and I had to edit. I scrapped the idea I had of writing some original score and used some already written stuff. The editing went well most of the time until premiere went gay. The last few hours were a nightmare. Things glitched up, pressure was on. I had another guy helping me edit, and we managed to get it done. Exported to tape. Watched it on my camcorder in the car and realized theres a skip in it. Nuts. We handed it in on time.

Some poor team handed theirs in 2 seconds late and got disqualified.

The amount of stuff I learnt about what to do and what not to do in this single film was amazing.

I learnt what the line of action REALLY was - at this time it was only something I had read about. I learnt that you don't get your friends to act if you want to be taken seriously. Generally, I tried to keep up a much more professional manner and it was hard to keep 8 cast members quiet when most of the time they wern't required on screen. At one point the boom operator fell in a lake.

I should have learnt by now that stick to 2-3 cast, one location, make it count. Oh well, you learn, you learn. I'm happy I learnt on something that doesn't matter too much.

The screening

Something like 300 people turned up. I was REALLY REALLY nervous about the whole thing and we had to stand up and say hi to the audience (we were sitting in the audience) when it was done.

The highlight of our screening was the really loud "AND ACTION" you could hear...and one of the actors jumping out of the bushes. I have no idea how that got in there, but we were in such a hurry in the editing room.

Finally

After this I made another film, for a national competition...I had done a BIT more reading about filmmaking and watched a few more films, I thought i was slighly more ready. It wasn't such a disaster , we made it to the finals of the "Young filmmakers competition" and I had a nice talk with the judge (who has made a few successful films here in NZ) afterwards and she seemed to enjoy it and we talked about making films for a little bit. it was fun.

Now I stand a few years later, I have not made another short, but I have spent the last two years reading about film, watching films with a much more critical eye. Compared to what I understood back in my 48hours entry, I now know a lot more. I learn something new everyday, thanks to this board, movies, books, and other things. I sit up at night and dream out sequences for scenes I get in my head. All of this stuff. And it's great. I have been working towards my first REAL short for the last two years and I'm still going. Pretty soon I'm going to write it. Then shoot it. Something good this time.

As some of you know I write music, I have just secured composing a feature length film called "Pathfinders" (shot on 16mm, war film) and recently did Jay's boxing film. Originally I had given up on the fact of persuing both music and directing but I have changed my mind and decided to go full force with both. Why can't I score my own films? Coming to DVXUser has taught me a lot, and inspired me in ways I cannot explain. You guys (and girls) are AWESOME.

Thank you DVXUSER!!!!

ps. i'd like to thank the academy

-Chris
 
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First movie was called Dane's World (Parody of Wayne's World)
Shot and Edited on a Saturday during the School year.
I was probably 15 at the time and so were my friends.
Dane's World has become a favorite of many and people keep asking for more.
Some random kid came up to me and is like "Dude, I got Dane's World on my iPod" or I had a wooden spoon one day and someone asked "Is that a prop from Dane's World"

Over 750 views on Google Video, 40 5-star ratings (only been on 4 months maybe)

Well here it is, 2 years later, and I'm still proud (oh yea, I'm Dane haha)
Since then my film work has improved drastically


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3625289354477430379&q=Dane%27s+World&hl=en
 
krestofre said:
Didn't Pestilence win a special award during ZombieFest? Best Cinematography or something Mod-decided that wasn't part of the voting? Maybe I'm having false memories, but that's certainly nothing to be ashamed of. Your first film winning an award in a contest of your peers (who I find to often be the toughest audience).
Click to expand...

Yeah I remember Pestilence on the DVXuser ZombieFest DVD. Its one of my favorites. That and the one that came in first place.
Click to expand...

You guy's are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too cool :dankk2: :beer:

Like waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
 
My first short film was terrible. It was done on my first year at university. It was a pseudo intelectual reflexion on an asian guy's resilence on living his life with his non-university friends or studying. It looked more like an amateur "say no to drugs"government commercial. Shot with a sony trv-900 in 1998, if I recall. Its just so bad I don't want to see it again... (just saw it and DEFINETLY don't want to see it again :) and don't want you guys to see it either!)

Its really funny that in most first attempts people try not to include dialogue. And it often doesn't work!
 
My first was shot Super 8, in sequence, no editing. Audio was recorded on a mono cassette tape recorder/radio with big orange buttons through -- I kid you not -- a Mr. Microphone. In order for there to be any sound when viewed, I had to play the tape along with the silent film. (I did figure out that the sounds could be re-recorded, though.)

I was 11. It was an opus called "Countdown to Death!" A sort of a space flick. The ship was a Starbird Intruder repainted to be called "Marauder 5." It was held up with black thread against a black background with holes for stars. Oh, yes, we actually used the sounds the ship itself made.

There was a lizard guy.

No freakin' clue whatever happened to this thing. If the film would even still be any good today, I have no doubt it simply didn't survive the throes of my parents' divorce 20 years ago. I did find the audio cassette about six years ago, though. (Not that it means I know where it is now.)
 
David Jimerson said:
My first was shot Super 8, in sequence, no editing. Audio was recorded on a mono cassette tape recorder/radio with big orange buttons through -- I kid you not -- a Mr. Microphone. In order for there to be any sound when viewed, I had to play the tape along with the silent film. (I did figure out that the sounds could be re-recorded, though.)

I was 11. It was an opus called "Countdown to Death!" A sort of a space flick. The ship was a Starbird Intruder repainted to be called "Marauder 5." It was held up with black thread against a black background with holes for stars. Oh, yes, we actually used the sounds the ship itself made.

There was a lizard guy.

No freakin' clue whatever happened to this thing. If the film would even still be any good today, I have no doubt it simply didn't survive the throes of my parents' divorce 20 years ago. I did find the audio cassette about six years ago, though. (Not that it means I know where it is now.)
Click to expand...
Oh man, I would love to have seen this masterpiece. You had me sold on "Mr. Microphone" and "starbird intruder". I had one of those ships and the cardboard space station.
 
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